Marilyn Monroe and America in the 1960s

One of the most significant photo exhibitions to document America in the turbulent 1960s, which also includes images of the American icon Marilyn Monroe, opens to the public on September 29th, 2007.  The exhibition is an unequaled historical perspective of the 1960s in America as captured by the legendary photographer, writer and director Lawrence Schiller, and will bring to the Chinese people a perspective of America never exhibited before in China. 

The photographs on display at the exhibition document one of the most difficult periods in America history, one that started with optimism and ended in chaos.  It was 10 years of turmoil and exploration.  Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday" to President Kennedy; Kennedy stared down the Russians over missiles in Cuba and was then assassinated the following year. Cassius Clay captured the heavy weight title and changed his name to Muhammad Ali.  Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream.  The antiwar protestors saw hope in Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy, but hope was stopped when Kennedy was killed.  The decade began with the election of John F. Kennedy and ended with Richard Nixon.  Throughout this turbulent decade, whenever a headline making news event occurred, Lawrence Schiller was there.

In the 1960s, Mr. Schiller's works appeared in leading publications throughout the world.  During the mid 1970s he turned to writing and film directing. His books, films and collaborations have won an Academy Award (Oscar), 7 Television Emmys, numerous New York Times bestseller listings and a Pulitzer Prize.  In addition, Mr. Schiller has been awarded the prestigious National Press Photographer's Association Award, the Graflex Award, the Catholic Church's Christopher Award, the Film Advisory Board Award and the USA Film Festival Award.  His works have been exhibited at New York's Lincoln Center, and the Berlin Film Festival.  He was a representative from the United States to the Moscow International Peace Forum.

Mr. Schiller's interest in China started in 2005 when he first visited and began to document China's modern history from 1933 to 2001, as told through the eyes of China's contemporary artists, and their fathers and mothers. 

Preface

When Lawrence Schiller received the assignment from the French magazine Paris Match, in May of 1962, to photograph Marilyn Monroe on the 20th Century Fox set of Something's Got to Give, the orphaned Norma Jean had firmly established herself as the blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe. By then she'd appeared in twenty-nine films, but the world was unprepared for the moment when Marilyn jumped in the swimming pool in a bikini and came up out of the water au natural. She was in her element: the sex goddess, posing for eternity at the age of 36. Two months later she would be dead. Accidental overdose, suicide, or murder? We'll never know.
 
Schiller remembers the 1960s this way: Fast. As in: Blur. To him it was a decade that began with optimism and ended in chaos. It was the decade that found Americans fighting the Vietcong in Vietnam, Mao's Red Guard fighting those who opposed his Cultural Revolution, Protestants and Catholics killing each other in Northern Ireland, and Soviet troops crushing the rise of liberalism in Czechoslovakia. On the peace side, you had the antiwar movement that spread among the youth around the world and the Sexual Revolution, which had a slogan: Make Love, Not War.

It often seemed that whenever a headline-making news event occurred, Lawrence Schiller was there. When the 1960 presidential election results came in and Richard Nixon lost, Schiller was there to capture Nixon's wife's tears. When President Kennedy stared down the Russians over missiles in Cuba, and then was struck down by Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was killed two days later by Jack Ruby on November 24, 1963, Schiller was also there. Cassius Clay captured the heavyweight crown, changed his name to Muhammad Ali, and declared himself a Black Muslim and it was Schiller who captured Ali knocking out Floyd Patterson in '65. Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream where all God's children came together, and was assassinated in Memphis and again Schiller was there when the Watt's riots erupted. The antiwar protestors saw a ray of hope in Bobby Kennedy, but that hope was extinguished when a young Palestinian named Sirhan Sirhan shot and killed Kennedy. It was Schiller who recorded Kennedy's last campaign. Where the decade began with the election of John F. Kennedy, it ended with Richard Nixon, planning to open the door to China and then in the 1970s having to resign in disgrace.

Schiller was not just lucky to be in the right place at the right time; he was prescient. One month he was working for the American Magazine, Life, the next the British publication, The London Sunday Times, or Newsweek, Look, Time or Paris Match.  He was there to cover the event, to add to it, to help us see it, to aid in its meaning and its depth.

"It was a time in which things happened awfully fast,"Schiller says of the decade. "It was a wild, wild period; an uncontrolled period. I don't think you had any sense of perspective in the '60s. You had to wait and look back at it, because it was a period in which things were happening that had no rhyme or reason to it. But by the end of '60s I had covered so many stories, had so many magazine covers, I had somehow become part of that decade's history.