The Boy Who Took Marilyn to the Prom
by Henry Massie
GENRE: Psychological Thriller, Hollywood
PUBLICATION DATE: 07/07/2021
DESCRIPTION:
Hardly any relationship is more fraught with unspoken feelings and words than one between a male psychiatrist and a female patient. In this novel drawn from real events, in 1961, a year before her death, Marilyn Monroe’s last psychiatrist invited her into his family in a desperate attempt to save the actress by giving her a family she never had. The doctor suggests his son take the actress to his senior prom, an experience Marilyn missed because she never finished high school. The boy is 17 and Marilyn is 35, looking no older than a college coed. The night of that dance haunts the boy until 2007 when, as a psychiatrist himself, he takes on a patient who reminds him of Marilyn, and a cascade of tempestuous events follows.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Henry Massie is a writer and psychiatrist who lives in Berkeley, California. He is the author of the biography Art of a Jewish Woman: Felice’s Worlds and coauthor of Lives Across Time, a study of paths to emotional health and mental illness. He is also coauthor of My Life is a Longing, the classic 2006 International Journal of Psychoanalysis article on child abuse, and author of many other articles in professional books and journals. This is his second novel.
REVIEWS:
“Mesmerizing…a haunting trauma…grippingly strange, poignantly melancholic and psychologically sophisticated…a sensitive exploration of the effects of unreconciled sadness.”—Kirkus Reviews
“A thought-provoking reflection on the dark side of glamour and the hidden recesses of the psyche.”—Midwest Book Review
“Intrepid, vivid. Takes us inside the psychotherapy office, face to face with the dangers psychiatrists and their patients run of becoming slaves to their feeling for each other.” Bridget Connelly, prize-winning author of Forgetting Ireland
“Captivating, always surprising, accurate and welcome.” Jean Marie Apostolides, Stanford University, author of The Audience
COMPARATIVE FILM/BOOK:
FILM: A Dangerous Method. BOOK: Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
CASTING:
1) Marilyn Monroe (actress Ana de Armas), 2) Robbie Carosso, adult son of Marilyn Monroe’s last psychiatrist (actor Michael Fassbinder or Leonardo DiCaprio), 3) Eli Meyer, Robbie’s attorney and best friend from childhood (actor Denzel Washington), 4) Talley Coates, Robbie and Eli’s high school lover, later Eli’s artist wife (actress, Katie Holmes)
PRIMARY VENUES/LOCATIONS WITHIN THE BOOK:
Los Angeles, San Francisco, briefly Manhattan (lower East Side & West Side)
