That Marilyn Monroe was much smarter than she’s regularly given credit for is old hat by now. As if “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” wasn’t proof enough, people tout her MENSA membership (er…wait….Was that Jane Mansfield? Whatever.), erudite diary entries and winsome encomiums from her ex-husband, the late Aurthur Miller as evidence of her unrecognized brilliance. She’s a genius we’re told and it’s not hard to see why. The buxom Midwesterner made presidents beg, executives weep and the world stand up and take notice. Rags, to riches, the power of resolve over destiny, and all that good stuff. Someone once told me that Marilyn was an answered prayer: a stretch of light against a crushing darkness.  I like that description. It’s universal and simplest to understand. If Marilyn Monroe was a living prayer, than couldn’t we reasonably assume that we are too? If she could make it, shouldn’t we all? If she was unappreciated than can we rest easy?

But if Marilyn Monroe was the essence of prayer then she was also its bete noir. Parroting her way from farmhand to A-list during cinema’s “golden age” is something one only achieves through indomitably, or, in other words, by praying to oneself. Prayer is entirely dependent on the will of a greater being, i.e. G-d’s for all it can obtain. But achieving success in any field, let alone the entertainment biz, requires a brand autonomy that virtually negates any sort of codependence. Like most stars, Monroe’s successes hinged, at least peripherally, on the affirmation of certain individuals in power, but it was her ability to transcend that reliance that supercedes liturgical comparisons. Marilyn Monroe may very well have been a prayer, but the G-d who answered it existed primarily within her own heart.

We al need prayer. We all need G-d. But what so few of us are willing to accept is that I many ways G-d needs us too. Just look at the L-rd within yourself for proof of that. Just watch ‘The Misfits.”