“Yes, that film didn’t do too badly,’’ he says wryly.
Based on a memoir (“The Prince, the Showgirl and Me’’) by the late Colin Clark, “My Week With Marilyn’’ is a coming-of-age story imbued with showbiz history and culture-clash drama. In 1956, at the height of her fame, Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) arrived in London to costar with British acting royalty Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) in “The Prince and the Showgirl,’’ which Olivier, who’d starred in the stage version opposite his wife, Vivien Leigh, was also directing.
Monroe’s youth, vitality, and intuitive acting style clashed with Olivier and caused friction on a set that included Dame Sybil Thorndike (Curtis’s “Cranford’’ star Judi Dench). The film was a famous flop, a fact that makes “My Week With Marilyn’’ even more intriguing.
“There is something about this story that’s a unique combination of English heritage meets Hollywood, also the ’50s and ’60s ‘Mad Men’ thing; it feels like everything comes together at right time,’’ said Curtis in Boston last month. “I wasn’t one of those Marilyn Monroe fanatics; for most people my age or younger, she is a brand, a Warhol image, a Madonna image, rather than an actress. So it was fun to get to know her performances better. I remember being disappointed by ‘The Prince and the Showgirl’ because here was the marriage of Olivier and Monroe and somehow it’s this stodgy, old-fashioned thing.’’
The film depicts what he calls the “massive cultural moment’’ when Monroe arrived in London. “Olivier was in his 50s and emblematic of fading England and she was emblematic in her 30s of burgeoning, exciting America,’’ says Curtis. “England in 1956 was still in the shadow of World War II; rationing had only just ended. It was a black-and-white culture and she delivered Hollywood glamour.’’
