Strawhead
Mailer's play about Marilyn Monroe, adapted with Richard Hannum from Of Women and Their Elegance. Given its fullest staging at the Actors Studio in 1986 with his daughter Kate Mailer as Monroe, in brief experimental runs in New York, Boston, and Provincetown; never published, though an extract from Act One appeared in Vanity Fair.
Strawhead is Mailer’s play about Marilyn Monroe, adapted with Richard Hannum from his 1980 “imaginary memoir” Of Women and Their Elegance (80.15). It grew out of years of work on the Monroe material — earlier readings and versions trace back across the 1970s and early 1980s (see 73.30, 81.4, and the 1983 Loeb Drama Center reading, 83.11).
Its fullest realization came in 1986 at the Actors Studio in New York, with Mailer’s daughter Kate Mailer as Monroe — a casting that drew a Vanity Fair cover, “Mailer’s New Marilyn: It’s His Daughter!”, and James Atlas’s report “The First Sitting” (86.22). An extract, “Strawhead: An Extract from Act One,” ran in the same April 1986 issue (86.25). The play had only these Actors Studio performances and brief experimental runs in Boston and Provincetown, and has never been published.
Related pages
- Of Women and Their Elegance (80.15) | Kate Mailer | The Actors Studio
- 1986
- Marilyn: A Biography (73.30)