Marilyn Monroe is alive and well. The world said their goodbyes to the icon almost 50 years ago, but we still see her in theaters, on the red carpet and in our living rooms. Celebrity culture has attempted to create the next Marilyn-esque icon -- Scarlett Johansson, Angelina Jolie, Lindsay Lohan -- but the mold from which they've sprung is never quite the same. And perhaps that's the true testament to Monroe's isolated iconoclasm -- the one and only.
Fifty years ago, some liked it hot and Monroe was hot in every way -- a hotly contested, sizzling siren with a closet of burning secrets. In another fifty years, will it still be Marilyn? When the real thing continues to exist on film, how could it not be.
Michelle Williams is the latest doe-eyed bombshell to crack the code in "My Week With Marilyn," for which she took home a 2012 best actress Golden Globe. Although Williams may be leading the wiggle and wave pack, she's hardly the first to do it. From Lindsay Lohan and Blake Lively to Nicole Kidman and Rachel McAdams, these ladies may have the hair and clothes down, but when it comes to channeling the real mccoy it's all about that ephemeral Je ne sais quoi.
"I do remember one moment of being all suited up as Marilyn and walking from my dressing room onto the soundstage practicing my wiggle," Williams told GQ magazine. "There were three or four men gathered around a truck, and I remember seeing that they were watching me come and feeling that they were watching me go -- and for the very first time I glimpsed some idea of the pleasure I could take in that kind of attention; not their pleasure but my pleasure. And I thought, 'Oh, maybe Marilyn felt that when she walked down the beach.'"
Check out the lovely ladies below who've come as close as one can to the real thing:
