A new documentary about endometriosis, “End of the Cycle,” starring Amy Schumer, Julianne Hough, and more, says we should reframe our understanding of Marilyn Monroe in terms of her silent battle with the debilitating condition.
The film icon had multiple miscarriages, “mystery” hospital trips and was labeled “difficult” — all things likely related to the painful disease, according to the movie.
“The way she’s been portrayed all these years has not been accurate,” co-director Sammy Jaye said during a screening at the Whitby Hotel. “If anyone mentions Marilyn Monroe in a negative way, you can revert back to this and know that she was going through [the disease] at a time when she couldn’t have said anything, and there wasn’t social media,” noting how the legendary “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” star would have struggled alone.
Jaye, who also has endometriosis, noted Monroe’s 100th birthday, saying, “You look at what has and hasn’t changed over the past 100 years with treatments and medicines. . . . not much has changed.”
The disease — in which tissue similar to the uterus’s inner lining grows outside of the uterus causing intense pain — has no cure and cannot be diagnosed without surgery. Some 200 million are estimated to have endometriosis.
The writer of the 1985 book “Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe,” Anthony Summers confirmed her diagnoses through her doctor. He writes, “The condition was so severe that it destroyed her marriages, her wish for children, her career and ultimately her life. In days before effective conservative surgery or effective medical therapies, it led to progressively increasing use of strong analgesics, tranquilisers and hypnotics – and drug dependency.”
In one instance, covered in the film, Monroe taped a pleading note on her stomach to her doctor before undergoing an appendectomy in April 1952 reading, “Save please (I can’t ask enough) what you can – I’m in your hands. You have children and you must know what it means – please Dr Rabwin – I know somehow you will!”
It continues, “Thank you – thank you – thank you – For God’s sakes Dear Doctor no ovaries removed.”
Olympian Brittany Brown, “Pretty Little Liars” Janel Parrish and “Bob Hearts Abishola” star Foláḱ Olówòfóyèkù also star in the film, which can be seen at endocollective.org.