Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007431589 ISBN 13: 9780007431588

Publisher: HarperPress, 2011

Now a major film, starring Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne and Kenneth Branagh. This edition combines Colin Clark’s acclaimed The Prince, the Showgirl and Me and My Week with Marilyn.

In 1956, fresh from Oxford, the 23-year-old Colin Clark (brother of maverick Tory MP and diarist Alan) worked as a humble ‘gofer’ on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl, the film that disastrously united Laurence Olivier with Marilyn Monroe.

This is the story of when Clark escorted a Monroe desperate to escape from the pressures of stardom. How he ended up sharing her bed is a tale too rich to summarise!

Clark’s extraordinary experiences on and off set have now been turned into a major film starring Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Judi Dench, Emma Watson, Kenneth Branagh and Dominic Cooper.

· Includes an exclusive introduction from Simon Curtis, director of ‘My Week with Marilyn’.

· Includes an exclusive interview with screenplay writer, Adrian Hodges.

Review:

‘My favourite book of the year’ Joan Collins

‘This book is sheer delight...wonderfully funny...by the end of this short but richly packed chronicle, Colin Clark seems like an old friend...he is blessed with a sharp eye and an even sharper pen’ Sunday Telegraph

‘The marvellous traumas and stampings of feet of the stars are recorded through the eyes of a star struck youngster whose bedside prose is so sharp and polished’ The Times

‘The immediacy and charm of Clark’s recollections are possibly more illuminating than the millions of words and pictures pumped out to expose or dish the dirt on the Monroe legend’ Helen Osborne, Sunday Times

‘Delightful: so observant and pleasing, and such enjoyable asides’ Alan Clark (letter to Colin Clark)

‘Beguiling, touching and compassionate’ Melanie McGrath, Evening Standard

‘An extraordinary story’ Frank Johnson, Spectator

‘It’s the funniest account of life in the booby-hatch that’s a film studio known to me...It’s not that I await [his next] diaries eagerly, but I’m planning to sneak into Clark’s house and read them right this minute’ Spectator

‘Revealing, moving and deliciously funny’ Daily Telegraph

From the Back Cover:

"The immediacy and charm of Clark's recollections are possibly more illuminating than the millions of words and pictures pumped out to expose or dish the dirt on the Monroe legend"
HELEN OSBORNE, 'Sunday Telegraph'

In this delightfully comic and touchingly romantic book Colin Clark describes – for the first time – what happened between Marilyn Monroe and himself during the 'missing' week from his celebrated diary for 1956, published in 1995 as 'The Prince, the Showgirl and Me'.

In 1956, fresh from Eton and Oxford, the twenty-three-year-old Colin Clark was employed as a humble 'gofer' on the set of 'The Prince and the Showgirl', the film that was intended to unite the talents of Sir Laurence Olivier, England's pre-eminent classical actor, and Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood's greatest star. From the outset the production was bedevilled by problems, and the clashes between Monroe and Olivier, who was both directing and co-starring, have entered film legend.

Nearly forty years later, Colin Clark's wonderfully entertaining diary of that time was chosen of the book of the year by Jilly Cooper, Joan Collins and many others. But – one week was missing from the middle of the book. Here is the story of that week: a delicious idyll in which Clark came to know an unhappy Monroe desperate to escape from the pressures of working with Olivier and an often hostile cast and crew, from the crowd of hangers-on who continually surrounded her, and from the burden of her stardom itself. How he unexpectedly ended up sharing a bed is a story readers will have to discover themselves.

"An engaging slice of memoir"
OBSERVER