Marilyn: The Last Sessions

Sunday August 2, 2009 at 10 pm ET/PT on CBC News Network

Marilyn: The Last Sessions, a revealing documentary about the Hollywood icon paints a rare portrait of Monroe, based on tapes made during psychoanalysis sessions in the months prior to her untimely death.

From January 1960 to August 1962, Monroe and Freudian psychoanalyst Ralph Greenson formed an odd couple. The emotionally troubled actress turned to Greenson for help with everything from getting up in the morning to her acting career. He had made it his mission to surround the fragile actress with love, as if she were a child in distress.

Greenson wanted to protect Monroe, but ended up being one of the last to see her alive on August 5, 1962. The mysterious tapes no longer exist, but John Miner, a former Los Angeles County prosecutor who investigated her death and interviewed the psychiatrist, claims they were played to him, and that he took "extensive" and "nearly verbatim" notes. Although Miner says he was allowed to hear the tapes on condition that he never reveal their contents, he broke the promise years after Greenson's death, and released the ‘transcript' when some Monroe biographers suggested the psychiatrist might be considered a suspect in her death.

Presenting exceptional archival footage of Marilyn Monroe, the documentary features individuals who loomed large in her life, including directors George Cukor and John Huston, and writers Truman Capote and Arthur Miller (one of her husbands), as well as the Kennedys and CIA and FBI operatives.

The documentary is adapted from Michel Schneider's book, Marilyn, Last Sessions (Interallie Prize 2006 - Grasset), which was published in 20 countries in 2008. Patrick Jeudy is the director of Marilyn: The Last Sessions. It was produced by Film D'Ici in France, which also produced the Golden Globe award-winning and Oscar-nominated animated documentary Waltz with Bashir.