Gentlemen Still Prefer...

WAITSBURG - To say Sunny Thompson was nervous when she first performed the role of Marilyn Monroe in "Marilyn: Forever Blonde" may be an understatement.

After all, one of the first audiences to see her new show in Los Angeles was made up of die-hard fans of the late "American Goddess," including some of the producers, cast and stylists from the original "Some Like It Hot."

These were people who knew Monroe personally or at least knew her style, body language and mannerisms intimately. At least a dozen spectators that night had met the 1950s "sex symbol" up close.

"It was scary," Thompson said during a presentation at the Powerhouse Theater in Walla Walla recently. "But they were just mesmerized by the play. They said it was the best they'd ever seen."

One of Monroe's show business acquaintance, the ever-critical late Richard Blackwell, was so moved he cried during the entire play and when he went back to congratulate Thompson, he treated her as Monroe's incarnate.

"I never thought I'd see you again," he told her privately.

Monroe fans and theater lovers in the Touchet Valley and Walla Walla will be able to get almost as close when the show comes to Walla Walla. It runs at the Powerhouse Oct. 15 -30.

To promote the show, Thompson is coming to Waitsburg and Dayton next week. She'll do a Q&A/Meet & Greet at the Coppei Coffee Co on Main Street at noon on Wednesday, Oct. 12, and wander over to Betty's Diner to check the eatery from the period Monroe was a star.

At about 1: 30 p. m. , Thompson will do a presentation about her upcoming show at the Liberty Theater in Dayton before driving back to Walla Walla.

" Marilyn: Forever Blonde," which is directed by Shakespeare Walla Walla Director Stephanie Shine, started in 2007 and has toured widely from Los Angeles to New Zealand and Boston to London. It has won numerous stage awards and earned praise from the president of the longest-running Marilyn Monroe fan club.

It was no small feat for Thompson to transform herself into one of the nation's most-beloved celebrities.

Sure, the musical theater actress resembles Monroe in looks, size, height and weight. She even tried out one of her old dresses and it fit.

Even as a young girl, boys would tell her she looked like Marilyn Monroe.

"While I considered it the highest compliment, I never believed it," she said. "Who could possibly be as beautiful as Marilyn Monroe?"

A considerable stage talent, Thompson has recorded eight albums and headlined "Showgirls" at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas among many other things.

But to become someone who has been gone for almost half a century takes a poolside plunge into her tumultuous life, which is exactly what Thompson did. For four years, she collected more than 450 books written about the actress, watched every film she ever made, watched old interviews and met with people who knew Monroe when she was alive, including the nurse who read her to sleep every night.

She practiced how Monroe walks, talks and sings.

"It's not an easy thing," said Greg Thompson, who sometimes gets questions from curious fans who want to know what it's like to sleep with Marilyn Monroe.

"Everyone has an opinion about Marilyn," he said.

Sunny Thompson recalls how she flunked walking like Monroe the first week she tried the mimic the actress' gate and flair.

The play, which is almost like a musical with 17 Monroe songs, begins at the time of the star's last photo shoot at age 36 and quickly flashes back to earlier parts of her rollercoaster life.

"The makeup comes off," said Sunny Thompson, who describes the play as gritty and true of life. "She's witty and in the end, it's very tragic."

But the play doesn't portray Monroe as a victim despite what many women then and now believe was the raw deal she got from rising to fame in an "all-men's world."

Instead, Thompson said Monroe was a "complex" career woman in search of love and acceptance both professionally and person- ally, " something we all crave," Thompson writes on the show's website (www,marilynforever blonde.com)

"I have deep admiration and respect for Marilyn's talent, her warm-witted charm and I empathize with her insecurities and need for reassurance," she wrote. "I love her style, her shrewd marketing sense and her compassion for humanity. Perhaps it's the kindness and compassion behind her eyes that make her so unforgettably beautiful."

Monroe "was a strong woman," Thompson said during her presentation about the play in Walla Walla. "She loved to push the envelope. She was the Lady Gaga and Madonna of her day."

"Marilyn"

Comes To Town Wednesday, Oct. 12

Waitsburg:

Coppei Coffee Co. noon (later to Betty's Diner)

Dayton:

Liberty Theater 1:30 p.m.