Welcome to "Saturday Night At The Movies."

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's film is "My Week with Marilyn" directed by Simon Curtis and released in 2011.

It stars Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Philip Jackson, Emma Watson and Judy Dench.

The screenplay by Adrian Hodges is based on the memoirs and diaries of Colin Clark who is a young man who worked on Laurence Olivier's 1957 film "The Prince and the Showgirl".

Olivier both directed and played the lead male role opposite Marilyn Monroe, who was then at the height of her fame and popularity.

The screenplay by Adrian Hodges is based on the memoirs and diaries of Colin Clark who was a young man who worked on Laurence Olivier's 1957 film "The Prince and the Showgirl."

Olivier both directed the film and played the lead male role opposite Marilyn Monroe, who was then at the height of her fame and popularity.

The film begins in 1956 when Colin Clark, a recent graduate of Christchurch, Oxford, is 23 years old.

Somewhat out of step with the rest of his distinguished family, Colin wants a career in films.

He goes to London seeking a job with a production company run by Sir Laurence Olivier, one of Britain's premier actors.

Although he's told repeatedly there is no work for him there, he continues to haunt the offices.

Eventually, he comes to Olivier's notice.

Just as Olivier is beginning production of a film based on the play "The Sleeping Prince."

Olivier will direct the film and star with the American actress Marilyn Monroe who will soon arrive in England.

Olivier assigns Colin to find a house in London where Monroe and her husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, can stay for the duration of the filming.

By using his wits, Colin secures a suitable residence and is rewarded with the job as a third assistant director on the film, doing whatever odd jobs need to be done during the production.

The British press and people go wild when Monroe and Miller arrive in London, and Monroe quickly wins them over with her beauty and charm.

But once filming begins, Olivier finds Monroe and her entourage difficult to work with, and is especially frustrated with Monroe's tardiness and trouble remembering her lines.

Colin, despite his lovely status, serves as her defender in various small ways, even as he begins dating a young woman in the costume department.

In time, Monroe and her uncertainty and distress after Arthur Miller returns to the United States, begins to turn to Colin for comfort and support, leading to tensions in their relationships with other people, both on and off the film set.

"The Prince and the Show Girl", the film that brought Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe together on screen, was based on a 1953 play by British playwright Terence Rattigan, "The Sleeping Prince".

Olivier had starred in the original production on stage with his wife, Vivian Lee.

The play has said in June, 1911, just before the coronation of King George V. Among the foreign dignitaries attending are the ruling family of the Balkan state of Carpathia, the 16 year old King, his father, the Prince Regent, and his maternal grandmother.

When the Prince Regent is taken to a show called "The Coconut Girl", he falls for one of the performers, Elsie Marina.

The play concerns the Prince Regent's plan to seduce Elsie, a plot to overthrow the Prince Regent, and Elsie's clever resolution of all problems both political and dramatic.

"My Week With Marilyn" is based on two books by Colin Clark, "The Prince and the Showgirl and Me", published in 1995, and "My Week With Marilyn", published in 2000.

Simon Curtis, who would go on to direct the film, suggested to producer David Parfitt that the books would provide good material for a movie.

Parfitt agreed, but his concern was whether a film could provide new insights into the character of a well known personality like Marilyn Monroe.

Screenwriter Adrian Hodges later said, "If you'd said to me one day I'd write a film about her, I'd have been amazed because I wouldn't know where to start."

But Clark's books largely solved that problem for Hodges, that chronicle a very specific episode in Monroe's life and career, one that had the further advantage of juxtaposing the very American sex symbol and her entourage with the very British cast and production crew of "The Prince and The Showgirl."

The cultural clash between them despite their mutual dedication to making a profitable movie, inevitably throws the pride and prejudices of each side into strong relief.

Fortunately for the audience, Colin Clark serves both sides as a go-between, providing the audience with a sympathetic observer of events that are sometimes amusing and sometimes poignant.

Probably the biggest task in making films about well known personalities with famous faces is finding an actor who can convey that face and personality well enough so the audience will accept them as the person they're portraying.

Sometimes actors are chosen specifically for their resemblance of the famous person they're playing, like Christian McKay in 2008's "Me and Orson Welles".

Sometimes actors who bear only a limited resemblance to the well known person they're playing are able to overcome the difference through the strength of their performance.

Like Martin Landau's Oscar winning work as Bela Lugosi in 1994's "Ed Wood".

In the case of Michelle Williams' portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in "My Week With Marilyn", her task was particularly difficult.

Not only are Marilyn's face and voice very familiar to movie audiences, so are her body and her distinctive demeanor.

Williams was the only actress that producers met with while casting the part of Marilyn, and she committed to the film two years before production started.

She spent months learning everything she could about Monroe, reading biographies and other books about the star, watching her movies, looking at photographs and listening to recordings of her voice.

She wanted to know everything she could about the enigmatic actress from the inside out.

To help her convey Monroe's distinctive appearance, Williams gained weight to more closely approximate Marilyn's famous curves.

She worked with a choreographer to learn to mimic Monroe's distinctive walk.

The hair and makeup designer for "My Week with Marilyn", Jenny Shircore, realized that Williams' facial features were quite different from Monroe's.

Instead of using prosthetics, a common practice in film makeup design, Shircore relied on key aspects of Williams' face to convey a sense of Monroe's own appearance.

"There are times in the film when she's actually wearing very little makeup," Shircore said.

"But we still kept tiny aspects of Marilyn, such as the eyebrows, the shading and the shape of the lips, so we would keep three or four major points that helped us towards Marilyn."

As a result, there are times when the resemblance between Williams and Monroe is very close, especially when Marilyn is being Marilyn Monroe.

Critic Mary Pols wrote In Time Magazine, "Williams locates a central truth, the contradictory allure of this utterly impossible woman, mercurial, vain, foolish, but also intelligent in some very primal way and achingly vulnerable."

Roger Ebert, in his review of "My Week with Marilyn" in the Chicago Sun Times said of Williams, "She evokes so many Marilyns, public and private, real and make believe.

We didn't know Monroe, but we believe she must have been something like this."

Of course, there were other actors portraying famous people in "My Week with Marilyn," but most of their faces are better known in Britain than here.

Kenneth Branagh shares many notable accomplishments with Sir Laurence Olivier, but he doesn't have Olivier's movie star looks.

Judi Dench, herself a well known face, convincingly portrays Dame Sybil Thorndike, who was in her mid seventies when she appeared in "The Prince and The Showgirl."

Sybil Thorndike was one of the greatest actresses of her generation.

How great?

George Bernard Shaw wrote his 1923 play about Joan of Arc, "Saint Joan", especially for Sybil Thorndike.

Like most films based on real events, "My Week with Marilyn" takes some liberties with the facts, mostly in its portrayal of Colin Clark.

The film romanticizes his relationship with Marilyn Monroe and gives him a larger role in the making of "The Prince and The Showgirl" than the one he played in reality.

Although he was, in fact, 23 when he met Monroe and a graduate of Eaton and Christchurch, Oxford, he'd also done a term of service in the Royal Air Force.

Clark was far from the sexual innocent he is in the film.

His pursuit of a working class girl in the costume department was aimed at seduction, not romance, and he was at the same time having an affair with a much older married woman.

Nor was Colin Clark the only person working at Pinewood Studios Marilyn turned to for comfort.

The British actor Donald Sinden starred in a number of British films produced by The Rank Organization in the mid fifties.

He had a dressing room very close to the one Monroe used during the filming of "The Prince and the Showgirl."

He put a notice on his door parroting the Method School of Acting promoted by Lee and Paula Strasberg, and Monroe thought it was very funny.

"From that moment on," he later wrote, "Whenever the poor girl could not face the problems of her hybrid existence, which was frequently, she popped in for a natter and a giggle.

Of course, as a sex symbol she was stunning, but sadly, she must be one of the silliest women I have ever met."

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm Glenn Holland.

Good night.