I Wanna Be Loved by You

I Wanna Be Loved by You is both a love song within the story and one of the performances through which Marilyn Monroe’s public identity is made and examined. Sung first to Ex-Atleta as an expression of marital happiness and later rehearsed repeatedly as Sugar Kane, it links private longing to the manufactured pleasures of the screen. Its refrain becomes a role she can perform with increasing precision, even as the novel presents that performance as a source of confinement rather than simple fulfillment.

Private song and manufactured repertoire

At the beginning of the marriage, Norma Jeane Baker sings I Wanna Be Loved by You to Ex-Atleta. She tells him that the day is the happiest of her life, and he is so moved that he can only whisper that it is his happiest day too. In this scene, the song belongs to an intimate exchange: its wish for love appears answered, at least for the moment, by the husband’s emotion and reciprocal declaration. The song thus enters the story with the promise of mutual affection, before later performances complicate that promise.

The account of the couple’s time in Tokyo places the song within a much larger repertoire that Marilyn can summon from memory. She can perform the songs from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as if she were a mechanical doll, after singing them dozens of times. Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, When Love Goes Wrong, Nothing Goes Right, and A Little Girl from Little Rock are named alongside the repertoire. The contrast is pointed: the songs are available to her with practiced reliability, while the surrounding circumstances are less secure. She is on her honeymoon, yet thinks Ex-Atleta might prefer not to have her constantly beside him at the baseball fields.

That apparent spontaneity has been built through work. Marilyn’s recordings were made in an average of twenty sessions per song, after which a studio sound engineer cut apart and reassembled the reels to produce a supposedly perfect recording. I Wanna Be Loved by You therefore carries the trace of a process that smooths out variation and labor. The polished musical object is assembled from repeated attempts, just as the screen image of Marilyn is made through repetition, selection, and correction.

Sugar Kane and repetition on the set

The song returns as part of Marilyn’s performance as Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot. The narration makes the refrain feel less like a freely chosen expression than a loop into which the actress has become caught. Sugar Kane’s cheerful ukulele playing and flirtatious manner are presented against Marilyn’s fear and intoxication; the public-facing performance continues while her private condition is distressed. The character’s song promises exclusive affection, but the performance also makes the woman singing it available to an audience’s appetite and approval.

On Marilyn’s first full day back on the set, after she has been ill at home and rumors have circulated, she sings I Wanna Be Loved by You in an effort to win over the people around her. Her pale, tall husband is present, watching grimly. The director starts an impromptu round of applause, and the rest of the set follows, eager to please the actress. Marilyn keeps her eyes lowered and bites her lip, trying to determine whether the applause is sincere or whether everyone is participating in an illusion. The song has made the room respond, but the response does not settle whether she is truly welcomed.

She asks to do the number again. The miniature ukulele and the exaggerated, doll-like movements make the performance seem to her like a condensed version of a life made into a toy: a bright, manageable object arranged for others to enjoy. The camera’s gaze and the role’s calculated innocence turn Sugar Kane into a comic and sexualized figure. The song’s lightness consequently carries a double charge: it is the musical pleasure the set expects, but it also underscores how the character is written to be laughed at and desired.

Marilyn asks to repeat the performance again, and again. With each attempt, her interpretation of Sugar Kane becomes more assured, and she senses that it is improving. Yet this progress does not dissolve the injury involved in playing a role defined by childishness and sexual availability. The song gives her a form she can refine, while the film’s version of femininity threatens to reduce the actress to that form. Repetition is at once craft and entrapment: she is learning how to make the character work, but the refrain’s return also suggests that the demand to please has no natural stopping point.

Applause, authorship, and the audience

The scene distinguishes between Marilyn’s control over performance and her limited control over its reception. The director can initiate applause, and the others can follow; she can ask to repeat the song and develop the interpretation. But she cannot be certain that the response she receives is honest. Her awareness of her own voice—as rough and breathless, and distant to her when she listens to it—adds to that uncertainty. The performance is not simply a direct expression of an inner self: it is a voice and manner recognized as Marilyn’s, heard by her almost as if from elsewhere.

Her growing command of the number does not mean that she accepts every meaning imposed on it. She is conscious that Sugar Kane has been written as a sexy cartoon and that the part’s treatment of femininity wounds her. At the same time, she recognizes the role as one written for her and cannot cleanly separate the character from the actress. The song becomes a point where the two identities meet uneasily: Marilyn can shape Sugar Kane’s performance, while Sugar Kane’s repeated appeal to be loved risks becoming the public’s substitute for seeing Marilyn herself.

The song as spectacle beyond the film set

The song’s association with Marilyn returns in the Club Zuma scene, where Norma Jeane Baker sees Amica Magica onstage performing before mirrors. The dancer resembles Marilyn Monroe, and the crowd’s repeated cries of Marilyn turn the name into a response to a spectacle rather than recognition of the person watching. The song is part of the performance, alongside the mirrors, the flashing lights, and the audience’s escalating excitement. The number’s public life has outgrown the film set: it can be used by another performer to summon the star image and provoke a crowd.

Norma Jeane Baker watches in disguise, hidden behind sunglasses and a white silk turban, and feels exposed by the audience’s reaction. She understands the performance as making women’s bodies into material for amusement and resents being brought there by Carlo, believing that he should have cared about her discomfort. As the crowd joins in the Marilyn chant, the distinction between the performer, the character, and the woman who bears the name collapses from the audience’s point of view. The song that once served as a private offering to a husband now helps organize a public spectacle in which a star’s image can be imitated, consumed, and confused with the person herself.

Across these scenes, I Wanna Be Loved by You changes from a marital declaration into a rehearsed screen number and then a sign of celebrity detached from its original singer. Its recurring wish for love is shadowed by the machinery that produces a performance and by audiences who respond to an image. The song’s sweetness remains audible, but the narrative makes its central irony difficult to miss: being asked to perform the desire to be loved does not guarantee that the performer will be seen or loved beyond the role.