Oh Marilyn, Say It Isn’t So

We couldn’t put this book down. The narrative drive was relentless. There were highs and lows, ups and downs, nips and tucks.

Who knew that a book about plastic surgery could be a page-turner?

We are breakfasting with Joan Kron, a longtime reporter on the plastic surgery beat for Allure magazine and the author of “Lift: Wanting, Fearing and Having a Face-Lift” (Viking). We are hunkered down at Hugo’s in West Hollywood, where we’re dishing the dirt along with the oatmeal.

To wit:

* Even Marilyn Monroe, named the sex goddess to end all sex goddesses by Playboy’s January issue, claimed her crown with a little help from her doctors.

A chin implant kicked off Monroe’s career, and her 1962 nose job X-rays are under lock and key in Beverly Hills, discreetly filed under the name of her surgeon’s nurse. La Belle Monroe’s breasts may have had a surgical je ne sais quoi by virtue of sponge breast implants as well as liquid-silicone injections. In fact, she was complaining about infections shortly before her death, according to a surgeon’s widow.

* The funny Fanny Brice had a nose job at 31, but her sniffer wasn’t necessarily up to snuff in the eyes of her public (as well as her private).

Dorothy Parker accused her of trying to hide her Jewish heritage, writing that Brice “cut off her nose to spite her race.” And when the Ziegfeld Follies star later divorced Nick Arnstein, her lawyer claimed that he “found her so much more beautiful, he was uncomfortable in her presence” and “began seeking the society of other . . . plainer women.”

Whatever.

The book also has a lot of information that’s actually useful to prospective patients, such as advice on picking a doctor, a blow-by-blow description of Kron’s second face lift of two, debates about techniques and anesthesia, sources for checking medical credentials, yada, yada, yada.

Back to the dish.

“People say to you, ‘Age is wonderful and you should grow old gracefully.’ And then you watch late-night TV and you see these awful jokes about old people and jokes about Angela Lansbury, who I think is a lovely looking woman: ‘I saw Angela Lansbury in an antique store yesterday. They wanted $800 for her.’ ”

At that price, erasing laugh lines begins to sound cheap.