Marilyn Monroe

Before the name Marilyn Monroe became shorthand for Hollywood glamour, she was Norma Jeane Mortenson, born in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926. Her early life was unsettled. She spent much of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage after her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and spent much of her life in and out of hospitals. Shy as a girl, Monroe developed a stutter and became withdrawn. By 16, she had married James Dougherty, a choice made before fame, studios, and the bright machinery of celebrity found her.

That discovery began during World War II, when Monroe was working in a factory and met a photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit. A successful pin-up modeling career followed, leading to brief film contracts with 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures. After freelancing, she signed a longer contract with Fox in 1951 and began appearing in comedies such as As Young as You Feel and Monkey Business, as well as dramas including Clash by Night and Don’t Bother to Knock. A scandal over nude photographs taken before she was famous only increased interest in her films.

By 1953, Monroe had become one of Hollywood’s most marketable stars. She played leading roles in Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and How to Marry a Millionaire, films that fixed her public image as the comic, alluring “blonde bombshell.” The same year, nude images of her appeared as the centerfold and cover of the first issue of Playboy. Monroe knew the power of image and played a large role in shaping her own, but she was also frustrated by being typecast and underpaid. When Fox resisted changing her contract, she took the bold step of founding her own film production company in 1954 with Milton Greene.

Monroe then worked to expand what audiences and studios thought she could do. She spent 1955 building her company and studying method acting under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Fox eventually gave her a new contract with more control and a higher salary. Her performance in Bus Stop was critically acclaimed, and The Prince and the Showgirl, her first independent production, brought a BAFTA nomination and a David di Donatello Award for Best Actress. In 1959, she won a Golden Globe for Some Like It Hot, a film that was both a critical and commercial success.

Her private life was watched almost as closely as her films. Her marriages to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller were widely publicized, and both ended in divorce. Monroe’s last completed film was The Misfits in 1961. On August 4, 1962, she died at 36 at her Los Angeles home from a barbiturate overdose, ruled a probable suicide. Yet her screen presence and her words still draw people in because they often sound like someone trying to make sense of change, disappointment, and hope. “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together” fits the Monroe people continue to quote: wounded, witty, and still reaching for possibility.