Marilyn Monroe
(born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1,
1926 – August 4, 1962) was an American actress, model, and singer. Famous for
playing comedic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the
most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s and was emblematic of the
era's changing attitudes towards sexuality. Although she was a top-billed
actress for only a decade, her films grossed $200 million (equivalent to $2
billion in 2018) by the time of her unexpected death in 1962. More than half a century later, she continues
to be a major popular culture icon.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her
childhood in foster homes and an orphanage and married at the age of 16. While
working in a factory as part of the war effort during World War II, she met a
photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit and began a successful pin-up
modeling career. The work led to short-lived film contracts with Twentieth
Century-Fox and Columbia Pictures. After a series of minor film roles, she
signed a new contract with Fox in late 1950. Over the next two years, she
became a popular actress with roles in several comedies, including As Young as
You Feel and Monkey Business and in
the dramas Clash by Night and Don't Bother to Knock. Monroe faced a
scandal when it was revealed that she had posed for nude photos before she
became a star, but the story did not damage her career and instead resulted in
increased interest in her films.
By 1953, Monroe was one of the most marketable Hollywood
stars; she had leading roles in the film noir Niagara, which focused on her sex
appeal, and the comedies Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a
Millionaire, which established her star image as a "dumb blonde". The
same year, her images were used as the centerfold and on the cover of the first
issue of the men's magazine Playboy. Although she played a significant role in
the creation and management of her public image throughout her career, she was
disappointed when she was typecast and underpaid by the studio. She was briefly
suspended in early 1954 for refusing a film project but returned to star in one
of the biggest box office successes of her career, The Seven Year Itch (1955).
When the studio was still reluctant to change Monroe's
contract, she founded her own film production company in 1954. She dedicated
1955 to building the company and began studying method acting at the Actors
Studio. In late 1955, Fox awarded her a new contract, which gave her more
control and a larger salary. Her subsequent roles included a critically
acclaimed performance in Bus Stop
(1956) and her first independent production, The Prince and the Showgirl (1957). Monroe won a Golden Globe for
Best Actress for her work in Some Like It
Hot (1959), a critical and commercial success. Her last completed film was
the drama The Misfits (1961).
Monroe's troubled private life received much attention. She
struggled with substance abuse, depression, and anxiety. Her second and third
marriages, to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller
were highly publicized and both ended in divorce. On August 4, 1962, she died
at age 36 from an overdose of barbiturates at her home in Los Angeles. Although
Monroe's death was ruled a probable suicide, several conspiracy theories have
been proposed in the decades following her death.
Life and career
1926–1943: Childhood
and first marriage
Monroe was born Norma
Jeane Mortenson at the Los Angeles County Hospital on June 1, 1926. Her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker (née Monroe,
1902–1984), was from a poor Midwestern family who had migrated to California at
the turn of the century. At the age of
15, Gladys married John Newton Baker, an abusive man nine years her senior, and
had two children by him, Robert (1917–1933) and Berniece (b. 1919). She successfully filed for divorce and sole
custody in 1923, but Baker kidnapped the children soon after and moved with
them to his native Kentucky. Monroe was
not told that she had a sister until she was 12, and met her for the first time
as an adult. Following the divorce, Gladys worked as a film negative cutter at
Consolidated Film Industries. In 1924,
she married Martin Edward Mortensen, but they separated only some months later
and divorced in 1928. Monroe's father is
unknown and she most often used Baker as her surname.
Although Gladys was mentally and financially unprepared for
a child, Monroe's early childhood was stable and happy. Gladys placed her daughter with evangelical
Christian foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender in the rural town of
Hawthorne; she also lived there for the first six months, until she was forced
to move back to the city due to work. She then began visiting her daughter on
weekends.
In the summer of 1933, Gladys bought a small house in
Hollywood with a loan from the Home Owners' Loan Corporation and moved
seven-year-old Monroe in with her. They
shared the house with lodgers, actors George and Maude Atkinson and their
daughter, Nellie. In January 1934,
Gladys had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. After several months in a rest home, she was
committed to the Metropolitan State Hospital. She spent the rest of her life in and out of
hospitals and was rarely in contact with Monroe. Monroe became a ward of the state, and her
mother's friend, Grace Goddard, took responsibility over her and her mother's
affairs.
"When I was five
I think, that's when I started wanting to be an actress [...] I didn't like the
world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. [...]
When I heard that this was acting, I said that's what I want to be [...] Some
of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house
and there I'd sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the
screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it."—Monroe in an interview for Life in 1962
In the next four years, Monroe's living situation changed
often. For the first 16 months, she continued living with the Atkinsons, and
was sexually abused during this time. Always a shy girl, she now also developed a stutter
and became withdrawn. In the summer of
1935, she briefly stayed with Grace and her husband Erwin "Doc" Goddard
and two other families, and in September, Grace placed her in the Los Angeles
Orphans Home. The orphanage was "a
model institution" and was described in positive terms by her peers, but
Monroe felt abandoned. Encouraged by the
orphanage staff who thought that Monroe would be happier living in a family,
Grace became her legal guardian in 1936, but did not take her out of the
orphanage until the summer of 1937. Monroe's second stay with the Goddards lasted
only a few months because Doc molested her; she then lived brief periods with
her relatives and Grace's friends and relatives in Los Angeles and Compton.
Monroe found a more permanent home in September 1938, when
she began living with Grace's aunt, Ana Lower, in Sawtelle. She was enrolled in Emerson Junior High School
and went to weekly Christian Science services with Lower. Monroe was otherwise a mediocre student, but
excelled in writing and contributed to the school newspaper. Due to the elderly Lower's health problems,
Monroe returned to live with the Goddards in Van Nuys in around early 1941. The same year, she began attending Van Nuys
High School.
In 1942, the company that employed Doc Goddard relocated him
to West Virginia. California child protection laws prevented the Goddards from
taking Monroe out of state, and she faced having to return to the orphanage. As a solution, she married their neighbors'
21-year-old son, factory worker James Dougherty, on June 19, 1942, just after
her 16th birthday. Monroe subsequently
dropped out of high school and became a housewife. She found herself and
Dougherty mismatched and later stated that she was "dying of boredom"
during the marriage. In 1943, Dougherty
enlisted in the Merchant Marine and was stationed on Santa Catalina Island, where
Monroe moved with him.
1944–1949: Modeling
and first film roles
In April 1944, Dougherty was shipped out to the Pacific, and
he would remain there for most of the next two years. Monroe moved in with his parents and began a
job at the Radioplane Company, a munitions factory in Van Nuys. In late 1944, she met photographer David
Conover, who had been sent by the U.S. Army Air Forces' First Motion Picture
Unit to the factory to shoot morale-boosting pictures of female workers. Although none of her pictures were used, she
quit working at the factory in January 1945 and began modeling for Conover and
his friends. Defying her deployed
husband, she moved on her own and signed a contract with the Blue Book Model
Agency in August 1945.
As a model, Monroe occasionally used the name Jean
Norman. She straightened her curly
brunette hair and dyed it blonde to make herself more employable. Her figure was deemed more suitable for
pin-up than fashion modeling, and she was featured mostly in advertisements and
men's magazines. According to Emmeline
Snively, the agency's owner, Monroe was one of its most ambitious and
hard-working models; by early 1946, she had appeared on 33 magazine covers for
publications such as Pageant, U.S. Camera, Laff, and Peek.
Through Snively, Monroe signed a contract with an acting
agency in June 1946. After an
unsuccessful interview at Paramount Pictures, she was given a screen-test by Ben
Lyon, a 20th Century-Fox executive. Head executive Darryl F. Zanuck was
unenthusiastic about it, but he gave her a standard six-month contract to avoid
her being signed by rival studio RKO Pictures.
Monroe's contract began in August 1946, and she and Lyon selected the stage
name "Marilyn Monroe". The first name was picked by Lyon, who was
reminded of Broadway star Marilyn Miller; the last was Monroe's mother's maiden
name. In September 1946, she divorced
Dougherty, who was against her having a career.
Monroe had no film roles during the first six months and
instead dedicated her days to acting, singing and dancing classes. Eager to learn more about the film industry,
she also spent time at the studio lot to observe others working and to promote
herself. Her contract was renewed in
February 1947, and she was given her first film roles, bit parts in Dangerous Years (1947) and Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948). The
studio also enrolled her in the Actors' Laboratory Theatre, an acting school
teaching the techniques of the Group Theatre; she later stated that it was
"my first taste of what real acting in a real drama could be, and I was
hooked". Despite her enthusiasm, her teachers thought
her too shy and insecure to have a future in acting, and Fox did not renew
Monroe's contract in August 1947. She
returned to modeling while also doing occasional odd jobs at film studios, such
as working as a dancing "pacer" behind the scenes at musical sets.
Monroe was determined to make it as an actress, and continued
studying at the Actors' Lab. In October 1947, she appeared as a blonde vamp in
the play Glamour Preferred at the Bliss-Hayden Theater, but it ended after only
a few performances. To promote herself,
she frequented producers' offices, befriended gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky,
and entertained influential male guests at studio functions, a practice she had
begun at Fox. She also became a friend and occasional sex
partner of Fox executive Joseph M. Schenck, who persuaded his friend Harry
Cohn, the head executive of Columbia Pictures, to sign her in March 1948.
While at Fox, Monroe was given "girl next door"
roles; at Columbia, she was modeled after Rita Hayworth. Her
hairline was raised and her hair was bleached platinum blonde. She also began working with the studio's head
drama coach, Natasha Lytess, who would remain her mentor until 1955. Her only film at the studio was the low-budget
musical Ladies of the Chorus (1948),
in which she had her first starring role as a chorus girl who is courted by a wealthy
man. She also screen-tested for the lead
role in Born Yesterday (1950), but
her contract was not renewed in September 1948.
Ladies of the Chorus was released the following month but was not a
success.
Monroe then became the protégée of Johnny Hyde, the vice
president of the William Morris Agency. Their relationship soon became sexual
and he proposed marriage, but Monroe refused.
He paid for Monroe to have
plastic surgery on her jaw and possibly a rhinoplasty, and arranged a bit part
in the Marx Brothers film Love Happy (1950), the New York promotional tour of
which she also joined in 1949.[74] Meanwhile, Monroe continued modeling, and in
1949 she posed nude for photos taken by Tom Kelley.
1950–1952:
Breakthrough years
In 1950, Monroe had bit parts in Love Happy, A Ticket to
Tomahawk, Right Cross and The
Fireball, but also appeared in minor supporting roles in two critically
acclaimed films: Joseph Mankiewicz's drama All
About Eve and John Huston's crime film The
Asphalt Jungle. Despite her screen
time being only a few minutes in the latter, she gained a mention in Photoplay
and according to biographer Donald Spoto "moved effectively from movie
model to serious actress". In December 1950, Hyde was able to negotiate a
seven-year contract for Monroe with 20th Century-Fox. He died of heart attack only days later, which
left her devastated.
The Fox contract brought Monroe more publicity, and she had
supporting roles in four low-budget films in 1951: in the MGM drama Home Town Story, and in three moderately
successful comedies for Fox, As Young as
You Feel, Love Nest, and Let's Make It Legal. According to Spoto all four films featured her
"essentially [as] a sexy ornament", but she received some praise from
critics: Bosley Crowther of The New York Times described her as
"superb" in As Young As You
Feel and Ezra Goodman of the Los Angeles Daily News called her "one of
the brightest up-and-coming [actresses]" for Love Nest. Her popularity with audiences was also
growing: she received several thousand fan letters a week, and was declared
"Miss Cheesecake of 1951" by the army newspaper Stars and Stripes,
reflecting the preferences of soldiers in the Korean War. In her private life, Monroe was in a
relationship with director Elia Kazan and also briefly dated several other men,
including director Nicholas Ray and actors Yul Brynner and Peter Lawford.
In the second year of her contract, Monroe became a
top-billed actress. Gossip columnist Florabel Muir named her the "it
girl" of 1952 and Hedda Hopper described her as the "cheesecake queen"
turned "box office smash". In
February, she was named the "best young box office personality" by
the Foreign Press Association of Hollywood, and began a highly publicized
romance with retired New York Yankees baseball star Joe DiMaggio, one of the
most famous sports personalities of the era.
In March 1952, a scandal broke when Monroe revealed that she
had posed for nude pictures in 1949, which were now featured in a
calendar. The studio had learned of the upcoming publication
of the calendar some weeks prior, and together with Monroe decided that to
avoid damaging her career it was best to admit to them while stressing that she
had been broke at the time. The strategy gained her public sympathy and
increased interest in her films; the following month, she was featured on the
cover of Life as "The Talk of Hollywood". Monroe added to her reputation as a new sex
symbol with other publicity stunts that year: she wore a revealing dress when
acting as Grand Marshal at the Miss America Pageant parade, and told gossip
columnist Earl Wilson that she usually wore no underwear.
Despite her newfound popularity, Monroe wished to show more
of her acting range and had begun taking acting classes with Michael Chekhov
and mime Lotte Goslar soon after beginning the Fox contract. In the summer of 1952, Monroe appeared in two
commercially successful dramas. The
first was Fritz Lang's Clash by Night,
in which she played a fish cannery worker; to prepare; she spent time in a fish
cannery in Monterey. She received
positive reviews for her performance: The Hollywood Reporter stated that
"she deserves starring status with her excellent interpretation", and
Variety wrote that she "has an ease of delivery which makes her a cinch
for popularity". The second film
was the thriller Don't Bother to Knock,
in which she starred as a mentally disturbed babysitter and which Zanuck had
assigned for her to test her abilities in a heavier dramatic role. It
received mixed reviews from critics, with Crowther deeming her too inexperienced
for the difficult role, and Variety blaming the script for the film's problems.
Monroe's three other films in 1952 continued with her
typecasting in comic roles that focused on her sex appeal. In We're Not Married!, her role as a beauty
pageant contestant was created solely to "present Marilyn in two bathing
suits", according to its writer Nunnally Johnson. In Howard Hawks' Monkey Business, in which she was featured opposite Cary Grant, she
played a secretary who is a "dumb, childish blonde, innocently unaware of
the havoc her sexiness causes around her". In O.
Henry's Full House, she had a minor role as a sex worker.
During this period, Monroe gained a reputation for being
difficult to work with; the difficulties worsened as her career progressed. She
was often late or did not show up at all, did not remember her lines, and would
demand several re-takes before she was satisfied with her performance. Her dependence on her acting coaches—Natasha
Lytess and then Paula Strasberg—also irritated directors. Monroe's problems have been attributed to a
combination of perfectionism, low self-esteem, and stage fright; she disliked
the lack of control she had on film sets and never experienced similar problems
during photo shoots, in which she had more say over her performance and could
be more spontaneous instead of following a script. To alleviate her anxiety and chronic insomnia,
she began to use barbiturates, amphetamines, and alcohol, which also
exacerbated her problems, although she did not become severely addicted until
1956. According to Sarah Churchwell,
some of Monroe's behavior, especially later in her career, was also in response
to the condescension and sexism of her male co-stars and directors. Similarly, biographer Lois Banner has stated
that she was bullied by many of her directors.
1953: Rising star
Monroe starred in three movies that were released in 1953
and emerged as a major sex symbol and one of Hollywood's most bankable
performers. The first was the
Technicolor film noir Niagara, in
which she played a femme fatale scheming to murder her husband, played by
Joseph Cotten. By then, Monroe and her
make-up artist Allan "Whitey" Snyder had developed her
"trademark" make-up look: dark arched brows, pale skin,
"glistening" red lips and a beauty mark. According to Sarah Churchwell, Niagara was one of the most overtly
sexual films of Monroe's career. In some
scenes, Monroe's body was covered only by a sheet or a towel, considered
shocking by contemporary audiences. Niagara's most famous scene is a
30-second long shot behind Monroe where she is seen walking with her hips
swaying, which was used heavily in the film's marketing.
When Niagara was
released in January 1953, women's clubs protested it as immoral, but it proved
popular with audiences. While Variety
deemed it "clichéd" and "morbid", The New York Times
commented that "the falls and Miss Monroe are something to see", as
although Monroe may not be "the perfect actress at this point ... she can
be seductive—even when she walks". Monroe continued to attract attention by
wearing revealing outfits, most famously at the Photoplay awards in January
1953, where she won the "Fastest Rising Star" award. She wore a skin-tight gold lamé dress, which
prompted veteran star Joan Crawford to publicly call her behavior "unbecoming
an actress and a lady".
While Niagara made
Monroe a sex symbol and established her "look", her second film of
1953, the satirical musical comedy Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes, cemented her screen persona as a "dumb
blonde". Based on Anita Loos' novel
and its Broadway version, the film focuses on two "gold-digging"
showgirls played by Monroe and Jane Russell. Monroe's role was originally
intended for Betty Grable, who had been 20th Century-Fox's most popular "blonde
bombshell" in the 1940s; Monroe was fast eclipsing her as a star who could
appeal to both male and female audiences.
As part of the film's publicity
campaign, she and Russell pressed their hand and footprints in wet concrete
outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in June.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was released shortly after and became one
of the biggest box office successes of the year. Crowther of The New York Times and William
Brogdon of Variety both commented favorably on Monroe, especially noting her
performance of "Diamonds Are a
Girl's Best Friend"; according to the latter, she demonstrated the
"ability to sex a song as well as point up the eye values of a scene by
her presence".
In September, Monroe made her television debut in the Jack
Benny Show, playing Jack's fantasy woman in the episode "Honolulu Trip". She
co-starred with Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall in her third movie of the year, How to Marry a Millionaire, released in
November. It featured Monroe as a naïve model who teams up with her friends to
find rich husbands, repeating the successful formula of Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes. It was the second film ever released in CinemaScope, a widescreen
format that Fox hoped would draw audiences back to theaters as television was
beginning to cause losses to film studios.
Despite mixed reviews, the film was Monroe's biggest box office success
at that point in her career.
Monroe was listed in the annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll
in both 1953 and 1954, and according to Fox historian Aubrey Solomon became the
studio's "greatest asset" alongside CinemaScope. Monroe's position as a leading sex symbol was
confirmed in December 1953, when Hugh Hefner featured her on the cover and as
centerfold in the first issue of Playboy. The cover image was a photograph taken of her
at the Miss America Pageant parade in 1952, and the centerfold featured one of
her 1949 nude photographs.
1954–1955: Conflicts
with 20th Century-Fox and marriage to Joe DiMaggio
Monroe had become one of 20th Century-Fox's biggest stars, but
her contract had not changed since 1950, meaning that she was paid far less
than other stars of her stature and could not choose her projects. Her attempts to appear in films other than
comedies or musicals had been thwarted by Zanuck, who had a strong personal
dislike of her and did not think she would earn the studio as much revenue in
dramas. In January 1954, Fox suspended
her when she refused to begin shooting yet another musical comedy, The Girl in Pink Tights.
This was front-page news, and Monroe immediately took action
to counter negative publicity. On January 14, she and Joe DiMaggio were married
at the San Francisco City Hall. They
then traveled to Japan, combining a honeymoon with his business trip. From Tokyo, she traveled alone to Korea, where
she participated in a USO show, singing songs from her films for over 60,000
U.S. Marines over a four-day period. After returning to the U.S., she was awarded
Photoplay's "Most Popular Female Star" prize. Monroe
settled with Fox in March, with the promise of a new contract, a bonus of
$100,000, and a starring role in the film adaptation of the Broadway success The Seven Year Itch.
In April 1954, Otto Preminger's western River of No Return, the last film that Monroe had filmed prior to
the suspension, was released. She called it a "Z-grade cowboy movie in
which the acting finished second to the scenery and the CinemaScope
process", but it was popular with audiences. The first film she made after the suspension
was the musical There's No Business Like
Show Business, which she strongly disliked but the studio required her to
do for dropping The Girl in Pink Tights. It was
unsuccessful upon its release in late 1954, with Monroe's performance considered
vulgar by many critics.
In September 1954, Monroe began filming Billy Wilder's
comedy The Seven Year Itch, starring
opposite Tom Ewell as a woman who becomes the object of her married neighbor's
sexual fantasies. Although the film was shot in Hollywood, the studio decided
to generate advance publicity by staging the filming of a scene in which Monroe
is standing on a subway grate with the air blowing up the skirt of her white
dress on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The shoot lasted for several hours and
attracted nearly 2,000 spectators. The
"subway grate scene" became one of Monroe's most famous and The Seven Year Itch became one of the
biggest commercial successes of the year after its release in June 1955.
The publicity stunt placed Monroe on international front
pages, and it also marked the end of her marriage to DiMaggio, who was
infuriated by it. The union had been
troubled from the start by his jealousy and controlling attitude; he was also
physically abusive. After returning from NYC to Hollywood in
October 1954, Monroe filed for divorce, after only nine months of marriage.
After filming for The
Seven Year Itch wrapped up in November 1954, Monroe left Hollywood for the
East Coast, where she and photographer Milton Greene founded their own
production company, Marilyn Monroe
Productions (MMP)—an action that has later been called
"instrumental" in the collapse of the studio system. Monroe
stated that she was "tired of the same old sex roles" and asserted
that she was no longer under contract to Fox, as it had not fulfilled its
duties, such as paying her the promised bonus.
This began a year-long legal battle between her and Fox in January 1955.
The press largely ridiculed Monroe and she was parodied in the Broadway play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955),
in which her lookalike Jayne Mansfield played a dumb actress who starts her own
production company.
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