Marilyn Monroe

Life and career

1926–1943: Childhood and first marriage

Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, at Los Angeles General Hospital in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker (née Monroe), was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, into a poor American family originally from the Midwest who migrated to California at the turn of the century. At age fourteen, Gladys had married John Newton Baker, an abusive man nine years her senior. They had two children together, Robert and Berniece. Gladys successfully filed for divorce and sole custody of her two oldest in 1923, but Baker kidnapped the children soon after and moved with them to his native Kentucky. Monroe first learned about her sister at age twelve and met the latter for the first time in her late teens.

Following the divorce, Gladys worked as a film negative cutter at Consolidated Film Industries. In 1924, she married Martin Edward Mortensen, but the union lasted only a few months, although they did not legally divorce until four years later. Gladys named Mortensen (misspelled "Mortenson") as Monroe's father in the birth certificate, but most of Monroe's biographers agree that this was unlikely as their separation had taken place well before she became pregnant. Biographers Fred Guiles and Lois Banner suggested Monroe's father was likely Charles Stanley Gifford, Gladys's superior at RKO Studios, with whom she had an affair in 1925. This was confirmed by a comparison conducted in 2022 between Monroe's DNA and that of one of Gifford's descendants.

Although Gladys was mentally and financially unprepared for a child, Monroe's early childhood was stable and happy. Gladys placed Monroe with evangelical Christian foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender in the suburban town of Hawthorne. Gladys also lived there for six months until she was forced to move back to the city for employment. She then began visiting Monroe on weekends. In the summer of 1933, when Monroe was seven, Gladys bought a small house in Hollywood with a loan from the Home Owners' Loan Corporation and moved 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; Gladys's friend Grace Goddard took responsibility over the affairs of the former and Monroe.

1944–1948: Modeling, divorce, and first film roles

In April 1944, Dougherty was shipped out to the Pacific, where he remained for most of the next two years. After Dougherty left, Monroe moved in with Dougherty's parents and began a job at the Radioplane Company, a munitions factory in Van Nuys, to help the war effort. In late 1944, she met the photographer David Conover, then working in the U.S. Army Air Forces' First Motion Picture Unit, who had been sent 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 and his disapproving mother, she moved on her own and signed a contract with the Blue Book Model Agency in August 1945.

The agency deemed Monroe's figure more suitable for pin-up than high fashion modeling, and she was featured mostly in advertisements and men's magazines. She straightened her naturally curly brown hair and dyed it platinum blonde. According to Emmeline Snively, the agency's owner, Monroe quickly became 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. As a model, Monroe occasionally used the pseudonym Jean Norman.

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. The 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 surname was Monroe's mother's maiden name. In September 1946, she divorced Dougherty, who had been opposed to her career.

Monroe spent her first six months at Fox learning acting, singing, and dancing, and observing the filmmaking process. 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 her 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 to keep the leads on point at musical sets.

1949–1952: Breakthrough years

When her contract at Columbia ended, Monroe returned again to modeling. She shot a commercial for Pabst beer and posed for artistic nude photographs by Tom Kelley for John Baumgarth calendars, using the name 'Mona Monroe'. Monroe had previously posed topless or clad in a bikini for other artists including Earl Moran, and felt comfortable with nudity. Shortly after leaving Columbia, she also met and became the protégée and mistress of Johnny Hyde, the vice president of the talent agency William Morris.

Through Hyde, Monroe landed small roles in several films, including two critically acclaimed works. The first was Joseph Mankiewicz's drama All About Eve (1950), which received 14 Academy Award nominations. The film's star Bette Davis later praised Monroe's performance, saying, "Definitely, no question, I knew she was going to make it. She was a very ambitious girl, [and] knew what she wanted [and was] very serious about it...I thought she had talent." The second film was John Huston's noir The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Despite her screen time being only a few minutes, Monroe gained a mention in Photoplay and according to biographer Donald Spoto "moved effectively from movie model to serious actress".

In December 1950, Hyde negotiated a seven-year contract for Monroe with 20th Century-Fox. According to its terms, Fox could opt not to renew the contract after each year. Hyde died of a heart attack only days later, which left Monroe devastated. In 1951, Monroe had supporting roles in three moderately successful Fox comedies: As Young as You Feel, Love Nest, and Let's Make It Legal. According to Spoto all three 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 February 1952, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association named Monroe the "best young box office personality". In her private life, Monroe had a short relationship with director Elia Kazan and also briefly dated several other men, including director Nicholas Ray and actors Yul Brynner and Peter Lawford. In early 1952, she began a highly publicized romance with retired New York Yankees baseball star Joe DiMaggio, one of the most famous sports personalities of the era.

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. A pleated "sunburst" waist-tight, deep décolleté gold lamé dress designed by William Travilla for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but barely seen at all in the film, was to become a sensation. Prompted by such imagery, veteran star Joan Crawford publicly called the 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".

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, so that she was paid far less than other stars of her stature and could not choose her projects. Her attempts to appear in films that would not focus on her as a pin-up had been thwarted by the studio head executive, Darryl F. Zanuck, who had a strong personal dislike of her and did not think she would earn the studio as much revenue in other types of roles. Under pressure from the studio's owner, Spyros Skouras, Zanuck had also decided that Fox should focus exclusively on entertainment to maximize profits and canceled the production of any "serious films". In January 1954, he suspended Monroe 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. She and DiMaggio, who had been dating for two years, were married at the San Francisco City Hall on January 14, 1954. Fifteen days later, they flew to Japan, combining a "honeymoon" with his business trip. From Tokyo, she traveled to South Korea, where she participated in a USO show, singing 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 (equivalent to $1,200,000 in 2025), 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.

1956–1959: Critical acclaim and marriage to Arthur Miller

Monroe began 1956 by announcing her win over 20th Century-Fox. On February 23, 1956, she legally changed her name to Marilyn Monroe. The press wrote favorably about her decision to fight the studio; Time called her a "shrewd businesswoman" and Look predicted that the win would be "an example of the individual against the herd for years to come". In contrast, Monroe's relationship with Miller prompted some negative comments, such as Walter Winchell's statement that "America's best-known blonde moving picture star is now the darling of the left-wing intelligentsia."

In March, Monroe began filming the drama Bus Stop, her first film under the new contract. She played a saloon singer whose dreams of stardom are complicated by a naïve cowboy who falls in love with her. For the role, she learned an Ozark accent, chose costumes and makeup that lacked the glamour of her earlier films, and provided deliberately mediocre singing and dancing. Broadway director Joshua Logan agreed to direct, despite initially doubting Monroe's acting abilities and knowing of her difficult reputation. The filming took place in Idaho and Arizona, with Monroe "technically in charge" as the head of MMP, occasionally making decisions on cinematography and with Logan adapting to her chronic lateness and perfectionism. The experience changed Logan's opinion of Monroe, and he later compared her to Charlie Chaplin in her ability to blend comedy and tragedy.

On June 29, 1956, Monroe and Miller were married in a four-minute civil ceremony at the Westchester County Court in White Plains, New York; two days later they had a Jewish ceremony at the home of Kay Brown, Miller's literary agent, in Waccabuc, New York. With the marriage, Monroe converted to Judaism, which led Egypt to ban all of her films. Due to Monroe's status as a sex symbol and Miller's image as an intellectual, the media saw the union as a mismatch, as evidenced by Variety's headline, "Egghead Weds Hourglass".

Bus Stop was released in August 1956 and became a critical and commercial success. The Saturday Review of Literature wrote that Monroe's performance "effectively dispels once and for all the notion that she is merely a glamour personality" and Crowther proclaimed: "Hold on to your chairs, everybody, and get set for a rattling surprise. Marilyn Monroe has finally proved herself an actress." She also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role - Musical or Comedy for her performance.

1960–1962: Career setbacks and personal difficulties

After Some Like It Hot, Monroe took another hiatus until late 1959, when she starred in the musical comedy Let's Make Love. She chose George Cukor to direct and Miller rewrote some of the script, which she considered weak. She accepted the part solely because she was behind on her contract with Fox. The film's production was delayed by her frequent absences from the set. During the shoot, Monroe had an affair with co-star Yves Montand that was widely reported by the press and used in the film's publicity campaign. Let's Make Love was unsuccessful upon its release in September 1960. Crowther described Monroe as appearing "rather untidy" and "lacking ... the old Monroe dynamism", and Hedda Hopper called the film "the most vulgar picture she's ever done". Truman Capote lobbied for Monroe to play Holly Golightly in a film adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's, but the role went to Audrey Hepburn as its producers feared that Monroe would complicate the production.

The last film Monroe completed was John Huston's The Misfits (1961), which Miller had written to provide her with a dramatic role. She played Roslyn, who has just received a quickie divorce in Reno, Nevada, and befriends three aging cowboys, played by Clark Gable, Eli Wallach and Montgomery Clift. The filming in the Nevada desert between July and November 1960 was difficult. Monroe and Miller's marriage was effectively over, and he began a relationship with on-set photographer Inge Morath. Monroe resented that he had based Roslyn partly on herself and thought the character inferior to the male roles. She also struggled with Miller's habit of rewriting scenes the night before filming. Her health was also failing: she was in pain from gallstones, and her drug addiction was so severe that her makeup usually had to be applied while she was still asleep under the influence of barbiturates. In August, filming was halted for her to spend a week in a hospital detox. Despite her problems, Huston said that when Monroe was acting, she "was not pretending to an emotion. It was the real thing. She would go deep down within herself and find it and bring it up into consciousness."

Monroe and Miller separated after filming ended, and she obtained a Mexican divorce in January 1961. The Misfits was released the following month, failing at the box office. Its reviews were mixed, with Variety complaining of frequently "choppy" character development, and Bosley Crowther calling Monroe "completely blank and unfathomable" and writing that "unfortunately for the film's structure, everything turns upon her". It has received more favorable reviews in the 21st century. Geoff Andrew of the British Film Institute has called it a classic, Huston scholar Tony Tracy called Monroe's performance the "most mature interpretation of her career", and Geoffrey McNab of The Independent praised her "extraordinary" portrayal of the character's "power of empathy".

Death and funeral

During her final months, Monroe lived at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Her housekeeper Eunice Murray was staying overnight at the home on the evening of August 4, 1962. Murray woke at 3:00 a.m. on August 5 and sensed that something was wrong. She saw light from under Monroe's bedroom door but was unable to get a response and found the door locked. Murray then called Monroe's psychiatrist Ralph Greenson, who arrived at the house shortly after and broke into the bedroom through a window. He found a nude Monroe dead in her bed, covered by a sheet, with her hand clamped around a telephone receiver. Monroe's physician, Hyman Engelberg, arrived at around 3:50 a.m. and pronounced her dead. At 4:25 a.m., the Los Angeles Police Department was notified.

Monroe died between 8:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. on August 4; the toxicology report showed that the cause of death was acute barbiturate poisoning. She had 8 mg% (milligrams per 100 milliliters of solution) of chloral hydrate and 4.5 mg% of pentobarbital (Nembutal) in her blood, and 13 mg% of pentobarbital in her liver. Empty medicine bottles were found next to her bed. The possibility that Monroe had accidentally overdosed was ruled out because the dosages found in her body were several times the lethal limit.

The Los Angeles County Coroners Office was assisted in their investigation by the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Team, who had expert knowledge on suicide. Monroe's doctors stated that she had been "prone to severe fears and frequent depressions" with "abrupt and unpredictable mood changes", and had overdosed several times in the past, possibly intentionally. From these facts and the lack of any indication of foul play, deputy coroner Thomas Noguchi classified her death as a probable suicide.

Monroe's sudden death was front-page news in the United States and Europe. According to historian Lois Banner, "it's said that the suicide rate in Los Angeles doubled the month after she died; the circulation rate of most newspapers expanded that month", and the Chicago Tribune reported that they had received hundreds of phone calls from members of the public requesting information about her death. French artist Jean Cocteau commented that her death "should serve as a terrible lesson to all those whose chief occupation consists of spying on and tormenting film stars", her former co-star Laurence Olivier deemed her "the complete victim of ballyhoo and sensation", and Bus Stop director Joshua Logan said that she was "one of the most unappreciated people in the world".

Screen persona and reception

The 1940s had been the heyday for actresses who were perceived as tough and smart—such as Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck—who had appealed to women-dominated audiences during the war years. 20th Century-Fox wanted Monroe to be a star of the new decade who would draw men to movie theaters, and saw her as a replacement for the aging Betty Grable, their most popular "blonde bombshell" of the 1940s.From the beginning, Monroe played a significant part in the creation of her public image, and towards the end of her career exerted almost full control over it. She devised many of her publicity strategies, cultivated friendships with gossip columnists such as Sidney Skolsky and Louella Parsons, and controlled the use of her images. In addition to Grable, she was often compared to another well-known blonde, 1930s film star Jean Harlow. The comparison was prompted partly by Monroe, who named Harlow as her childhood idol, wanted to play her in a biopic, and even employed Harlow's hair stylist to color her hair.

Monroe's screen persona focused on her blonde hair and the stereotypes that were associated with it, especially dumbness, naïveté, sexual availability, and artificiality. She often used a breathy, childish voice in her films, and in interviews gave the impression that everything she said was "utterly innocent and uncalculated", parodying herself with double entendres that came to be known as "Monroeisms". For example, when she was asked what she had on in the 1949 nude photo shoot, she replied, "I had the radio on".

In her films, Monroe usually played "the girl", who is defined solely by her gender. Her roles were almost always chorus girls, secretaries, or models: occupations where "the woman is on show, there for the pleasure of men." Monroe began her career as a pin-up model, and was noted for her hourglass figure. She was often positioned in film scenes so that her curvy silhouette was on display, and frequently posed like a pin-up in publicity photos. Her distinctive, hip-swinging walk also drew attention to her body and earned her the nickname "the girl with the horizontal walk".

Monroe often wore white to emphasize her blondness and drew attention by wearing revealing outfits that showed off her figure. Her publicity stunts often revolved around her clothing either being shockingly revealing or even malfunctioning, such as when a shoulder strap of her dress snapped during a press conference. In press stories, Monroe was portrayed as the embodiment of the American Dream, a girl who had risen from a miserable childhood to Hollywood stardom. Stories of her time spent in foster families and an orphanage were exaggerated and even partly fabricated. Film scholar Thomas Harris wrote that her working-class roots and lack of family made her appear more sexually available, "the ideal playmate", in contrast to her contemporary, Grace Kelly, who was also marketed as an attractive blonde, but due to her upper-class background was seen as a sophisticated actress, unattainable for the majority of male viewers.

Legacy

According to The Guide to United States Popular Culture, "as an icon of American popular culture, Monroe's few rivals in popularity include Elvis Presley and Mickey Mouse... no other star has ever inspired such a wide range of emotions—from lust to pity, from envy to remorse." Art historian Gail Levin stated that Monroe may have been "the most photographed person of the 20th century", and The American Film Institute has named her the sixth greatest female screen legend in American film history. The Smithsonian Institution has included her on their list of "100 Most Significant Americans of All Time", and both Variety and VH1 have placed her in the top ten in their rankings of the greatest popular culture icons of the twentieth century.

Hundreds of books have been written about Monroe. She has been the subject of numerous films, plays, operas, and songs, and has influenced artists and entertainers such as Andy Warhol and Madonna. Documentaries have been made about her life, e.g. The Legend of Marilyn Monroe (1966, narrated by John Huston), Marilyn (1963, hosted by Rock Hudson).

She also remains a valuable brand in advertising: her image and name have been licensed for hundreds of products, and she has been featured in advertising for brands such as Max Factor, Chanel, Mercedes-Benz, and Absolut Vodka.

Monroe's enduring popularity is tied to her conflicted public image. On the one hand, she remains a sex symbol, beauty icon and one of the most famous stars of classical Hollywood cinema. On the other, she is also remembered for her troubled private life, unstable childhood, struggle for professional respect, as well as her death and the conspiracy theories that surrounded it. She has been written about by scholars and journalists who are interested in gender and feminism; these writers include Gloria Steinem, Jacqueline Rose, Molly Haskell, Sarah Churchwell, and Lois Banner. Some, such as Steinem, have viewed her as a victim of the studio system. Others, such as Haskell, Rose, and Churchwell, have instead stressed Monroe's proactive role in her career and in the creation of her public persona.

Owing to the contrast between her stardom and troubled private life, Monroe is closely linked to broader discussions about modern phenomena such as mass media, fame, and consumer culture. According to academic Susanne Hamscha, Monroe has continued relevance to ongoing discussions about modern society, and she is "never completely situated in one time or place" but has become "a surface on which narratives of American culture can be (re)constructed". Similarly, Banner has called Monroe the "eternal shapeshifter" who is re-created by "each generation, even each individual... to their own specifications".