Everything about Marilyn Monroe totally explained
Marilyn Monroe (born
Norma Jeane Mortenson;, critically acclaimed
American actress,
singer,
model,
Hollywood icon,
cultural icon,
fashion icon,
pop icon,
film executive and
sex symbol. She is known for her beauty, comedic acting roles and screen presence. Monroe was one of the most popular movie stars of the 1950s and early 1960s and became the object of unprecedented popular adulation. During the later stages of her career, she worked towards serious roles and her fame surpassed that of any other entertainer of her time. Many individuals including
Jack Clemmons, the first LAPD Police officer to arrive at the death scene, believed that she was
murdered. Monroe is the only female on the
Forbes top-earning dead
celebrities list.
Childhood
Family and early life
Los Angeles County Hospital. According to biographer Fred Lawrence Guiles, her grandmother, Della Monroe Grainger, had her
baptized Norma Jeane Baker by
Aimee Semple McPherson. Her mother was Gladys Pearl (Monroe) Baker (1902-1984). For many years it was believed Gladys' second husband Martin Edward Mortenson (1897–1981) was Monroe's father. His name was listed on her birth certificate.
Foster homes
Mentally unstable and unable to care for Monroe, Gladys placed her with foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender of
Hawthorne,
California, where she lived until she was seven. In her
autobiography My Story, Monroe stated she believed that the Bolenders were her parents until Ida, quite rudely, corrected her.
During one of her weekly visits, Gladys told Norma Jeane that she bought a house for them. A few months after moving in, Gladys suffered a
breakdown. In
My Story, Monroe recalls her mother "screaming and laughing," as she was forcibly removed to the State Hospital in
Norwalk, where her mother, Della, had been taken and died. According to
My Sister Marilyn, Gladys's brother, Marion,
hanged himself upon his release from an asylum, and Della's father, Tilford Marion Hogan, did the same in a fit of
depression.
Monroe was declared a
ward of the state, and Gladys's best friend, Grace McKee became her
guardian. After McKee married in 1935, Monroe was sent to the Los Angeles Orphans Home (later renamed Hollygrove), and then to a succession of
foster homes.
Since Norma Jeane wasn't considered a commercial stage name, Lyon suggested she adopt Marilyn (after the famous actress
Marilyn Miller). For her last name, she took her mother's maiden name of Monroe. During her first six months at Fox, Monroe was given no work, but Fox renewed her contract and she was given minor appearances in
Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! and
Dangerous Years, both released in 1947. In
Scudda Hoo!, her part was edited out except for a quick glimpse of her face when she speaks two words. Fox decided not to renew her contracts. Monroe returned to modeling and began to
network and make contacts. She posed for nude photographs which were later featured in the first issue of
Playboy.
The next two years were filled with inconsequential roles in standard fare, such as
We're Not Married! and
Love Nest. However,
RKO executives used Monroe to boost
box office potential of the
Fritz Lang production,
Clash by Night. After the film performed well,
Fox employed a similar tactic, and she was cast as the ditzy
receptionist with
Cary Grant and
Ginger Rogers in
Howard Hawks's slapstick comedy
Monkey Business. Critics no longer ignored her, and both films' success at the
box office was partly attributed to Monroe's growing popularity.
Fox finally gave Monroe a starring role in 1952 with
Don't Bother to Knock, in which she portrayed a deranged
babysitter who attacks the little girl in her care. It was a cheaply made
B-movie, and although the reviews were mixed, they claimed it demonstrated Monroe's ability and confirmed she was ready for more leading roles. Her performance has been noted as one of her finest.
Stardom
Monroe proved she could carry a big-budget film when she starred in
Niagara in 1953. Movie critics focused on Monroe's connection with the camera as much as on the sinister plot. She played an unbalanced woman planning to murder her husband.
Playboy playmate
Around this time, the
nude photos of Monroe began to surface, taken by photographer Tom Kelley during her unemployment. Prints were bought by
Hugh Hefner and, in December 1953, appeared in the first edition of
Playboy. To the dismay of
Fox, Monroe decided to publicly admit it was indeed her in the pictures. When a journalist asked her what she wore in bed she replied, "
Chanel No. 5". When asked what she'd on during the photo shoot, she replied, "The radio". and the scene where she sang "
Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" has inspired the likes of
Anna Nicole Smith,
Madonna,
Kylie Minogue, a
Geri Halliwell, and millions of others worldwide. In the Los Angeles premiere of the film, Monroe and co-star
Jane Russell pressed their foot- and handprints in the cement in the forecourt of
Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
In
How to Marry a Millionaire, Monroe was teamed up with
Lauren Bacall and
Betty Grable. She played a short-sighted dumb blonde, and though the role was stereotypical, critics took note of her comedic timing.
Monroe's next two films, the western
River of No Return and the musical
There's No Business Like Show Business, were not successful. Monroe eventually got tired of the roles that Zanuck assigned her. After completing work on
The Seven Year Itch in early 1955, she broke her contract and fled Hollywood to study acting with
Lee Strasberg at the
Actors Studio in
New York.
The first film to be made under the contract and production company was
Bus Stop, directed by
Joshua Logan. Monroe played Chérie, a saloon bar singer who falls in love with a cowboy. Monroe deliberately appeared badly made-up and unglamorous. She was nominated for a
Golden Globe for the performance and was praised by critics. Monroe's performance earned her a Golden Globe for best actress in musical or comedy.
After
Some Like It Hot, Monroe shot
Let's Make Love directed by
George Cukor and co-starring
Yves Montand. Monroe was forced to shoot the picture because of her obligations to Twentieth Century-Fox. While the film wasn't a commercial or critical success, it included one of Monroe's legendary musical numbers,
Cole Porter's "My Heart Belongs to Daddy".
Arthur Miller wrote what became Monroe and her co-star
Clark Gable's last completed film,
The Misfits. The exhausting shoot took place in July, in the hot Northern
Nevada Black Rock desert, and
Reno Nevada.
The rodeo and bar scenes were shot in
Dayton,
Nevada
Monroe, Gable and
Montgomery Clift delivered performances that are considered excellent by contemporary movie critics. Tabloid magazines blamed Gable's death of a
heart attack on Monroe, citing her tardiness and quoting Gable's widow
Kay Spreckels Gable, who claimed that her husband did his own stunt work out of the frustration of waiting for Monroe. Exacerbating the situation was Gable's advanced age, plus long history of alcohol and tobacco use, and previous heart attacks. Monroe was invited by Kay to the baptismal ceremony for her and Clark's son
John Clark Gable. She attended.
In 1962, some of the most famous photographs of Monroe were taken by
Bert Stern as a feature for
Vogue magazine. This photo shoot was her last and it's known as "
The Last Sitting".
Monroe returned to Hollywood to resume filming on the George Cukor comedy
Something's Got to Give, a never-finished film that has become legendary for problems on the set and proved a costly debacle for Fox.
After shooting what was claimed to have been the first ever nude scene by a major motion picture actress, Monroe's attendance on the set became even more erratic. On
June 1, her thirty-sixth birthday, she attended a charity event at Dodger Stadium.
Financially strained by the production costs of
Cleopatra, starring
Elizabeth Taylor, Fox dropped Monroe from the film and replaced her with
Lee Remick. However, co-star
Dean Martin, who had a clause in his contract giving him an approval over his co-star, was unwilling to work with anyone but Monroe. She was rehired.
Monroe conducted a lengthy interview with
Life, in which she expressed how bitter she was about Hollywood labeling her as a dumb blonde and how much she loved her audience. She also did a photo shoot for
Vogue and began discussing a future film project with
Gene Kelly and
Frank Sinatra, according to the Donald Spoto biography.
Monroe was planning to star in a
biopic of
Jean Harlow, as well as starring alongside
Jack Lemmon in
Irma La Douce, a Billy Wilder comedy that eventually starred
Shirley MacLaine.|Marilyn Monroe}}
DiMaggio biographer Maury Allen quoted
New York Yankees PR man Arthur Richman that Joe told him everything went wrong from the trip to Japan on. On
September 14 1954, Monroe filmed the iconic skirt-blowing scene for
The Seven Year Itch in front of New York's
Trans-Lux Theater. Bill Kobrin, then Fox's east coast correspondent, told the
Palm Springs Desert Sun in 2006 that it was
Billy Wilder's idea to turn the shoot into a media circus: "... every time her dress came up and the crowd started to get excited, DiMaggio just blew up." Kobrin reported that the couple had a "yelling battle" in the theater lobby. She filed for divorce on grounds of
mental cruelty 274 days after the wedding.
In February 1961, Monroe was admitted to the
Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, where, according to Spoto, she was placed in the ward for the most seriously disturbed. Monroe contacted DiMaggio, who secured her release. She later joined him in
Florida, where he was serving as a batting coach at the Yankees' spring training camp. Their "just good friends" claim to the media didn't stop rumors of remarriage;
Bob Hope jokingly dedicating
Best Song nominee
The Second Time Around to them at the 1960
Academy Awards.
According to Allen, on
1 August 1962, DiMaggio alarmed by how Monroe had fallen in with people he considered detrimental to her well-being quit his job with a
PX supplier to ask her to remarry him.
After Monroe's death, DiMaggio claimed her body and arranged her funeral. For 20 years, he'd a dozen red
roses delivered to her crypt three times a week. Unlike her other two husbands, he never talked about her publicly or otherwise exploited their relationship.
Arthur Miller
On
June 29,
1956, Monroe married playwright
Arthur Miller, whom she first met in 1951, in a civil ceremony in
White Plains,
New York. City Court Judge Seymour Robinowitz presided over the hushed ceremony in the law office of Sam Slavitt (the wedding had been kept secret from both the press and the public). In reflecting on his courtship of Monroe, Miller wrote, "She was a whirling light to me then, all paradox and enticing mystery, street-tough one moment, then lifted by a lyrical and poetic sensitivity that few retain past early adolescence". Nominally raised as a
Christian, she converted to
Judaism before marrying Miller. After she finished shooting
The Prince and the Showgirl with
Laurence Olivier, the couple returned to the United States from England and discovered she was pregnant. However, she suffered from
endometriosis, and the pregnancy was found to be
ectopic. A subsequent pregnancy ended in
miscarriage.
Miller's screenplay for
The Misfits, a story about a despairing divorcée, was meant to be a
Valentine gift for his wife, but by the time filming started in 1960 their marriage was beyond repair. A
Mexican divorce was granted on
January 24 1961. On
February 17 1962, Miller married
Inge Morath, one of the
Magnum photographers recording the making of
The Misfits.
In January 1964, Miller's play
After The Fall opened, featuring a beautiful and devouring shrew named Maggie. The similarities between Maggie and Monroe didn't go unnoticed by audiences and critics (including
Helen Hayes).
Simone Signoret noted in her autobiography the morbidity of Miller and
Elia Kazan resuming their professional association "over a casket." In interviews and in his autobiography, Miller insisted that Maggie wasn't based on Monroe. However, he never pretended that his last
Broadway-bound work,
Finishing the Picture, wasn't based on the making of
The Misfits. He appeared in the documentary
The Century of the Self, lamenting the psychological work being done on her before her death.
The Kennedys
On
May 19,
1962, Monroe made her last significant public appearance, singing "
Happy Birthday, Mr. President" at a televised birthday party for
President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden. The dress that she wore to the event, specially designed and made for her by
Jean Louis, sold at an auction in 1999 for 1.26 million dollars, establishing a new world record for the most expensive piece of clothing ever sold at an auction.
It has been claimed that Monroe was involved with both
Robert Kennedy and
John F. Kennedy.
Death and aftermath
On
August 5,
1962,
LAPD police sergeant
Jack Clemmons received a call at 4:25AM from Dr. Hyman Engelberg proclaiming that Monroe was dead at her home in
Brentwood, Los Angeles, California. Sergeant Clemmons was the first police officer to arrive at the death scene. Many questions remain unanswered about the circumstances of her death and the timeline from when Monroe's body was found.
The official cause of Monroe's death was classified, by Dr. Thomas Noguchi of the Los Angeles County Coroners office, as a case of "acute barbiturate poisoning." Eight milligrams of chloral hydrate and 4.5 milligrams of Nembutal were found in her system after the autopsy.
Her death was classified as "probable suicide,"
On
August 8,
1962, Monroe was interred in a crypt at Corridor of Memories, #24, at the
Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in
Los Angeles, California.
Lee Strasberg delivered the
eulogy.
Administration of estate
In her
will, Monroe left
Lee Strasberg 75 percent of the residuary estate. She expressed her desire that Strasberg, or, if he predeceased her, her executor, "distribute [herpersonal effects] among my friends, colleagues and those to whom I'm devoted."
Strasberg willed his portion to his widow, Anna. She declared she'd never sell Monroe's personal items after successfully suing Odyssey Auctions in 1994 to prevent the sale of items, which were withheld by Monroe's former business manager, Inez Melson. However, in
October 1999,
Christie's auctioned the bulk of the items Monroe willed to Strasberg, netting US $13,405,785.
Anna Strasberg is currently in litigation against the children of four photographers to determine rights of publicity, which permits the licensing of images of deceased personages for commercial purposes. The decision as to whether Monroe was a resident of California, where she died, or New York, where her will was probated, is worth millions.
On
May 4,
2007, a federal judge in New York ruled that Monroe's rights of publicity ended upon her death, thus allowing the family of photographer Sam Shaw to sell photos of Monroe.
On
March 17,
2008, a federal judge issued a decision in favor of two photo archives in the tangled, long-running legal battle over who controls the likeness of Monroe.
A judge found that CMG and Marilyn Monroe LLC had been inconsistent in their arguments that Monroe was domiciled in California when she died. U.S. District judge Margaret M. Morrow applied a concept called judicial estoppel, which is designed to prevent parties from changing positions when it suits their legal advantage.
The Greene and Kelley archives say that'll now license photographs of Monroe and other celebrities for commercial use through a new company called Legends Licensing, LLC with a division called Marilyn Monroe Licensing Group.
The Monroe lawsuit has seemed resolved several times before, only to flare back up with new legal maneuvering. Marilyn Monroe LLC successfully lobbied for a change in the right of publicity law in California last year. A similar law failed to pass in New York State. If such a law were to pass in New York, it could give CMG new grounds to continue fighting its case for control over Monroe's likeness.
In effect, the ruling tossed ownership rights to the public, said Jonathan Polak, who leads the intellectual property group at Sommer Barnard.
“Marilyn Monroe is one of the heavyweight celebrities in the licensing business and she's generated significant licensing revenues, but the court has essentially unleashed the right of publicity for Marilyn to the public domain,” Polak said.
Quotes
Art (selection)
Willem de Kooning: Marilyn Monroe (Oil on canvas, 1954)
Andy Warhol: Marilyn Diptych (Print on canvas, 1962)
James Rosenquist: Marilyn Monroe I (Oil on canvas, 1962)
Mimmo Rotella: Marilyn Monroe (Handcoloured decollage), 1962)
Richard Hamilton: My Marilyn (Photo and oil on canvas, 1966)
Salvador Dali: Mao Monroe (Oil on Perspex, 1967)
Robert Rauschenberg: Test Stone #1 (Lithography on paper, 1967)
George Segal: The Film Poster (Paperprint, 1967)
Ray Johnson: Dear Marilyn Monroe (Collage, 1972−1994) and Dear Marilyn Monroe, To Chuck Close (Collage, 1980−1994)
Audrey Flack: Marilyn: Golden Girl (Oil on acrylic glass, 1978)
Richard Serra: Marilyn Monroe–Greta Garbo (Steal-sculpture and lithography, 1981)
Peter Blake: Marilyn Monroe Over a Painting No 1 (Photo on painting, 1989-1990), Marilyn Monroe Wall No 2 (Assemblage, 1990), MM Red Yellow (Collage, 1990), M for Marilyn Monroe (Screenprint, 1991) and H.O.M.A.G.E. – JJ MM RR KS (Collage, 1991)
Douglas Gordon: As Kurt Cobain, as Andy Warhol, as Myra Hindley, as Marilyn Monroe (Photography, 1996)
Barbara Kruger: Not Stupid Enough (Lettered photography, 1997)
Mel Ramos: Peek-a-boo Marilyn (Coloured lithography, 2002)
Gina Lollobrigida: My Friend Marilyn Monroe (Bronze-sculpture, 2003)Further Information
Get more info on 'Marilyn Monroe'.
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