Monroe - 1953
Norma Jeane is born on June 1, 1926 at the Los Angeles County Hospital to twice-married Consolidated Film Industries negative film cutter, Gladys Pearl Monroe (at age 15 to her nine year senior, John Newton Baker, by which she has two children, and to Martin Edward Mortenson whom she almost instantly separates from before divorcing him in 1928) ... the identity of her father is never known. Mother unstable (she will have a mental breakdown in 1934, and diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia, be in and out of hospitals for the rest of her life, which ends in 1984), the future star has a hard childhood as she bounces between mother, relatives, the Los Angeles Orphans Home, and various foster care homes, switching schools across southern California, enduring sexual abuse at the hands of the husband of her legal guardian (a humanoid named Erwin "Doc" Goddard), and becoming withdrawn and developing a stutter. The one place she escapes and can dream of a better, happier life is in the darkness of the area's many movie palaces.
Infant - 1927
Mother & Daughter
Somewhat settled when she begins living in the Sawtelle area of Los Angeles with Ana Atchinson Lower, Norma Jeane attends Emerson Junior High School (a so-so student, she excels in writing and contributes to the school newspaper). The normalcy doesn't last long however, and the teenager is soon back with the Goddards as she begins attending classes at Van Nuys High School; a matriculation that is cut off when work moves the family to West Virginia and the teenager stays behind as a ward of the state of California. About to be sent back to an orphanage, a "solution" to the youth's situation takes place in 1942 when Norma Jeane marries a neighbor of the Goddard's, 21-year-old factory worker, James Dougherty. She is just past her sixteenth birthday when she drops out of high school and becomes a housewife in a doomed marriage (the first of three) that sees the couple living on Santa Catalina Island, when with WWII raging, Dougherty joins the Merchants Marines. Shipped off to the Pacific, Norma Jeane lives with Doughery's parents and gets a job at a munitions factory in Van Nuys, the Radioplane Company. There, in 1944, she meets photographer David Conover as he is shooting morale-boosting pictures of female workers for the U.S. Army Air Force, and despite protests from her husband (they will finally divorce in 1946), begins a modeling career that soon has her appearing on the covers of Peek, Pageant, Laff, U.S. Camera and other popular magazines of the time.
Teenager
Catalina.
A Star Is Born
On The Beach
Curly hair straightened and dyed blonde, her modeling career in turn leads to acting classes, interviews and screen tests for the local movie studios, and of course, a series of casting couch encounters (taking a close interest in her, she will be the sometime bed partner of Fox executive Joseph M. Schenck and also become the "protegee" of William Morris Agency vice-president, Johnny Hyde). Now transformed into Marilyn Monroe, Paramount Pictures, RKO Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Columbia Pictures all have a chance at making her into a star, but her career doesn't take off until she makes brief appearances in All About Eve (1950 - playing party companion to George Sanders in a film that will be nominated for fourteen Oscars, and win six) and The Asphalt Jungle (a 1950 John Huston crime caper for MGM in which she is the mistress of a crooked lawyer played by Louis Calhern). Once rejected by the studio, she signs a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox in December of 1950 and soon is a presenter at the 23rd Academy Awards, has a first profile written up in Collier's magazine, becomes Miss Cheesecake of 1951 for servicemen fighting in Korea (she will begin receiving thousands of letters a week in fan mail), has relationships with directors Elia Kazan (Best Director Oscars for 1948's Gentleman's Agreement and 1955's On The Waterfront) and Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without A Cause, King Of Kings, and others), actors Yul Brynner and Peter Lawford. And when Hugh Hefner uses old nude calendar shots of the ingenue as his first Playboy centerfold in 1953, Monroe becomes even more famous!
With Anne Baxter, Bette Davis, And George Sanders In
All About Eve
Publicity Still For The Asphalt Jungle
The First Playboy Magazine
Acting in both comedies and dramas, from 1953 to 1961, Monroe appears in eleven major Hollywood releases ... the crime thriller Niagara with Joseph Cotton as her murderous husband (1953), the musical Gentle Prefer Blondes opposite Jane Russell (1953), the musical How To Marry A Millionaire alongside Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall (1953), floating down the Snake River with Robert Mitchum in the western, River Of No Return (1954), in the Irving Berlin musial blockbuster, There's No Business Like Show Business (1954, also starring Ethel Merman, Dan Dailey, Mitzi Gaynor, and Donald O'Connor), as the tempting upstairs neighbor in the marital comedy, The Seven Year Itch (the 1955 film in which her skirt is blown aloft by the New York City subway), as the singer Cherie in the drama, Bus Stop (1956), tempting Laurence Olivier in The Prince And The Showgirl (1957), as Tony Curtis's love interest, ukulele player and singer, Sugar "Kane" Kowalczyk, in the comedy classic, Some Like It Hot (1959), billionaire Yves Montand's goal in Let's Make Love (1960), and as Roslyn Tabor, opposite Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift in their last film, The Misfits (1961). By the time the new decade of the 1960 begins, Monroe seemingly has it all, money, fame, and marriages to Hall-of-Fame New York Yankee outfielder Joe DiMaggio (the love of his life, he will never marry again after their divorce in 1955) and renowned playwright, Arthur Miller (author of Death Of A Salesman), but it has all come with a heavy cost.
Subway Moment
Sugar
With DiMaggio
With Miller
Never far away from the insecurities her traumatic childhood has caused, Monroe as an adult has to deal with criticism of her acting abilities, the perception that she is nothing more than a comely piece of meat, and more failed relationships (added to her list of lovers are Marlon Brando, Yves Montand, and Frank Sinatra, along with rumors of relationships with both John and Robert Kennedy), along with pregnancies that don't reach full term caused by endometriosis), all manifest themselves in her becoming a problem on the sets of her movies as she is often late for shootings (or doesn't show up at all), can't remember her lines, demands retakes of scenes, and requires her acting coaches be constantly available for advice (which often clashes with what the picture's actual director wants). And for it all, downward spiral begun, she begins self-medicating her woes with barbiturates, amphetamines, and booze. Woes, woes, and more woes, in 1962 Monroe undergoes surgery for her endometriosis, endures another surgery for a gall bladder condition, catches sinusitis, spends weeks in hospitals, and enrages 20th Century Fox executives by delaying filming of her next movie with Dean Martin, Something's Got to Give (in one incident, she manages to recover her health long enough to fly to the East Coast to sing Happy Birthday to JFK in a evening gown that makes her appear to be nude) to the point where she is finally fired by the studio and sued for $750,000 in damages. Licking her wounds, she retreats to her new Brentwood home (purchased in 1961) to contemplate a career comeback that never takes place.
With Gable In The Misfits
Happy Birthday
Something's Got To Give
On the last day of her life, at her home, Monroe meets with photographer Lawrence Schiller about Playboy publishing nude photos of her from the Something's Got To Give pool shoot, talks on the phone with her personal massage therapist, speaks with an assortment of friends, signs for several deliveries, has a therapy session with her psychiatrist, Greenson, gets in an argument with her publicist, Patricia Newcomb, talks to Joe DiMaggio Jr. on the phone at around 7:00 in the evening about breaking up with his girlfriend (the son of The Yankee Clipper will testify that Monroe sounded fine), and now behind her locked bedroom door, has a conversation with Peter Lawford in which she sounds drugged, that concludes with what sounds like the actress saying goodbye (frightened for his friend when she drifts off, Lawford will eventually make contact with Greenson and be told that Monroe is fine). Discovered dead in he wee hours of Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department will be notified of the death of the actress at 4:25 in the morning. Taken to the Los Angeles coroner's office, after autopsying Monroe's body, Deputy coroner Thomas Noguchi (assisted by Norman Farberow, Robert Litman, and Norman Tabachnik) will classify her death as a "probable suicide" (the case will be reviewed in 1982 (after several conspiracy theories about murder lead to book contracts), with Noguchi's findings being validated. On August 8, in a small ceremony arranged by Joe DiMaggio (the eulogy is delivered by acting coach and friend, Lee Strasberg, and along with Tchaikovsky music, a record of Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow is played), Monroe will be buried at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetary (crypt #24 in the cemetery's Corridor of Memories) wearing a green Emilio Pucci dress, holding a small bouquet of pink roses. For the next twenty years, Di Maggio will have a half-dozen roses put in a vase beside her crypt three times a week. He never marries again or discusses Monroe in public, and according to his attorney, the Hall-of-Famer's last words are, "I'll finally get to see Marilyn."
In The Bedroom
Leaving
Yikes!
Headlines
Crypt
Gone, but in no way forgotten, Monroe lives on as a cultural icon of the 20th Century ... existing in her still watched films, as the subject of hundreds of books, a character in films, plays, operas, and songs, the basis of magazine articles, and still selling with her image of sexuality, beauty, and glamour, in a host of products that include Max Factor makeup, Absolut Vodka liquor, Mercedes-Benz cars, and Chanel perfume. Roller coaster life now over, rest in peace, Marilyn.
Monroe
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