Marilyn Monroe once said that “fame is like caviar… it’s good to have caviar, but not when you have it at every meal.”
And, indeed, fame proved to be a double-edged sword for the sultry platinum-blonde actress who took Hollywood by storm. Outwardly, she projected the image of a silly, sexy airhead who had all the men bowing at her feet. It was an archetype that played well in Hollywood, and it had been done before, but Monroe was in a class of her own. Even now, over half a century after her death, the notion of the “blonde bombshell” makes many people instantly think of Marilyn Monroe, perhaps in her iconic white dress getting swept up by a gust of wind.
Behind closed doors, however, everything was not OK. First, Marilyn endured an unhappy childhood where she was moved around from place to place and, eventually, pressured into a marriage she didn’t really want just to avoid the orphanage. Deep-seated feelings of abandonment and not being wanted haunted her throughout her life and had an adverse effect on her relationships and her career. Eventually, her demons got the best of her, and Marilyn ended her life at the tender age of 36 when she was still at the peak of her career.
Her time in Hollywood was surprisingly brief, but her legacy as one of cinema’s most legendary stars is everlasting.
Early Years
Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles, California. However, she was soon baptized as Norma Jeane Baker, after her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker. When Norma Jeane was born, Gladys was struggling, both mentally and financially, and was in no position to be a mother. Her first marriage, which had resulted in two children, proved abusive and ended when she was only 19 years old. Her ex-husband then kidnapped their children and took them to his native Kentucky, where he started a new life for himself. Gladys spent what little money she had to track down her kids, but, ultimately, let them go since they had a better life in Kentucky than what she could provide for them back in Los Angeles.
In 1924, Gladys married again, but this relationship only lasted for a few months before the couple separated. After that, Gladys had a string of lovers and soon became pregnant with Norma Jeane, who we will just call Marilyn from now on to avoid confusion. Nobody was really sure who Marilyn’s father was. Nobody other than Gladys herself, who insisted that the father was a man named Charles Stanley Gifford, a sales manager at Consolidated Studios where Gladys worked as a film cutter. However, she had no way of proving this at the time; it was just her gut instinct, and that wasn’t good enough for Gifford, who knew that Gladys had been with other men and wanted nothing to do with raising the child. Modern technology, however, has vindicated Gladys Baker’s instincts, as a recent DNA test concluded that Gifford really was Marilyn Monroe’s father.
As far as we know, Marilyn never met her father. She tried once but only ran into his wife. Unsurprisingly, this had a profound impact on Monroe’s development, and she was often attracted to older men later in life and even called them “dad” or “daddy.”
Normally, a baby’s arrival is cause for celebration, but not in this case. Gladys Baker had a history of depression and mood swings, as did her mother, Della, and these were greatly exacerbated by Marilyn’s birth. It’s likely that Gladys suffered from postpartum depression, but this was at a time when few people understood the condition, and even fewer cared about it. Her mental state was, undoubtedly, made even worse by the stigma and shame that society bestowed upon single, unwed mothers.
At the very least, Gladys had the state of mind to understand that motherhood was too much for her right then, and she agreed to give up Marilyn just two weeks after she was born. Well, “agreed” might be too strong a word. Her choice was “hurried along” after Gladys tried to stab a friend of hers after accusing her of poisoning her child. So on June 13, baby Marilyn ended up in the home of Wayne and Ida Bolender, who lived in Hawthorne, California, across the street from Marilyn’s grandmother, Della Baker. Unfortunately, living close to Grandma wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. One day, during a visit, Ida Bolender walked in on Della Baker trying to smother Marilyn in her crib. Police were called and, from then on, Della’s mental state steadily deteriorated, and she died about a year later.
Marilyn spent the first seven years of her life with the Bolenders. Just how bad it was, well, that’s a matter of opinion. Later in life, Marilyn Monroe certainly talked up her rough childhood to emphasize her rags-to-riches story, saying that it was strict and religious, bordering on zealotry, but one of the Bolenders’ daughters disputed many of her claims, so who knows who was telling the truth?
In 1933, Gladys got her life back on track and got Marilyn back. Under Roosevelt’s New Deal, she had managed to obtain a loan for the down payment on a house near the Hollywood Bowl, while also renting a bedroom to the Atkinson family, George and Maud, and their young daughter Nellie. Like Gladys Baker, the Atkinsons were on the periphery of Hollywood, with both husband and wife occasionally landing bit parts in movies. They were a lot looser than Ida Bolender. They liked to smoke, drink, dance, and play cards, all the fun stuff that sends you straight to hell. But Marilyn still liked them and enjoyed hearing about all the stories in Hollywood and, for the first time, began wondering what such a life would be for her…
First Marriage
This new living arrangement seemed to work pretty well, but a dark storm soon clouded the sunshine and rainbows. Just a few months after moving into the new house, Gladys received some dreadful news: Jackie, her boy from her first marriage, had died of tuberculosis. A short while later, she also found out that her grandfather had committed suicide after allegedly going mad. Even at the best of times, Gladys Baker’s mental state was precarious, but two tragedies in a row sent her on a downward spiral. She lashed out at Marilyn, telling her she should have died instead of Jackie. Then, one day, she suffered a full-on psychotic break, brandishing a knife to protect herself from imaginary attackers. At that point, Gladys Baker was a danger to herself and everyone around her, so the police were called and they sent her for a psychiatric evaluation. Gladys was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and committed to a mental hospital.
The next years of Marilyn’s life were a bit uncertain as she drifted between different homes and orphanages. In 1935, Marilyn thought she had found a new home with Grace McKee, her mother’s closest friend and the same woman who Gladys once tried to stab after accusing her of poisoning Marilyn. After Gladys was committed, Grace became Marilyn’s legal guardian, but now that she had her, she decided there were other things she wanted more. Grace McKee had just gotten married for the fourth time to a man who already had three kids. A middle-aged woman, she was desperate to hang onto this husband, so when he said that three kids were enough and that Marilyn had to go, she relented and sent her to the orphanage again.
Marilyn spent about a year and a half at the Los Angeles Orphans’ Home. She described it as one of the darkest periods of her life, but, just like her years with the Bolenders, orphanage officials have accused her of making up most of the horrible things she described, possibly to give herself a more tragic and compelling backstory. Again, since nobody’s pants caught on fire, we’re not really sure who was telling the truth.
After leaving the orphanage, Marilyn got passed around like a beach volleyball. First, she stayed with Grace McKee and her family again. Then, she was sent to live with her elderly aunt Ana Lower. When the aunt became too sickly to look after Marilyn, the girl returned to Grace for a bit, but the whole family was planning to move to Virginia, and Marilyn wasn’t invited along for the trip. Faced with the possibility of returning to the orphanage, Marilyn looked for an alternative, any alternative, and she found it in the boy next door, James Dougherty. Marilyn and James were already sweet on each other, and she was just about to turn 16, so they thought…why not get married?
So they did. They got hitched in 1942, soon after Marilyn came of legal age, with Grace’s full support. That way, McKee could pack up and move to Virginia with a clear conscience. That same year, Marilyn dropped out of high school and became a housewife while Dougherty worked at the Lockheed factory in Van Nuys. But just like every other new arrangement in Monroe’s life, this one was short-lived. In 1943, Dougherty joined the Merchant Navy, so the couple relocated to Catalina Island. A year later, he got shipped to the Pacific, so Marilyn went back to Van Nuys and moved in with her in-laws. Soon after that, she found her first job with a company named Radioplane, which manufactured drones that were used for gunnery targets. And who could have foreseen that it would be here, of all places, that Marilyn would emerge as a star?
The Pin-Up Girl
One day in late 1944, a man walked into the Radioplane offices. His name was David Conover, and he was a photographer with Yank magazine, a military publication during World War II. He was looking to do a morale-boosting feature on women in the workplace, to show the lads who were deployed what they were fighting for. Several women posed for Conover, but Marilyn immediately caught his eye. He saw something in her and concluded she would make a great pin-up model.
And he was right. Conover used Marilyn a few more times and spread the word about this great new girl he had discovered, and she became a hit overnight, with dozens of photoshoots in her first year as a model.
This caused tensions with her husband, who was not happy about his wife’s new career. Dougherty was old school. He wrote Marilyn a letter where he made it clear that, once he was back, he expected her to settle down, give up her modeling, and start a family. But that didn’t sit well with Marilyn. She wasn’t the scared, innocent girl needing to be saved that she was when they got married. Now, Marilyn could look after herself, and she was not about to give up a flourishing career just because someone else told her to. In 1946, Jim Dougherty came back home. His feelings had not changed at all, so Marilyn was forced to make a decision: her marriage or her career. And we all know that she chose the latter, divorcing Doughtery that same year.
Her personal life might have taken a hit, but her professional life was just one success after another. In February 1946, Marilyn made the inspired decision to change her look a little, so she straightened her curls, dyed her hair blonde, and added her signature beauty mark. She wanted to resemble her idol, Jean Harlow, Hollywood’s original blonde bombshell and someone who, incidentally, we’ve already covered here at Biographics, in case you’re interested. This new look made Marilyn even more popular and, inevitably, came the transition to movies. Everyone kept telling her that she was pretty enough to be in pictures, so her modeling agent, Emmeline Snively, arranged a screen test between Marilyn and Ben Lyon, a recruiter for 20th Century Fox. Studio big wig Darryl Zanuck wasn’t exactly bowled over by her performance, but he was sufficiently impressed to want to keep her away from the competition, so he put the budding starlet on the payroll – $75 a week for six months, with an option for the studio to renew at double the salary.
All that was missing was the name. “Norma Jean Baker” didn’t exactly scream glitz and glamour. So the actress decided to use the first name Marilyn after Broadway actress Marilyn Miller and her mother’s maiden name, Monroe.” And thus, the transformation from Norma Jean Mortenson to Marilyn Monroe was complete.
So now she had the name and she had the look, but it would still be a while before she had the star power. As we said, 20th Century Fox didn’t immediately see box-office gold in her, so she spent her first six-month contract without actually appearing in any movies. She used that time to take acting, singing, and dancing lessons, with occasional appearances at press layouts where all that was expected of her was to smile and look pretty. Finally, in February 1947, the 21-year-old Monroe landed her first acting gig, a bit part in the movie Dangerous Years, where she played a waitress. A few more roles followed, but they were all small-time, some even uncredited.
Clearly, she had not impressed anyone with her acting chops, so when her second contract expired, Fox did not renew it. She signed a new deal with Columbia in 1948, but this went even worse. Although Marilyn landed her first-ever leading role in Ladies of the Chorus, the movie was a bomb, and the studio dropped her like a hot potato soon after its release.
Marilyn returned to modeling to pay the bills, and this was also when she posed nude for pinup photographer Tom Kelley under the name “Mona Monroe.” It wasn’t something she was proud of, but she needed to make a car payment, and Kelley promised that nobody would recognize it was her. That last part didn’t exactly work out, since Hugh Hefner bought the photographs four years later, when Marilyn Monroe was a star, and used them for the first issue of his new magazine named Playboy.
It was starting to look like Marilyn Monroe might not be made for the movies, after all. However, she had been told that you could never predict when you’ll get your big break in Hollywood, but that when it happens, you’ll know. And for Marilyn, it happened on New Year’s Eve 1949, at the party of producer Sam Spiegel, when she shook the hand of Johnny Hyde.
Her Big Break
At first glance, Johnny Hyde was nothing to look at. He was a short, balding middle-aged man with a sickly appearance and a bad ticker. But, as the Vice President of the William Morris talent agency, he was also one of the most powerful men in the room. And the moment he laid eyes on Marilyn, he was smitten. His proposition to her was exactly what you would expect – become his mistress, and he’ll make her a star. Although by the end of their year-long relationship, the power dynamic shifted completely, and it was Hyde who worked nonstop to please Marilyn, terrified that she might leave him, while she constantly rebuffed his marriage proposals.
On a professional level, Hyde delivered on his promise. He knew that Marilyn wanted, more than anything else, to be seen as a serious actress, not just a sexy airhead, so he got her a role in John Huston’s film noir The Asphalt Jungle in 1950. Although Monroe only had a few minutes of screen time, it was the first time she received praise for her acting. That same year, she had another minor role in one of the greatest movies of all time, the seminal drama All About Eve, which is still tied with Titanic for the record of most Oscar nominations with 14.
These two hits were followed by several mediocre films that only became noteworthy retroactively because they included a young Marilyn Monroe. Otherwise, they would have been doomed to irrelevancy soon after they were released. But Hyde wanted any roles he could get for Marilyn, hoping that if she got featured enough, one of the big studios would offer her a contract.
Ultimately, he got his wish. In December 1950, 20th Century Fox offered Monroe a new, seven-year contract. With his job done, Hyde had a heart attack and died a few days later. Stricken with grief, Marilyn blamed herself for his heart attack and probably tried to commit suicide a couple of days after the funeral. Her acting coach found her passed out in bed, with several sleeping pills still dissolving in her mouth. This likely being her first attempt, Marilyn didn’t take enough pills to get the job done, and her coach was able to remove the pills from her mouth and shake her awake.
Marilyn completely dismissed the event as an accident, but she had already begun abusing pills to cope with the disappointments in her life, a habit that only got worse as the years went on. After Hyde’s death, she had a string of short-lived high-profile relationships, including with director Elia Kazan and actor Peter Lawford, who would later introduce her to the Kennedys. This culminated in her second marriage, this time to New York Yankees star player Joe DiMaggio, which only lasted nine months.
On a professional level, Monroe’s career didn’t exactly flop, but it stagnated. During the early 1950s, she made a bunch of moderately successful movies for Fox Studios, where she was once again relegated to playing the sexy, dumb blonde. There were some exceptions, such as the film noir Clash by Night and the thriller Don’t Bother to Knock, but Monroe was still looking for that breakout role to launch her career into the stratosphere.
Stardom
1953 was the year that made Marilyn Monroe’s career. She started the year by appearing in the film noir Niagara, where she played a femme fatale who was still heavy on sex appeal, but less so on the ditziness that defined most of her roles. Later that year, she starred in the movie adaptation of the comedy musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, where she showcased her singing and dancing skills in her memorable rendition of Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend. Monroe finished off the year by starring in the comedy How to Marry a Millionaire alongside Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable. All three movies were hits and cemented Monroe’s status as one of Hollywood’s greatest rising stars. Her second stint at Fox was capped off by the Billy Wilder comedy The Seven Year Itch, which featured arguably one of the most iconic images of the 20th century when Marilyn’s white cocktail dress gets blown upwards by the wind from a subway train passing underneath.
Marilyn Monroe had become undisputed Hollywood royalty, but she was still bothered by the blonde airhead archetype that she kept portraying. She butted heads several times with Fox execs over her parts, as they felt any other roles would be unsuited to her. Eventually, she said, “screw that!” and moved to New York where she opened her own production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions.
20th Century Fox, however, begged to differ and insisted that Monroe was still under contract with them. This launched a year-long battle between the two sides, a time during which some ridiculed Marilyn for torpedoing her own career, while others applauded her for taking on the big studios to support actors’ rights. Eventually, the two sides reached an agreement that was very favorable to Monroe, with her not only receiving a big pay increase but also the ability to choose her own projects and directors. It was a landmark moment that signaled the beginning of the end for the studio system that dominated Hollywood during the first half of the 20th century.
Marilyn’s first movie under her new deal was the drama Bus Stop, where she downplayed her sex appeal and spoke with an Ozark accent. Both the movie and her acting were well-received, proving to the world that Marilyn Monroe was not just a one-trick pony. Her next film, however, The Prince and the Showgirl, wasn’t quite as successful, marred by conflicts between the movie’s two leads, Monroe and Laurence Olivier.
In fact, by that point, Marilyn Monroe had firmly established a reputation as being difficult to work with, someone who always showed up late, often forgot her lines, and demanded countless retakes until she felt everything was right. This attitude caused the most problems on the set of one of her final movies and, undoubtedly, one of her best – the Billy Wilder comedy Some Like It Hot. By the end of production, the director was not speaking to Monroe anymore, and he later made multiple disparaging remarks about her in the press. Wilder put it bluntly that, although Marilyn was good, she probably wasn’t worth all the trouble, and that he was “too old and too rich” to ever go through something like that again.
“So Long, I’ve Had You, Fame”
Although Marilyn’s career had its ups and downs, her personal life seemed to be a string of disappointments, heartbreaks, and failures. She married playwright Arthur Miller in 1956 and, although this was her longest marriage, it still ended in divorce in 1961. Afterward, it is presumed that she had her infamous affair with President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Bobby Kennedy, although this has never been definitively proven. In fact, many people believe a popular conspiracy theory that says that the Kennedys were somehow involved in Marilyn’s death, which included her second husband, Joe DiMaggio.
Behind closed doors, Marilyn was also dealing with health problems. She suffered two miscarriages and one ectopic pregnancy in her life, and also had to deal with very painful gallstones. Her physical and emotional pain made her turn to drugs, and by the end of her life, she had become addicted to barbiturates. While filming her final movie, Something’s Got to Give, Monroe had to take an extended sick leave, which prompted Fox to fire her and seek a replacement. However, by now, you’d think the studio would have learned that they always got the short end of the stick when they went up against Marilyn. Her co-star, Dean Martin, refused to work with anyone else. Eventually, the studio rehired her with a pay raise, not just for this movie, but also for her next one.
Marilyn stood to earn $1 million for two movies, a giant sum in those days. The studio would never have to pay out, though. On the evening of August 5, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died in her home from a barbiturate overdose. The 36-year-old actor’s death was officially ruled a probable suicide, although, as we mentioned, there are quite a few conspiracy theories that surround her untimely demise. Marilyn Monroe’s life, her career, and, yes, even her tragic death, combined to form one of the most popular and enduring figures in Hollywood history.
