Marilyn Monroe... the name inspires many things; beauty, lust, comedy, an unquestionable icon of the 50's, sex symbol.
Born Norma Jean Baker (later Norma Jean Dougherty), Norma Jean was an orphan of sorts, moving from one foster home to the next. No one told her she was special, or pretty, she wrote in her biography "My Story". Her mother, who was in and out of mental institutions, was unable to care for Norma Jean, but also would not allow another family to adopt the child, leaving Norma Jean to a transient life that eventually became a marriage at 16 to a young neighbor named Jim Dougherty. She did not love him, she protested on her wedding day. He didn't seem to return the feeling either, as Norma Jean's early diaries speak of his trysts with an old girlfriend. But it didn't matter. The two were married and lived in Los Angeles. Jim was soon called to military duty, and while he was away, Norma Jean was discovered.
At first she worked in a factory for fifteen cents an hour until she decided to try modeling, which paid much better. Soon Norma Jean was able to leave her job at the factory and commit herself to her modeling full time.
It was during this time that the now infamous nude calendar photo was taken, for which she was paid $50 - exactly the amount she needed to get her car out of repossession.
For all of her sensuality on screen and in public, Marilyn herself describes her sexual desire as "non-existant", and even wonders in her memoirs if she is frigid, or even a lesbian, as she says "I did get a thrill from a well-built woman that I never felt for a man."
Though many other stars of the day write of Marilyn as a tart and even as the woman everyone in Hollywood was having sex with, Marilyn herself describes a far different picture - one of loneliness and fighting off "the wolves" as she calls them. She adamantly denies any affairs with motion picture moguls or her co-stars.
In one of the most chilling moments of her memoir, Marilyn has yet to become the star she will soon be, and has been fired by her studio for being "non-photogenic". She goes into a dizzying dispair, filling her days with keeping to her bed, and her nights with crying. She did not sleep. It is during this period that she writes, "and I suddenly realized, "I am one of those girls you find dead in a hallway bedroom with a bottle of empty sleeping pills in my hand". I wonder if she always knew.
So what is it about this fragile blonde with the childlike innocence blended with the sexuality of a rock star that so draws us to her, now some 50 years after her suicide? Was it the hint of madness, that glimmer of the young abused Norma Jean coming through her eyes that so captivates us? (In her book, she starts to speak of herself (Marilyn) and Norma Jean as two separate persons.) Perhaps it was the way she walked, talked and moved that was so sensual, even when her thoughts were as far from sex as possible - that sense of her as unpossessable that so draws us in. We've always loved Marilyn, and she always needed that love; the desire to be needed and wanted was a dominating factor in her personality.
She needed to be needed so badly that I believe it drove everything she did in her life, and ultimately lead to her sad and lonley death in a little bedroom off the hallway with an empty bottle of pills beside the bed and the phone clutched losely in one hand.
Marilyn Monroe
1926 - 1962
died at 36 years old of a suspected overdose of a variaty of pills
(Marilyn's favorite photo of herself)
Sources:
My Story, by Marilyn Monroe and Ben Hecht
Fragments, Personal Notes and writings of Marilyn Monroe, edited by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment
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