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Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1, 1926 – August 4, 1962) was an American actress, singer, and model. Famous for playing comedic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million (equivalent to $2 billion in 2021) by the time of her death in 1962.[3] Long after her death, Monroe remains a major icon of pop culture.[4] In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her sixth on their list of the greatest female screen legends from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage; she married at age sixteen. She was working in a factory during World War II when she met a photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit and began a successful pin-up modeling career, which led to short-lived film contracts with 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures. After a series of minor film roles, she signed a new contract with Fox in late 1950. Over the next two years, she became a popular actress with roles in several comedies, including As Young as You Feel and Monkey Business, and in the dramas Clash by Night and Don't Bother to Knock. She faced a scandal when it was revealed that she had posed for nude photographs prior to becoming a star, but the story did not damage her career and instead resulted in increased interest in her films.
By 1953, Monroe was one of the most marketable Hollywood stars; she had leading roles in the film noir Niagara, which overtly relied on her sex appeal, and the comedies Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, which established her star image as a "dumb blonde". The same year, her nude images were used as the centerfold and on the cover of the first issue of Playboy. She played a significant role in the creation and management of her public image throughout her career, but she was disappointed when she was typecast and underpaid by the studio. She was briefly suspended in early 1954 for refusing a film project but returned to star in The Seven Year Itch (1955), one of the biggest box office successes of her career.
When the studio was still reluctant to change Monroe's contract, she founded her own film production company in 1954. She dedicated 1955 to building the company and began studying method acting under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Later that year, Fox awarded her a new contract, which gave her more control and a larger salary. Her subsequent roles included a critically acclaimed performance in Bus Stop (1956) and her first independent production in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957). She won a Golden Globe for Best Actress for her role in Some Like It Hot (1959), a critical and commercial success. Her last completed film was the drama The Misfits (1961).
Monroe's troubled private life received much attention. She struggled with addiction and mood disorders. Her marriages to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and to playwright Arthur Miller were highly publicized, but ended in divorce. On August 4, 1962, she died at age 36 from an overdose of barbiturates at her Los Angeles home. Her death was ruled a probable suicide.
Monroe was born as Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, at the Los Angeles County Hospital in Los Angeles, California.[5] Her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker (née Monroe), was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico,[6] to a poor Midwestern family who had migrated to California at the turn of the century.[7] At the age of 15, Gladys married John Newton Baker, an abusive man nine years her senior. They had two children, named Robert (1917–1933)[8] and Berniece (1919–2014).[9] She successfully filed for divorce and sole custody in 1923, but Baker kidnapped the children soon after and moved with them to his native Kentucky.[10]
Monroe was not told that she had a sister until she was 12, and they met for the first time when Monroe was 17 or 18.[11] Following the divorce, Gladys worked as a film negative cutter at Consolidated Film Industries.[12] In 1924, she married Martin Edward Mortensen, but they separated just months later and divorced in 1928.[12][b] In 2022, DNA testing indicated that Monroe's father was Charles Stanley Gifford,[16] Gladys’ co-worker with whom she had an affair in 1925.[15]
Although Gladys was mentally and financially unprepared for a child, Monroe's early childhood was stable and happy.[17] Gladys placed her daughter with evangelical Christian foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender in the rural town of Hawthorne. She also lived there for the first six months, until she was forced to move back to the city for employment.[18] She then began visiting her daughter on weekends.[17] In the summer of 1933, Gladys bought a small house in Hollywood with a loan from the Home Owners' Loan Corporation and moved seven-year-old Monroe in with her.[19]
They shared the house with lodgers, actors George and Maude Atkinson and their daughter, Nellie.[20] In January 1934, Gladys had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.[21] After several months in a rest home, she was committed to the Metropolitan State Hospital.[22] She spent the rest of her life in and out of hospitals and was rarely in contact with Monroe.[23] Monroe became a ward of the state, and her mother's friend, Grace Goddard, took responsibility over her and her mother's affairs.[24]
In the next four years, Monroe's living situation changed often. For the first 16 months, she continued living with the Atkinsons, and may have been sexually abused during this time.[25][c] Always a shy girl, she now also developed a stutter and became withdrawn.[31] In the summer of 1935, she briefly stayed with Grace and her husband Erwin "Doc" Goddard and two other families.[32] In September 1935, Grace placed her in the Los Angeles Orphans Home.[33] The orphanage was "a model institution" and was described in positive terms by her peers, but Monroe felt abandoned.[34]
Encouraged by the orphanage staff who thought that Monroe would be happier living in a family, Grace became her legal guardian in 1936, but did not take her out of the orphanage until the summer of 1937.[35] Monroe's second stay with the Goddards lasted only a few months because Doc molested her.[36] She then lived brief periods with her relatives and Grace's friends and relatives in Los Angeles and Compton.[37]
It was Monroe's childhood experiences that first made her want to become an actor: "I didn't like the world around me because it was kind of grim ... When I heard that this was acting, I said that's what I want to be ... Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I'd sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it."[38]
Monroe found a more permanent home in September 1938, when she began living with Grace's aunt, Ana Lower, in the west side district of Sawtelle.[39] She was enrolled at Emerson Junior High School and went to weekly Christian Science services with Lower.[40] Monroe was otherwise a mediocre student, but excelled in writing and contributed to the school newspaper.[41] Due to the elderly Lower's health problems, Monroe returned to live with the Goddards in Van Nuys in around early 1941.[42]
The same year, she began attending Van Nuys High School.[43] In 1942, the company that employed Doc Goddard relocated him to West Virginia.[44] California child protection laws prevented the Goddards from taking Monroe out of state, and she faced having to return to the orphanage.[45] As a solution, she married their neighbors' 21-year-old son, factory worker James Dougherty, on June 19, 1942, just after her 16th birthday.[46]
Monroe subsequently dropped out of high school and became a housewife. She found herself and Dougherty mismatched and later stated that she was "dying of boredom" during the marriage.[47] In 1943, Dougherty enlisted in the Merchant Marine and was stationed on Santa Catalina Island, where Monroe moved with him.
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