Marilyn Monroe
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Marilyn Monroe (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1, 1926Template:Spnd August 4, 1962) was an American actress and model. Known for playing comic "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 $Template:Inflation billion in Template:Inflation/year) by her death in 1962.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Born in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage before marrying James Dougherty at the age of 16. 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 roles as a freelancer, she began a longer contract with Fox in 1951, becoming 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. Monroe faced a scandal when it was revealed that she had posed for nude photographs prior to fame, but the story resulted in increased interest in her films.
Monroe became one of the most marketable Hollywood stars in 1953. 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 cover of the first issue of Playboy. Monroe played a significant role in the creation and management of her public image, but felt disappointed when 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 with her friend Milton Greene. 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), for which she received a BAFTA nomination. She won a Golden Globe 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. Her marriages to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and to playwright Arthur Miller were highly publicized; both ended in divorce. On August 4, 1962, Monroe died at age 36 of an overdose of barbiturates at her Los Angeles home. Her death was ruled a probable suicide. Monroe remains a pop culture icon,Template:Sfnm with the American Film Institute ranking her as the sixth-greatest female screen legend from the Golden Age of Hollywood.<ref name="afi">Template:Cite web</ref>
Life and career
[edit]1926–1943: Childhood and first marriage
[edit]Monroe was born Norma Jeane MortensonTemplate:Efn at Los Angeles General Hospital on June 1, 1926.Template:Sfnm Her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker (Template:Née Monroe), was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, into a poor Midwestern family who migrated to California at the turn of the century.Template:Sfnm At the age of 14, Gladys had married John Newton Baker, an abusive man sixteen years her senior. They had two children together, RobertTemplate:Sfnm and Berniece.Template:Sfnm Gladys successfully filed for divorce and sole custody of her two oldest in 1923, but Baker kidnapped the children soon after and moved with them to his native Kentucky.Template:Sfnm Monroe first learnt about her sister when she was 12 years old, and met her for the first time in her late teens.Template:Sfnm
Following the divorce, Gladys worked as a film negative cutter at Consolidated Film Industries.Template:Sfnm In 1924, she married Martin Edward Mortensen, but the union lasted only a few months, although they did not legally divorce until four years later.Template:Sfnm Gladys named Mortensen (misspelled Mortenson) as Monroe's father in the birth certificate, but most of Monroe's biographers agree that this was unlikely as their separation had taken place well before she became pregnant.Template:Sfnm According to biographers Fred Guiles and Lois Banner, her father was likely Charles Stanley Gifford, Gladys's superior at RKO Studios, with whom she had an affair in 1925.Template:Sfnm This was supported by a comparison conducted in 2022 between Monroe's DNA and that of one of Gifford's descendants.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Although Gladys was mentally and financially unprepared for a child, Monroe's early childhood was stable and happy.Template:Sfnm Gladys placed her daughter with evangelical Christian foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender in the suburban town of Hawthorne. She also lived there for six months until she was forced to move back to the city for employment.Template:Sfnm She then began visiting her daughter on weekends.Template:Sfnm 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.Template:Sfnm They shared the house with lodgers, actors George and Maude Atkinson and their daughter, Nellie.Template:Sfnm In January 1934, Gladys had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.Template:Sfn After several months in a rest home, she was committed to the Metropolitan State Hospital.Template:Sfnm She spent the rest of her life in and out of hospitals and was rarely in contact with Monroe.Template:Sfnm Monroe became a ward of the state, and her mother's friend Grace Goddard took responsibility over her and her mother's affairs.Template:Sfnm
For the next 16 months, Monroe continued living with the Atkinsons and may have been sexually abused during this time.Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn Always a shy girl, she developed a stutter and became withdrawn.Template:Sfn In the summer of 1935, she briefly stayed with Grace and her husband Erwin "Doc" Goddard and two other families.Template:Sfn In September 1935, Grace placed her in the Los Angeles Orphans Home #2, Hollygrove.<ref name="flickr/7416642764">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="pcad/7187">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="latimes/2005-12-20/me-hollygrove20">Template:Cite news</ref>Template:Sfnm The orphanage was "a model institution" and was described in positive terms by her peers, but Monroe felt abandoned.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfnm Monroe's second stay with the Goddards lasted only a few months because Doc allegedly molested her.Template:Sfn She then lived for brief periods with her relatives and Grace's friends and relatives in Los Angeles and Compton.Template:Sfnm
Monroe's childhood experiences first made her want to become an actress:
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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Monroe found a more permanent home in September 1938, when she began living with Grace's aunt Ana Lower in Sawtelle.Template:Sfnm Monroe was enrolled at Emerson Junior High School and went to weekly Christian Science services with Lower.Template:Sfnm She excelled in writing and contributed to the school newspaper, but was otherwise a mediocre student.Template:Sfn Owing to the elderly Lower's health problems, Monroe returned to live with the Goddards in Van Nuys in about early 1941.Template:Sfnm That same year, she began attending Van Nuys High School.Template:Sfn
In 1942, the company that employed Doc relocated him to West Virginia.Template:Sfnm California child protection laws prevented the Goddards from taking Monroe out of state, and she faced having to return to the orphanage.Template:Sfn To avoid this, it was decided that she leave high school and marry their neighbor, factory worker James Dougherty, who was five years her senior. The marriage took place just after her 16th birthday on June 19, 1942.Template:Sfn Monroe found herself and Dougherty mismatched, and later said she was "dying of boredom" during the marriage.Template:Sfn In 1943, Dougherty enlisted in the Merchant Marine and was stationed on Santa Catalina Island, where Monroe moved with him.Template:Sfnm
1944–1948: Modeling, divorce, and first film roles
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In April 1944, Dougherty was shipped out to the Pacific, where he remained for most of the next two years.Template:Sfnm After Dougherty left, Monroe moved in with Dougherty's parents and began a job at the Radioplane Company, a munitions factory in Van Nuys, to help the war effort.Template:Sfnm In late 1944, she met photographer David Conover, then working in the U.S. Army Air Forces' First Motion Picture Unit, who had been sent to the factory to shoot morale-boosting pictures of female workers.Template:Sfnm Although none of her pictures were used, she quit working at the factory in January 1945 and began modeling for Conover and his friends.Template:Sfnm<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Defying her deployed husband and his disapproving mother, she moved on her own and signed a contract with the Blue Book Model Agency in August 1945.Template:Sfn
The agency deemed Monroe's figure more suitable for pin-up than high fashion modeling, and she was featured mostly in advertisements and men's magazines.Template:Sfn She straightened her naturally curly brown hair and dyed it platinum blonde.Template:Sfnm According to Emmeline Snively, the agency's owner, Monroe quickly became one of its most ambitious and hard-working models; by early 1946, she had appeared on 33 magazine covers for publications such as Pageant, U.S. Camera, Laff, and Peek.Template:Sfnm As a model, Monroe occasionally used the pseudonym Jean Norman.Template:Sfnm
Through Snively, Monroe signed a contract with an acting agency in June 1946.Template:Sfn After an unsuccessful interview at Paramount Pictures, she was given a screen-test by Ben Lyon, a 20th Century-Fox executive. Head executive Darryl F. Zanuck was unenthusiastic about it,Template:Sfnm but he gave her a standard six-month contract to avoid her being signed by rival studio RKO Pictures.Template:Efn Monroe's contract began in August 1946, and she and Lyon selected the stage name "Marilyn Monroe".Template:Sfn The first name was picked by Lyon, who was reminded of Broadway star Marilyn Miller; the surname was Monroe's mother's maiden name.Template:Sfn In September 1946, she divorced Dougherty, who had been opposed to her career.Template:Sfn
Monroe spent her first six months at Fox learning acting, singing, and dancing, and observing the film-making process.Template:Sfnm Her contract was renewed in February 1947, and she was given her first film roles, bit parts in Dangerous Years (1947) and Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948).Template:SfnTemplate:Efn The studio also enrolled her in the Actors' Laboratory Theatre, an acting school teaching the techniques of the Group Theatre; she later stated that it was "my first taste of what real acting in a real drama could be, and I was hooked".Template:Sfn Despite her enthusiasm, her teachers thought her too shy and insecure to have a future in acting, and Fox did not renew her contract in August 1947.Template:Sfnm She returned to modeling while also doing occasional odd jobs at film studios, such as working as a dancing "pacer" behind the scenes to keep the leads on point at musical sets.Template:Sfnm
Monroe was determined to make it as an actress, and continued studying at the Actors' Lab. She had a small role in the play Glamour Preferred at the Bliss-Hayden Theater, but it ended after a couple of performances.Template:Sfnm To network, she frequented producers' offices, befriended gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky, and entertained influential male guests at studio functions, a practice she had begun at Fox.Template:Sfnm She also became a friend and occasional sex partner of Fox executive Joseph M. Schenck, who persuaded his friend Harry Cohn, the head executive of Columbia Pictures, to sign her in March 1948.Template:Sfnm
At Columbia, Monroe's look was modeled after Rita Hayworth and her hair was bleached platinum blonde.Template:Sfnm She began working with the studio's head drama coach, Natasha Lytess, who would remain her mentor until 1955.Template:Sfn Her only film at the studio was the low-budget musical Ladies of the Chorus (1948), in which she had her first starring role as a chorus girl courted by a wealthy man.Template:Sfn She also screen-tested for the lead role in Born Yesterday (1950), but her contract was not renewed in September 1948.Template:Sfn Ladies of the Chorus was released the following month and was not a success.Template:Sfn
1949–1952: Breakthrough years
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When her contract at Columbia ended, Monroe returned again to modeling. She shot a commercial for Pabst beer and posed for artistic nude photographs by Tom Kelley for John Baumgarth<ref name="issuemagazine-goddesses">Template:Cite news</ref> calendars, using the name 'Mona Monroe'.Template:Sfn Monroe had previously posed topless or clad in a bikini for other artists including Earl Moran, and felt comfortable with nudity.Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn Shortly after leaving Columbia, she also met and became the protégée and mistress of Johnny Hyde, the vice president of the William Morris Agency.Template:Sfnm
Through Hyde, Monroe landed small roles in several films,Template:Efn including two critically acclaimed works. The first was Joseph Mankiewicz's drama All About Eve (1950), which received 14 Academy Award nominations.Template:Sfn The film's star Bette Davis later praised Monroe's performance, saying, "Definitely, no question, I knew she was going to make it. She was a very ambitious girl, [and] knew what she wanted [and was] very serious about itTemplate:Nbsp... I thought she had talent."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The second film was John Huston's noir The Asphalt Jungle (1950).Template:Sfn Despite her screen time being only a few minutes, Monroe gained a mention in Photoplay and according to biographer Donald Spoto "moved effectively from movie model to serious actress".Template:Sfn
In December 1950, Hyde negotiated a seven-year contract for Monroe with 20th Century-Fox.Template:Sfnm According to its terms, Fox could opt not to renew the contract after each year.Template:Sfn Hyde died of a heart attack only days later, which left Monroe devastated.Template:Sfnm In 1951, Monroe had supporting roles in three moderately successful Fox comedies: As Young as You Feel, Love Nest, and Let's Make It Legal.Template:Sfn According to Spoto all three films featured her "essentially [as] a sexy ornament", but she received some praise from critics: Bosley Crowther of The New York Times described her as "superb" in As Young As You Feel and Ezra Goodman of the Los Angeles Daily News called her "one of the brightest up-and-coming [actresses]" for Love Nest.Template:Sfnm
Her popularity with audiences was also growing: she received several thousand fan letters a week, and was declared "Miss Cheesecake of 1951" by the army newspaper Stars and Stripes, reflecting the preferences of soldiers in the Korean War.Template:Sfn In February 1952, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association named Monroe the "best young box office personality".<ref name=gg>Template:Cite web</ref> In her private life, Monroe had a short relationship with director Elia Kazan and also briefly dated several other men, including director Nicholas Ray and actors Yul Brynner and Peter Lawford.Template:Sfnm In early 1952, she began a highly publicized romance with retired New York Yankees baseball star Joe DiMaggio, one of the most famous sports personalities of the era.Template:Sfnm
Monroe found herself at the center of a scandal in March 1952, when she revealed publicly that she had posed for a nude calendar in 1949.Template:Sfnm The studio had learned about the photos and that she was publicly rumored to be the model some weeks prior, and together with Monroe decided that to prevent damaging her career it was best to admit to them while stressing that she had been broke at the time.Template:Sfnm The strategy gained her public sympathy and increased interest in her films, for which she was now receiving top billing. In the wake of the scandal, Monroe was featured on the cover of Life magazine as the "Talk of Hollywood", and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper declared her the "cheesecake queen" turned "box office smash".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Three of Monroe's films—Clash by Night, Don't Bother to Knock and We're Not Married!—were released soon after to capitalize on the public interest.Template:Sfnm
Despite her newfound popularity as a sex symbol, Monroe also wished to showcase more of her acting range. She had begun taking acting classes with Michael Chekhov and mime Lotte Goslar soon after beginning the Fox contract,Template:Sfnm and Clash by Night and Don't Bother to Knock showed her in different roles.Template:Sfnm In the former, a drama starring Barbara Stanwyck and directed by Fritz Lang, she played a fish cannery worker; to prepare, she spent time in a fish cannery in Monterey.Template:Sfnm She received positive reviews for her performance: The Hollywood Reporter stated that "she deserves starring status with her excellent interpretation", and Variety wrote that she "has an ease of delivery which makes her a cinch for popularity".Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The latter was a thriller in which Monroe starred as a mentally disturbed babysitter and which Zanuck used to test her abilities in a heavier dramatic role.Template:Sfn It received mixed reviews from critics, with Crowther deeming her too inexperienced for the difficult role,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and Variety blaming the script for the film's problems.Template:Sfnm<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
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Monroe's three other films in 1952 continued with her typecasting in comedic roles that highlighted her sex appeal. In We're Not Married!, her role as a beauty pageant contestant was created solely to "present Marilyn in two bathing suits", according to its writer Nunnally Johnson.Template:Sfn In Howard Hawks's Monkey Business, in which she acted opposite Cary Grant, she played a secretary who is a "dumb, childish blonde, innocently unaware of the havoc her sexiness causes around her".Template:Sfn In O. Henry's Full House, with Charles Laughton she appeared in a passing vignette as a nineteenth-century street walker.Template:Sfn Monroe added to her reputation as a new sex symbol with publicity stunts that year: she wore a revealing dress when acting as Grand Marshal at the Miss America Pageant parade, and told gossip columnist Earl Wilson that she usually wore no underwear.Template:Sfn By the end of the year, gossip columnist Florabel Muir named Monroe the "it girl" of 1952.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="MotionPicture1953">Template:Cite news</ref>
During this period, Monroe gained a reputation for being difficult to work with, which would worsen as her career progressed. She was often late or did not show up at all, did not remember her lines, and would demand several re-takes before she was satisfied with her performance.Template:Sfn Her dependence on her acting coaches—Natasha Lytess and then Paula Strasberg—also irritated directors.Template:Sfn Monroe's problems have been attributed to a combination of perfectionism, low self-esteem, and stage fright.Template:Sfnm She disliked her lack of control on film sets and never experienced similar problems during photo shoots, in which she had more say over her performance and could be more spontaneous instead of following a script.Template:Sfnm<ref name=levin/> To alleviate her anxiety and chronic insomnia, she began to use barbiturates, amphetamines, and alcohol, which also exacerbated her problems, although she did not become severely addicted until 1956.Template:Sfnm According to Sarah Churchwell, some of Monroe's behavior, especially later in her career, was also in response to the condescension and sexism of her male co-stars and directors.Template:Sfn Biographer Lois Banner said that she was bullied by many of her directors.Template:Sfn
1953: Rising star
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Monroe starred in three movies that were released in 1953 and emerged as a major sex symbol and one of Hollywood's most bankable performers.Template:Sfnm<ref name="www.quigleypublishing.com Top10_lists">Template:Cite web</ref> The first was the Technicolor film noir Niagara, in which she played a femme fatale scheming to murder her husband, played by Joseph Cotten.Template:Sfn By then, Monroe and her make-up artist Allan "Whitey" Snyder had developed her "trademark" make-up look: dark arched brows, pale skin, "glistening" red lips and a beauty mark.Template:Sfn According to Sarah Churchwell, Niagara was one of the most overtly sexual films of Monroe's career.Template:Sfn In some scenes, Monroe's body was covered only by a sheet or a towel, considered shocking by contemporary audiences.Template:Sfnm NiagaraTemplate:Apostrophes most famous scene is a 30-second long shot behind Monroe where she is seen walking with her hips swaying, which was used heavily in the film's marketing.Template:Sfnm
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When Niagara was released in January 1953, women's clubs protested it as immoral, but it proved popular with audiences.Template:Sfnm While Variety deemed it "clichéd" and "morbid", The New York Times commented that "the falls and Miss Monroe are something to see", as although Monroe may not be "the perfect actress at this point ... she can be seductive—even when she walks".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Monroe continued to attract attention by wearing revealing outfits, most famously at the Photoplay Awards in January 1953, where she won the "Fastest Rising Star" award.Template:Sfnm A pleated "sunburst" waist-tight, deep décolleté gold lamé dress designed by William Travilla for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but barely seen at all in the film, was to become a sensation.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Prompted by such imagery, veteran star Joan Crawford publicly called the behavior "unbecoming an actress and a lady".Template:Sfnm
While Niagara made Monroe a sex symbol and established her "look", her second film of 1953, the satirical musical comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, cemented her screen persona as a "dumb blonde".Template:Sfnm Based on Anita Loos' novel and its Broadway version, the film focuses on two "gold-digging" showgirls played by Monroe and Jane Russell. Monroe's role was originally intended for Betty Grable, who had been 20th Century-Fox's most popular "blonde bombshell" in the 1940s; Monroe was fast eclipsing her as a star who could appeal to both male and female audiences.Template:Sfnm As part of the film's publicity campaign, she and Russell pressed their hand and footprints in wet concrete outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in June.Template:Sfnm Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was released shortly after and became one of the biggest box office successes of the year.Template:Sfnm Crowther of The New York Times and William Brogdon of Variety both commented favorably on Monroe, especially noting her performance of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend"; according to the latter, she demonstrated the "ability to sex a song as well as point up the eye values of a scene by her presence".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In September, Monroe made her television debut in the Jack Benny Show, playing Jack's fantasy woman in the episode "Honolulu Trip".Template:Sfn She co-starred with Grable and Lauren Bacall in her third movie of the year, How to Marry a Millionaire, released in November. It featured Monroe as a naïve model who teams up with her friends to find rich husbands, repeating the successful formula of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It was the second film ever released in CinemaScope, a widescreen format that Fox hoped would draw audiences back to theaters as television was beginning to cause losses to film studios.Template:Sfnm Despite mixed reviews, the film was Monroe's biggest box office success at that point in her career.Template:Sfnm
Monroe was listed in the annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll in both 1953 and 1954,<ref name="www.quigleypublishing.com Top10_lists" /> and according to Fox historian Aubrey Solomon became the studio's "greatest asset" alongside CinemaScope.Template:Sfn Monroe's position as a leading sex symbol was confirmed in December 1953, when Hugh Hefner featured her on the cover and as centerfold in the first issue of Playboy; Monroe did not consent to the publication.Template:Sfn The cover image was a photograph taken of her at the Miss America Pageant parade in 1952, and the centerfold featured one of her 1949 nude photographs.Template:Sfn
1954–1955: Conflicts with 20th Century-Fox and marriage to Joe DiMaggio
[edit]Monroe had become one of 20th Century-Fox's biggest stars, but her contract had not changed since 1950, so that she was paid far less than other stars of her stature and could not choose her projects.Template:Sfn Her attempts to appear in films that would not focus on her as a pin-up had been thwarted by the studio head executive, Darryl F. Zanuck, who had a strong personal dislike of her and did not think she would earn the studio as much revenue in other types of roles.Template:Sfn Under pressure from the studio's owner, Spyros Skouras, Zanuck had also decided that Fox should focus exclusively on entertainment to maximize profits and canceled the production of any "serious films".Template:Sfn In January 1954, he suspended Monroe when she refused to begin shooting yet another musical comedy, The Girl in Pink Tights.Template:Sfnm
This was front-page news, and Monroe immediately took action to counter negative publicity. She and DiMaggio, who had been dating for two years, were married at the San Francisco City Hall on January 14, 1954.Template:Sfn Fifteen days later, they flew to Japan, combining a "honeymoon" with his business trip.Template:Sfn From Tokyo, she traveled to Korea, where she participated in a USO show, singing for over 60,000 U.S. Marines over a four-day period.Template:Sfn After returning to the U.S., she was awarded PhotoplayTemplate:'s "Most Popular Female Star" prize.Template:Sfn Monroe settled with Fox in March, with the promise of a new contract, a bonus of $100,000, and a starring role in the film adaptation of the Broadway success The Seven Year Itch.Template:Sfn
In April 1954, Otto Preminger's western River of No Return, the last film that Monroe had filmed prior to the suspension, was released. She called it a "Z-grade cowboy movie in which the acting finished second to the scenery and the CinemaScope process", but it was popular with audiences.Template:Sfn The first film she made after the suspension was the musical There's No Business Like Show Business, which she strongly disliked but the studio required her to do for dropping The Girl in Pink Tights.Template:Sfn It was unsuccessful upon its release in late 1954, with Monroe's performance considered vulgar by many critics.Template:Sfnm
In September 1954, Monroe began filming Billy Wilder's comedy The Seven Year Itch, starring opposite Tom Ewell as a woman who becomes the object of her married neighbor's sexual fantasies. Although the film was shot in Hollywood, the studio decided to generate advance publicity by staging the filming of a scene in which Monroe is standing on a subway grate with the air blowing up the skirt of her white dress on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.Template:Sfn The shoot lasted for several hours and attracted nearly 2,000 spectators.Template:Sfn The "subway grate scene" became one of Monroe's most famous, and The Seven Year Itch became one of the biggest commercial successes of the year after its release in June 1955.Template:Sfn
The publicity stunt placed Monroe on international front pages, and it also marked the end of her marriage to DiMaggio.Template:Sfnm The union had been troubled from the start by his jealousy and controlling attitude; he was also physically abusive.Template:Sfnm After returning from NYC to Hollywood in October 1954, Monroe filed for divorce, after only nine months of marriage.Template:Sfnm
After filming for The Seven Year Itch wrapped up in November 1954, Monroe left Hollywood for the East Coast, where she and photographer Milton Greene founded their own production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions (MMP)—an action that has later been called "instrumental" in the collapse of the studio system.Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn Monroe stated that she was "tired of the same old sex roles" and asserted that she was no longer under contract to Fox, as it had not fulfilled its duties, such as paying her the promised bonus.Template:Sfn This began a year-long legal battle between her and Fox in January 1955.Template:Sfn The press largely ridiculed Monroe, and she was parodied in the Broadway play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955), in which her lookalike Jayne Mansfield played a dumb actress who starts her own production company.Template:Sfn
After founding MMP, Monroe moved to Manhattan and spent 1955 studying acting. She took classes with Constance Collier and attended workshops on method acting at the Actors Studio, run by Lee Strasberg.Template:Sfn She grew close to Strasberg and his wife Paula, receiving private lessons at their home due to her shyness, and soon became a family member.Template:Sfn She replaced her old acting coach, Natasha Lytess, with Paula; the Strasbergs remained an important influence for the rest of her career.Template:Sfn Monroe also started undergoing psychoanalysis, as Strasberg believed that an actor must confront their emotional traumas and use them in their performances.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn
Monroe continued her relationship with DiMaggio despite the ongoing divorce process; she also briefly dated actor Marlon Brando. According to Brando, they maintained an intermittent relationship until she died.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> She began a more serious affair with playwright Arthur Miller.Template:Sfnm Their relationship became increasingly serious after October 1955, when Monroe's divorce was finalized and Miller left his wife Mary Slattery.Template:Sfnm<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The studio urged her to end it, as Miller was being investigated by the FBI for allegations of communism and had been subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, but Monroe refused.Template:Sfnm The relationship led to the FBI opening a file on her.Template:Sfnm
By the end of the year, Monroe and Fox signed a new seven-year contract, as MMP would not be able to finance films alone, and the studio was eager to have Monroe working for them again.Template:Sfn Fox would pay her $400,000 to make four films, and granted her the right to choose her own projects, directors and cinematographers.Template:Sfn She would also be free to make one film with MMP per each completed film for Fox.Template:Sfn
1956–1959: Critical acclaim and marriage to Arthur Miller
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Monroe began 1956 by announcing her win over 20th Century-Fox.Template:Sfn On February 23, 1956, she legally changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The press wrote favorably about her decision to fight the studio; Time called her a "shrewd businesswoman"Template:Sfn and Look predicted that the win would be "an example of the individual against the herd for years to come".Template:Sfn In contrast, Monroe's relationship with Miller prompted some negative comments, such as Walter Winchell's statement that "America's best-known blonde moving picture star is now the darling of the left-wing intelligentsia."Template:Sfn
In March, Monroe began filming the drama Bus Stop, her first film under the new contract.Template:Sfn She played Chérie, a saloon singer whose dreams of stardom are complicated by a naïve cowboy who falls in love with her. For the role, she learned an Ozark accent, chose costumes and makeup that lacked the glamor of her earlier films, and provided deliberately mediocre singing and dancing.Template:Sfn Broadway director Joshua Logan agreed to direct, despite initially doubting Monroe's acting abilities and knowing of her difficult reputation.Template:Sfn The filming took place in Idaho and Arizona, with Monroe "technically in charge" as the head of MMP, occasionally making decisions on cinematography and with Logan adapting to her chronic lateness and perfectionism.Template:Sfnm The experience changed Logan's opinion of Monroe, and he later compared her to Charlie Chaplin in her ability to blend comedy and tragedy.Template:Sfn
On June 29, 1956, Monroe and Miller were married in a four-minute civil ceremony at the Westchester County Court in White Plains, New York; two days later they had a Jewish ceremony at the home of Kay Brown, Miller's literary agent, in Waccabuc, New York.Template:Sfn With the marriage, Monroe converted to Judaism, which led Egypt to ban all of her films.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Due to Monroe's status as a sex symbol and Miller's image as an intellectual, the media saw the union as a mismatch, as evidenced by VarietyTemplate:'s headline, "Egghead Weds Hourglass".Template:Sfnm
Bus Stop was released in August 1956 and became a critical and commercial success.Template:Sfnm The Saturday Review of Literature wrote that Monroe's performance "effectively dispels once and for all the notion that she is merely a glamour personality" and Crowther proclaimed: "Hold on to your chairs, everybody, and get set for a rattling surprise. Marilyn Monroe has finally proved herself an actress."Template:Sfn She also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role - Musical or Comedy for her performance.<ref name=gg />
In August, Monroe also began filming MMP's first independent production, The Prince and the Showgirl, at Pinewood Studios in England.Template:Sfn Based on a 1953 stage play by Terence Rattigan, it was to be directed and co-produced by, and to co-star, Laurence Olivier.Template:Sfn The production was complicated by conflicts between him and Monroe.Template:Sfn Olivier, who had also directed and starred in the stage play, angered her with the patronizing statement "All you have to do is be sexy", and with his demand she replicate Vivien Leigh's stage interpretation of the character.Template:Sfnm He also disliked the constant presence of Paula Strasberg, Monroe's acting coach, on set.Template:Sfn In retaliation, Monroe became uncooperative and began to deliberately arrive late, later saying, "if you don't respect your artists, they can't work well."Template:Sfn
Monroe also experienced other problems during the production. Her dependence on pharmaceuticals escalated and, according to Spoto, she had a miscarriage.Template:Sfnm She and Greene also argued over how MMP should be run.Template:Sfnm Despite the difficulties, filming was completed on schedule by the end of 1956.Template:Sfnm The Prince and the Showgirl was released to mixed reviews in June 1957 and proved unpopular with American audiences.Template:Sfn It was better received in Europe, where she was awarded the Italian David di Donatello and the French Crystal Star awards and nominated for a BAFTA.Template:Sfn
After returning from England, Monroe took an 18-month hiatus to concentrate on family life. She and Miller split their time between NYC, Connecticut and Long Island.Template:Sfn She had an ectopic pregnancy in mid-1957, and a miscarriage a year later;Template:Sfn these problems were most likely linked to her endometriosis.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Monroe was also briefly hospitalized due to a barbiturate overdose.Template:Sfn As she and Greene could not settle their disagreements over MMP, Monroe bought his share of the company.Template:Sfn
Monroe returned to Hollywood in July 1958 to act opposite Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Billy Wilder's comedy on gender roles, Some Like It Hot.Template:Sfn She considered the role of Sugar Kane another "dumb blonde", but accepted it due to Miller's encouragement and the offer of 10% of the film's profits on top of her standard pay.Template:Sfn The film's difficult production has since become "legendary".Template:Sfn Monroe demanded dozens of retakes, and did not remember her lines or act as directed—Curtis famously said that kissing her was "like kissing Hitler" due to the number of retakes.Template:Sfnm Monroe privately likened the production to a sinking ship and commented on her co-stars and director saying Template:Nowrap why should I worry, I have no phallic symbol to lose."Template:Sfnm Many of the problems stemmed from her and Wilder—who also had a reputation for being difficult—disagreeing on how she should play the role.Template:Sfnm She angered him by asking to alter many of her scenes, which in turn made her stage fright worse, and it is suggested that she deliberately ruined several scenes to act them her way.Template:Sfnm
In the end, Wilder was happy with Monroe's performance, saying: "Anyone can remember lines, but it takes a real artist to come on the set and not know her lines and yet give the performance she did!"Template:Sfn Some Like It Hot was a critical and commercial success when it was released in March 1959.Template:Sfnm Monroe's performance earned her a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Leading Role - Musical or Comedy,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and prompted Variety to call her "a comedienne with that combination of sex appeal and timing that just can't be beat".Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It has been voted one of the best films ever made in polls by the BBC,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> the American Film Institute,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Sight & Sound.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
1960–1962: Career setbacks and personal difficulties
[edit]
After Some Like It Hot, Monroe took another hiatus until late 1959, when she starred in the musical comedy Let's Make Love.Template:Sfn She chose George Cukor to direct and Miller rewrote some of the script, which she considered weak. She accepted the part solely because she was behind on her contract with Fox.Template:Sfn The film's production was delayed by her frequent absences from the set.Template:Sfn During the shoot, Monroe had an affair with co-star Yves Montand that was widely reported by the press and used in the film's publicity campaign.Template:Sfn Let's Make Love was unsuccessful upon its release in September 1960.Template:Sfnm Crowther described Monroe as appearing "rather untidy" and "lacking ... the old Monroe dynamism",<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and Hedda Hopper called the film "the most vulgar picture she's ever done".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Truman Capote lobbied for Monroe to play Holly Golightly in a film adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's, but the role went to Audrey Hepburn as its producers feared that Monroe would complicate the production.Template:Sfn
The last film Monroe completed was John Huston's The Misfits (1961), which Miller had written to provide her with a dramatic role.Template:Sfn She played Roslyn, who has just received a quickie divorce in Reno, Nevada and befriends three aging cowboys, played by Clark Gable, Eli Wallach and Montgomery Clift. The filming in the Nevada desert between July and November 1960 was difficult.Template:Sfnm Monroe and Miller's marriage was effectively over, and he began a relationship with on-set photographer Inge Morath.Template:Sfn Monroe resented that he had based Roslyn partly on herself and thought the character inferior to the male roles. She also struggled with Miller's habit of rewriting scenes the night before filming.Template:Sfnm Her health was also failing: she was in pain from gallstones, and her drug addiction was so severe that her makeup usually had to be applied while she was still asleep under the influence of barbiturates.Template:Sfnm In August, filming was halted for her to spend a week in a hospital detox.Template:Sfnm Despite her problems, Huston said that when Monroe was acting, she "was not pretending to an emotion. It was the real thing. She would go deep down within herself and find it and bring it up into consciousness."Template:Sfn
Monroe and Miller separated after filming ended, and she obtained a Mexican divorce in January 1961.Template:Sfn The Misfits was released the following month, failing at the box office.Template:Sfnm Its reviews were mixed,Template:Sfnm with Variety complaining of frequently "choppy" character development,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Bosley Crowther calling Monroe "completely blank and unfathomable" and writing that "unfortunately for the film's structure, everything turns upon her".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It has received more favorable reviews in the 21st century. Geoff Andrew of the British Film Institute has called it a classic,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Huston scholar Tony Tracy called Monroe's performance the "most mature interpretation of her career",Template:Sfn and Geoffrey McNab of The Independent praised her "extraordinary" portrayal of the character's "power of empathy".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Monroe was next to star in a television adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's "Rain" for NBC, but the project fell through as the network did not want to hire her choice of director, Lee Strasberg.Template:Sfn She did not film any new projects in 1961 but instead focused on her health. She had surgery for her endometriosis and gall bladder problems, and underwent four weeks of hospital treatment for depression.Template:Sfn She first admitted herself to the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, but was erroneously placed on a ward meant for people with psychosis, where she was locked in a padded cell and not allowed to move to a more suitable ward or leave the hospital.Template:Sfn After three days she was able to move to the more suitable Columbia University Medical Center with the help of her ex-husband Joe DiMaggio, with whom she rekindled a friendship.Template:Sfnm In later 1961, she dated Frank Sinatra for several months, and returned to live in California, where she purchased a house at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, Los Angeles.Template:Sfnm
Monroe returned to the public eye in the spring of 1962. She received a "World Film Favorite" at the 19th Golden Globe Awards and began to shoot a film for Fox, Something's Got to Give, a remake of My Favorite Wife (1940).Template:Sfnm It was to be co-produced by MMP, directed by George Cukor and to co-star Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse.Template:Sfn Days before filming began, Monroe caught sinusitis. Despite medical advice to postpone the production, Fox began it as planned in late April.Template:Sfnm Monroe was too sick to work for most of the next six weeks, but despite confirmations by multiple doctors, the studio pressured her by alleging publicly that she was faking it.Template:Sfnm On May 19, she took a break to sing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" on stage at President John F. Kennedy's early birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden in New York.Template:Sfnm She drew attention with her costume: a beige, skintight dress covered in rhinestones, which made her appear as if she were nude.Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn Monroe's trip to New York caused even more irritation for Fox executives, who had wanted her to cancel it.Template:Sfn
Monroe next filmed a scene for Something's Got to Give in which she swam naked in a swimming pool.Template:Sfn To generate advance publicity, the press was invited to take photographs; these were later published in Life. This was the first time that a major star had posed nude at the height of their career.Template:Sfn When she was again on sick leave for several days, Fox decided that it could not afford to have another film running behind schedule when it was already struggling with the rising costs of Cleopatra (1963).Template:Sfn On June 7, Fox fired Monroe and sued her for $750,000 in damages.Template:Sfn She was replaced by Lee Remick, but after Martin refused to make the film with anyone other than Monroe, Fox sued him as well and shut down the production.Template:Sfn The studio blamed Monroe for the film's demise and began spreading negative publicity about her, even alleging that she was mentally disturbed.Template:Sfn
Fox soon regretted its decision and reopened negotiations with Monroe later in June; a settlement about a new contract, including recommencing Something's Got to Give and a starring role in the black comedy What a Way to Go! (1964), was reached later that summer.Template:Sfnm She was also planning on starring in a biopic of Jean Harlow.Template:Sfnm To repair her public image, Monroe engaged in several publicity ventures, including interviews for Life and Cosmopolitan and her first photo shoot for Vogue.Template:Sfnm For Vogue, she and photographer Bert Stern collaborated for two series of photographs over three days, one a standard fashion editorial and another of her posing nude, which were published posthumously with the title The Last Sitting.Template:Sfn
Death and funeral
[edit]Template:MainTemplate:Multiple image During her final months, Monroe lived at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Her housekeeper Eunice Murray was staying overnight at the home on the evening of August 4, 1962.Template:Sfnm Murray woke at 3:00Template:Nbspa.m. on August 5 and sensed that something was wrong. She saw light from under Monroe's bedroom door but was unable to get a response and found the door locked. Murray then called Monroe's psychiatrist Ralph Greenson, who arrived at the house shortly after and broke into the bedroom through a window. He found a nude Monroe dead in her bed, covered by a sheet, with her hand clamped around a telephone receiver.Template:Sfnm Monroe's physician, Hyman Engelberg, arrived at around 3:50Template:Nbspa.m.Template:Sfnm and pronounced her dead. At 4:25Template:Nbspa.m., the Los Angeles Police Department was notified.Template:Sfnm
Monroe died between 8:30 p.m. and 10:30Template:Nbspp.m. on August 4;Template:Sfn the toxicology report showed that the cause of death was acute barbiturate poisoning. She had 8 mg% (milligrams per 100 milliliters of solution) chloral hydrate and 4.5 mg% of pentobarbital (Nembutal) in her blood, and 13 mg% of pentobarbital in her liver.Template:Sfnm Empty medicine bottles were found next to her bed.Template:Sfnm The possibility that Monroe had accidentally overdosed was ruled out because the dosages found in her body were several times the lethal limit.<ref name=tribunecoroner>Template:Cite web</ref>
The Los Angeles County Coroners Office was assisted in their investigation by the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Team, who had expert knowledge on suicide.Template:Sfnm Monroe's doctors stated that she had been "prone to severe fears and frequent depressions" with "abrupt and unpredictable mood changes", and had overdosed several times in the past, possibly intentionally.<ref name=tribunecoroner />Template:Sfn From these facts and the lack of any indication of foul play, deputy coroner Thomas Noguchi classified her death as a probable suicide.Template:Sfnm
Monroe's sudden death was front-page news in the United States and Europe.Template:Sfn According to historian Lois Banner, "it's said that the suicide rate in Los Angeles doubled the month after she died; the circulation rate of most newspapers expanded that month",Template:Sfn and the Chicago Tribune reported that they had received hundreds of phone calls from members of the public requesting information about her death.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> French artist Jean Cocteau commented that her death "should serve as a terrible lesson to all those whose chief occupation consists of spying on and tormenting film stars", her former co-star Laurence Olivier deemed her "the complete victim of ballyhoo and sensation", and Bus Stop director Joshua Logan said that she was "one of the most unappreciated people in the world".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Monroe's funeral, held at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery on August 8, was private and attended by only her closest associates.Template:Sfnm The service was arranged by DiMaggio, Miracle, and Monroe's business manager Inez Melson.Template:Sfnm DiMaggio was the only one of her ex-husbands to attend.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> He barred most of Hollywood from attending and believed that they held a responsibility for her death.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Hundreds of spectators crowded the streets around the cemetery.Template:Sfnm Monroe was later entombed at the Corridor of Memories.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
In the following decades, several conspiracy theories, including murder and accidental overdose, have been introduced to contradict suicide as the cause of Monroe's death.Template:Sfn The speculation that Monroe had been murdered first gained mainstream attention with the publication of Norman Mailer's Marilyn: A Biography in 1973, and in the following years became widespread enough for the Los Angeles County District Attorney John Van de Kamp to conduct a "threshold investigation" in 1982 to see whether a criminal investigation should be opened.Template:Sfnm No evidence of foul play was found.Template:Sfn
Screen persona and reception
[edit]The 1940s had been the heyday for actresses who were perceived as tough and smart—such as Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck—who had appealed to women-dominated audiences during the war years. 20th Century-Fox wanted Monroe to be a star of the new decade who would draw men to movie theaters, and saw her as a replacement for the aging Betty Grable, their most popular "blonde bombshell" of the 1940s.Template:Sfn According to film scholar Richard Dyer, Monroe's star image was crafted mostly for the male gaze.Template:Sfn
From the beginning, Monroe played a significant part in the creation of her public image, and towards the end of her career exerted almost full control over it.Template:Sfnm<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She devised many of her publicity strategies, cultivated friendships with gossip columnists such as Sidney Skolsky and Louella Parsons, and controlled the use of her images.Template:Sfnm In addition to Grable, she was often compared to another well-known blonde, 1930s film star Jean Harlow.Template:Sfn The comparison was prompted partly by Monroe, who named Harlow as her childhood idol, wanted to play her in a biopic, and even employed Harlow's hair stylist to color her hair.Template:Sfn
Monroe's screen persona focused on her blonde hair and the stereotypes that were associated with it, especially dumbness, naïveté, sexual availability and artificiality.Template:Sfn She often used a breathy, childish voice in her films, and in interviews gave the impression that everything she said was "utterly innocent and uncalculated", parodying herself with double entendres that came to be known as "Monroeisms".Template:Sfnm For example, when she was asked what she had on in the 1949 nude photo shoot, she replied, "I had the radio on".Template:Sfn
In her films, Monroe usually played "the girl", who is defined solely by her gender.Template:Sfn Her roles were almost always chorus girls, secretaries, or models: occupations where "the woman is on show, there for the pleasure of men."Template:Sfn Monroe began her career as a pin-up model, and was noted for her hourglass figure.Template:Sfn She was often positioned in film scenes so that her curvy silhouette was on display, and frequently posed like a pin-up in publicity photos.Template:Sfn Her distinctive, hip-swinging walk also drew attention to her body and earned her the nickname "the girl with the horizontal walk".Template:Sfn
Monroe often wore white to emphasize her blondness and drew attention by wearing revealing outfits that showed off her figure.Template:Sfnm Her publicity stunts often revolved around her clothing either being shockingly revealing or even malfunctioning,Template:Sfnm such as when a shoulder strap of her dress snapped during a press conference.Template:Sfnm In press stories, Monroe was portrayed as the embodiment of the American Dream, a girl who had risen from a miserable childhood to Hollywood stardom.Template:Sfnm Stories of her time spent in foster families and an orphanage were exaggerated and even partly fabricated.Template:Sfn Film scholar Thomas Harris wrote that her working-class roots and lack of family made her appear more sexually available, "the ideal playmate", in contrast to her contemporary, Grace Kelly, who was also marketed as an attractive blonde, but due to her upper-class background was seen as a sophisticated actress, unattainable for the majority of male viewers.Template:Sfn
Although Monroe's screen persona as a dim-witted but sexually attractive blonde was a carefully crafted act, audiences and film critics believed it to be her real personality. This became a hindrance when she wanted to pursue other kinds of roles, or to be respected as a businesswoman.Template:Sfn The academic Sarah Churchwell studied narratives about Monroe and wrote:Template:Blockquote Biographer Lois Banner writes that Monroe often subtly parodied her sex symbol status in her films and public appearances,Template:Sfn and that "the 'Marilyn Monroe' character she created was a brilliant archetype, who stands between Mae West and Madonna in the tradition of twentieth-century gender tricksters."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Monroe herself stated that she was influenced by West, learning "a few tricks from her—that impression of laughing at, or mocking, her own sexuality".Template:Sfnm She studied comedy in classes by mime and dancer Lotte Goslar, famous for her comic stage performances, and Goslar also instructed her on film sets.Template:Sfn In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, one of the films in which she played an archetypal dumb blonde, Monroe had the sentence "I can be smart when it's important, but most men don't like it" added to her character's lines.Template:Sfn
According to Dyer, Monroe became "virtually a household name for sex" in the 1950s and "her image has to be situated in the flux of ideas about morality and sexuality that characterised the Fifties in America", such as Freudian ideas about sex, the Kinsey report (1953), and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963).Template:Sfnm By appearing vulnerable and unaware of her sex appeal, Monroe was the first sex symbol to present sex as natural and without danger, in contrast to the 1940s femmes fatales.Template:Sfn Spoto likewise describes her as the embodiment of "the postwar ideal of the American girl, soft, transparently needy, worshipful of men, naïve, offering sex without demands", which is echoed in Molly Haskell's statement that "she was the Fifties fiction, the lie that a woman had no sexual needs, that she is there to cater to, or enhance, a man's needs."Template:Sfnm Monroe's contemporary Norman Mailer wrote that "Marilyn suggested sex might be difficult and dangerous with others, but ice cream with her", while Groucho Marx characterized her as "Mae West, Theda Bara, and Bo Peep all rolled into one".Template:Sfnm According to Haskell, due to her sex symbol status, Monroe was less popular with women than with men, as they "couldn't identify with her and didn't support her", although this would change after her death.Template:Sfn
Dyer has also argued that Monroe's blonde hair became her defining feature because it made her "racially unambiguous" and exclusively white just as the civil rights movement was beginning, and that she should be seen as emblematic of racism in twentieth-century popular culture.Template:Sfn Banner agreed that it may not be a coincidence that Monroe launched a trend of platinum blonde actresses during the civil rights movement, but has also criticized Dyer, pointing out that in her highly publicized private life, Monroe associated with people who were seen as "white ethnics", such as Joe DiMaggio (Italian-American) and Arthur Miller (Jewish).Template:Sfn According to Banner, she sometimes challenged prevailing racial norms in her publicity photographs; for example, in an image featured in Look in 1951, she was shown in revealing clothes while practicing with African-American singing coach Phil Moore.Template:Sfn
Monroe was perceived as a specifically American star, "a national institution as well known as hot dogs, apple pie, or baseball" according to Photoplay.Template:Sfn Banner calls her the symbol of populuxe, a star whose joyful and glamorous public image "helped the nation cope with its paranoia in the 1950s about the Cold War, the atom bomb, and the totalitarian communist Soviet Union".Template:Sfn Historian Fiona Handyside writes that the French female audiences associated whiteness/blondness with American modernity and cleanliness, and so Monroe came to symbolize a modern, "liberated" woman whose life takes place in the public sphere.Template:Sfn Film historian Laura Mulvey has written of her as an endorsement for American consumer culture:Template:Blockquote
Twentieth Century-Fox further profited from Monroe's popularity by cultivating several lookalike actresses, such as Jayne Mansfield and Sheree North.Template:Sfnm Other studios also attempted to create their own Monroes: Universal Pictures with Mamie Van Doren,Template:Sfn Columbia Pictures with Kim Novak,Template:Sfn and The Rank Organisation with Diana Dors.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In a profile, Truman Capote quoted Monroe's acting teacher, Constance Collier:
She is a beautiful child. I don't mean that in the obvious way—the perhaps too obvious way. I don't think she's an actress at all, not in any traditional sense. What she has—this presence, this luminosity, this flickering intelligence—could never surface on the stage. It's so fragile and subtle, it can only be caught by the camera. It's like a hummingbird in flight: only a camera can freeze the poetry of it.Template:Sfn
Filmography
[edit]Template:Main Template:Div col
- Dangerous Years (1947)
- Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948)
- Ladies of the Chorus (1948)
- Love Happy (1949)
- A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950)
- The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
- All About Eve (1950)
- The Fireball (1950)
- Right Cross (1951)
- Home Town Story (1951)
- As Young as You Feel (1951)
- Love Nest (1951)
- Let's Make It Legal (1951)
- Clash by Night (1952)
- We're Not Married! (1952)
- Don't Bother to Knock (1952)
- Monkey Business (1952)
- O. Henry's Full House (1952)
- Niagara (1953)
- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
- How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
- River of No Return (1954)
- There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
- The Seven Year Itch (1955)
- Bus Stop (1956)
- The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)
- Some Like It Hot (1959)
- Let's Make Love (1960)
- The Misfits (1961)
- Something's Got to Give (1962–unfinished)
Legacy
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According to The Guide to United States Popular Culture, "as an icon of American popular culture, Monroe's few rivals in popularity include Elvis Presley and Mickey Mouse... no other star has ever inspired such a wide range of emotions—from lust to pity, from envy to remorse."Template:Sfn Art historian Gail Levin stated that Monroe may have been "the most photographed person of the 20th century",<ref name=levin>Template:Cite web</ref> and The American Film Institute has named her the sixth greatest female screen legend in American film history. The Smithsonian Institution has included her on their list of "100 Most Significant Americans of All Time",<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and both Variety and VH1 have placed her in the top ten in their rankings of the greatest popular culture icons of the twentieth century.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite press release</ref>
Hundreds of books have been written about Monroe. She has been the subject of numerous films, plays, operas, and songs, and has influenced artists and entertainers such as Andy Warhol and Madonna.Template:Sfnm<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She also remains a valuable brand:<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> her image and name have been licensed for hundreds of products, and she has been featured in advertising for brands such as Max Factor, Chanel, Mercedes-Benz, and Absolut Vodka.Template:Sfn<ref name="www.theguardian.com max-factor-cant-claim-marilyn-monroe2">Template:Cite news</ref>
Monroe's enduring popularity is tied to her conflicted public image.Template:Sfnm On the one hand, she remains a sex symbol, beauty icon and one of the most famous stars of classical Hollywood cinema.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> On the other, she is also remembered for her troubled private life, unstable childhood, struggle for professional respect, as well as her death and the conspiracy theories that surrounded it.Template:Sfnm She has been written about by scholars and journalists who are interested in gender and feminism;<ref name="Guardianfem">Template:Cite web</ref> these writers include Gloria Steinem, Jacqueline Rose,Template:Sfn Molly Haskell,Template:Sfn Sarah Churchwell,<ref name="www.theguardian.com max-factor-cant-claim-marilyn-monroe2"/> and Lois Banner.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Some, such as Steinem, have viewed her as a victim of the studio system.<ref name="Guardianfem" />Template:Sfnm Others, such as Haskell,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Rose,Template:Sfn and Churchwell,<ref name="www.theguardian.com max-factor-cant-claim-marilyn-monroe2"/> have instead stressed Monroe's proactive role in her career and in the creation of her public persona.
Owing to the contrast between her stardom and troubled private life, Monroe is closely linked to broader discussions about modern phenomena such as mass media, fame, and consumer culture.Template:Sfn According to academic Susanne Hamscha, Monroe has continued relevance to ongoing discussions about modern society, and she is "never completely situated in one time or place" but has become "a surface on which narratives of American culture can be (re)constructed".Template:Sfn Similarly, Banner has called Monroe the "eternal shapeshifter" who is re-created by "each generation, even each individual... to their own specifications".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Monroe remains a cultural icon, but critics are divided on her legacy as an actress. David Thomson called her body of work "insubstantial"<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> and Pauline Kael wrote that she "used her lack of an actress's skills to amuse the public. She had the wit or crassness or desperation to turn cheesecake into acting—and vice versa; she did what others had the 'good taste' not to do".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In contrast, Peter Bradshaw wrote that Monroe was a talented comedian who "understood how comedy achieved its effects",<ref name="bradshaw">Template:Cite news</ref> and Roger Ebert wrote that "Monroe's eccentricities and neuroses on sets became notorious, but studios put up with her long after any other actress would have been blackballed because what they got back on the screen was magical".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Jonathan Rosenbaum stated that "she subtly subverted the sexist content of her material" and that "the difficulty some people have discerning Monroe's intelligence as an actress seems rooted in the ideology of a repressive era, when super feminine women weren't supposed to be smart".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2024, the Los Angeles City Council approved Monroe's house being designated as a Historic Cultural Monument.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Notes
[edit]References
[edit]Sources
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External links
[edit]- Marilyn Monroe collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History
- Template:AFI person
- Template:IMDb name
- Template:Tcmdb name
- Template:Discogs artist
- Monroe's file at the Federal Bureau of Investigation website
- "Marilyn Monroe: Still Life" A website containing clips and essays related to PBS's American Masters documentary on Monroe
Template:Marilyn Monroe Template:Golden Globe Award Best Actress Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Template:Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century Template:Arthur Miller
- Pages with broken file links
- Marilyn Monroe
- 1926 births
- 1962 suicides
- 1962 deaths
- 20th-century American actresses
- 20th-century American people
- 20th-century American women singers
- 20th-century converts to Judaism
- 20th Century Studios contract players
- Actors Studio alumni
- Actresses from Los Angeles
- American atheists
- American film actresses
- American glamour models
- Analysands of Ralph Greenson
- Authentic Brands Group
- Barbiturates-related deaths
- Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
- Burials at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
- California Democrats
- Converts to Reform Judaism
- Drug-related deaths in California
- Jewish American actresses
- Jewish American atheists
- Jewish female models
- Jewish American singers
- Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute alumni
- Method actors
- Female models from Los Angeles
- Muses (persons)
- 1950s Playboy Playmates
- People with mood disorders
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- University High School (Los Angeles) alumni
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- Articles containing video clips