Born Norma Jean Mortenson on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles General Hospital, she never knew the true identity of her father. Her unmarried mother, Gladys, who was a film cutter at RKO, was mentally unstable. Due to this, Norma Jean was placed in a foster home where she would remain for the first seven years of her life. In 1933 she lived briefly with her mother but in 1934, after showing signs of severe depression, Gladys was admitted to a rest home in Santa Monica. A friend of her mother’s, Grace McKee, took over her care. She kept her as long as she could and was extremely fond of her, but she married in 1935 and, due to financial difficulties, had to relinquish care of Norma Jean who was then placed in an orphanage.
She met her first husband, Joe Dougherty, in September of 1941. While he was overseas, Norma Jean got a job in a factory inspecting parachutes where she was photographed as part of an Army promotion of women contributing to the war effort. David Conover, one of the photographers, asked to take further pictures of her, and by the spring of 1945 she had already appeared on the covers of 33 national magazines. In the fall of 1946 she divorced Joe Dougherty.
That same year she signed a contract with Twentieth Century Fox, selecting as her stage name her mother’s maiden name of Monroe. Her first serious acting job came in 1950 where she landed a small but crucial role in “The Asphalt Jungle.” The year 1952 was an important one for Marilyn. It marked two more memorable performances, one in “Clash By Night” and the other in “Don’t Bother To Knock.” It was also during the span of this when she met Joe DiMaggio and began filming on “Niagara” with Joseph Cotton, the film that would make her a star.
She married DiMaggio in January of 1954, but their union lasted barely a year. She later married and divorced playwright Arthur Miller. Her career as an actress spanned sixteen years and twenty-nine films, twenty-four in the first eight years of her career. Her last years were unhappy, with dependency on alcohol and barbituates. Her accidental death at the age of 36 due to an overdose is still in dispute and remains one of the unsolved Hollywood mysteries of the 20th century. Still as Elton John so eloquently put it, she is and always will be “a candle in the wind” and a star worthy of tribute and memory.
What are some of YOUR favorite Marilyn Monroe performances?