Marilyn Monroe

Tragedy behind the scenes

Table of contents
1. Foreword
2. CHAPTER 1 – The beginning of a legend
3. CHAPTER 2 – Why is she famous ?
4. CHAPTER 3 – Leaving a mark
5. Conclusion
6. Bibliography
Foreword

Marilyn Monroe is seen by many people as a famous, beautiful blonde woman, that left a huge
impact ever since she became someone known. Her presence was giving nothing but good energy
and everyone loved her for that.
The reason I chose Marilyn Monroe was because she has been and still is, an inspiration for me. I
remember vividly the first time I saw Marilyn Monroe. I remember being with my mom getting
Coca Cola and I saw her face on the refrigerator. Her appearance really made me fascinated and I
wanted to know more about her and my mom would tell me how good she was at acting and how
beautiful she was. I wasn’t able to watch any movies or do research about her as a child because
we couldn’t buy any CDs or books. But now I’ve been able to find out so much about her it’s
honestly incredible. I’ve been able to see her act out in movies such as “How to marry a
millionaire”, ”Some like it hot”, “Gentlemen prefer blondes”, modeling career and singing. No
wonder she was loved by everyone. She was like any other human being but there was something
unique about her. You can’t really pinpoint it; it’s something that can’t be described. But from
that uniqueness you could see Marilyn’s innocent yet sensual appearance that really made her
stand out from others.
The way she put herself out by being in movies, singing and modeling with such determination
and passion is something that not everyone can achieve and I really admire people that are able to
do that. I also love her for being a great human being even after the struggles that she had to face
her whole life those being her not feeling love from her mother or father, being in foster care,
being under pressure and unhappy for most of her life and possibly many more that are unknown
by the public today. The only way she could cope with all of this was by involving herself in
various affairs in search for happiness or using drugs. It’s hard to imagine that behind her bubbly
and cheerful personality was hiding a terrible past with terrible coping mechanisms. Still, she was
human after all. She was still a fearful little girl that never felt love from anyone and was still
being hurt like anyone else. I think all of us are like Marilyn in one way or another. We are
putting a successful act in front of everyone while struggling behind the scenes. Showing
struggles in front of people shouldn’t be something seen as weak; and I think that Marilyn’s story
should be seen as a lesson for everyone.

I have structured my paper in three chapters. In the first chapter I’ll write about Marilyn
Monroe’s biography, early life, childhood and relationships. In the second chapter I’ll write about
the many reasons she became an icon in everyone’s eyes, what roles she played in movies and her
modeling career. In the last chapter I’ll write about her death, the many conspiracies that surround
her death and the marks that she left in the present even after all these years.
CHAPTER 1 – The beginning of a legend

Marilyn Monroe was born in June 1st 1926 in Los Angeles, California. Her name assigned at
birth was Norma Jeane Morteson, which was later changed to Norma Jeane Baker and then
finally to Marilyn Monroe. She was an American model, singer and actress famous for playing
stereotypical blonde characters and she represented one of the most famous sex symbols of the
1950s and early 1960s. Marilyn was a top-billed actress for a whole decade and her films made
200$ million by the time she died in 1962 due to a drug overdose.
She spent most of her childhood in foster homes due to her mother’s mental illness and her dad
being absent. Her mother, Gladys, has been in many relationships, confusing her child about who
was her real father. Of course, Marilyn had a difficult childhood and struggled with emotional
problems throughout her life because of that. Monroe’s mother bought a small house in the
summer of 1933 in Hollywood and both her and her daughter lived there, They shared the house
with George and Maude Atkinson and their daughter Nellie. It is believed that she may have been
sexually abused by the Atkinsons, developing a stutter and became withdrawn. In January 1934,
Gladys had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia resulting to
Monroe to be in her mother’s friend care, Grace Goddard who later became her legal guardian in
1936. It lasted only a few months because Grace’s husband, Doc molested her. Things started to
be more stable when she began living with Ana Lower, Grace’s aunt. She went to Emerson Junior
High School and went weekly to Christian Science services with Lower. She was a average
student, but she was brilliant at writing and helped with the school’s newspaper. Due to Lower’s
health problems, Marilyn had to return to the Goddards. Monroe’s childhood experiences gave
her the determination 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.” For Marilyn, this could have been a way for her to cope with the harsh reality. When she was
just 16, Monroe married James Dougherty, who lived next door to a friend of Monroe’s mother,
in June 1942 in order for her to not return to the orphanage. He was older, something that was
common to her husbands. The marriage, according to the reports, wasn’t really unhappy but it
was doomed to failure. And it was. Marilyn wanted to become more than Doughtery’s wife. In
1944, while she was working at a factory during World War II, she met a photographer from First
Motion Picture Unit and Marilyn’s face began to appear on many magazine covers. From there
the rest is history. Things fell apart when James joined the Merchant Marines and Monroe started
modeling. In 1946 she got a divorce, a new name, the name that we all recognize and set herself
on a new path, a new career as an actress.
After this marriage, Marilyn had two more husbands in her lifetime: Joe DiMaggio and Arthur
Miller. DiMaggio and Monroe married in 1954 and it lasted for nine months. According to
Monroe, DiMaggio came up with a last-minute marriage that fit both of their schedules. He had
to go to Japan for a baseball business and he used that trip as their honeymoon. Their marriage
was challenged since Monroe was asked to perform for the American troops stationed in Korea.
DiMaggio was left behind in Japan. When they both came back to America, they had the hope of
a normal life, but Marilyn’s career growth and Joe’s jealousy and involvement in her role choices
and contract negotiations began to crumble the relationship down. He wanted Marilyn to become
a housewife and she wanted the opposite. She wanted to expand her cultural horizons and have a
husband interested in her career work. He started to hate his wife’s image, feeling disgusted by
the now-famous and iconic subway grate scene. There were rumors about their remarriage, but
that didn’t stopped their “good friends” status. When Marilyn died, her ex-husband would bring
roses to her grave three times a week for the next 20 years, until his death in 1999. “I’ll go to my
grave regretting and blaming myself for what happened to her,” DiMaggio is quoted as saying
in Dinner With DiMaggio.
The second marriage and the longest was with Arthur Miller. They were complete opposites: an
intellectual, award winning playwright and a movie star sex symbol. Monroe met Miller for the
first time in 1950, when she was still trying to find fame, while he was already put on the spot as
one of “the greatest country leading playwrights”. Miller was instructed by Kazan, Miller’s friend
and director, to bring Monroe to a party and not act on his obvious attraction to her. Marilyn
believed that he showed respect towards her as a person, which was more than enough for him to
stand out from the rest. In 1951 Monroe saw Miller at the airport when he returned to New York.
He would tell her how unhappy he was in his current marriage and Marilyn was expecting him to
return. They didn’t meet in person until 1955 after she would move to New York to study at the
Actors’ Studio. She was still interested in Miller and she’d so anything to be closer to him. Soon
both of them embarked upon an affair, despite that Miller was married to someone else. During
this time Monroe finally became a star, but with that the press was paying more attention to her
and the affair couldn’t remain a secret. Miller had everything that Marilyn was looking for. Love
and a sense of security that she would always lack. Both were in love with each other but Miller
was reluctant to leave his wife, but after some thought he went to Nevada to establish residency
so he could divorce his wife. When Miller was in Nevada, he was accused of having ties to
Communism. Monroe was counseled to distance herself from Miller so her career would still be
intact. She refused to let go of Miller, remaining loyal to him. She was finally happy and truly in
love with someone after so long. Of course that didn’t last long after seeing Miller’s notes about
her. He was disappointed by their marriage and found Monroe embarrassing for most of the time.
She was devastated, seeing him with rose-tinted glasses since the beginning, only to end up in a
betrayal. Her discovery wasn’t enough to end the marriage. They would have happy moments
such as when he collected plays and dedicate them to her. Monroe also tried to embrace a more
peaceful life by cooking and staying home. But these moments of happiness would be destroyed
by other problems. She was struggling with miscarriages and blamed herself for those because of
her drinking and drug abuse.
Slowly but surely Miller and Monroe’s relationship ended up in the same spot as her previous
one. Miller was struggling to find peace and quietness, resulting a poor skill of writing and
Monroe was starting to resent him because he’d ignore his principles and made a whole mess to
the new movie’s script, “Let’s Make Love” that she had to play. The relationship between the two
finally reached it’s limit when they worked together on her final movie “The Misfits”. The script
was supposed to make the audience think that Monroe was a more serious actress. By the time the
movie was shooting, she started to dislike the script saying that Arthur was taking all of the credit
and she doesn’t think that he even wants her in the movie. But if they’d split up now it’d be bad
for the film. Miller’s rewriting, her ongoing substance abuse and stress made it difficult for
Monroe to learn her dialogue and due to these issues she was hospitalized in Los Angeles. She
managed to come back just in time to complete the movie but by then the marriage with Arthur
Miller was over. Monroe has been thinking about their marriage and she concluded that maybe
she was “too demanding” and that “no man could put up with all of her”. However both Arthur
and herself put each other through a lot resulting the breakup.

CHAPTER 2 – Why is she famous ? what roles she played in movies

Monroe’s career started when the photographer David Conover was sent to the factory she was
working at during World War II. He found Marilyn fitting the model’s standards, leading her to
the Blue Book Model Agency, one of the biggest modeling agencies at the time. That was the
moment when she started to develop her iconic blonde hair with curvy locks that we all
recognize. She made her way to Century Fox and met with Ben Lyon that helped her pick out her
final name: Marilyn Monroe. The new actress switched between acting and modeling before
becoming slowly but surely a rising star. Marilyn was truly unique. Her persona was based by her
idols Jean Harlow and Lana Turner that had a few twists here and there that would turn her into
something that would stand out more than the rest. During her modeling and film roles she was
able to mask many insecurities of her. People always wonder “how can a beauty like her have
insecurities ?”. No matter how beautiful we are to people around us we can still feel insecure. She
had a lot of attention on her body, on her face and she knew every camera angle, she was aware
of everything that was focusing on her. At first, Marilyn’s acting career started with small roles
since she wasn’t considered to be “star acting material”. Her beauty, her voice, her figure,
however helped her to skyrocket into one of the most famous actresses of Hollywood and proved
her skill by winning many people’s hearts and awards.
Marilyn’s modeling career has shaped almost every part of her into what we know today. She
ended on numerous magazines, ads and covers. Monroe was made for modeling. “When she saw
a camera, any camera, she lit up and was totally different. The moment the shot was over, she fell
back into her not very interesting position. I don’t know how to explain that, but that’s what
makes a good model.” -Laszlo Willinger. Despite being a great model by nature already, Monroe
had to take modeling classes and learn how to pose and handle her body. Her determination was a
great factor for her. She started less than any girl, working the hardest out of all of them. Still that
wasn’t enough for the agencies and she had to go through plastic surgery to fix other flaws such
as her chin and nose. Her modeling career kept growing and growing, reaching the eyes of the
casting director in 1946, opening her final and most successful career as a film actress. This was a
significant time for Marilyn: she divorced Mr. Doughtery, had a contract with a studio and under
contact with 20th Century Fox she attended acting, dancing and singing and appeared in movies
as a background character and had one line in the movie “Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!”.
Marilyn appeared in 30 movies, her final film being left unfinished. In 1947 her debut came in the
movie “Dangerous Years” where she played as a waitress named Evie. Her second role was in
“Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!” which was released in 1948 and she acted together with Natalie
Wood. In the same year she would get her first main role in the movie “Ladies of the Chorus”. It
took many years for Marilyn to get more known by the public; playing in “All about Eve”, have
smaller roles in other movies or her name or face would appear in posters. In 1952 Monroe
started to appear in bigger films with bigger roles such as “Don’t bother to Knock”. Her top
billing was received in 1953 in the movie “Niagara” which finally gave her the popularity she
deserved and she started performing in the most known movies known till this day like
“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, “How to Marry a Millionaire”, “Some Like It Hot”, “The Seven
Year Itch” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business”. Marilyn’s acting persona was a
“dumb blonde” that had a sex appeal, which was used for comedic effect and it helped her land
roles in many movies. In the movie “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” Marilyn was paired with Jane
Russell, who was another bombshell. In the film both girls travel to Paris and are dealing with a
private detective hired by Monroe’s fiancé’s father and other admirers. Monroe’s performance of
the song “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” and her pink dress were considered iconic and the
performance gave Marilyn a lot of respect by other celebrities such as Madonna, Ariana Grande,
Beyoncé and many more. One thing that I really love about this movie is the contrast between the
two friends and how well their relationship works. Russell playing Dorothy Shaw, a down-to-
earth character, while Monroe was playing Lorelei Lee, which was her dumb-blonde persona that
was over heels for diamonds, gold and other valuable things. I also love the fact that Both
Marilyn and Russell were really good friends outside acting too. In another popular movie “Some
Like It Hot”, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play as two singers that witness a mob hit and they
try to run away by attending another concert in another state that is led by an all-female band.
They end up dressing as women and meet Marilyn who plays as Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, a singer
who loves to drink and hopes to marry a millionaire. This was my first movie that I’ve ever seen
with Marilyn in it. More text about movies and the main plot + personal opinions Her character
was able to make and begin a shift into Hollywood’s culture.
Her final film was “The Misfits” which was made in 1961, written by Arthur Miller, her then-
husband.

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movies-Marilyn-Monroe-make-gentlemen-prefer-blondes-evg - used

deleting later -
EARLY LIFE//FOREWORD//chapter 1 – DONE (3 PAGES)
CAREER AND GROWTH // chapter 2 – HALF-DONE (1.5 PAGES CURRENTLY)
STRUGGLES, DEATH AND THEORIES // chapter 3 – NOT STARTED (2 PAGES ??)
CONCLUSION- NOT STARTED (1 PAGE)
BIBLIOGRAPHY // last page – DONE (1 PAGE)
10 pages in total – 3 occupied by: foreword, conclusion and bibliography, 7 pages left
Early life has 2 pages, 5 pages left
Modeling, Movie career and movies (2.5 pages ?) 3.5 pages left
3.5 pages left for death, conspiracy theories and present impact