Marilyn Monroe (1926 - 1962) was an American actress, model, and producer who became one of the most recognisable figures in twentieth-century popular culture. [1] A leading box-office draw during the 1950s, she was known for comic performances in films including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, and Some Like It Hot, the last of which won her a Golden Globe Award. [2] She died at her home in Los Angeles in August 1962 at the age of thirty-six. [1]
Early life
Norma Jeane Mortenson was born on 1 June 1926 in Los Angeles. Her mother, a film-laboratory worker, was hospitalised with mental illness during her childhood, and she spent much of her youth in foster homes and for a period in an orphanage. She married at sixteen, and the marriage ended a few years later. [1]
While working in a factory during the Second World War she was photographed for a feature on women in war production, which led to modelling work. She dyed her hair blonde, adopted the name Marilyn Monroe, and signed her first short-lived studio contracts in the late 1940s. [2]
Rise to stardom
Small parts in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve in 1950 brought her attention, and Twentieth Century-Fox built a campaign around her. By 1953 she was a major star, appearing in Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and How to Marry a Millionaire within a single year. The Seven Year Itch followed in 1955, and the scene of her white dress lifted by air from a subway grating became one of the most reproduced images in film history. [2]
Dissatisfied with the studio's terms and with being confined to comic roles, Monroe suspended her contract in 1954 and founded her own company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, an unusual step for an actress at the time. She studied at the Actors Studio in New York under Lee Strasberg and returned to Fox on improved terms, with approval over her directors. [1]
Later films
The later work includes Bus Stop (1956), The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), made with and directed by Laurence Olivier, and Some Like It Hot (1959), for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy. Her final completed film was The Misfits (1961), written by her third husband, the playwright Arthur Miller. [2]
She married the baseball player Joe DiMaggio in 1954 and Miller in 1956; both marriages ended in divorce. Her health, chronic insomnia, and reliance on prescribed medication affected her work during these years, and she was dismissed from the unfinished production Something's Got to Give in 1962. [1]
Death and legacy
Monroe was found dead at her home in the Brentwood district of Los Angeles on 4 August 1962. The death was recorded as a probable suicide from an overdose of barbiturates, a conclusion that has been the subject of persistent speculation without documented support. [1]
Her films continue to be revived, and her likeness remains among the most widely reproduced of any performer, appearing in works by Andy Warhol and countless subsequent artists and advertisers. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and later critical writing has reassessed her comic timing and screen presence as substantial achievements distinct from the publicity apparatus that surrounded her. [3] Biographies and archival collections, including auctions of her personal papers, have continued to appear in the decades since her death. [4]
