Marilyn Monroe Essay, Research Paper

When someone mentions Marilyn Monroe, one usually thinks off the seductive

all-American sex goddess who captured the world with her woman-childlike charm.

Yet not many know her as the illegitimate child who endured a childhood of

poverty and misery, sexual abuse, and years in foster home and orphanages. Most

people don?t realize that her disrupted loveless childhood may been the main

reason to her early death. Norma Jeane Baker?s father, Edward Mortenson, had

deserted her mother, Gladys Baker ne? Monroe, before she was born on June, 1

1926, in the charity ward of Los Angeles General Hospital. Due to Gladys?

instability and the fact that she was unmarried at the time, Norma Jeane was

placed in a foster home. At the age of 7, Norma Jeane lived briefly with her

mother. Gladys began to show signs of mental depression, and a year later she

was admitted to a rest home. Norma Jeane was then placed with a family friend

for a year until being placed in another orphanage for another two years. Norma

Jeane was once heard to reflect on this time and say: ?The world around me

then was kind of grim…I had to learn to pretend in order to…I don?t know..

block the grimness. The whole world seen sort of closed to me..(I felt) on the

outside of everything, and all I could do was to dream up any kind of pretend

game.? (MarilynMonroe,http://www.ionet.net/~jellenc/mmbio3.html) In 1941,

Norma Jeane again lived with a family friend when she met Jim Dougherty, who was

5 years older than her. They then married on June 19, 1942. ?Grace Mckee

(family friend she was living with) arranged the marriage for me, I never had

much of a choice. There?s not much to say about it. They couldn?t support

me, and they had to work out something. And so I got married.? (Marilyn

Monroe) Jim joined the Marines in 1943 and was send overseas. Norma Jeane, while

working in a factory inspecting parachutes in 1944, was photographed by the army

as a promotion to show women on the assembly line contributing to the war

effort. One of the photographers asked to take further pictures of her. She

began modeling bathing suites and, after bleaching her hair blonde, began posing

for pinups and glamour photos. By spring of 1945, she was quickly known as a

?photographers dream? and had appeared on 33 covers of national magazines.

She then enrolled in a 3 month modeling course, and in 1946, aware of her

considerable charm and the potential it had for a career in films, Norma

obtained a divorce. ?Howard Hughes saw some of her photographs and expressed

an interest in giving her a screen test for RKO, but Ben Lyon of 20th

Century-Fox beat Hughes to the punch.? (MarilynMonroeBiography,wysiwg://main.13/http:www.geocities.com/hollywood/bungalow/9690.bio.html)

Ben Lyon arranged a screen test and on August 26, 1946, Norma Jeane signed a

$125 a week, one year contract with the studio. Ben Lyon was the one who

suggested the new name for the fledging actress, Marilyn Monroe. Along with this

name change came a personality change. Her voice was lightened to speak in a

whispery tone, and her nose was stretched to get rid of the pudgy look. She was

no longer Norma Jeane the troubled orphan, she was now Marilyn Monroe the

superstar. Marilyn met Joe Dimaggio in early 1952, she was 25 and he was 37. By

February the romance was in full bloom. After appearing in small parts of films

including Happy Love, and All About Eve, Monroe achieved celebrity with starring

roles in three 1953 features, Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and How to

Marry a Millionaire. In 1948 she began to make a series of nude calendar photos,

which appeared in the December 1953 debut issue of Playboy magazine. By the end

of the year, Monroe had been voted the top star of 1953 by American Film

Distributors. On January 14, Joe and Marilyn were married. The wedding captured

the headlines worldwide. Joe was extremely jealous type of a guy and resented

her popularity among other men. ?He desired a housewife, not a star if such

magnitude…. the marriage was doomed from the beginning.? (MarilynMonroe,http://www.ionet.net/~jellenc/mmbio3.html)

Marilyn was asked to go on a USO tour of Korea in February to entertain the

troops, beginning on the 16th for four days. She entertained over 60,000

soldiers, many of who had never seen a Monroe film…having been in the service

during her rise to stardom. Through the summer of 1954, Marilyn was ?ill with

bronchitis and anemia.? (MarilynMonroe) For the time, she began showing

serious side effects of the many sleeping pills she had been taking for the past

few years; often groggy, lethargic, and crying on the set. The famous skirt

blowing scene from the ?Seven Year Itch?, filmed in 1954 was to be a hit

with both amateur and professional photographers. Several hundred, along with

2000 spectators gathered around the Trans-Lux Theater in New York City in the

early morning hours of September 15th to see and record her as she posed for

over two hours for her adoring fans. In the fall of 1954 Marilyn and Joe

separated… later to divorce. Two years later she married again to a newly

divorced Arthur Miller. Soon after her marriage they departed for London so

Marilyn could start production on ?The Prince and the Showgirl.? She did not

return to Hollywood until 1958 to make ?Some Like it Hot?. Her heath began

to deteriorate due to increased dependency on drugs and involvement in an

unhappy marriage. She often came late and was unable to remember her lines.

Early in 1960, Marilyn began consulting a prominent psychoanalyst to Hollywood

stars. He relied heavily on drug therapy, routinely prescribing barbiturates and

tranquilizers in addition to his psychotherapy. Pills for Marilyn began to be

regularly flown in from her Los Angeles doctors. In January of 1961, Marilyn

divorced Arthur Miller. Later in the same year she was reported to be having an

affair with John F. Kennedy. She was also reported to have an affair with Bobby

Kennedy, the Attorney General. Soon after in 1962, Marilyn began seeing Joe

DiMaggio frequently during this time and had finally agreed to remarry him. The

wedding date was set for August 8, 1962. Fox rehired her on August 1 to complete

?Somethings Got to Give? with a salary of $250,000, which was two and a half

times the original amount. On August 5, 1962, she was found dead of an overdose

of sleeping pills at the early age of 36. There has been much speculation about

the events surrounding Marilyn?s death. ?The drug overdose was probably

accidental and possibly administered by someone other than

Marilyn.?(MarilynMonroeBiography,-http://tombtown.com/bios/marilyn.htm.) In

conclusion, Monroe?s was a tragedy in which her public, the media, and the

Hollywood power brokers all share blame.