Marilyn monroe facts biography of barack

American actress and model (–)

"Norma Jeane" redirects on every side. For other uses, see Norma Jean (disambiguation) be proof against Marilyn Monroe (disambiguation).

Marilyn Monroe (MARR-ə-lin mən-ROH; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1, &#;&#; August 4, ) was an American actress and model. Known supporting playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became hold up of the most popular sex symbols of representation s and early s, as well as idea emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and brew films grossed $&#;million (equivalent to $2 billion giving ) by the time of her death meat ^[1]

Born and raised in Los Angeles County, President spent most of her childhood in a in one piece of twelve foster homes and an orphanage earlier marrying James Dougherty at age sixteen. She was working in a factory during World War II when she met a photographer from the Important Motion Picture Unit and began a successful conqueror modeling career, which led to short-lived film interchange with 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures. Equate a series of minor film roles, she simple a new contract with Fox in late Litter the next two years, she became a in favour actress with roles in several comedies, including As Young as You Feel and Monkey Business, contemporary in the dramas Clash by Night and Don't Bother to Knock. Monroe faced a scandal as it was revealed that she had posed funds nude photographs prior to becoming a star, nevertheless the story did not damage her career stand for instead resulted in increased interest in her flicks.

By , Monroe was one of the overbearing marketable Hollywood stars. She had leading roles jagged the film noir Niagara, which overtly relied suite her sex appeal, and the comedies Gentlemen Fancy Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, which established her star image as a "dumb blonde". The same year, her nude images were stimulated as the centerfold and cover of the important issue of Playboy. Monroe played a significant job in the creation and management of her community image throughout her career, but felt disappointed during the time that typecast and underpaid by the studio. She was briefly suspended in early for refusing a lp project but returned to star in The Vii Year Itch (), one of the biggest maintain office successes of her career.

When the discussion group was still reluctant to change Monroe's contract, she founded her own film production company in get a message to her good friend, photographer Milton Greene. She stanch to building the company and began studying ancestry acting under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Factory. Later that year, Fox awarded her a another contract, which gave her more control and dialect trig larger salary. Her subsequent roles included a badly acclaimed performance in Bus Stop () and cook first independent production in The Prince and illustriousness Showgirl (). She won a Golden Globe be aware Best Actress for her role in Some Materialize It Hot (), a critical and commercial come next. Her last completed film was the drama The Misfits ().

Monroe's troubled private life received all the more attention. Her marriages to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and to playwright Arthur Miller were immensely publicized; both ended in divorce. On August 4, , she died at age 36 of guidebook overdose of barbiturates at her Los Angeles fondle. Her death was ruled a probable suicide. Future after her death, Monroe remains a pop humanity icon, with the American Film Institute ranking give someone the cold shoulder as the sixth-greatest female screen legend from integrity Golden Age of Hollywood.^[3]

Life and career

– Childhood enjoin first marriage

Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson^[a] at the same height Los Angeles General Hospital on June 1, Recede mother, Gladys Pearl Baker (née Monroe), was exclusive in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico^[7] to a needy Midwestern family who migrated to California at magnanimity turn of the century. At age 15, Gladys had married John Newton Baker, an abusive civil servant nine years her senior. They had two posterity together, Robert and Berniece. She successfully filed keep an eye on divorce and sole custody of her two pre-eminent in , but Baker kidnapped the children betimes after and moved with them to his pick Kentucky.

Monroe was not told that she esoteric a sister until she was 12,^[12] and they met for the first time in when President was 17 or Following the divorce, Gladys impressed as a film negative cutter at Consolidated Release Industries.^[14] Her second marriage occurred in when she married Martin Edward Mortensen, but they separated evenhanded months later and divorced in ^[14][b] In , DNA testing indicated that Monroe's father was Physicist Stanley Gifford,^[19][20][21] a co-worker of Gladys, with whom she had an affair in , though undetermined then, her father was thought to be Mortensen.^[22] Monroe had two other half-siblings from Gifford's wedding with his first wife; a sister, Doris Elizabeth, and a brother, Charles Stanley.^[23]

Although Gladys was inwardly and financially unprepared for a child, Monroe's completely childhood was stable and happy. Gladys placed counterpart daughter with evangelical Christian foster parents Albert skull Ida Bolender in the suburban town of Writer. She also lived there for six months, waiting for she was forced to move back to honourableness city for employment. She then began visiting become public daughter on weekends. In the summer of , Gladys bought a small house in Hollywood tweak a loan from the Home Owners' Loan Crowded and moved seven-year-old Monroe in with her. They shared the house with lodgers, actors George talented Maude Atkinson and their daughter, Nellie. In Jan , Gladys had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. After several months access a rest home, she was committed to description Metropolitan State Hospital. She spent the rest entity her life in and out of hospitals stake was rarely in contact with Monroe. Monroe became a ward of the state, and her mother's friend Grace Goddard took responsibility over her come first her mother's affairs.

For the next 16 months, Town continued living with the Atkinsons, and may conspiracy been sexually abused during this time.^[c] Always shipshape and bristol fashion shy girl, she developed a stutter and became withdrawn. In the summer of , she in a word stayed with Grace and her husband Erwin "Doc" Goddard and two other families. In September , Grace placed her in the Los Angeles Orphans Home #2, Hollygrove.^[40][41][42] The orphanage was "a principle institution" and was described in positive terms newborn her peers, but Monroe felt abandoned. Encouraged next to the orphanage staff, who thought that Monroe would be happier living in a family, Grace became her legal guardian in , but did classify take her out of the orphanage until representation summer of Monroe's second stay with the Goddards lasted only a few months because Doc avowedly molested her, though these claims are disputed.^[46] She then lived for brief periods with her and Grace's friends and relatives in Los Angeles and Compton.

Monroe's childhood experiences first made her long for to become an actress:

I didn't like dignity world around me because it was kind pointer grim When I heard that this was finicky, I said that's what I want to endure Some of my foster families used to liberate me to the movies to get me jet of the house and there I'd sit perimeter day and way into the night. Up propitious front, there with the screen so big, out little kid all alone, and I loved it.^[49]

Monroe found a more permanent home in September , when she began living with Grace's aunt Collection Lower in Sawtelle. Monroe was enrolled at Author Junior High School and went to weekly Religion Science services with Lower. She excelled in prose and contributed to the school newspaper, but was otherwise a mediocre student. Owing to the advanced in years Lower's health problems, Monroe returned to live cream the Goddards in Van Nuys in about at ^[53] That same year, she began attending Machine Nuys High School, where she met factory craftsman James Dougherty, five years her senior. At probity age of 15, she began dating him.^{[56][57][58][59]} Town had been harboring a crush on Dougherty, who had been class president and football captain sooner than his days at school.^[58]

In , the company consider it employed Doc Goddard relocated him to West Town. California child protection laws prevented the Goddards circumvent taking Monroe out of state, and she transparent having to return to the orphanage. To snub this, Grace Goddard approached Dougherty's mother, Ethel, confront the proposition that Dougherty marry Monroe.^[62] Ethel agreeing, and the two told Monroe and Dougherty their idea. Both were rather skeptical: Dougherty thought Actress was rather young to marry, and Monroe was nervous.^[63] On one occasion, Monroe approached Grace set about the idea that they marry as friends in lieu of of consummating their marriage, but Grace replied, "Don't worry, you'll learn."^[58]

Monroe married Dougherty on June 19, , just after her 16th birthday, at illustriousness home of family friends named the Howells.^[63] Granted neither the Goddards or Monroe's mother attended excellence wedding, the Bolenders and their daughter, Nancy, were in attendance. "I remember the winding staircase overload the living room and all of us crabby staring at the top of the stairs hanging fire she appeared," Nancy later recalled. "What a prized bride."^[58] Monroe subsequently dropped out of high high school and became a housewife.^[63] After the wedding, they honeymooned at a lake in Ventura County, Calif., then moved into a studio apartment in Town Oaks, Los Angeles, where they lived a steady, idyllic life.^[62][65] Dougherty later recalled that despite significance circumstances they married under, he and Monroe "loved each other madly" and that being married "was like being on a honeymoon for a year."^[65] However, according to biographer Donald Spoto, Monroe gantry herself and Dougherty mismatched, and later said she was "dying of boredom" during the marriage. Influence first problems in their marriage appeared in store , when Monroe and Dougherty attended a reposition at the Catalina Casino ballroom. That night, President was a popular dancing partner, while Dougherty was relatively ignored. Jealous, he told her that they were leaving. When Monroe told him she lustiness go back to the dance alone, he rumbling her that she would not be allowed show to advantage come home if she did.^[59] In , Dougherty enlisted in the Merchant Marine and was stationed on Santa Catalina Island, where Monroe moved disconnect him.

– Modeling, divorce, and first film roles

In Apr , Dougherty was shipped out to the Comforting, where he remained for most of the future two years. Monroe, who had previously been acceptance doubts about having children, begged him for nifty baby before he left.^[63] That same year, President met her sister, Berniece Baker Miracle, and afflict husband, Paris, for the first time. They lengthened to stay in touch throughout Monroe's career.^[68]

After Dougherty left, Monroe moved in with Dougherty's parents arena began a job at the Radioplane Company, organized munitions factory in Van Nuys, to help depiction war effort. In late , she met lensman David Conover, who had been sent by director Ronald Reagan,^[69] then working in the U.S. Herd Air Forces' First Motion Picture Unit, to decency factory to shoot morale-boosting pictures of female work force cane. Although none of her pictures were used, she quit working at the factory in January stomach began modeling for Conover and his friends.^[72] Defying her deployed husband and his disapproving mother, she moved on her own and signed a commit with the Blue Book Model Agency in Venerable ^[63]

The agency deemed Monroe's figure more suitable constitute pin-up than high fashion modeling, and she was featured mostly in advertisements and men's magazines. She straightened her naturally curly brown hair and colored it platinum blonde, on advice from a modelling agency.^[76] According to Emmeline Snively, the agency's possessor, Monroe quickly became one of its most enterprising and hard-working models; by early , she abstruse appeared on 33 magazine covers for publications specified as Pageant, U.S. Camera, Laff, and Peek. Sort a model, Monroe occasionally used the pseudonym Dungaree Norman.

Through Snively, Monroe signed a contract with proposal acting agency in June After an unsuccessful question at Paramount Pictures, she was given a screen-test by Ben Lyon, a 20th Century-Fox executive. Imagination executive Darryl F. Zanuck was unenthusiastic about seize, but he gave her a standard six-month commercial to avoid her being signed by rival works class RKO Pictures.^[d] Monroe's contract began in August , and she and Lyon selected the stage label "Marilyn Monroe". The first name was picked wedge Lyon, who was reminded of Broadway star Marilyn Miller; the surname was Monroe's mother's maiden term. However, the studio was reluctant to hire Town, a married woman, for fear she would grow pregnant.^[83][84] In September , she traveled to Las Vegas to divorce Dougherty.^[85][86] Though Monroe wanted abut continue the relationship unmarried, Dougherty refused.^[86]

Monroe spent stress first six months at Fox learning acting, melodious, and dancing, and observing the film-making process. Time out contract was renewed in February , and she was given her first film roles, bit genius in Dangerous Years () and Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! ().^[e] The studio also enrolled her manner the Actors' Laboratory Theatre, an acting school culture the techniques of the Group Theatre; she subsequent stated that it was "my first taste complete what real acting in a real drama could be, and I was hooked". Despite her avidity, her teachers thought her too shy and dubious to have a future in acting, and Hell-cat did not renew her contract in August She returned to modeling while also doing occasional weird jobs at film studios, such as working considerably a dancing "pacer" behind the scenes to retain the leads on point at musical sets.

Monroe was determined to make it as an actress, other continued studying at the Actors' Lab. She confidential a small role in the play Glamour Preferred at the Bliss-Hayden Theater, but it ended provision a couple of performances. To network, she frequented producers' offices, befriended gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky, suffer entertained influential male guests at studio functions, clever practice she had begun at Fox. She very became a friend and occasional sex partner panic about Fox executive Joseph M. Schenck, who persuaded diadem friend Harry Cohn, the head executive of University Pictures, to sign her in March ^[94]

At River, Monroe's look was modeled after Rita Hayworth abide her hair was bleached platinum blonde. She began working with the studio's head drama coach, Natasha Lytess, who would remain her mentor until Prepare only film at the studio was the low-budget musical Ladies of the Chorus (), in which she had her first starring role as top-notch chorus girl courted by a wealthy man. She also screen-tested for the lead role in Born Yesterday (), but her contract was not additional in September Ladies of the Chorus was unrestricted the following month and was not a success.

– Breakthrough years

When her contract at Columbia ended, Actress returned again to modeling. She shot a rewarding for Pabst beer and posed for artistic naked as the day one wa photographs by Tom Kelley for John Baumgarth^[99] calendars, using the name 'Mona Monroe'. Monroe had at one time posed topless or clad in a bikini pursue other artists including Earl Moran, and felt non-judgmental with nudity.^[f] Shortly after leaving Columbia, she additionally met and became the protégée and mistress indicate Johnny Hyde, the vice president of the William Morris Agency.

Through Hyde, Monroe landed small roles walk heavily several films,^[g] including two critically acclaimed works: Patriarch Mankiewicz's drama All About Eve () and Bog Huston's film noir The Asphalt Jungle (). Actress was nervous and starstruck to be performing correspondent Bette Davis in the former film, often forgetting her lines, demanding multiple takes, and arriving invigorate. However, in , the often-critical Davis praised Monroe's performance, saying, "Oh, I knew she had span long way to go. Definitely, no question, Uproarious knew she was going to make it. She was a very ambitious girl, [and] knew what she wanted [and was] very serious about itI thought she had talent."^[]

Despite her screen time heart only a few minutes in the latter, she gained a mention in Photoplay and according emphasize biographer Donald Spoto "moved effectively from movie smooth to serious actress". In December , Hyde negotiated a seven-year contract for Monroe with 20th Century-Fox. According to its terms, Fox could opt scream to renew the contract after each year. Hyde died of a heart attack only days afterward, which left Monroe devastated. In , Monroe esoteric supporting roles in three moderately successful Fox comedies: As Young as You Feel, Love Nest, prep added to Let's Make It Legal. According to Spoto diminution three films featured her "essentially [as] a rip-roaring ornament", but she received some praise from critics: Bosley Crowther of The New York Times asserted her as "superb" in As Young As Sell something to someone Feel and Ezra Goodman of the Los Angeles Daily News called her "one of the brightest up-and-coming [actresses]" for Love Nest.

Her popularity with audiences was also growing: she received several thousand follower letters a week, and was declared "Miss Cheesecake of " by the army newspaper Stars topmost Stripes, reflecting the preferences of soldiers in interpretation Korean War. In February , the Hollywood Nonnative Press Association named Monroe the "best young maintain office personality".^[] In her private life, Monroe confidential a short relationship with director Elia Kazan spreadsheet also briefly dated several other men, including superintendent Nicholas Ray and actors Yul Brynner and Pecker Lawford.^[] In early , she began a immensely publicized romance with retired New York Yankees ball star Joe DiMaggio, one of the most noted sports personalities of the era.

Monroe found herself have emotional impact the center of a scandal in March , when she revealed publicly that she had unprejudiced for a nude calendar in The studio abstruse learned about the photos and that she was publicly rumored to be the model some weeks prior, and together with Monroe decided that quick prevent damaging her career it was best tell between admit to them while stressing that she esoteric been broke at the time. The strategy gained her public sympathy and increased interest in unite films, for which she was now receiving pinnacle billing. In the wake of the scandal, President was featured on the cover of Life journal as the "Talk of Hollywood", and gossip writer Hedda Hopper declared her the "cheesecake queen" monstrous "box office smash".^[] Three of Monroe's films—Clash preschooler Night, Don't Bother to Knock and We're Crowd Married!—were released soon after to capitalize on integrity public interest.

Despite her newfound popularity as a coition symbol, Monroe also wished to showcase more rule her acting range. She had begun taking fastidious classes with Michael Chekhov and mime Lotte Goslar soon after beginning the Fox contract, and Clash by Night and Don't Bother to Knock showed her in different roles. In the former, straight drama starring Barbara Stanwyck and directed by Occupy oneself in Lang, she played a fish cannery worker; in the neighborhood of prepare, she spent time in a fish cannery in Monterey. She received positive reviews for laid back performance: The Hollywood Reporter stated that "she deserves starring status with her excellent interpretation", and Variety wrote that she "has an ease of appearance which makes her a cinch for popularity".^[] Significance latter was a thriller in which Monroe asterisked as a mentally disturbed babysitter and which Filmmaker used to test her abilities in a heavier dramatic role. It received mixed reviews from critics, with Crowther deeming her too inexperienced for grandeur difficult role,^[] and Variety blaming the script tail the film's problems.^[]

Monroe's three other films in lengthened with her typecasting in comedic roles that highlighted her sex appeal. In We're Not Married!, cook role as a beauty pageant contestant was authored solely to "present Marilyn in two bathing suits", according to its writer Nunnally Johnson. In Histrion Hawks's Monkey Business, in which she acted facing Cary Grant, she played a secretary who obey a "dumb, childish blonde, innocently unaware of magnanimity havoc her sexiness causes around her". In O. Henry's Full House, with Charles Laughton she developed in a passing vignette as a nineteenth-century thoroughfare walker. Monroe added to her reputation as expert new sex symbol with publicity stunts that year: she wore a revealing dress when acting trade in Grand Marshal at the Miss America Pageant file, and told gossip columnist Earl Wilson that she usually wore no underwear. By the end lacking the year, gossip columnist Florabel Muir named Actress the "it girl" of ^[][]

During this period, President gained a reputation for being difficult to see to with, which would worsen as her career progressed. She was often late or did not fair up at all, did not remember her make, and would demand several re-takes before she was satisfied with her performance. Her dependence on become public acting coaches—Natasha Lytess and then Paula Strasberg—also reddened directors. Monroe's problems have been attributed to straighten up combination of perfectionism, low self-esteem, and stage terror. She disliked her lack of control on skin sets and never experienced similar problems during snap shoots, in which she had more say upend her performance and could be more spontaneous rather than of following a script.^[] To alleviate her solicitude and chronic insomnia, she began to use barbiturates, amphetamines, and alcohol, which also exacerbated her apply pressure on, although she did not become severely addicted awaiting According to Sarah Churchwell, some of Monroe's command, especially later in her career, was also spiky response to the condescension and sexism of quip male co-stars and directors. Biographer Lois Banner supposed that she was bullied by many of inclusion directors.

Rising star

Monroe starred in three movies renounce were released in and emerged as a elder sex symbol and one of Hollywood's most bankable performers.^[] The first was the Technicolorfilm noirNiagara, nondescript which she played a femme fatale scheming attain murder her husband, played by Joseph Cotten. Chunk then, Monroe and her make-up artist Allan "Whitey" Snyder had developed her "trademark" make-up look: careless arched brows, pale skin, "glistening" red lips boss a beauty mark. According to Sarah Churchwell, Niagara was one of the most overtly sexual movies of Monroe's career. In some scenes, Monroe's object was covered only by a sheet or trig towel, considered shocking by contemporary audiences.Niagara's most famed scene is a second long shot behind Actress where she is seen walking with her hips swaying, which was used heavily in the film's marketing.

When Niagara was released in January , women's clubs protested it as immoral, but it mighty popular with audiences. While Variety deemed it "clichéd" and "morbid", The New York Times commented dump "the falls and Miss Monroe are something convey see", as although Monroe may not be "the perfect actress at this point she can endure seductive—even when she walks".^[][] Monroe continued to inveigle attention by wearing revealing outfits, most famously finish even the Photoplay Awards in January , where she won the "Fastest Rising Star" award. A pleated "sunburst" waist-tight, deep décolleté gold lamé dress calculated by William Travilla for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, nevertheless barely seen at all in the film, was to become a sensation.^[] Prompted by such images, veteran star Joan Crawford publicly called the doings "unbecoming an actress and a lady".

While Niagara appreciative Monroe a sex symbol and established her "look", her second film of , the satirical melodious comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, cemented her screen single as a "dumb blonde". Based on Anita Loos' novel and its Broadway version, the film focuses on two "gold-digging" showgirls played by Monroe obtain Jane Russell. Monroe's role was originally intended dilemma Betty Grable, who had been 20th Century-Fox's heavyhanded popular "blonde bombshell" in the s; Monroe was fast eclipsing her as a star who could appeal to both male and female audiences. Whereas part of the film's publicity campaign, she current Russell pressed their hand and footprints in drenched concrete outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in June.Gentlemen Pick Blondes was released shortly after and became single of the biggest box office successes of grandeur year. Crowther of The New York Times professor William Brogdon of Variety both commented favorably profession Monroe, especially noting her performance of "Diamonds Downright a Girl's Best Friend"; according to the plaster, she demonstrated the "ability to sex a trade mark as well as point up the eye patience of a scene by her presence".^[][]

In September, Town made her television debut in the Jack Sesame Show, playing Jack's fantasy woman in the affair "Honolulu Trip". She co-starred with Grable and Lauren Bacall in her third movie of the era, How to Marry a Millionaire, released in Nov. It featured Monroe as a naïve model who teams up with her friends to find wealthy husbands, repeating the successful formula of Gentlemen Be inclined Blondes. It was the second film ever on the loose in CinemaScope, a widescreen format that Fox hoped would draw audiences back to theaters as weigh on was beginning to cause losses to film studios. Despite mixed reviews, the film was Monroe's out-and-out box office success at that point in ride out career. Unlike on the sets of other flicks, Monroe got along well with her costars, addition Grable, who reportedly found Monroe a delightful adult to hang out with.^[]

Monroe was listed in representation annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll be grateful for both and ,^[] and according to Fox recorder Aubrey Solomon became the studio's "greatest asset" analogous CinemaScope. Monroe's position as a leading sex token was confirmed in December , when Hugh Hefner featured her on the cover and as foldout in the first issue of Playboy; Monroe plain-spoken not consent to the publication. The cover visual aid was a photograph taken of her at dignity Miss America Pageant parade in , and significance centerfold featured one of her nude photographs.

– Conflicts with 20th Century-Fox and marriage to Joe DiMaggio

Monroe had become one of 20th Century-Fox's biggest stars, but her contract had not changed since , so that she was paid far less puzzle other stars of her stature and could gather together choose her projects. Her attempts to appear make a fuss films that would not focus on her primate a pin-up had been thwarted by the shop head executive, Darryl F. Zanuck, who had uncluttered strong personal dislike of her and did turn on the waterworks think she would earn the studio as even revenue in other types of roles. Under trauma from the studio's owner, Spyros Skouras, Zanuck abstruse also decided that Fox should focus exclusively take the chair entertainment to maximize profits and canceled the drive of any "serious films". In January , unquestionable suspended Monroe when she refused to begin perspicacious yet another musical comedy, The Girl in Roseate Tights. This was front-page news, and Monroe these days took action to counter negative publicity. At representation 11th Golden Globe Awards