Monroe, Marilyn

Monroe, Marilyn (1926–1962), film actress.Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortenson in Los Angeles. She did not complete high school, marrying James Dougherty in 1942 and divorcing him in 1946. An army photographer discovered her working in an airplane factory during World War II, and she parlayed her photogenic face and figure into modeling assignments. Signing her first movie contract in 1946, she appeared in small but provocative roles before receiving star treatment in Niagara and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (both 1953). She married retired baseball hero Joe DiMaggio in January 1954. When their stormy marriage ended nine months later, she embarked on the films that would consolidate her place in the history of American popular culture: The Seven Year Itch (1955), Bus Stop (1956), Some Like It Hot (1959), and The Misfits (1960). She married playwright Arthur Miller in 1956 and divorced him in 1961. Monroe died, a suicide, amid rumors of involvements with President John F. Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

In the years after her death, Monroe became a national—indeed, a world—icon, symbolizing American innocence and ambition, the desire to remain a genuine person and yet invent a new self. Her last interviews, her attraction to men of power and celebrity, and her determination to protect her image from misguided Hollywood decisions demonstrate her awareness of her mythic status. Her major films reveal a talent transcending limited, repetitive roles and finding ways to make stereotypes yield a complex humanity.

Bibliography

Norman Mailer , Marilyn, 1973.
Carl Rollyson , Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress, 1986.

Carl Rollyson