Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson, was an American film actress – bold and famously remembered as the blonde bombshell ever known to Hollywood who later became a sex symbol worldwide. Even today, more than half a century later, she continues to be a pop icon being copied and portrayed – from personal style to fashion shoots.
Here are some things you know and some, you probably don’t, about Marilyn Monroe on her 57th death anniversary:
She spent most of her life in shelter homes and orphanages and was first married at the age of 16 to James Dougherty at 16 years old to avoid the possibility of her going back to an orphanage.
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She later married for the second and third time to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller,
Getty Images – Pictured here with Joe DiMaggio
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She later signed with Blue Book Model Agency as a model until she met executive Ben Lyon of 20th Century Fox where she performed a screen test. She later got a divorce from Dougherty to focus on her acting career, thus dying her hair to make herself more marketable.
She was rumoured to have an affair with JFK and sang Happy Birthday for him at his 40th birthday publicly giving room to even more scandal and assumptions on the affair – a rendition that is still remembered and resung today, too.
She is still famously remembered for classics like: The Prince & The Show Girl, Some Like It Hot, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
But the world remembers The 7 Year Itch vividly because of this iconic scene which is often imitated in fashion shoots, even today:
Giant Art
She was once asked what she wore to bed and her response was: Chanel No.5 – here she is pictured getting ready in her room at the Ambassador Hotel to see the play Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in New York City
Somethings Gotta Give was said to be the last movie she did which was left incomplete due to her health issues and was as a result never air, minus a few stills shot in a pool, from the few minutes that were shot:
After Marilyn Monroe’s death renowned Pop Artist Andy Warhol spent four months making silkscreens, where he created brilliantly coloured multiples of Monroe’s image from a scene of her movie ‘Niagra’. Fascinated by morbid subjects and celebrity, she became one of his prime subjects alongside Edie Segdwick.
An international star whose sudden death shook the world, making front page news worldwide, is still remembered and often wondered about as her death ruled as acute barbiturate poisoning was not taken well and has since been a conspiracy theory of claims of murder, suicide and assassination.
