Probably the most iconic "Blond Bombshell" Marilyn Monroe was an actress and model during the 1950s and was "emblematic of the era's attitudes towards sexuality".
Marilyn Monroe, originally Norma Jeane Mortensen and brunette, was born on June 1st of 1926 in Los Angeles California. In her early life Monroe struggled because of the events during her unfortunate childhood. With a father who had left before birth and a mother who was admitted to a mental hospital for nearly killing Marilyn as a baby, Monroe moved around quite a bit in her early years jumping from foster home to foster home and later told stories of sexual assault and even rape at the raw age of 11.
In order to escape her troubled childhood and the foster care system Marilyn at the ripe age of 16 married her then boyfriend Jimmy Daugherty, an overseas merchant marine who served in the South Pacific. It was during this marriage that Monroe was discovered by a photographer and made into a successful model, however as quickly as it had begun Monroes marriage to Daugherty fizzled out ending with a divorce. With the divorce, Marilyn signed her first big film contract with 20th century fox as well as dyed her hair platinum blond and changed her name to Marilyn Monroe after the broadway star Marilyn Miller and Monroe for her mother's maiden name.
The starlet quickly took off as she stared in many movies such as " As Young As You Feel", " Monkey Business" and "Don't Bother to Knock", and in December of 1953, she cemented her status as one of America's leading sex symbols when she graced the cover of a brand new magazine called Playboy by Hugh Hefner. Monroe made Hefner's new entertainment magazine a success and was his first "sweetheart of the month". After that Marilyn's career sky rocketed as she took on the role of the dumb blond in movies like "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend", "How to Marry a Millionaire" and "Gentlemen prefer blonds", she was even awarded Fastest Rising Star Award at the 1953 Photoplay awards.
Monroe went on to be a part of many other iconic films such as "The seven year itch" as well as at the Fox musical "there is no business like show business. Through all of her ventures Monroe was said to have grossed $200million for all her films by the time of her death as well as having been awarded multiple golden globes for her various preformances.
However aside from the glitz and glam of Hollywood during the 50s and 60s Monroe suffered from 2 very public failed marriages with baseball player Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller as well as a drug abuse problem which eventually lead to her dying of an overdose at a prime at of 36.
While she lived a short life Marilyn had left her mark on Hollywood, and to this day Marilyn Monroe remains an icon in the entertainment and modeling industry, remembered for her striking appearance and bubbly blond bombshell persona.
https://www.biography.com/people/marilyn-monroe-9412123
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/marilyn-monroe-biography/61/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe
Leah, awesome article! I thought you did a great job addressing such a prominent social symbol in American society. I found that it is actually debated if Monroe committed suicide. The sheer number of drugs that she consumed suggested that it was done intentionally. Monroe's housekeeper found that at 3am, Monroe had locked herself within her bedroom and was unresponsive. Due to Marilyn's "mood swings" and "suicidal ideation" the coroner believed it was a possible suicide case. The very amount of the barbiturates that she had consumed had ruled out a possible OD. When a toxicological analysis was done, it was found that her cause of death was "acute barbiturate poisoning". She had 13% of pentobarbital in her liver, and high amounts in her blood as well. Although Monroe was a huge sex symbol and the idol for thousands of American women, in reality her several failed marriages and the inevitable pressure for being such a huge celebrity led for her, I believe, to take her own life.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Marilyn_Monroe
Leah I loved this post! I never knew about Marilyn Monroe's childhood -- I've only ever heard of her from her status as America's first sex symbol. After reading your article, I started researching other areas of Marilyn's life, specifically her political one. I had never connected Marilyn to politics until we were learning about the Hollywood 10 through the class documentary. I realized that politics became incredibly intertwined with movie stars and found out that Marilyn was very politically active. Marilyn was a leftist and founding member for the Hollywood branch of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy whose "focus is on preventing the deployment of nuclear weapons in space". Additionally, Marilyn Monroe was incredibly pro-Castro and the rights movement in Cuba.
ReplyDeletehttp://time.com/4346542/radical-politics-marilyn-monroe/
http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_national_committee_for_a_sane_nuclear_policy_sane/
Thanks for such an interesting post! I really like how you articulated Monroe's impact on Hollywood despite her short career. Another aspect of your post that I enjoyed was how you talked about all of Monroe's fame and fortune seemed to come at a cost. This is based off of her failed marriages and her use of drugs that eventually killed her. Something interesting that I found about Marilyn was that she was seriously underpaid for a lot of her work. I was personally surprised by this, given how famous she was, but taking the time period into account, makes a bit more sense. However, even with the time period and the gender based wage gaps that plagued it I still found Monroe's wages to be surprising. She was paid about 10 times less than her male costar in one of her films and she was also paid significantly less than Elizabeth Taylor, another notable actress of the 50s.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/06/01/50-things-you-didnt-know-about-marilyn-monroe/