A lot better than this, that's for sure!
Posted on 05/31/2006 9:49:44 PM PDT by lunarbicep
It is hard to imagine what Marilyn Monroe would have looked like had she lived to the age of 80. That is the milestone she would have celebrated today but for her death in 1962.
The epitome of the "blonde bombshell", she remains as well known in death as she was in her life. The image of her standing on a vent with her dress being blown upwards is familiar even to people who have never seen The Seven Year Itch, the film from which the classic image came.
Her life was a series of dramatic highs and lows ending in a premature demise. Mystery shrouds not only her death but also her birth.
One thing we know for certain about the baby who arrived on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles is that her mother was Gladys Baker.
The name on her birth certificate was Norma Jeane Mortensen but she was later christened Norma Jeane Baker at the insistence of her grandmother, Della Monroe Grainger. Baker was never sure whether the father of her baby was her second husband Edward Mortensen or Frank Gifford, a man with whom she had an affair.
When Baker lost her job at RKO's film lab and was committed to a mental institution, Norma Jeane spent her time in foster homes and orphanages until she moved in with the family of Grace McKee Goddard. In 1942, the family moved and couldn't take their ward with them. Norma Jeane married neighbour Jim Dougherty to avoid another stay in an orphanage.
Dougherty joined the merchant marines and was posted overseas in 1944. Norma Jeane took a job at the Radio Plane Munitions factory in Burbank, California. A photographer, taking pictures of women involved in the war effort, spotted the vivacious redhead (the blonde hair would later come from a bottle) and used her for the shoot. This brought her modelling jobs, some of them nude, but many of them with reputable magazines. She then started taking acting classes.
When her husband returned in 1946 she was forced to choose between marriage and career. It was not a hard choice since hers was mostly a marriage of convenience. They divorced in 1946. She dyed her hair blonde, changed her name to Marilyn Monroe and scored a contract with 20th Century Fox.
Her first project, a bit part in The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, was followed by her first character with a name, in Dangerous Years. Both films were made in 1947. Fox let her contract lapse and she moved to Columbia and RKO before returning to Fox, which gave the starlet her first lead role.
This was as the mentally disturbed Nell in the thriller Don't Bother to Knock in 1952. In 1953, her performance as the scheming young wife plotting to kill her husband in Niagara, rocketed her to stardom. Curiously, instead of being typecast as a psychotic blonde as these roles would suggest, she would go on to become Hollywood's favourite dumb blonde.
She began playing a series of ditzy characters in big-budget comedies with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, both in 1953.
She was the most famous blonde on screen; women tried to imitate her and men lusted after her, helped partly by nude images of her that surfaced and were bought by Hugh Hefner for the first edition of his new magazine Playboy.
Baseball star Joe DiMaggio broke millions of men's hearts by marrying the movie star in 1954. But Monroe could not leave behind a film career for domestic bliss. They divorced after less than a year although DiMaggio carried a torch for Monroe for the rest of his life.
In 1955, the comedy The Seven Year Itch was released. Monroe played an un-named girl living in the same apartment complex as Richard (Tom Ewell).
While Richard's wife is away, he has trouble resisting his voluptuous neighbour but the closest they get to consummation is a brief grapple when they fall over a piano.
Excusing his indiscretion, Richard says "I'm sorry, this has never happened to me before" to which she replies: "That's funny, it happens to me all the time."
It scored Monroe a BAFTA nomination for best foreign actress.
Increasingly dissatisfied with the roles she was being offered, Monroe risked her studio contract by taking off to New York to study acting at the Actors Studio, under Lee Strasberg in 1955. Strasberg introduced her to playwright Arthur Miller. She was attracted to Miller's intellect and he later said he felt "giddy" in her presence. They married in 1956.
Monroe now insisted on choosing her own film projects and having more say in the overall production of her films. The first film she made under this new arrangement was Bus Stop, about a cowboy who impulsively marries a showgirl only to have to kidnap her to take her back to his ranch. The performance earned her a Golden Globe nomination and is considered by many to be one of her best performances.
The Prince and the Showgirl followed in 1957 and although it is not a great film, it paired Monroe with the great Laurence Olivier.
Monroe idolised the Shakespearean great but Olivier derided her for her lack of professionalism. She was said to have been late for shooting and to have struggled with lines.
On the set of Some Like it Hot (1959), Monroe also had trouble with lines, needing dozens of takes for simple sentences and resorting to reading lines. Her marriage to Miller was not going well. She had two miscarriages and several infidelities; the pair realised they were not suited. They divorced in 1961, by which time Monroe was filming The Misfits, written for her by Miller.
Monroe had suffered bouts of depression throughout her life, partly caused by abuse and neglect as a child. By the end of the 1950s drugs and alcohol had become a problem and no doubt contributed to difficulties on her film sets.
The Misfits brought together three of Hollywood's saddest stars: declining matinee idol Clark Gable, tormented closet homosexual Montgomery Clift and Monroe. They would all be dead by 1966.
The film was savaged by the critics when it was released in 1961. Ironically, many people have since seen it as some of the trio's finest acting.
Rumours of an affair with President John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby, tainted the Camelot years, especially after she sang a provocative version of Happy Birthday to JFK before a crowd at Madison Square Garden in 1962.
Monroe tried to make one more film, Something's Got to Give, but was fired because of frequent absences from the set. She was later re-hired but before she could complete the project she was found dead in her home in August 1962, apparently from a drug overdose.
Forever young!
A lot better than this, that's for sure!
AAAAUGGGHH!! NO FAIR!! Now I'm blind, and all the good pics are yet to come...
In this scene, she looks like she's plucking a hair off her chest, and placing it on her head.
She was a fabulous scene stealer.
She was ... fabulous. In the older, straighter sense: the stuff of fables, myths, and legends.
What a shame that she died unhappy because of feeling unappreciated as an actress, perhaps afraid of amounting to only a footnote in history. Instead, she became arguably the most desired and revered woman of the 20th century.
Of course, she probably also contributed more to the stereotype of the ditzy blonde than all other blondes combined... that's sort of a mixed legacy.
When I was a boy, the classic centerfold of her in my Dad's copy of the first Playboy Magazine was the first glimpse I ever had of a naked woman. My ideal of what a woman should look like was set for life in that forbidden instant. Me, and probably a few million other American males...
Candle In The Wind
Music by Elton John
Lyrics by Bernie Taupin
Goodbye Norma Jean
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled
They crawled out of the woodwork
And they whispered into your brain
They set you on the treadmill
And they made you change your name
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would have liked to know you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend never did
Loneliness was tough
The toughest role you ever played
Hollywood created a superstar
And pain was the price you paid
Even when you died
Oh the press still hounded you
All the papers had to say
Was that Marilyn was found in the nude
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would have liked to know you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend never did
Goodbye Norma Jean
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled
Goodbye Norma Jean
From the young man in the 22nd row
Who sees you as something as more than sexual
More than just our Marilyn Monroe
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would have liked to know you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend never did
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend never did
One of the most beautiful women to ever grace the silver screen.
She died too young.
I loved her in "Some Like It Hot". She was a good comedic actress.
Just wow re the CBS special yesterday. Was she coopted by Cuba and Castro/USSR? Wouldn't that be something!
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