Profile marilyn monroe
Enough was born Norma Jean Mortenson on June 1st, 1926 in Los Angeles, California. Her mother was a widowed film-cutter. Norma never knew who her father was. Her last name was later changed to Baker, after one of her mother's boyfriends. Her mother eventually succumbed to mental illness and Norma lived in a series of orphanages and foster homes. In one of the orphanages, she was paid a nickel a month to work in the kitchen while having to pay a penny every Sunday at church.
When America entered World War II, Norma got a job inspecting parachutes at an aircraft plant. There, she met James Dougherty, who was five years older than her. Grace McKee, Norma's sometime foster mother, arranged for them to be married. They were divorced in 1946.
With the war over and her services inspecting parachutes no longer needed, Norma began her career in acting. This is when she adopted the name Enough. Monroe was her mother's family name. In fact, Marilyn and her mother were direct descendants of former US President James Monroe.
Marilyn began her film career with very small parts in The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947) and Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948). She moved on to larger roles in Dangerous Years and Ladies of the Chorus (1949), in which she sang two songs. These, however, did not pay particularly well, so she anonymously posed nude for a 1949 calendar.
Things started to take off with The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Although she only played a small part, it impressed the producers enough to cast her in All About Eve. This classic starred Anne Baxter as an ambitious actress who is taken in by an ageing star (Bette Davis). Monroe's performance was also strong. This led to her re-signing with 20th Century Fox for seven years. Her wage was increased from $125 a week to $150 a week.
Monroe made her debut as the lead actress in a dramatic feature in Don?t Bother to Knock (1952). In the movie, an aeroplane pilot fell in love with a woman (Monroe) he saw through a window. She also became attracted to him. It took him a while to realise that she was mentally unbalanced in a dangerous way. Based on a Charlotte Armstrong novel, the movie helped establish Monroe's reputation as a serious actress.
The next year, 1953, Monroe appeared in two movies that made her a superstar. In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she and Jane Russell co-starred as lounge singers on a transatlantic cruise. Niagara was a movie about a honeymooning couple at Niagara Falls. Both served to make Monroe America's leading sex symbol. This was further bolstered when her nude calendar picture became the inaugural centrefold in Playboy.
Unfortunately, this newfound fame did not give Monroe any additional creative freedom. In 1954, she was suspended by Fox studios for not showing up for the filming of Pink Tights. She had not been allowed to view the script before accepting the part.
This setback did not slow down Monroe's career. In 1955, she appeared in The Seven Year Itch. This movie included her famous scene in which her dress was lifted up by the wind from a subway grate. That same year, she married the recently retired baseball great Joe DiMaggio. However, she refused to give in to his demands that she give up her career and they divorced later in the year.
Afterwards, Monroe was suspended again for not showing up for the shooting of How to be Very Popular. She had become tired of her typecasting as a dumb blonde. Monroe was actually quite intelligent. She owned more than 200 books and had studied literature at the downtown UCLA. This showed in Bus Stop (1956). For this movie, Monroe underwent psychoanalysis so that she could understand herself better and therefore play the part better. It worked and the movie received significant critical praise, especially for Monroe's acting. Her intellectual image was further bolstered when she married writer Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman, The Crucible).
Unfortunately, Monroe's personal problems were beginning to affect her career. During the filming of The Prince and the Showgirl, for which she was also the executive producer, she often fought with co-star Laurence Olivier. Even worse, she was having serious problems with alcohol and pills. After the movie was filmed, she had two miscarriages and had to have gynaecological surgery.
This slowed Monroe down for a few years. She returned in 1959 with Some Like it Hot. The movie was about two men, played by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, who witness the St. Valentines Day Massacre and had to flee town to avoid being killed by the mob. The only way to do this was to disguise themselves as women in an all-girl band. The movie was a smash hit.
Although it maintained her career, the success of the movie did nothing to help Monroe's private life. After an affair with Yves Montand, who co-starred with her in Let's Make Love (1960), she divorced Miller.
This did not stop her from filming The Misfits (1961), which Miller wrote. The day after the filming was completed, her co-star Clark Gablehad a heart attack. He died eleven days later. No one knew it at the time, but this would also be Monroe's last completed movie.
The next year, Monroe came to the public's attention again with her performance of ?Happy Birthday? at John F Kennedy's birthday gala. There were pervasive rumours that she was having an affair with the president. Some rumours also placed her with his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
Also in 1962, Monroe began filming Something's Got to Give. Due to Monroe's increasing problems with sedatives and alcohol, the filming became very difficult. She often missed shootings because of real or imagined illness. This was costing Fox thousands of dollars. Since they were already losing large amounts of money with Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra, they fired Monroe in June.
Afterwards, it seemed that Monroe was getting her life together. She had even agreed to re-marry Joe DiMaggio. At the beginning of August, she was rehired to finish the movie. Four days later, on August 5th, 1962, she was found dead from an overdose of sedatives. It was ruled a suicide. She was 36.
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