The Darker Truth Behind Marilyn Monroe’s Glamorous Image

Norma Jeane Mortenson came into the world on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles. From birth until she was 7 years old, Norma Jeane lived with a paid foster family, the Bolenders, while her own mother, Gladys Pearl Baker, worked as a film cutter, splicing reels together at a Hollywood movie studio. Gladys paid all expenses and remained actively involved in her daughter’s life. Seven years passed in relative stability.

In the latter half of 1934, Gladys Pearl Baker, Norma Jeane’s mother, had a breakdown and was later found to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, a severe mental illness characterized by hallucinations, delusions, and impaired reasoning. In January 1935, she was admitted to a state mental institution. In September of that year, nine-year-old Norma Jeane was declared a ward of the state and sent to Hollygrove, an orphans’ home. She remained there until 1937, and said later that she had spent time in some dozen foster homes.

In 1942, Norma Jeane’s mother’s friend, Grace McKee Goddard, who was also her legal guardian, intended to leave for West Virginia, but California law prevented Goddard from taking the 15-year-old Norma Jeane out of state, meaning Goddard would have to leave without her. Had that happened, Norma Jeane would have been returned to an institution. Therefore, she married a 21-year-old neighbor, James Dougherty, on June 19, 1942, 18 days after her sixteenth birthday, and then dropped out of high school.

While her husband, Dougherty, was stationed in the Merchant Marine, Norma Jeane worked in 1944 for the Radioplane Company, earning $20 per week. Her job consisted of inspecting parts and painting radio-controlled target drones, which were used as unmanned training aircraft by the military. It was at work that Army photographer David Conover snapped pictures of her for a publicity feature and suggested she pursue a career in modeling. She did.

Norma Jeane was signed by the Blue Book Model Agency in August 1945, and her hair was bleached platinum blonde. She divorced Dougherty in 1946 and was then signed by 20th Century-Fox for $75 a week. Studio executive Ben Lyon gave her the stage name Marilyn Monroe, combining “Marilyn” with her mother Gladys’s maiden name. Legally, she remained Norma Jeane Dougherty; the name change wouldn’t come for another decade.

Fox dropped Monroe’s contract in 1947, and she signed with Columbia that year; Columbia let her go in 1948, following Ladies of the Chorus. Broke and about to be evicted, Monroe took off her clothes in May 1949 and posed for $50 for photographer Tom Kelley. She signed the model release form with the pseudonym Mona Monroe. The photographs would lie dormant for another three years.

Monroe’s agent, Johnny Hyde, had been hired at the end of 1949. He paid for some minor cosmetic work (she had the tip of her nose made a little smaller and got a chin implant) in 1950 and landed her breakthrough roles in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve. And then, on Dec. 18, 1950, he died of a heart attack. She had lost her champion.

In March 1952, the press named Monroe as the nude model in the “Golden Dreams” calendar (printed from photographer Tom Kelley’s photos taken in 1949). While studio officials advised her to deny everything, she gave an interview in which she admitted that she’d been a nude model for $50, saying, “I had nothing on but the radio.” She told reporters that she was desperate for rent money, and they responded with sympathy.

Don’t Bother to Knock, which was released in July 1952, put Monroe in the role of a disturbed babysitter. In an era when she was primarily known as a pin-up, the role demonstrated that she had serious dramatic potential and was a subtle statement of where she wanted to go.

In January 1953, Niagara was released and gave Monroe her first top-billed starring role. Monroe’s extended walking scene drew widespread attention, and it was enough to establish her as a box-office draw.

Monroe’s breakthrough film was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), which turned her into an international star. Her co-star, Jane Russell, was hired by the studio separately and paid a flat fee of $100,000 or $200,000 (sources differ) for the role, while Monroe was paid $1,500 a week under her Fox contract (about $18,000 in all). Russell was warm and supportive toward her. Studio head Darryl F. Zanuck enforced the pay gap, and Monroe protested publicly.

Monroe married retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio on January 14, 1954. He wanted her to give up acting to be a housewife. Tensions arose almost immediately. She made a four-day stopover in South Korea during their honeymoon in February and performed for more than 100,000 American soldiers as part of a United Service Organizations (USO) tour. The visit helped increase her confidence in her own appeal.

Monroe shot the famous scene for The Seven Year Itch in which her white dress blows upward as she stands over a subway grate on a New York City street on September 15, 1954, but her husband, DiMaggio, was enraged by the attention, and the couple had a bitter argument that night. On October 6, 1954, after nine months of marriage, Monroe filed for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty. The footage from the New York shoot was never used in The Seven Year Itch and was re-shot on a Hollywood soundstage.

Fed up with the roles she was being offered, Monroe rejected her next contract offer from Fox, and in December 1954, Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck placed her on suspension. Monroe moved to New York City, where she began working with photographer Milton Greene. Monroe formed her own production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, on December 31, 1954; she owned 51 percent of the company and served as its president. The asset had become the boss.

Early in 1955, Monroe enrolled at the Actors Studio in New York with acting coach Lee Strasberg, immersing herself in Method acting, a technique based on calling up one’s own personal emotional memories. Strasberg would later write that she was one of his most gifted students. The bombshell was studying craft.

In 1955, Monroe’s refusal to work stalled Fox’s production activities, and Fox finally gave in. On December 31, 1955, she signed a seven-year contract at $100,000 per picture, plus a percentage of profits and the right to approve the director and the script.

Playing Cherie, a nightclub singer, in Bus Stop (1956), Monroe received universal praise for her performance and a Golden Globe nomination. This time, the critical consensus was that Monroe’s work at Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio was paying off. She was no longer being dismissed as just a blonde caricature.

In June 1956, Monroe wed playwright Arthur Miller. In that same month, the House Un-American Activities Committee, a committee of Congress tasked with investigating alleged Communist ties, issued a subpoena to Miller, who then refused to testify against his friends. Monroe supported her new husband in defiance of pressure from the studios. The FBI created a file on the couple, which was declassified in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

From 1956 through 1957, Monroe suffered from severe, chronic endometriosis, a painful condition in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus, and underwent several surgeries. In 1957, she had emergency surgery for a pregnancy that developed outside the uterus, and she experienced a miscarriage in 1958. To treat chronic insomnia and stage fright, doctors prescribed barbiturates and amphetamines, leading to drug dependency.

Some of the scenes in Some Like It Hot took multiple takes because Monroe was suffering from severe anxiety and side effects from her medication while shooting. Nevertheless, she received praise for her comedic turn as Sugar Kane, winning a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Comedy or Musical in March 1960 in March 1960, ending a ten-year campaign for recognition.

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