Marilyn Monroe was the diva par excellence, the absolute icon of twentieth century beauty.
You have bewitched the planet with her charm, some unforgettable scenes from her films have gone down in the history of cinema.
In just thirty-six years of her life, she has been the most photographed, most loved, most criticized, most imitated, most envied and perhaps the most unhappy woman in Hollywood.
She was born with the name of Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles. She had never known her father and her mother, Gladys Monroe, was suffering from severe mental disorders, which forced her to frequent admissions to a psychiatric hospital.
For much of her childhood, she alternated stays in orphanages or foster care in temporary families with turbulent returns home. When her mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia, little Norma Jeane was taken into custody by her best friend, Grace McKee, a film archivist at Columbia Pictures, it was perhaps from her that she learned her love of cinema. She was a little girl with obvious lack of affection and a need for security, while she was in high school she met her first husband James Dougherty, whom she married when she was only 16 and from whom she separated after four years.
She found a job in an aviation industry producing parachutes. It was there that photographer David Conover, committed to documenting women's work in the war period, noticed her incredible beauty and convinced her to pursue a career as a model. From that moment, under the guidance of another photographer, Andrè de Denes, she began to appear on the covers of magazines. At twenty she was signed by Fox and the doors of Hollywood opened for her. Divorced, she lightened her hair and changed her name to Marilyn Monroe, her surname being her mother's maiden name.
She started making an appearance in various films, only to conquer small parts that launched her in the firmament of the cinema. She jungle of asphalt, Eva against Eva, Monkeys Business and others.
In 1952 she landed her first starring role in Your Mouth Burns. Her worldwide success came in '53 with Niagara.
It was with How to Marry a Millionaire and Men Prefer Blondes that she confirmed herself as one of the most popular stars. Other sensational successes followed.
In 1954 Marilyn Monroe married the famous baseball player, Joe DiMaggio, from whom she divorced in less than a year and began to collect a series of deep sentimental disappointments that dragged her further into a great existential vacuum.
After the separation she moved to New York to study at the Actor's Studio. At that time she met Arthur Miller, an accomplished playwright and charming intellectual. The two married in 1956. Around that time, Marilyn earned a Golden Globe nomination for Bus Stop.
In 1957 the actress founded, with her photographer friend Milton Green, her film production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, with which she shot a single ill-fated film The Prince and the Dancer alongside Laurence Olivier.
She has recovered with her participation in Billy Wilder's hilarious comedy Some Like It Hot, with a character who will remain indelibly imprinted in the minds of viewers.
She was a woman who needed constant confirmation and attention, she started various romantic relationships that inflamed the gossip and gossip tabloids.
In 1962 she received the Golden Globe for Best Actress. She was finally recognized for her talent and charisma, but her love life was increasingly turbulent and she conditioned her mood. She had started a secret relationship with the President of the United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy who treated her as a pleasant pastime and nothing more than her.
More and more emotionally unstable, she took refuge in alcohol and barbiturates and went in and out of clinics.
Her last film was Her Misfits written for her by Arthur Miller, with whom she divorced the same year.
She was kicked off the set of Something Gotta Give because she became unmanageable, she showed up drunk, she didn't respect schedules, she was out of control.
Little comforted by her relationship with Robert Kennedy, even if more affectionate than her brother, she is definitively plunged into the maelstrom of depression.
On August 5, 1962, she was found lifeless, without clothes and with the telephone receiver in her hand in her bedroom. Her report was suicide due to an overdose of barbiturates, but many things were not clear in the reconstruction of the events, so much so that even today her death is one of the unsolved mysteries of Hollywood.
The hypotheses of murder, secret services, revenge due to her relationship with the two most important men of the time return cyclically. But perhaps we will never know the truth.
In his will it was read that he had left his fortune (a couple of million dollars) to Lee Strasberg's drama school, his psychoanalyst and care for his sick mother. She was buried at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.
Of the beautiful little girl Marilyn Monroe, as she had called her Truman Capote, there are thousands of exhibits, images of her, her films, the secrets of her that she brought with her.
She was an extraordinary actress and singer. Unique in her own way. A beautiful and sensual woman like few others, very generous but with a mal de vivre that she accompanied her throughout her short life.
Everything has been said and written about her. That it was impossible to work on it together. The delays. The lines never learned. The infinite takes. Her head always elsewhere, lost in her whirlwinds. Her feeling of despair and substantial loneliness. She has been remembered in books, films, retrospectives. Articles are still being written about how she lived, what she ate, how she dressed. Her stage clothes were auctioned and represent important relics. Her life has been sifted through thousands of anecdotes, rumors, stories.
She was the most desired woman and yet the most unhappy. However, a timeless myth.
