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Marilyn Monroe a Natural Beauty

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Every so often, more in hope than conviction, Hollywood annouces the advent of a sensational glamour girl, guaranteed to entice people from all lands to the box office. Usually the sensation fizzles. But today the most respected studio seers, in a crescendo of talk unparalleled since the debut of Rita Hayworth, are saying that the genuine article is here at last: a sturdy blonde named Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe a Natural Beauty

Three years ago Marilyn was trying to get a start like any other starlet: a low-salary contract with 20th Century-Fox, small parts in movies, choice as Miss Flamethrower by an Army unit. She even posed for calendar art for a few badly needed extra pennies. Somewhere between her ingenous mind and voluptuous body came a spark of the kind that makes movie personalities. Her bit parts stood out in big films (All About Eve, Asphalt Jungle). Today she is topic A-plus in Hollywood. She gets 5000 fan letters a week and is being costarred simultaneously in films with Cary Grant, Richard Widmark, Charles Laughton.

Marilyn was being driven down a California scenic route recently by an admirer when she volunteered the information, “I was born under the sign of Gemini. That stands for the intellect.” “Yes,” said the admirer. “Everybody else I’ve told that to,” said Marilyn, “laughed.” Because, her movie role is always that of a dumb blonde. Hollywood generally supposes she is pretty dumb herself. This is a delusion. Marilyn is naive and guileless. But she is smart enough to have known how to make a success in the cutthroat world of glamour. She does it by being as wholly natural as the world will allow. Physically she has many of the attributes of Jean Harlow. But there is no suggestion of hardness or tartness in Marilyn. She is relaxed, warm, apparently absorbed by whatever man she has her big blue eyes fixed on at any particular moment. “I’ve given pure sex appeal very little thought,” she says, “If I had to think about it I’m sure it would frighten me.”

Marilyn Monroe a Natural Beauty

What does she think about the expresses in aphorisms. On clothes: “I dress for men. A woman looks at your clothes critically. A man appreciates them.” On eating with a man: “I don’t give the food much thought.” On walking: “I use walking to just get me around.” On resting: “I sit down the way I feel.” On men: “They seem to understand me.” On herself: “I am very definitely a woman and I enjoy it.”

Marilyn never finished high school but she is devoted to the intellectual life. She sprinkles her conversation with lines from Thomas Wolfe and Browning, with the same candid simplicity she uses in describing her dumbbell exercises: “I’m fighting gravity. If you don’t fight gravity, you sag.” Her candor sometimes disconcerts interviewers. "Once this fellow says, “Marilyn, what do you wear to bed” So I said I only wear Chanel No. 5 and he groans, “Oh no, I can’t use that.”

Marilyn Monroe a Natural Beauty

Marilyn’s real name is Norma Jeane Mortenson, though she generally gives it as Baker, apparently because her father was a baker. She was brought up at municipal expense in 12 different foster homes in Los Angeles. The first family was intensely religious. “To go to a movie was a sin,” recalls Marilyn. “Every night I was told to pray that I would not wake up in hell.” The next family was comprised of movie bit players: “They drank and danced and played cards. Oh, how I prayed for them.” Another one gave her empty whiskey bottles as her only toys. She was a skinny child, something of an ugly duckling. At 16, to avoid being sent to an orphanage, she married an aircraft worker and was divorced two years later. Marilyn looks back on the hard knocks of her youth with no particular self-pity and only hopes they may have taught her a few things about people which will help her in her career. For, with all Hollywood at her feet, she is obsessed by an irrational childhood ambition: she wants very much to become an actress.

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Marilyn Monroe Biography

Probably the most celebrated of all actresses, Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortenson on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles General Hospital. Prior to her birth, Marilyn’s father bought a motorcycle and headed north to San Francisco, abandoning the family in Los Angeles. Marilyn grew up not knowing for sure who her father really was. Her mother, Gladys, had entered into several relationships, further confusing her daughter as to who it was who fathered her. Afterward, Gladys gave Norma Jean (Marilyn) the name of Baker, a boyfriend she had before Mortenson. Poverty was a constant companion to Gladys and Norma. Gladys, who was extremely attractive and worked for RKO Studios as a film cutter, suffered from mental illness and was in and out of mental institutions for the rest of her life, and because of that Norma Jean spent time in foster homes. When she was nine she was placed in an orphanage where she was to stay for the next two years. Upon being released from the orphanage, she went to yet another foster home. In 1942, at the age of 16, Norma Jean married 21-year-old aircraft plant worker James Dougherty. The marriage only lasted four years, and they divorced in 1946. By this time Marilyn began to model swimsuits and bleached her hair blonde. Various shots made their way into the public eye, where some were eventually seen by RKO Pictures head Howard Hughes. He offered Marilyn a screen test, but an agent suggested that 20th Century-Fox would be the better choice for her, since it was a much bigger and more prestigious studio. She was signed to a contract at $125 per week for a six-month period and that was increased by $25 per week at the end of that time when her contract was lengthened.

Marilyn Monroe a Natural Beauty

Marilyn Monroe Career

Her first film was in 1947 with a bit part in The Shocking Miss Pilgrim Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948). Two of the three brief scenes she appeared wound up on the cutting room floor. Later that same year she was given a somewhat better role as Evie in Dangerous Years (1947). However, Fox declined to renew her contract, so she went back to modeling and acting school.

Columbia Pictures then picked her up to play Peggy Martin in Ladies of the Chorus (1949), where she sang two numbers. Notices from the critics were favorable for her, if not the film, but Columbia dropped her. Once again Marilyn returned to modeling. In 1949 she appeared in United Artists’ Love Happy (1949). It was also that same year she posed nude for the now famous calendar shot which was later to appear in Playboy magazine in 1953 and further boost her career. She would be the first centerfold in that magazine’s long and illustrious history. The next year proved to be a good year for Marilyn. She appeared in five films, but the good news was that she received very good notices for her roles in two of them, The Asphalt Jungle (1950) from MGM and All About Eve (1950) from Fox. Even though both roles were basically not much more than bit parts, movie fans remembered her ditzy but very sexy blonde performance.

Marilyn Monroe First Big Movie Roll

In 1951, Marilyn got a fairly sizable role in Love Nest (1951). The public was now getting to know her and liked what it saw. She had an intoxicating quality of volcanic sexuality wrapped in an aura of almost childlike innocence. In 1952, Marilyn appeared in Don’t Bother to Knock (1952), in which she played a somewhat mentally unbalanced babysitter. Critics didn’t particularly care for her work in this picture, but she made a much more favorable impression later in the year in Monkey Business (1952), where she was seen for the first time as a platinum blonde, a look that became her trademark. The next year she appeared in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Marilyn Monroe a Natural Beauty

Marilyn is a Hit

Marilyn was now a genuine box-office drawing card. Later, she appeared with Betty Grable, Lauren Bacall and Rory Calhoun in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). Although her co-stars got the rave reviews, it was the sight of Marilyn that really excited the audience, especially the male members. On January 14, 1954, Marilyn wed DiMaggio, then proceeded to film There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954). That was quickly followed by The Seven Year Itch (1955), which showcased her considerable comedic talent and contained what is arguably one of the most memorable moments in cinema history: Marilyn standing above a subway grating and the wind from a passing subway blowing her white dress up.

Marilyn Monroe a Natural Beauty

By October of 1954, Marilyn announced her divorce from DiMaggio. The union lasted only eight months. In 1955 she was suspended by Fox for not reporting for work on How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955). It was her second suspension, the first being for not reporting for the production of The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955). Both roles went to others. Her work was slowing down, due to her habit of being continually late to the set, her illnesses (whether real or imagined) and generally being unwilling to cooperate with her producers, directors, and fellow actors.

Marilyn Monroe a Natural Beauty

In Bus Stop (1956), however, Marilyn finally showed critics that she could play a straight dramatic role. It was also the same year she married playwright, Arthur Miller (they divorced in 1960). In 1957 Marilyn flew to Britain to film The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) which proved less than impressive critically and financially. It made money, but many critics panned it for being slow-moving. After a year off in 1958, Marilyn returned to the screen the next year for the delightful comedy, Some Like It Hot, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. The film was an absolute smash hit, with Curtis and Lemmon pretending to be females in an all-girl band, so they can get work. This was to be Marilyn’s only film for the year.

In 1960 Marilyn appeared in George Cukor’s Let’s Make Love (1960), with Tony Randall and Yves Montand. Again, while it made money, it was critically panned as stodgy and slow-moving. The following year Marilyn made what was to be her final film. The Misfits (1961), which also proved to be the final film for the legendary Clark Gable, who died later that year of a heart attack. The film was popular with critics and the public alike. In 1962 Marilyn was chosen to star in Fox’s, Something’s Got to Give. With Marilyn’s unfortunate passing, the film was never finished.

Marilyn made only 30 films in her lifetime, but her legendary status and mysticism will remain with film history forever.

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