Once
entering this industry, she eventually signed a contract with The Blue Book
Model Agency. She was then convinced to get a nose job, to go blonde (because
she was naturally brunette) and to change her name. This is how she became
Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn was happy with these changes, because she looked to Lana
Turner and Jean Harlow as inspirations. During
her modeling years, she posed for numerous photographers. There was one, Tom
Kelley, who wanted to photograph her nude. At first she disagreed, but when she
was in desperate need for money she decided to go through with it. She signed
her name on the contract as Mona Monroe. When the photographs came to surface, she
took honest responsibility for it, which gained her both sympathy and respect.
These photographs, famously known as the red velvet session (due to the velvet
backdrop) became the cover page and cover spread of the first Playboy magazine.
This was just the start to the career of this famous beauty and sex icon.
When Marilyn’s husband returned home in 1946, he was not thrilled with her modeling, and forced her to choose between their marriage and her career. Marilyn chose her career, and so the two divorced. It was around this time she was also discovered by Ben Lyon, and signed to 20th Century Fox. She had always dreamed of becoming an actress, so this was an exciting step forward. Her acting career took off in the 1950’s when she starred in The Asphalt Jungle and It’s All About Eve. Here she met her makeup artist, Allan Whitey Snyder, who applied her makeup from her first movie all the way until her funeral. The two developed a specific and extensive look together; a look that is still iconic today. (To learn how to do Marilyn Monroe Makeup CLICK HERE)
After her first couple of films, she
then went on to star in Niagara, and
then worked alongside Jane Russell in Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes. Other well-known Monroe movies, which were mostly comedies,
included How to Marry a Millionaire, There’s No Business like Show Business,
and The Seven Year Itch. The Seven Year Itch was the film that included
her famous scene of standing above a subway vent with her white dress in the
air. Around the time of these films, she also married her second husband- Joe
DiMaggio. The two married on January 14, 1954 and became a famous couple- for a
short time that is. On October 27, 1954 the two divorced…yes, only after nine
months of marriage! It was believed that Monroe being a sex symbol highly
bothered DiMaggio, and that it eventually separated the two.
Marilyn grew tired of being a
stereotypical “dumb blonde” and moved to New York City to study acting with Lee
Strasberg. She was said to lack confidence in her acting abilities both before
and during her training. In fact, she suffered from performance anxiety that
made her feel ill. Because of this, she was often late to film sets or did not
show at all. This obviously created tension with her casts and crews and she
was constantly signed and release with various movie studios. After she trained in NYC, she
tried to start her own film production company along with starring in the
production Bus Stop. This was when
she met playwright Arthur Miller- her third husband. Miller actually wrote the
script The Misfits for her. The two
married (on my birthday) June 29, 1956 and divorced January 24, 1961. It was
said that Marilyn discovered that Arthur found her too dependable and regretted
their marriage; after this their relationship was never the same and eventually
it led to their separation.
Later,
in 1959, she went on to star in Some Like
it Hot, and won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in Comedy (pictured above).
The previous year, 1958, she also won an Italian David di Donatello award for
Best Foreign Actress. However, between the years of 1960-1962 her career
started to go downhill. Her last few films were box office disappointments. In
fact, her last completed film ended up being The Misfits, and even that received poor reviews. In 1962, she was
dismissed from the movie set for Something’s
Got to Give for her continuous tardiness and absence. Dean Martin was also
a part of the movie and refused to film without her so it never completed
production. On July 19, 1962, she sang
her famous Happy Birthday to
President John F. Kennedy. It’s believed that the two were involved in an
affair. Apparently Monroe called Jackie Kennedy and came clean about it all.
On
August 5, 1962, at the age of 36 years old, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in
her home, near a bottle of empty sleeping pills. Some believe she committed
suicide, some believe it was an accident, and some believe she was murdered. It
was declared as an overdose, so the truth forever remains a mystery. At her
funeral, she was buried in her favorite Emilio Pucci dress inside a Cadillac Casket . Lee Strasberg
delivered a eulogy and Hugh Hefner bought the plot next to Monroe’s. Her ex-husband Joe DiMaggio famously
delivered roses to her grave every year, for the next 20 years, until his own
passing. Over half a century later,
while numerous beauty and sex icons have come and gone, none have been as
memorable and loved as Monroe. Multiple merchandise products, movies and books have been published and sold about her life, her makeup look is
style highly popular, her quotes and pictures still constantly seen and quoted
all around us; and there is now even a facial piercing named “The Monroe” after
her famous (but actually fake) beauty mark! Overall, Marilyn Monroe will
forever be a major beauty icon to the world.
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