The Sexualization of Marilyn Monroe: Her Life and Mysterious Death
Many wonder what really happened to this major 1950s sex symbol and well-known blonde bombshell. Did she actually commit suicide in her Hollywood mansion? Did she accidentally overdose? Or was the cause of her death darker than the tabloids could even imagine…?
The Beginning: Norma Jean Mortenson
It is known that Marilyn Monroe had once said: “I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.” However, Marilyn Monroe was not always ‘Marilyn’. She was not always the symbol of sexual fantasy from the 1950s that she is known as infamously today. She was not the sentimentalized and sexualized image of a woman that the citizens of the 1950s made her out to be. Marilyn Monroe was once known as Norma Jean Mortenson. She was a young girl born into unfortunate circumstances and had struggled greatly in order to achieve what greatness that she had in her shortly lived life. The story of Norma Jean Mortenson is where the story of Marilyn Monroe begins, and therefore was the beginning of a life of fame and fortune — gathering the attention of thousands — which ultimately caused the sexualization of her image which had an adverse effect on the rest of her life and even effected the perception of her untimely death.
About Norma Jean: Marilyn’s Life Before Hollywood
Norma Jean Mortenson was born in Los Angeles, California on June 1st, 1926 — short years before the Great Depression started. She was of unsure parentage, her father was unknown to her, and her mother was sent to a psychiatric hospital when she very young. This left Norma Jean to the foster care system, an orphanage, and eventually — in the year 1937 — the Goddard family who were friends of Mortenson’s. Paid twenty-five dollars a week to raise the girl by Norma’s mother, the Goddard’s had treated Norma Jean like their own for a few years. The family was very religious and fundamentalist, which limited Mortenson from partaking in many popular activities of the time such as going to the movies. In 1942, however, Mr. Goddard received a job offer in another state and the family could not afford to bring Norma Jean with them. This doomed Norma Jean back into the foster system and changed the course of her life forever.
Under the care of the foster system, Norma Jean Mortenson was raped when she was eleven years old. She was assaulted in various foster homes she was placed into after she turned seven when the Goddard family left her. She was sexualized and objectified from a very young age. Due to her suffering, Norma took matters into her own hands and instead of remaining in the foster care system for too much longer, she decided she had to end it somehow. Mortensen dropped out of school at the age of fifteen.
A year later, she did the only thing she thought she could do in the 1940s to get out of the orphanage early and to start living by her own terms and avoid the sexual abuse she had been facing: she got married. She married her boyfriend Jimmy Dougherty on June 19th, 1942. Marrying Dougherty was the beginning of a new life for Norma Jean and the beginning of Marilyn.
The Beginnings of Marilyn: An Aspiring Model
While Jimmy Dougherty was away working as a Merchant Marine in the South Pacific, Norma Jean Mortenson worked in a munitions factory where she was discovered by a photographer. Dougherty was gone for a total of four years, and by the time he got back Norma Jean had become a model. A successful one, at that. When her husband came home, he discovered that Norma Jean Mortenson had officially changed her name to Marilyn Monroe in preparation for a career that she wanted in acting. Things went quickly for Monroe shortly after Dougherty’s return from the Merchant Marines and the couple had grown apart. The couple’s divorce occurred the same year he returned, 1946.
At the end of 1946, Norma Jean Mortensen landed her first movie contract and role by the name of Marilyn Monroe. In preparation she began to dye her hair blonde and use her new name everywhere. However, during the first few years of her acting career, Marilyn had not gathered a lot of public attention. It took her until the year of 1950 to land a role that would put her on the quick path of becoming incredibly famous. When Monroe landed a role in a John Huston crime drama called The Asphalt Jungle in 1950, she started to gain a lot of attention based primarily on Monroe’s likability and good looks. Due to the large number of audience members she was attracting to her movie releases and her growing number of fans and awards Marilyn was on the fast track to fame at last. Her popularity helped her land roles in movies such as All About Eve (1950), Niagara (1953), and the musical comedy which she had gained a lot of popularity for — Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) in which she starred alongside the famous actress Jane Russell.
The Image of Marilyn
It was during this time period that the public really started to sexualize the image of Marilyn Monroe. Not only was she becoming famous for her hourglass figure and large assets, but she was also becoming popular for her breathy, bedroom voice. Marilyn was objectified and allowed herself to be objectified by the public people. Old Hollywood had found a starlet to gaze upon, and it was clear that Marilyn Monroe was eating up the attention. As Marilyn had begun with her career being centralized around modeling her body and then segued into the acting world in Hollywood, the public had been enabled to put her image first. She was regarded with popularity by many due to how likable she was. She also became popular because of her looks — widely regarded as a “blonde bombshell.”
Marilyn’s Anxiety and Relations
Life was not a piece of cake for Marilyn Monroe during this time in her life, however. She suffered from many anxiety issues that could have stemmed from her mother and her traumatic childhood. Marilyn Monroe suffered pre-performance anxiety in which she would sometimes render herself ill through anxiousness. This caused her many issues with the movies that she signed onto. The anxiousness that acting brought her at times often made her very late to work and had helped to create a very tense and sometimes hateful relationship with Marilyn’s co-stars who had to struggle with dealing with her chronic lateness. Producers and Directors were often frustrated with the starlet’s behavior because of her consistent stage anxiety and fright. This often caused Marilyn Monroe to be signed on and off of many movies as she sometimes could not handle the stress and anxiety that came with doing them.
The anxiety that came with performing contributed to Marilyn Monroe’s depression which she struggled with mostly in the last years of her life. Marilyn Monroe seemed sick and tired of only being considered for light, funny, and blonde roles during this time period in her life. As a result of this, Marilyn traveled to the city to study with a famous acting coach and method teacher, Lee Strasburg. Marilyn Monroe was introduced to Lee Strasburg in the year of 1955. Lee Strasburg’s acting methods centralize around the interactions of human emotion. In his methods, actors use their own emotions to deliver an emotional performance. By doing this, they are able to make their performances seem realistic as well as more believable for the audience. Marilyn went to train with Strasberg so she could be considered as a more serious actress and achieve better roles in a time period of which she was being type-casted into sexualized roles in Hollywood. Marilyn reportedly had a very complicated relationship with Strasburg where she felt attacked.
However, Marylin’s training with Lee Strasburg seemed to truly pay off in the long run. Because of her training, Marilyn was able to land quite a few more serious roles in Hollywood movies. This causes her to rise above a new level of popularity among her fans and the movie-watchers of the United States of America. Monroe still had her moments during this time period, having not showed up for filming during her role in the movie The Prince and the Showgirl of which she made the co-stars uncomfortable due to her erratic behavior. That discomfort shows and causes the movie not to do so well in its release in the United States. She made up for this decline in her popularity in the movie Some Like it Hot featuring the actress when it was released in the year of 1959.
The Decline: Marilyn’s Life after Some Like it Hot (1959)
In the year 1961, the last film that Monroe completed was released. She starred alongside Clark Gable, rumored to be the actress’s father, but the movie bombed in the box office. In 1962 Marilyn was dismissed from the set of Something’s Got to Give for missing multiple days of filming of which she claimed to be sick. This ‘sickness’ may tie into Monroe’s underlying depression at this time and her pre-performance anxiety. Marilyn Monroe’s life was starting to decline, as was her box office success. The last two films that she released both did not do well in the box office — Let’s Make Love (1960) and The Misfits (1961) when she starred with the popular Clark Gable.
Marilyn’s love life was also on the decline since her fame began. This may have also had an effect on the crippling depression that she experienced in the final years of her life. She married baseball player Joe DiMaggio in 1954 and the marriage only lasted a short nine months. Then she went on to wed the playwright Arthur Miller in 1956 and remained married to him until the year of 1961. Both marriages where very affected by Marilyn Monroe’s anxiety and schedule. Meanwhile, just four short months before Marilyn Monroe died, she sang Happy Birthday to the Mr. President of her time — John F. Kennedy and four months after her involvement with John and Bobby Kennedy: she died. Marilyn Monroe’s involvement with all of these men combined with her sexualized image in the eyes of the public made her death a breeding ground for suspicion and speculation.
The Death of Marilyn
Marilyn Monroe died in her Los Angeles home on August 4th, 1962 in the only home she had ever owned. An empty bottle of pills was found next to her bed. The cause of her death was officially listed as a drug overdose. However, there has been speculation for many years that Marilyn Monroe was murdered. The sexualization of her image has resulted in many speculating that one of her many possible sexual partners at the time may have killed the starlet in the prime of her life and fame. Others believe that the overdose was the act of suicide due to Marilyn Monroe’s depression. It is also rumored that Marilyn Monroe was killed by someone connected to the Kennedy brothers, her psychiatric doctor, or one of her many ex-lovers.
The list goes on and the conspiracy theories have no clear end. Marilyn Monroe’s present-day image is overtly sexual and sentimentalized in nature. There is so much more to Marilyn Monroe’s life and personality than her looks. Marilyn is not a “dumb” or “ditzy” blonde. She is rather a very complicated individual with an unfortunate past filled with despair and misguidance. There are so many things that could have happened to Marilyn Monroe in the event of her death. But it seems clear to me that the best way to respect this late Hollywood starlet is to leave it to the facts. Marilyn Monroe died of an overdose which certainly seems like an awful, unfortunate accident.
What do you think happened to Marilyn Monroe? Leave a comment below for everyone to see.
Works/Research Cited:
Margolis, Jay. The Murder of Marilyn Monroe: A Case for Murder. iUniverse, 2011. Print. Barris, George. Marilyn — Her Life in Her Own Words: Marilyn Monroe’s Revealing Last
Words and Photographs. Secausus, NJ: Carol Pub. Group, 1995. Print.
McDonough, Yona Zeldis, ed. All the Available Light: A Marilyn Monroe Reader. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 2002. Print.
Slatzer, Robert F. The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe. New York: Pinnacle
House, 1974. Print.
Spoto, Donald. Marilyn Monroe: The Biography. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. Print. Victor, Adam. The Marilyn Encyclopedia. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1999. Print.
