18 Fascinating Facts About Marilyn Monroe
There is no denying that Marilyn Monroe is a legend. She is a sex symbol from times past who is still revered today. She was a fascinating, intriguing, and very very complicated woman. She didn’t come from the greatest of backgrounds, so it is amazing to know that she rose to such fame. I decided to write this article to share some interesting facts about her for these reasons.
All the facts were jotted down while reading Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe by Fred Lawrence Guiles. The numbers in parantheses are the page numbers on where the information can be found.
****Please note that we are assuming that the author of the biography was correct with their research. ****
I hope that you enjoy reading these facts as much as I enjoyed learning about this complex woman. If you are a fan of Marilyn, you probably already are well aware of the first one, but as a person new to her life story, I was surprised by it.
1. Her birth name was Norma Jean Mortenson.
2. Her father was absent throughout her life.
3. Her grandmother was committed to a hospital for mental disturbances on August 4, 1927. Marilyn died thirty-five years later, plus one day, on August 5th. (29)
Fears of going mad like her grandmother and mother would haunt her throughout her life.
4. She stuttered on occasion throughout her life. (43)
5. She was sent to an orphanage when she was nine years old. (44–46)
The reason she was sent to an orphanage was because her mother was hospitalized for mental issues. The issues were so debilitating for her mother that it caused her mother to spend most of the rest of her life inside some kind of mental institution.
6. Was married to her first husband, Jim Dougherty, when she was only sixteen years old. They would stay married for four years. (65)
7. How the stage name Marilyn Monroe was created. (100)
The stage name, Marilyn Monroe, was created with the help of Ben Lyon, the head of new talent at Fox Studios. The name Marilyn was chosen because he said to her, “You are to me a Marilyn,” which was based off a woman, Marilyn Miller, he knew who starred in musicals in New York. She then asked if she could use her grandmother’s last name, Monroe. And that is how Marilyn Monroe came into being.
8. She had minor plastic surgery done.
She had a small nose job done in 1950, a surgery that left her nose “lifted a notch,” and “some cartilage was placed in her jaw to make her chin line stronger.” (167)
9. She attempted suicide for the first time (known first attempt) after Johnny Hyde died in December 1950. (170)
Johnny Hyde was a super agent who she was seeing romantically and who was also her agent. She credited him throughout her life with building her career and jumpstarting her path to fame.
Hyde loved Marilyn so much that he wanted to marry her after he had a heart attack so that when he died she would be covered financially. She declined because she wasn’t “in love” with him. (150)
10. She was notorious for always being late.
11. Would often have her own special shooting schedule on many films. (315)
Once she became successful, her behavior became very erratic for when she would show up to work. She often would cause everyone else to wait around for her. The directors she worked with never knew when, or even if, she would show up, so they would shoot around her. One of the main reasons for her always being late was because of her emotional states.
12. She became pregnant when she was married to Arthur Miller, and lost the baby six weeks into the pregnancy because it was a tube pregnancy. (327)
13. Attempted suicide again in the months after the lost pregnancy. (333)
Arthur Miller found her after she had taken too many barbiturates. He called a doctor, who promptly came and pumped out her stomach.
It was stated that Miller would end up saving her from suicide three times. (438)
14. She became pregnant with Miller’s child again and lost that baby too. She was pregnant with that baby during the filming of Some Like It Hot. (344 & 353)
15. Tony Curtis’s famous line, “It was like kissing Hitler,” was spoken because of how difficult it was working with Marilyn on Some Like It Hot (344)
She would want to do twenty to thirty takes of the same scene, and it often caused her co-stars performance to suffer as a result.
16. According to the biography listed at the top of this article, she did have affairs with the Kennedy brothers.
This has been a highly debated topic for years. Some say it is isn’t true, others say it is. This biography is in the “it did happen” camp. People’s definition of an “affair” are different also. My take is that any extramarital sexual activity for someone who is married is an affair, and both Kennedy brothers were married, hence the use of the word “affair” above.
17. Was fired from the last movie she ever worked on, Something’s Got to Give, because of her erratic behavior. (428)
18. She had a strong desire to be taken as a more serious actress. She worked with acting coaches throughout her career to improve her craft.
Marilyn Monroe is a legend in today’s time primarily because of her status as a sex symbol. It is easy to look at pictures of her and admire her for her looks, but it simplifies a woman who was a very complicated person, and who was also a talented actress — her work in Some Like It Hot is brilliant to me.
I hope you enjoyed these facts about Marilyn Monroe that were acquired while reading the biography Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe by Fred Lawrence Guiles. . She was a fascinating person whose fame still endures today.
As an added bonus, here are some small snippets of her amazing work.
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Hope you enjoy some awesome Marilyn Monroe scenes.
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