Immortal, legend, beauty... about which you actually know nothing!
"She was a girl who knew how to be happy even when she was sad. And that is important.” – Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn dedicated the above quote to Sadie Thompson's character in the drama Rain, a character she desperately wanted to play. Maybe she also revealed something about herself, even if she didn't realize it?
Marilyn is an icon, a goddess. But still, everything we heard about her is easy misunderstood, exaggerated or simply untrue. All those quotes that adorn t-shirts, mugs, Facebook... she never said half of them. Was she really a "stupid blonde"? Ah, where. She was very well read, and she also owned a huge book collection. And what about Norma Jean Baker, renamed Marilyn Monroe, you don't know yet? Here's something horribly tragic facts, which marked her life.
6 horribly tragic things you probably don't know about the actress:
Her mother was a mental patient
The reason many people don't know anything about Marilyn Monroe's mother, Gladys Baker, is pretty simple: her managers didn't want anything to go public. When she became a superstar in Hollywood, she was told not to talk about her hospitalized mother because it would cast a bad light on her, and instead to say that her mother was dead.
Norma Jean spent her childhood with different foster families and in orphanages, as Gladys was unable to care for her. When she was 7 years old and living with the Bolenders, Gladys showed up one day to take Norma home. Ida Bolender did not allow this, because she knew that Gladys was not healthy and that she had to protect the girl. But Gladys reacted quite quickly - she dragged Ida into the yard and locked her out of her own home. She then pushed 7-year-old Marilyn into the stroller and dragged her away. The Bolenders got Norma back, but Gladys disappeared for a while.
When she came back again she looked more stable, she bought a house so that her daughter could live with her. Marilyn once said that she cherished the time she had with her mother, but that it sadly ended suddenly and violently. In 1934, Gladys was found on the floor by her best friend Grace McKee. Grace remembers Gladys lying on her back, staring at the stairs and saying: "Someone is coming down the stairs to kill me."
In her memoir, Marilyn recalls being a mother "laughed, screamed", when the police arrived and took her to another psychiatric hospital. They finally did diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and hospitalized her irrevocably at the age of 32. She spent most of her life in the hospital, and Marilyn spent most of her time yearning for the validation of a mother she didn't even recognize.
She never found out who her real father was
It is still unclear who Marilyn Monroe's biological father is. Gladys, as mentioned earlier, was never a mentally stable person and in all likelihood did not know who Norma's real father was. Martin Mortensen (Gladys' ex-husband) is listed on the birth certificate, but they divorced long before Gladys became pregnant.
She once showed Norma a photo of a man identified as Charles Stanley Gifford, and said he was her real father (Gifford's family still denies this). Young Norma Jean thought it was looks like the actor Clark Gable and thus began to fantasize that HE is her real father.
In the 60s of the last century, Marilyn filmed her last completed the movie The Misfits, and her co-star was none other than Clark Gable. After years and years of fantasizing that this was her father, she now had the opportunity to make a movie with him. It was one of the most tumultuous points in Marilyn's life, the production of the film was hellish. It's Marilyn got sick several times and was often late for filming, with which she honestly annoyed the entire film crew. They just finished the film, but it's already 10 days after the shooting Clark Gable suffered a fatal heart attack and died.
His widow stated, that it killed him "eternal waiting". She never named Marilyn, but everyone knew who she was referring to. Marilyn thus not only never found out who her real father was, but blamed herself for the death of the man she had fantasized about as her father since childhood.
Her legendary scene ended in a real nightmare
We all know him. A classic shot of the beautiful Marilyn standing over a grate, a sudden gust of air lifting her white dress. She looks perfect. She looks happy. But no one imagined what it would cost her.
Scene for the movie Seven years of scraps were filmed in New York, where the whole thing was watched by around 5,000 enthusiastic curious people. One of them was Marilyn's husband at the time, baseball player Joe DiMaggio. But he himself was not at all impressed. As a staunch Catholic, he watched the filming furiously, and he was especially angered when the powerful spotlights shined through the pair of panties Marilyn was wearing.
After filming, they went to the hotel, where an intense fight took place, which attracted the attention of the hotel guests. The next day is Marilyn came to the shoot with bruises on her shoulders and back. They covered them in a mask.
Less than a month later, Marilyn filed for divorce. And the work of cruel fate? The scene that so angered DiMaggio could not be used in the film due to the crowd being too noisy. It was reshot in Los Angeles.
“Marilyn Monroe” was a convincing performance
Despite all the smiling photos, Marilyn was herself a very sad person. Which, come to think of it, makes sense. The most desirable woman in the world, who herself never found happiness in a man's embrace. Incredibly famous, but her mother didn't know who she was. She desperately wanted a family, but was never able to bear a child. But in that era, when no one knew about social media and reality shows, the public had no idea what Marilyn was struggling with inside. Her task was to to present the world with a happy, sexy starlet.
She herself thought that "Marilyn Monroe" was another person. Truman Capote, a good friend of hers, recalled a lunch with Marilyn where she disappeared into the bathroom and stayed there for so long that he went looking for her worriedly. He found her staring at the mirror, but when he asked her what she was doing, she replied: "I'm looking at her."
An actress Susan Strasberg she remembered the moment when she and Marilyn were walking the streets of New York. Most of the day no one bothered them, no one noticed the sexy blonde, which Susan thought was odd. At one point, Marilyn turned to Susan and said: "You want to see me become her?" Susan then said: "She obviously made some internal changes, something in her 'switched on', and suddenly she became her - not just the girl I used to go out with, but 'Marilyn Monroe.' Now she was noticed. Now we were besieged."
One of the most heartbreaking things about Marilyn Monroe was said by the director of the movie Seven Years of Crumbs, Billy Wilder: "Her marriages never worked out because Joe DiMaggio found out she was Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller found out she wasn't."
Her suicide makes no sense.
We all know that for a long time it was rumored that Marilyn's death was not suicide, but murder. What really happened we may never know. But here it is some quirks which arise around the death of the famous blonde.
- She spoke to Joe DiMaggio Jr. in the hours before her death, who said she could be heard "cheerful and optimistic".
- She was found by her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, who told a different story each time. She changed the timeline of the night Marilyn died several times, and at 4:00 a.m. when the police arrived, she was washing the bedclothes.
- Despite the 40 pills in her stomach, the police noticed that on the coffee table there is no water glass next to the tablets. It was known that Marilyn could not swallow pills, even with water. The jar was later discovered on the floor next to the bed. Police say he was not there when they arrived.
- The pathologist who performed the first autopsy wanted additional tests, especially how the pills got into the system. When he asked for her organs, the toxicologist told him they had already been destroyed. The pathologist then asked for slides of her organs and photographs that showed unexplained bruises on her body, but all of this, according to those responsible, "disappeared".
Her death shook the world
The death of Marilyn Monroe filled the front pages of newspapers around the world. People simply they could not believe that such a beautiful, successful and (seemingly) happy woman would commit suicide.
The New York Times reported that the number of suicides in the week after her death reached a record - 12 in one day, and only in New York. A farewell letter from one person who committed suicide in the days after Marilyn's death wrote: "If the most wonderful, beautiful thing in the world has no reason to live, then neither do I."
Marlon Brando observed that in the days following her death, Hollywood became slow and sad. "Everyone stopped working and everyone had the same expression on their face, they had the same thought: 'How could a successful, famous, young, beautiful girl with money, kill herself?' No one understood that these are not the things that everyone in the world wants. And that's why they couldn't believe that Marilyn's life didn't matter.”
After the divorce, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn remained friends. Marilyn is said to have asked her friend that if she died before him, he carries flowers to the grave. DiMaggio stuck to the deal, and so it is until his death in 1999 three times a week he arranged for Marilyn to get roses on her grave. His last words were: "I'm finally going to see Marilyn."
