Marilyn Monroe

 

Marilyn Monroe is one of the iconic film stars of the 20th century, a Hollywood star whose life was full of sex, lies and scandal. For many years she was considered the most beautiful woman in America, her blonde hair, red lips and curvaceous figure representing the 1950s ideal of womanhood. However, despite her huge success as a movie star, and the fact that she was seen as one of the most desirable women of the age, her life was full of sadness, and throughout her career she suffered a series of mental breakdowns. Her eventual suicide may have simply been the inevitable outcome of this mental instability, but many believed that there was more to the story. There were rumours that she was sexually involved with the president of the USA, John F. Kennedy, or possibly the president’s brother, Robert Kennedy, and that she was murdered in an effort to try to hush up the enormous scandal that would have ensued if the affair had become known to the public. However, these were never investigated, so today her death remains something of a mystery.

 

Foster homes

 

Norma Jeane Mortenson was born on 1 June 1 1926, in the charity ward of Los Angeles County Hospital. Right from the start her prospects did not look good. Her mother, Gladys Pearl Monroe, had married twice, divorcing her second husband, Martin Edward Mortenson, a man from a Norwegian background, after only six months. Mortenson played no role in baby Norma Jeane’s life, and it was thought by some – including Marilyn herself when she was older – that her real father was in fact one Charles Stanley Gifford, a man that her mother had met while working at RKO pictures as a film cutter.

After the departure of Mortenson, Gladys could not care for her child, so the girl was sent to live with foster parents, where she remained until the age of seven. After that, she went to live with her mother, but it was then that Gladys suffered a serious mental breakdown and was sent to a mental hospital. Norma Jeane moved in with a family friend, Grace McKee, but this did not last and soon she was shuttling between foster homes, since no one wanted to take care of her.

Finally, McKee managed to persuade a young man, James Dougherty, to marry the teenager so that she would at least have a home. The couple moved in to his parents’ home, and Norma Jeane began employment spraying aeroplanes in a factory, where she was discovered by a photographer who arranged for her to be signed up by a modelling agency.

 

Movie career

 

After screen testing for Twentieth Century Fox, Norma Jeane landed a contract and began to make movies under the name of Marilyn Monroe. Little by little, she began to build her movie career, and by the early 1950s had begun to make a considerable name for herself. At this point, some nude photographs of her were picked up and published in Playboy. She had posed for these when she was poor and unknown. To the studio’s horror, she faced down the scandal by admitting that it was her in the pictures – even joking that all she had had on during the photo shoot was ‘the radio’. It was this honesty and lack of hypocrisy that earned her many admirers, and she went on to become the major sex siren of her day, with a ready wit that recalled Mae West. (For example, when asked what she wore in bed, she wittily replied, ‘Chanel Number 5’.) She also went on to make some of the classic films of all time, such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like it Hot. Yet despite the fact that she had a cracking sense of humour and had proved herself to be a talented actress and comedienne, the film studios she worked for preferred to present her as a ‘dumb blonde’.

By the early 1960s, Monroe’s erratic behaviour on set – turning up late and failing to learn her lines – was beginning to put studios off hiring her. Eventually, she was dropped by all the major studios and from then on, often expressed her bitterness about the way she had been treated in Hollywood. However, despite the fact that the studios no longer wanted to employ her, she still had many opportunities and admirers in the business, so it came as a shock – both to the industry and to the public – when on 5 August 1962, she was found dead in her home.

 

Public scandals

 

Many speculated on the reasons behind her apparent suicide. Monroe’s personal relationships had been very unstable throughout her career, and there had been constant rumours and scandals about her love life. She had divorced her first husband soon after her film career took off and in 1954 married baseball player Joe DiMaggio. However, he became jealous of her and was particularly angry when the crowd yelled their approval as her skirt blew up in The Seven Year Itch. They openly fought in public and later Monroe was seen to have bruises on her arms. Less than a year into the marriage the couple split, Monroe filing for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty.

Monroe’s second marriage was to the popular American playwright Arthur Miller. The intellectual Miller could not have been a more different man from DiMaggio and the couple at first seemed happy, until Monroe suffered two miscarriages. This was enough to tip her into mental illness once more, and before long this marriage was over, too. Added to this her movie career was now failing. Monroe went to live alone in Brentwood, Los Angeles, where she descended deeper into depression, until on 5 August 1962 she was found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills.

 

Suspicious circumstances

 

Given her history of mental illness and that of her mother, as well as other members of her family, most people believed that she had committed suicide. After all, she had made numerous suicide attempts over the years, and for many years her behaviour had been extremely erratic. The coroner recorded the case as ‘probable suicide’ and she was buried at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. However, rumours soon began to circulate that the death was not a suicide and that she had possibly been murdered. There were anomalies in the coroner’s report and some aspects of the scene of the crime did not make sense. For example, there was no glass of water near where Monroe’s body was found, so how could she have downed an overdose of sleeping tablets? Also, in death, her body looked as though it had been positioned in a certain way; it was not like the usual posture of suicide victims.

Then there were the circumstances surrounding the case. It gradually came out that on the last evening of her life, Monroe had made a number of phone calls, including one to the actor Peter Lawford, who was a close friend of the Kennedys. It was also rumoured that Robert Kennedy, brother of President John Kennedy, had been seen driving away from the house that night. This caused speculation that Monroe might have been having an affair with the president.

 

A huge scandal

 

The theory was that the president had been worried about Monroe’s threats to go public over the affair, and might have had her killed to save a huge scandal, and the end of his political career. Thus – so the theory went – he asked his brother Robert to perform the murder. Additionally, there was speculation that Robert Kennedy, too, might have been having an affair with Monroe. There was also a theory that Monroe was killed by a hitman employed by mafia man Sam Giancana, and that JFK had ordered the killing, or that Giancana himself had been having an affair with Monroe. However, it was not clear, if this was the case, what his motive would have been.

Whatever the truth of the matter, no hard evidence was uncovered that would back up any of these theories. Since that time, there have been many books published on the matter, the most persuasive of which have suggested that Monroe killed herself by accident. It seems that Monroe may have asked her housekeeper to give her an enema containing her medicines, which would explain the lack of a glass of water by the bedside. That would mean that instead of trying to kill herself, she muddled up her tablets, causing the overdose. It is possible that Monroe might have been having an affair with the president, and that knowing this link, whoever found her might have panicked, moving the body around at the scene of the death and delaying calling an ambulance.

The current line of thinking is that, instead of being a murder, Monroe’s death was more of a scandal, involving sex, drugs and people in high places. Perhaps the reason that not more was made of it at the time was that, at the heart of the scandal, was a very sad story, about a woman who, despite her success and fame had suffered great unhappiness throughout her life. She was undoubtedly a woman who was held up as an icon of feminine sexuality, but whose talent was never recognised, or so she felt. She was a woman who was adored as a movie star by millions, but who did not feel loved by those closest to her. For, from the outset of her career, Monroe’s story was one of sex, lies and scandals; but at the end, at the heart of it, a tale of tragedy.