Marilyn Monroe defined the word Sexy in the fifties and early sixties. People admired her, looked up to her, and wanted to be her. Although her life was cut short at such an early age in her life at 36 and with it her acting career, it's also the most studied and analyzed Hollywood history and she still has an image in today's world. Not only will she live on in her movies and songs, but also through her image as "America's First Sex Symbol." (marilynmonroe.com).
When you think of the period of the fifties, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Maybe Elvis Presley or James Dean? Well for me, I think of Marilyn Monroe. She was born June 1, 1926 as Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles. For most of her childhood and teenage years she was in foster homes or an orphanage because her father abandoned her, while her mother, Gladys Monroe Baker, had to work and then was in a mental hospital. At the age of sixteen she started working at a target airplane factory during the war. While a photographer was there taking pictures of women helping out the war effort, he was impressed by Norma Jeane and suggested she apply for a modeling position as the Blue Book model agency and soon after that took up acting. From 1946 - 1962 she was in thirty-one movies, over 100 magazine covers (including the very first issue of Playboy Magazine), three marriages, and numerous scandals, one even involving the then President John F. Kennedy. Then in 1961, soon after her divorce to playwright Arthur Miller, she was briefly hospitalized in a mental clinic and started taking drugs for her various problems. On August 5, 1962, Monroe was found dead of an overdose of barbiturates in her home in Los Angeles. And even though it was reported that she died of an overdose, things still seem to be missing. Her death is, and will always be, a mystery. Some evidence suggestions spread widely from it being connected to the reported affairs with the Kennedy's to it being her psychiatrist Ralph Greenson.
