Father
: unknown to Marilyn. Gladys pretended it was Stan
Gifford. He refused to speak to Marilyn when she tried to meet him.
Siblings
(born from Gladys' marriage to Jasper Baker) : Jackie and Berneice.
Jasper took the children away from Gladys when Berneice was still a baby.
When Marilyn was born, Gladys declared she was her third child but that
the other two were dead. Jackie died in 1933 at the age of 15, after Jasper
refused to have him cured at the hospital. Norma Jeane and Berneice first
heard of eachother when they were respectivly 12 and 19 years old.
Childhood
: because of her mental instability, Gladys had to entrust her
daughter to foster homes.
Norma Jeane consequently grew up in various
foster homes (she spent the first 7 years of her life with the
Bolenders). In 1934, after spending a few months with her mother, who
was finally confined into a mental institution because of her mental illness
(schizophreny), she moved in with Grace McKee
(one of Gladys' good friends). In 1935, as Grace was to marry, she had
to leave Norma Jeane to the orphanage, from September 1935 to June 1937,
when she finally went back to live with Grace's family, the Goddards.
Grace kept telling her she would become a beautiful woman and a wonderful
actress, which made Norma Jeane hope for a better future. Unfortunately,
Grace's husband was transferred to the East Coast in 1942. Because of
the expenses related to a 16 years old teenager they couldn't afford,
the couple had to take a decision for Norma Jeane : either put her back
to the orphanage or marry her to someone. On June 19, 1942 she finally wed her
21-year-old neighbor James
E. Dougherty, whom she had been dating for six months.
From
Norma Jeane to Marilyn :Jimmy
joined the Merchant Marines and was sent to the South Pacific in 1944
: Norma Jeane decided to join the assembly line at the Radio Plane Munitions
factory.During the 1944 fall, she met David
Coroner, a photographer taking pictures of women who were contributing
to the war effort. He immediatly saw Norma Jeane's potential and sent
her to the Blue Book Agency in 1945. In November of that same year, Andre
De Dienes met her and took her first pictures on the beach.
In 1946, because of pressures, Norma Jeane started to change things in
her life : first, she dyed her hair to blonde
shades. Second, she asked for a divorce
on May 14th 1946. That same year, she signed
her first contract with the Fox Studios, and was paid 75$ a week.
Finally, on August 24th 1946, Norma Jeane Dougherty
became Marilyn Monroe.
Fame
: things started to work out for Marilyn, small parts slowly
became first parts in her movies. When she met Joe
DiMaggio, they became the most popular couple of the United States.
The two American idols got married on January
14th of 1954 in San Francisco and divorced nine months later, for "career
conflicts". The fact was Joe DiMaggio was very protective of his
wife and hated seeing her treated as a sexual object by the public.
At the end of 1954, the bad critics for "There's no Business like Show
Business" helped her take the decision to leave L.A. for New York in secret,
with Milton Greene's help. A few weeks later, on January
1, 1955, they both publicly announced the creation of the Marilyn Monroe
Productions, which was a way for Marilyn to choose her movies,
parts, directors, etc... and get more control on her career. At the same
time, as a part of her efforts to become what she called a "real actress",
she joined Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio
and moved all her fellow students singing "I'll get by".
By the same time, she was also seeing playwright
Arthur Miller who was waiting for his divorce to marry her. They
finally married on June 29th 1956.
Children
: from what we know, Marilyn had two miscarriages during her
common life with Arthur Miller, but never had children. It was probably
the hardest thing she had to deal with, since she wanted and needed children
so badly. Rumours are that in her last days, she was looking for a child
to adopt in Mexico.
Death
: Marilyn died mysteriously in her
bedroom on August 5th, 1962. The coroner declared the probable
cause of death was suicide by poisoning but many elements tend to leed
to other suggestions, more likely to have happened : accident or even
maybe murder. Will we ever know the truth ?