Psst, hey, Marilyn Monroe’s image as a freewheeling sexpot was a carefully constructed lie. The real Marilyn Monroe was a roiling tragedy and her life was an indictment of our society as a whole. She was orphaned after her mother had a schizophrenic breakdown, bounced around between foster homes where she was sexually abused, and married a 21-year-old at 16 to get out of being sent to an orphanage. Hugh Hefner published nude photos of her without her consent that were taken when she was 23 and desperate. She suffered severe anxiety and depression, which she coped with by drinking and using barbiturates, and was already a full-blown addict when she became famous in the mid-50s. Her career was one of exploitation, condescension and alienation, and she killed herself at 36. That Hugh Hefner, a man who was at best an unpleasant footnote in her life, felt entitled to be buried next to her is one more humiliation in a pop cultural landscape we should all be ashamed of.
“Please don’t make me a joke… I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one… I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity..”
- Marilyn Monroe, last taped interview, days before her death
She deserved better than this
Can I just also say, in addition to all this, that I’m still pissed off about the fact that Joe DiMaggio swooped in and gave Marilyn a Christian funeral before her Rabbi could return from a trip overseas? ‘Cause that shit is fucked up.
So many men who claimed to be in love with her, and not one could fucking respect her wishes, even in death.
“I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let people fool themselves. They didn’t bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn’t argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn’t.”” — Marilyn Monroe
Also:
As one of the biggest Ella Fitzgerald fans, she literally helped desegregate her performances. Ella was not allowed to play at Mocambo because of her race.
Ella Fitzgerald: “I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt… she personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status – that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman – a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.” thisisnotmyfairytaleendingg (Source: dmvnessa)
ALSO:
In August 1956, Monroe began filming The Prince and the Showgirl, with Laurence Olivier staring and directing. The production was complicated by conflicts between him and Monroe. He angered her with the patronizing statement “All you have to do is be sexy” and his attempts to get her to replicate Vivien Leigh’s interpretation. She became pregnant and miscarried during the production, which heavily worsened her depression and increased her drug abuse.
A L S O , I will never forget watching a documentary about her once and, speaking about her marriage with Arthur Miller, the narrator said, verbatim: “America’s Brain had married America’s Body”. Like, literally, because he was a famous writer, he was entitled to personhood; she, being an actress, and a beautiful woman, was reduced to being “a body”. I have never been more enraged with her portrayal in the media. If you want to be dismissive of her, literally come for you.
She was also chronically ill her whole life: she suffered from endometriosis with pain so debilitating that a clause was written into her contracts accounting for the days when she would not physically be able to work during her periods.
She was on courses of strong medication, had invasive surgery to try and limit the damage caused, and despite trying for a baby numerous times, suffered many miscarriages because of her condition. The miscarriages especially sent her into deep depression, since she desperately wanted to be a mother.
There is speculation that the condition may have been one of the triggers in her drug dependency as well, because when you have endo, you will take whatever you can to stop. it. hurting.
Marilyn Monroe was smart and strong as hell in a world that saw her as a sexy doll and nothing more.
She deserves better
Marilyn was a founding member of the Hollywood branch of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and had lifelong left-wing political views with a particular emphasis on racial equality. She formed her own independent production company that survived for several years and earned a credit as an executive producer on several films. Additionally, she was not only concerned for workers rights, she acted for them, using her own fame to stop staff being unfairly sacked from several of her films. She was a loyal, kind woman and her early death remains a great tragedy. Worse still, as OP notes, is the co-opting of her image by exactly the sort of people she would have loathed in life.
