Marilyn Monroe or Norma Jeane?

Norma Jeane Mortenson died on this date in 1962 at age 36.  She never had a chance at a normal life, but she will be forever young, forever a symbol of female sexuality, and forever a tragedy.  Some may say that is the legacy she would have chosen.  I think she just wanted to be happy.

            I knew a newsman who had once lived in the same neighborhood as Norma Jeane in New York City.  She was well known as Marilyn Monroe by then and was married to play write Arthur Miller.  He crossed paths with her in a small grocery store squeezed in among the brownstone houses.  She was wearing jeans and a sweat shirt, her hair was under a scarf and she had on no make-up.  He said she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.  I believe him.

            Always a child of Hollywood, Norma Jeane was born on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles, California.  Her mother, Gladys, was emotionally unstable and eventually institutionalized.  To say that Norma’s childhood was traumatic would be to give a definition to that term.

Norma’s father is unknown and her baptismal records show that her last name of Mortenson had already been changed to Baker.  Most of her childhood was spent in a series of foster homes and orphanages.  In 1937 she was taken in by friends of her mother’s, Grace and Doc Goddard, who raised her for a few years in their strict, fundamentalist household.  They were paid $25/week by Norma’s mother to raise her daughter.  When the Goddard’s went east for a better job, Norma went back into the system.  She was raped on more than one occasion by foster workers. 

At the age of 16 she found a way out.  She married a merchant marine named Jimmy Daugherty.  It was the middle of World War II.  Jimmy was shipped to the South Pacific and Norma went to work in a munitions factory.  It was there that she was discovered by a photographer.  By the time her husband got back to the states his wife was a successful model, had changed her name to Marilyn Monroe, dyed her rich, brown hair blonde and had her sights set on a movie career.  They divorced in 1946.

Marilyn’s natural beauty and uninhibited joy at being photographed attracted attention.  Her acting ability did not.  But she had pitch perfect comedic timing.  Her best movies (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, Some Like it Hot) show those qualities.  When she made Bus Stop you can see the limits of her acting ability, but also a vulnerability that mirrors her own state of mind. 

Her short-comings are well known.  Marilyn’s insecurities made her chronically late but, as Director Billy Wilder said, “My Aunt Minnie is punctual, but who would pay to see Aunt Minnie?”  She played the cards she was dealt and was probably sexually involved with either John or Robert Kennedy.  Among her prized possessions was an autographed picture of Albert Einstein that reads “To Marilyn, with respect and love and thanks.”  [God only knows what that means, but I wouldn’t have said no to Einstein, either.]

She took her own life with an overdose of sleeping pills.  I am sorry that she never knew who she really was.  Marilyn Monroe was the woman that all woman secretly want to be: sexy, funny, vulnerable but resilient.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t the one thing that all women need to be—comfortable inside their own skin. 

Enjoy your inner goddess and keep the faith.