1 June, 1926, Marilyn Monroe was born...
Norma Jeane Mortensen, better known as Marilyn Monroe was born on 1st June, 1926. The Hollywood star and sex symbol is a household name throughout the world, but what do we really know about her? Here are five things that I didn’t know about her, I wonder if you did?
1. She worked in a munitions factory during WWII…
In 1943, her then husband, Jim Dougherty, enlisted in the Merchant Marines and around that time Monroe began working at the Radioplane Munitions Factory, spraying aeroplane parts and testing parachutes. It was here that she was photographed for Yank magazine in order to boost morale for the war effort, although it’s thought that the photos were never used. The photographer, David Conover, was sent to visit the factory, by the future president Ronald Reagan, where he spotted Monroe. He suggested that she should join The Blue Book Modelling Agency. She was told that they were looking for blonde models, so she bleached her hair and became one of their most successful models.
2. She thought Clark Gable was her father…
Throughout her life, Monroe didn’t know her father and was only shown a picture of him by her mother. Although, her birth certificate states Edward Mortensen as her father, it is believed that it was actually Charles Stanley Gifford. It’s said that her mother Gladys Baker, nee Monroe put her estranged husband down as the father to hide the illegitimacy of Monroe’s birth. Monroe thought that this photo of Gifford resembled Clark Gable, so as a child she enjoyed pretending that her father actually was Clark Gable.
5. She attended the University of California…
The image of a blonde airhead wasn’t always subjected to Marilyn Monroe, but she did seem to have a naivety that overshadowed her intelligence. As director, Joshua Logan, observed in his autobiography Movie Stars, Real People and Me, “…she struck me as being a much brighter person than I had ever imagined…” She enrolled at the University of California in 1951 whilst still having minor roles in some mildly successful films. She went on to appear on the front cover of Look magazine in her Georgia Tech sweater, celebrating the enrolment of females to the main campus.
The Hollywood icon of Marilyn Monroe is an exploited symbol of the Golden Era and she has been written about, sung about and consistently theorised over during her life and ever since. However, from taking a brief look at the life of Norma Jeane it is clear that behind the superstar’s face is a very complicated story.
by Russell Farnham
3. She had work done on her face…
Marilyn Monroe has a beauty that seems so effortlessly natural, so I was interested to read that she had work done on her smile and her nose. During her short period at Columbia Pictures in 1948, Harry Cohn, the studio head, helped Monroe ‘soften’ her look by correcting an overbite that she had. A couple of years later, she joined 20th Century Fox on a seven-year contract where Johnny Hyde arranged for a tiny piece of cartilage to be removed to alter her ‘bulbous’ nose, changing her look somewhat in films after 1950.
4. Was once stuffed into a military bag…
Marilyn Monroe’s mother suffered from mental issues and was financial unable to look after Monroe, so at a young age she was given to foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender of Hawthorne, California where she lived until she was seven. During that time, Gladys paid the Bolender’s a visit wanting Monroe to be returned to her, Ida refused and chaos ensued. It was said that Gladys made her way into the home and carried Monroe out in Albert’s military bag in an attempt to take her away. Ida stopped her and Monroe was left wailing on the lawn.
