Marilyn Monroe AKA Norma Jean, enough can?t be said about her and the turbulent life she lived. I guess everyone remembers her from the movies like ?The seven year itch? and ?Gentlemen prefer blondes? which launched her as a sex symbol.
Her mother used to work as a film cutter at RKO studios. Her mother was in and out of hospitals for treatment with mental illnesses. When she was nine and moved into an orphanage two blocks from RKO. She watched its bright lights. ?My mother used to work there.? I?d say to myself, ?Someday I?d like to be a star there?.
She spent the majority of her childhood in foster homes. The book starts with the news that Marilyn had left her husband baseball star Joe DiMaggio. She refuses to be interviewed. George Carposi finds a way to meet and speak to her, it seems she liked to take walks in woods. He called her publicist and Marilyn agreed for a walk in central park.
The book goes through her whole life her childhood her modeling stint, her infamous picture on a nude calendar, her films while going back and forth to the interview in the park. It?s amazing the life she lived, the dreams she had, and the kind of person she was. She was anything but simple.
The famous nude photo of her originally appeared as Anonymous on a calendar entitled ’’Miss Golden Dreams.’’ In 1952, a blackmailer threatened to identify the model as Marilyn, but she shrewdly thwarted the scheme by announcing the fact herself. She wanted to shed the image of a sex symbol; she wanted to be appreciated as a real actress.
She led a turbulent life; she was married and divorced four times. Her first marriage was at the age of sixteen 16. She died of a sedative overdose, it?s said that when she died Joe DiMaggio did the funeral arrangements. And for years there after put fresh roses on her memorial site. She did 30 films, she was on the cover of the first ever Playboy, has been voted the 4th greatest movie star of all time.
I put here a passage I loved from the book. ?With all of us throughout a decade of our lives, Marilyn has lived in the intimacy of our imaginations. We?ve joked about her, we?ve journeyed with her we?ve laughed at her and envied her and the quality of her innocence. Now that she?s dead each one of us feels a little more alone?