The future screen goddess was born Norma Jeane Baker in Los Angeles, in 1926. Her mother, Gladys Pearl Monroe Mortensen, was a 25-year-old photo lab technician who would spend much of Marilyn’s childhood in mental institutions. The girl’s father, Martin Edward Mortensen, had deserted Gladys during her pregnancy and filed for divorce, but it hadn’t become official. (He would die in a motorcycle crash in 1929.) Norma Jeane’s gloomy childhood was played out in a succession of foster homes and orphanages. At the age of eight, in one of these temporary setups, she was raped. One of the side effects of the emotional scarring that resulted was a tendency to stutter.
In June of 1942, to avoid being sent to yet another foster home, the 16-year-old Norma Jeane wed 21-year-old James Dougherty, an aircraft factory worker. While Dougherty was serving away from home in the merchant marines, Norma Jeane was employed in a San Fernando Valley defense plant. She began posing for local photographers, typically in eye-catching, form-fitting sweaters. Further modeling work led to photo spreads in national-circulation girlie magazines, which, in turn, brought her to the attention of Twentieth Century-Fox. Outfitted with a new name, Marilyn Monroe, she was signed by the movie studio, and soon divorced Dougherty.
At Fox, Marilyn appeared in Dangerous Years (1947) but then was let go. She moved over to Columbia Pictures and made Ladies of the Chorus (1948). Meanwhile, she dated vocal coach Fred Karger; when he dropped her, she attempted suicide. Johnny Hyde, her agent and new boyfriend, got her small but showy screen roles in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and All About Eve (1950). Next, Hyde (who would die in late 1950) engineered her return to Twentieth Century-Fox.
Monroe developed a talent for ingratiating herself with the correct people. She soon made the formerly indifferent Fox studio interested in promoting her career, and renegotiated her salary to five hundred dollars per week. Also, her 1949 nude calendar photo surfaced, giving her career a surprise boost. Marilyn proved she was more than a bustline with her dramatic work in Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) and Niagara (1953). By How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), Monroe had become the queen of the Fox lot. Her insecurities still led her to displays of temper and tardiness, however. At this stage, she was controlled professionally by her acting coach, Natasha Lytess.
In 1954, Marilyn married Joe DiMaggio, the celebrated 38-year-old baseball player. He had hoped she would abandon her career to become a housewife; instead, he grew frustrated and jealous in his role as “Mr. Monroe.” The celebrity couple soon divorced. Now single, Monroe resisted her studio and, despite a seven-year contract, departed for New York. Amidst much public ridicule, the “dumb blond” studied at the Actors Studio, becoming a disciple of Lee Strasberg’s method acting. Soon, Strasberg’s wife, Paula, took over as her acting coach.
The “new” Marilyn made her debut in Bus Stop (1956) to terrific reviews. Now more in demand than ever, she became increasingly unmanageable and rejected a rash of movie projects, despite a newly revised Fox contract. Meanwhile, her dependency on pills and drink (especially Dom Perignon champagne) was growing acute. In June 1956, in White Plains, New York, Marilyn married the much older playwright Arthur Miller, author of Death of a Salesman. For her own production company, she transferred to England to costar with Laurence Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl (1958). The finished film, however, proved to be a dud with both the critics and the public. The next year, Monroe bounced back with the classic comedy Some Like It Hot.
Unfortunately, her next offering was Let’s Make Love (1960), in which Marilyn and her French costar, Yves Montand, exhibited far more chemistry offscreen than on. The movie flopped. Meanwhile, Arthur Miller was writing a screenplay, The Misfits (1961), as a vehicle for Marilyn. By now, the combined effects of sleeping pills, alcohol, miscarriages, and emotional breakdowns had weighed the actress down. She seemed quite forlorn, much like her Misfits costar Montgomery Clift (who would die of a drug overdose in 1966).
The making of The Misfits (an artsy movie and a commercial disappointment) was a saga in itself. Not long after its completion in November 1960, Clark Gable died of a heart attack. Many people blamed this partially on the effects of Monroe’s “artistic” temperament (although the hot desert filming location and his three-decade smoking habit couldn’t have helped, either). In January 1961, Monroe and Miller divorced. A distraught Marilyn underwent treatment at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in Manhattan.
By 1962, Marilyn had settled into a modest one-story stucco ranch-style bungalow at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood. It was the first home she had ever owned. She lived there alone except for her housekeeper, Mrs. Eunice Murray (who usually went back to her own home each night), and a little white dog named Maf.
Monroe was starting Somethings Got to Give with Dean Martin at Fox. Although physically she was in peak condition, emotionally it was the same sad story as always. Marilyn was frequently absent from the set, claiming illness. During one of these “illnesses,” she turned up in New York to sing “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden. The studio was livid. They were appeased, however, when Marilyn returned to the lot and was more cooperative than usual.
On June 1, Marilyn celebrated her 36th birthday with an on-the-set party. The following Thursday (June 7), she was fired from the picture for “unprofessional antics.” Fox filed a $750,000 lawsuit against her. Later, however, they agreed quietly to have her complete the project once costar Dean Martin had finished his other screen commitments. Meanwhile, Marilyn was contemplating movie and stage offers (including some in Las Vegas), as well as the possibility of a Playboy magazine layout. After short visits to New York City and Mexico City, the actress returned home. (During this period, she supposedly also had an illegal abortion.)
On Saturday, August 4, 1962, Marilyn was home all day. Her only guest was her publicist, Pat Newcomb. (Later reports hinted that Robert F. Kennedy might also have visited her during the afternoon.) About 5:00 P.M. her psychoanalyst, Dr. Ralph R. Greenson, came for their usual therapy session. He suggested that she go for a drive to relax. Instead, Marilyn remained at home and retired to her bedroom around 8:00 P.M., taking the phone from the hall into the room with her.
She made several phone calls that evening. One was to Joe DiMaggio’s son, Joe Jr., in San Francisco to discuss his recent breakup with another girlfriend. She also talked with actor Peter Lawford, who in past years had introduced her to his brothers-in-law, John F. and Robert Kennedy. That call supposedly happened about 6:00 P.M.; its purpose was to cancel a dinner invitation. Marilyn allegedly said to Lawford, “Peter, I don’t think I’m going to make it tonight because I just don’t feel well. . . . Will you say goodbye to Pat [Lawford’s wife] and to Jack and to yourself, because you’re a nice guy?” Supposedly, Lawford became concerned about the “goodbye” portion of her message and wanted to rush over there, but he was advised not to. Since he was the president’s brother-in-law, it could generate adverse publicity for everyone if something really was amiss. Lawford later claimed that he contacted Monroe’s agent and had the person call Monroe’s house. Mrs. Murray answered the 9:30 P.M. call and said that the telephone cord was still in Marilyn’s room, so she must be OK. (Because Monroe had difficulty sleeping—even with sleeping pills—she typically placed the phone outside her room once she went to bed for the night, so she wouldn’t be disturbed by its ringing.) If Marilyn made any other calls on this crucial night, they are unknown; telephone records for the evening of August 4 at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive mysteriously disappeared after being gathered up by authorities from the phone company.
According to the “official” story of Marilyn’s death, just after midnight (later said to be at 3:25 A.M.) on August 6, 1962, Mrs. Murray noticed a light shining from under Marilyn’s bedroom door. When Marilyn didn’t answer her knocking, Murray went outside and peered through the closed window. When she saw Monroe on her bed, looking “peculiar,” she phoned Dr. Greenson. When he arrived, he broke a pane in the French window and opened the door, finding M
onroe on her bed unconscious. Greenson called Marilyn’s personal physician, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, who pronounced Monroe dead. Thereafter, the police were summoned to the home.
When Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant Jack Clemmons arrived, he found several people there, including the two doctors and Mrs. Murray. In Clemmons’s words, “it looked like a convention” and something “wasn’t kosher.”
Clemmons affirmed that he found the movie star lying naked—facedown and cater-cornered—on her bed in the sparsely furnished master bedroom, her outstretched arm apparently reaching for the nearby phone. An empty bottle of sleeping pills was found next to her bed. There were 10 to 14 other bottles on the nightstand, including 1 containing 10 capsules of chloral hydrate (used as a hypnotic). Marilyn’s body was taken to Westwood Village Mortuary and the house itself was sealed and placed under guard. Later, the corpse was transferred to the county morgue, where Los Angeles County Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi conducted the high-profile autopsy. (In his 1983 book, Coroner, Noguchi pleaded naiveté in the case owing to his youth and inexperience; at another time he claimed to have been pressured by his superiors into signing his original autopsy report on Monroe’s death.)
The official investigation attributed Monroe’s death to a lethal overdose of Nembutal and chloral hydrate. It was determined a probable suicide. Joe DiMaggio, who had stayed in touch with Marilyn after their divorce, flew down from San Francisco to supervise the funeral arrangements. At the service, Lee Strasberg delivered the eulogy. Marilyn was buried at Westwood (Village) Memorial Park, where for the next 20 years, red roses were placed in a vase attached to the crypt (courtesy of DiMaggio).
Westwood (Village) Memorial Park
© 2001 by Albert L. Ortega
In her will, Marilyn left a trust fund of $100,000 for her mother, who was institutionalized at the time of her daughter’s death. (Gladys would die at age 83 in March 1984.) Monroe bequeathed another trust fund and a quarter of the residuary estate to her then-psychotherapist, Dr. Marianne Kris. (Dr. Kris would die in 1980, leaving her share of the estate to what became the Anna Freud Center for the Psychoanalytic Study and Treatment of Children, in London.) A large portion of Monroe’s estate went to her acting mentor, Lee Strasberg. When he passed away in 1982, his estate portion went to his then widow, Anna. Because of taxes and other debts that were outstanding at the time of her demise, it was not until seven years after Monroe was gone that her estate was straightened out. Now, through proceeds from her motion pictures and the multimedia merchandising of her image, the Monroe estate earns over $1 million annually, with most of the proceeds going to Anna Strasberg.
A year after her death, Monroe’s studio issued a documentary called Marilyn (1963). It contained footage of her aborted final movie, which Fox later revamped into a Doris Day vehicle, Move Over, Darling (1963).
Despite the wealth of contradictory facts and testimony at the time of Monroe’s death, no charges were ever pressed in the highly controversial matter. During the intervening years, many of the knowledgeable parties have died (Peter Lawford, Los Angeles Police Department Chief William H. Parker, FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover) or been assassinated (John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy), and much evidence has simply vanished. In 1985, under pressure from allegations in new books and TV documentaries, a Los Angeles County grand jury was asked to reexamine Marilyn’s death. The jury’s criminal justice committee, however, recommended against reopening the still-controversial case.
In March 1999, Joe DiMaggio died at the age of 85. In the wake of his death, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ben Cramer published Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life. The 560-page tome recounts in great detail the relationship between the baseball great and the movie star, and how Joe, still obsessed with Marilyn, hoped to remarry her. When her untimely death ended that dream, he pursued a bevy of Monroe look-alikes. Reportedly, not long before he passed away, Joe told his longtime attorney and friend, Morris Engelberg, “I’ll finally get to see Marilyn.”
And so the Monroe myth continues onward.
Elvis Presley
January 8, 1935–August 16, 1977
Even today, decades after Elvis Presley’s well-documented death, there are many fans who refuse to accept that “the King” is truly gone. The phenomenon of “Elvis sightings” is cause more for astonishment than for ridicule. It is just one of many manifestations of global Elvis mania, along with the enshrinement of his Graceland estate, the bestselling status (even now) of his albums and movies, and the mass merchandising of Presley memorabilia. Clearly, the public still deeply misses this beloved singer; no other twentieth-century icon has been revered by so many.
Elvis Aron Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the son of Vernon Elvis Presley, a farm laborer, and Gladys (Smith) Presley, a sewing-machine operator. (A twin brother died at birth.) The exceedingly polite boy was drawn more to singing than to school studies. He first began vocalizing at church, in the Assembly of God camp meetings that his family attended.
For his 12th birthday, Elvis wanted a bicycle. His doting mother couldn’t afford one, however, so she scraped together enough money to buy him a $12.95 guitar. He taught himself to strum it, and soon became fascinated with the blues and country music he heard on the radio. In 1948, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where Vernon was employed at a paint factory and Elvis attended Humes High School. After graduation, Elvis held down a wide range of jobs, including factory worker and truck driver (at $35 a week). At one time, he thought of becoming an electrician.
In 1953, Elvis paid four dollars to record two songs for his mother at the Memphis Recording Service, one of the many stops on his truck route. One of their employees took a shine to the handsome, shy teenager and remarked on his singing ability to her boss, Sam Phillips (who also owned Sun Records). When Phillips finally listened to Elvis, he was very impressed by his innovative mix of African-American blues and Caucasian hillbilly sounds. Phillips persuaded Elvis to do a recording session, and the resulting cuts were popular with teenagers, if not with puzzled disc jockeys. Presley was soon able to quit truck-driving to focus on personal appearances, as well as performing on radio shows like the Grand Ole Opry. Before long, Colonel Tom Parker—a skilled showman and career organizer—took over management of the gyrating young Presley, and soon negotiated an RCA recording contract for his client. Elvis’s first new single, “Heartbreak Hotel,” was an instant hit, leading to his TV debut on a variety show and to Las Vegas nightclub appearances. Allegedly, Elvis first became addicted to drugs during this early-period, especially amphetamines and Benzedrine to provide energy boosts.
Love Me Tender (1956) was Elvis’s first movie; teenagers flocked to see “Elvis the Pelvis.” By the time of King Creole (1958), he was among the top 10 box-office stars in America, earning $250,000 plus 50 percent of Creole’s profits. With a fragment of his earnings, he purchased Graceland, his soon-to-be-extravagant Memphis mansion, and lined its driveways with his assorted Cadillacs. His many publicized romances (including one with movie star Natalie Wood) only added to his growing legend.
In the spring of 1958, Elvis was drafted into the U.S. Army; his salary dropped from more than $100,000 a month to $78. He served most of his two-year enlistment with an armored unit in West Germany. (During this period, his beloved mother died of a heart attack.) To celebrate his release from the service in 1960, Sergeant Presley returned to Hollywood for G. I. Blues (1960). Two of his new recordings, including “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” quickly became gold records.
During the 1960s, Elvis’s movie excursions became assembly-line efforts with simple plots and interchangeable songs. But they continued to earn profits, even as his first fans grew into middle age and new singers (especially the Beatles and other bands of the British Invasion) grabbed for audience attention. Well-known for his extravagant lifestyle and numerous dalliances, Elvis finally married on May 1, 1967. He’d first met 21-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu when he was based in West
Germany; she was the teenage daughter of a U.S. Army major stationed in Frankfurt. Their well-publicized Las Vegas wedding did nothing to diminish his popularity with female fans. On February 1, 1968, their daughter Lisa Marie was born.
By the late 1960s, Elvis’s career had begun to falter badly and his movies’ budgets had been sliced to maintain the profit margin—this ploy only served to reduce audience interest. A comeback TV special (Singer Presents Elvis) in December 1968 managed to spark his professional standing, as did his return to performing in the summer of 1969, in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe. By 1970, Elvis had stopped making feature films (except for occasional career documentaries) and begun a heavy concert-tour schedule. Back in touch with his adoring public, Elvis’s album sales increased and he had several more gold records. In October 1973, he and Priscilla divorced. She said later, “I realized I couldn’t give him the kind of adulation he got from his fans, and he needed that adulation desperately. Without it he was nothing.”
By the mid-1970s, the bloated and physically sagging Elvis had changed considerably from the slim man he’d been two decades ago. His self-indulgent lifestyle and bad temper were legendary, as was the “Memphis Mafia,” the coterie of bodyguards and helpers who surrounded him constantly (and had since 1960). Elvis had an array of health problems, and his acute dependency on prescription drugs would have been more than enough to kill the average person. Several times he nearly overdosed. After each episode, he would attempt to kick the substance habit, but always failed. By now, he weighed nearly 250 pounds and was dying his gray hair black. Nevertheless, his devout fans remained supportive; a one-night engagement in Detroit in late 1975 earned him $816,000. At one point, Presley was considered for the lead (opposite Barbra Streisand) in A Star Is Born (1976), but Kris Kristofferson won the part. Several of his associates in this period reported Presley’s fascination with death, and his ambiguous remarks about not having much longer to live.
The Hollywood Book of Death: The Bizarre, Often Sordid, Passings of More than 125 American Movie and TV Idols Page 39