Description: Monroe, Marilyn
Header: CompuServe
Monroe, Marilyn
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 Marilyn Monroe, b. Norma Jeane Baker, Los Angeles, June 1, 1926, d. Aug. 5, 1962, after rising from bit parts, became one of the most celebrated film personalities of her time. Hers was the classic show-business tragedy.  Stardom seemed a burden;  being an international sex goddess, even more so.  Her second husband was baseball star Joe DiMaggio.  Following her third marriage, to playwright Arthur Miller, she struggled to understand theories of acting and wanted to star in the classics.  When this effort proved fruitless, she became so difficult to work with that she was virtually unemployable. Yet in the handful of comedies in which she starred her personal ebullience and freshness transcend her limitations: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), The Seven Year Itch (1955), The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), and Some Like It Hot (1959).  She also performed competently in two dramatic roles, Bus Stop (1956) and The Misfits (1961).
Among the many books written about her, Norman Mailer's biography, Marilyn (1973), made headlines in its own right. Miller's play After the Fall (1964) is the playwright's thinly disguised interpretation of their tense, unhappy marriage; Paddy Chayevsky's screenplay The Goddess (1958) is a fictional account of her checkered professional career.  She died from an overdose of sleeping pills, possibly a suicide, at age 36.
Leslie Halliwell

Bibliography: Brown, Peter Harry, and Barham, Patte B.,Marilyn: The Last Take (1992);  Guiles, F. L., Legend (1991); Mailer, N., Marilyn (1983;  repr. 1987);  McCann, G., Marilyn Monroe (1988);  Reise, Randell, and Hitchens, Neal, The Unabridged Marilyn: Her Life from A to Z (1987);  Steinem, Gloria, Marilyn (1986);  Zolotow, M., Marilyn Monroe, rev. ed. (1990).