The Woman the World Wanted, the Little Girl Who Wanted a Mother, and the Sad Ending Behind Hollywood’s Most Famous Smile

There may be no face from old Hollywood more recognizable than Marilyn Monroe. The platinum-blonde hair, the red lips, the white dress, the breathless voice and the smile became symbols recognized around the world. Men desired her, women copied her, photographers fought for her picture, movie studios made fortunes from her image, and decades after her death she remains one of the most famous women ever produced by Hollywood. Yet the image hides something much darker. Before there was Marilyn Monroe, there was Norma Jeane Mortenson, a little girl who never knew with certainty who her father was and whose mother could not provide the stable home she desperately needed. Norma Jeane spent much of her childhood moving through foster homes and an orphanage, never knowing how long she would be allowed to stay anywhere. The woman who would eventually be wanted by millions grew up with one devastating question following her from house to house: Why doesn’t anyone want me enough to keep me?

Marilyn’s story is often reduced to sex, celebrity, famous husbands and conspiracy theories surrounding her death. That misses the most important part. Her life was a struggle between two people inhabiting the same body: the abandoned Norma Jeane who wanted security and love, and Marilyn Monroe, the dazzling creation who learned that if she looked beautiful enough, smiled brightly enough and became famous enough, perhaps the world would finally give her what childhood never had.

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NORMA JEANE AND THE MOTHER SHE COULD NEVER REALLY HAVE

Norma Jeane was born in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926, to Gladys Pearl Baker. Her relationship with her mother would become one of the deepest wounds of her life, but it is important not to turn Gladys into a villain. Gladys suffered serious psychiatric illness and was eventually institutionalized; historical accounts describe a diagnosis of schizophrenia. She was not simply a cold mother who decided she didn’t want her daughter. She was a woman whose illness left her unable to provide the stability and care a child required. Norma Jeane could not understand psychiatric diagnoses or adult explanations. She only understood absence. Other children went home to their mothers. Her mother repeatedly disappeared from hers.

That distinction makes the story even sadder. Norma Jeane could love her mother and still be deeply wounded by her. She could desperately want Gladys to become the mother she needed while slowly discovering that wanting something did not make it possible. Gladys reportedly experienced severe instability, and when Norma Jeane was still young, her mother’s condition deteriorated enough that she was hospitalized. The result was a childhood in which Norma Jeane was repeatedly placed elsewhere. Foster homes, guardians and eventually an orphanage became substitutes for the one place every child should be able to take for granted: home. PBS’s account of her life describes a childhood in which she was repeatedly moved and rarely able to feel that she permanently belonged anywhere.

This was not simply a difficult childhood that disappeared once she became famous. Those early experiences became part of the emotional architecture of the adult Marilyn Monroe. She would spend much of her life searching for safety in husbands, lovers, friends, acting teachers, psychiatrists and audiences. The world eventually gave her attention beyond anything the little girl could have imagined, but attention and love are not the same thing, and being desired is not the same as being safe.

THE CHILDHOOD BEHIND THE SMILE

Norma Jeane’s childhood became even darker. She later spoke about being sexually abused while young, accounts that were dismissed by some people for years but have since been treated far more seriously by biographers and scholars. One PBS documentary recounts Monroe describing an incident of childhood molestation and then telling a foster mother, only to be struck rather than protected. Whether every recollection can be independently reconstructed decades later is impossible, but Monroe repeatedly described childhood sexual abuse, and modern examinations of her life no longer treat those disclosures with the casual disbelief common in her era.

Imagine what that teaches a child. The adults who are supposed to protect you may not protect you. Speaking the truth may make things worse. Your body can attract attention before you are emotionally capable of understanding that attention. Affection, danger, approval and sexuality begin becoming tangled together. Years later Hollywood would discover that Norma Jeane possessed extraordinary physical beauty and would build Marilyn Monroe around it, but long before her beauty became her fortune, being noticed could also make her vulnerable.

One of the cruel ironies of Marilyn’s life is that the physical appearance that eventually allowed her to escape poverty also became another kind of prison. The world became fascinated with her body while the person living inside it spent years trying to convince people there was more to her.

AT SIXTEEN, MARRIAGE BECAME A WAY OUT

By 1942, another disruption was approaching. The family caring for Norma Jeane was relocating and could not simply take her along. At only sixteen, she married James “Jim” Dougherty, who was several years older. The marriage gave her something she had rarely possessed: a home and a degree of stability. It also prevented her from returning to institutional care or another foster placement.

Think about how young sixteen really is. At an age when most teenagers are worrying about school, friendships and what they might do after graduation, Norma Jeane was already trying to create the family security she had never experienced. She became a wife partly because adulthood seemed safer than remaining a displaced child.

World War II soon changed their lives. Dougherty entered wartime service, and Norma Jeane worked at the Radioplane factory in California. There, a photographer documenting women working for the war effort noticed her. The camera loved her almost immediately.

That moment changed everything.

THE CAMERA FOUND SOMETHING IN HER

Norma Jeane began modeling. She discovered that the camera responded to her in an extraordinary way, and modeling offered something factory work never could: money, attention, possibility and escape. She dyed her naturally darker hair blonde, learned how to pose, developed her appearance and began appearing in magazines. In 1946, she signed with 20th Century Fox and adopted the name that would eventually erase Norma Jeane from public view:

Marilyn Monroe.

The transformation didn’t happen overnight. Hollywood was filled with beautiful women. Marilyn had small roles and periods when studios showed little interest. But she kept working. She studied acting. She learned how lighting changed her face. She understood the camera’s angles. She developed the walk, the voice, the expressions and the strange combination of sexuality and innocence that would become uniquely hers.

People later dismissed her as a “dumb blonde,” but the image was carefully constructed. Marilyn understood something sophisticated about performance: sexuality could become less threatening when mixed with vulnerability and humor. She could look like the most desirable woman in the room while somehow appearing unaware of her own effect.

That wasn’t stupidity.

That was acting.

THEN HOLLYWOOD COULD NOT LOOK AWAY

By the early 1950s, supporting roles in films including The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve helped establish her. Then came increasingly prominent pictures such as Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire. Suddenly Marilyn wasn’t merely another actress.

She was becoming Marilyn Monroe.

Her image appeared everywhere. The famous nude photographs she had posed for years earlier when she needed money resurfaced as her career exploded. Rather than destroy her, the controversy arguably strengthened her image because Marilyn handled it with unusual openness. Instead of constructing an elaborate denial, she acknowledged why she had done the photographs: she had needed the money.

The world was beginning to understand something about her.

Marilyn could be vulnerable without disappearing.

But success created another problem. Hollywood increasingly wanted the image while Marilyn increasingly wanted to be respected as an actress.

Those were not necessarily the same goal.

HOLLYWOOD WANTED MARILYN. SHE WANTED TO BECOME SOMETHING MORE.

The studio system saw enormous commercial value in the blonde bombshell. Marilyn, however, became frustrated with weak roles and comparatively poor compensation. She wanted better scripts and serious acting opportunities. Eventually she challenged 20th Century Fox, left Hollywood for New York and established Marilyn Monroe Productions, an unusually assertive move for a female star operating inside the powerful studio system of the 1950s. Her stand eventually helped her secure better contractual terms and greater control over her career. PBS’s recent account describes her as a pioneering star who fought the Hollywood system rather than simply submitting to it.

In New York she studied at the Actors Studio and worked with Lee Strasberg, surrounding herself with people who treated acting as serious artistic work. She wanted desperately to prove she wasn’t merely a body in a tight dress.

That is one of the great misunderstandings about Marilyn Monroe.

She wasn’t satisfied with being Marilyn Monroe.

She wanted to know whether Norma Jeane had something worth hearing too.

JOE DIMAGGIO

In 1954, Marilyn married one of the most famous athletes in America, baseball legend Joe DiMaggio. On paper it looked like a union of American royalty: the baseball hero and Hollywood’s most glamorous woman. But the marriage lasted less than a year.

Their personalities and expectations collided. Marilyn’s career required her sexuality to be displayed publicly. DiMaggio reportedly struggled with that reality, and the famous filming of The Seven Year Itch—when Marilyn stood above a subway grate while her white dress blew upward before photographers and spectators—became a breaking point. PBS’s American Experience recounts that the couple fought afterward and that Monroe later sought divorce citing “mental cruelty”; accounts also describe the conflict becoming physical.

Yet DiMaggio remained an important figure in her life. Their relationship after divorce was complicated, but he later returned to help her during periods of crisis. After her death, it was DiMaggio who arranged her funeral.

Some relationships don’t fit neatly into love story or tragedy.

Sometimes they are both.

ARTHUR MILLER AND THE DREAM OF BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY

Then Marilyn fell in love with playwright Arthur Miller, one of America’s most respected intellectuals. They married in 1956. The pairing fascinated the public: Hollywood’s ultimate sex symbol had married one of America’s great literary minds.

But underneath the publicity was something Marilyn had wanted for years.

Respect.

Depth.

Family.

Perhaps even normality.

She wanted children intensely. But pregnancies ended in devastating losses, including miscarriage, and accounts indicate she experienced multiple pregnancy losses. For a woman whose childhood had been defined by the absence of a stable mother-child relationship, the desire to create her own family carried enormous emotional weight.

She wanted to become what she had desperately needed as a little girl:

a mother who stayed.

She never got that chance.

THE PILLS

By the late 1950s, Marilyn’s emotional and physical problems were increasingly entangled with prescription medication. Hollywood in that era had a dangerous relationship with pills. Stimulants could help performers work. Sedatives could help them sleep. Doctors supplied medications that today would raise serious concerns, and Monroe increasingly relied on barbiturates and other drugs while also drinking alcohol. PBS’s examination of her final years describes extensive use of sedatives and other prescription drugs, while contemporary historical accounts note that she was under psychiatric care and struggled increasingly with depression.

The cycle could become brutal.

Can’t sleep?

Take something.

Can’t wake up?

Take something else.

Anxious?

Take something.

Depressed?

Another prescription.

Need to perform?

Keep going.

Need to shut your mind off afterward?

Take another pill.

And underneath all of it remained the emotional pain medication could temporarily quiet but never resolve.

“SOME LIKE IT HOT”

Despite everything happening behind the scenes, Marilyn produced one of her greatest performances in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, released in 1959. The production itself was famously difficult. Monroe struggled with lateness, remembering lines and repeated takes, placing enormous strain on those around her.

Then audiences saw the finished movie.

She was magnificent.

Funny, vulnerable, seductive and heartbreaking almost simultaneously.

The film became one of the most celebrated comedies in American cinema, and Marilyn demonstrated that underneath the publicity machine was genuine comic ability and screen presence that could not simply be manufactured.

The tragedy is that the better she became at being Marilyn Monroe onscreen, the harder being Marilyn Monroe seemed to become offscreen.

THE MARRIAGE TO MILLER COLLAPSES

By the filming of The Misfits, which Miller wrote, their marriage was falling apart. The production became emotionally and physically exhausting. Marilyn’s dependence on medication and her difficulties working consistently created problems, while the relationship itself had deteriorated.

The marriage ended in divorce in 1961.

Now consider where Marilyn stood.

Her first marriage had ended.

Her marriage to DiMaggio had ended.

Her marriage to Miller had ended.

The children she wanted had never arrived.

Her relationship with her mother had never become the secure mother-daughter bond she needed.

The public still saw one of the most desirable women alive.

But desire does not cure loneliness.

THE MOTHER NEVER COMPLETELY LEFT THE STORY

Gladys remained alive during Marilyn’s rise to fame, but theirs could never become an ordinary relationship. Mental illness had taken something from both of them. Marilyn reportedly supported her mother financially and remained aware of her circumstances, but money could not recreate the childhood they had lost.

That may be one of the saddest truths in Marilyn Monroe’s entire life.

There wasn’t necessarily one final conversation that could fix everything.

There wasn’t a Hollywood ending where Gladys suddenly became well, embraced her daughter and explained away thirty years of pain.

Real life doesn’t always give people that scene.

Marilyn could become rich enough to provide care for her mother.

She could become famous enough that nearly everyone on Earth knew her face.

But she could never go backward and give eight-year-old Norma Jeane the mother she needed.

Some wounds cannot be repaired by success because success happened after the wound was made.

THE STRANGE CONTRADICTION OF MARILYN MONROE

By the beginning of the 1960s, Marilyn had achieved what millions dream about.

She was famous.

Beautiful.

Wealthy.

Desired.

Photographed.

Recognized.

Immortalized before she was even dead.

And still she struggled.

That contradiction matters because people often imagine that one external achievement will finally repair everything inside them.

When I make enough money, I’ll be happy.

When I become successful, I’ll be happy.

When everyone respects me, I’ll be happy.

When somebody loves me, I’ll finally be okay.

Marilyn reached the mountaintop and discovered that the little girl had climbed it with her.

THE FINAL YEAR

In 1962, Marilyn was working on Something’s Got to Give at 20th Century Fox, but production became troubled by illness, absences and conflict with the studio. She was fired, although negotiations and plans surrounding the film continued afterward. In May, she famously appeared at Madison Square Garden and sang “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy, creating one of the most famous celebrity moments of the twentieth century.

Photographs from that night became iconic.

She looked glamorous.

Sensual.

Untouchable.

Less than three months later she would be dead.

That is why photographs can lie without being fake.

A camera captures what someone looked like for a fraction of a second.

It cannot photograph everything happening inside them.

AUGUST 4, 1962

Marilyn spent Saturday, August 4, 1962, at her Brentwood home in Los Angeles. She interacted with people during the day, including her psychiatrist, and made telephone calls. By that evening she had retired to her bedroom.

Sometime during the night, something went terribly wrong.

Her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, eventually became concerned because Marilyn’s bedroom light remained on and the door was locked. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, came to the home, gained entry through a window and found Marilyn unresponsive.

She was dead.

She was 36 years old.

The woman millions of men dreamed about had died alone in her bedroom.

The woman whose telephone could connect her to some of the most powerful people in America was found with a telephone nearby.

The woman who had spent her childhood searching for somewhere she belonged had died inside the first home she had purchased for herself.

It is difficult to write a sadder ending.

HOW DID MARILYN MONROE DIE?

The official investigation determined that Monroe died from acute barbiturate poisoning, and her death was classified as probable suicide. Toxicological evidence showed lethal levels of sedative drugs.

The word “probable” helped fuel decades of speculation.

Conspiracy theories have accused the Kennedys, organized crime, doctors and others of involvement. Stories involving John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy have been repeated endlessly, often mixing documented relationships and contacts with claims for which reliable evidence is much weaker.

The responsible way to tell her story is simple:

There is no established evidence proving Marilyn Monroe was murdered.

Her death was officially ruled probable suicide from a drug overdose. Whether every detail of her final hours can ever be known with absolute certainty is another question, but mystery should not be turned into fact simply because mystery sells books.

Perhaps focusing obsessively on conspiracies also distracts from a tragedy that is already terrible enough.

Marilyn had serious emotional struggles.

She had a long and dangerous relationship with prescription medication.

She had experienced profound childhood instability.

And at thirty-six years old, she died from an overdose of sedatives.

JOE DIMAGGIO CAME BACK ONE LAST TIME

After Marilyn died, Joe DiMaggio took responsibility for arranging her funeral. It was deliberately small and private rather than another Hollywood spectacle. PBS’s account notes that only a small group of friends and family attended and that major Hollywood celebrities were largely absent.

DiMaggio reportedly continued arranging flowers for her crypt for years afterward.

There is something painfully human about that.

The marriage hadn’t worked.

They had hurt each other.

Life had moved on.

But when Marilyn died, he was there.

Sometimes love survives even when the relationship doesn’t.

AND WHAT HAPPENED TO HER MOTHER?

This may be the cruelest epilogue of all.

Marilyn died at thirty-six.

Her mother outlived her.

Gladys lived for more than two decades after Marilyn’s death, dying in 1984.

The daughter spent much of her life longing for a stable mother.

The daughter became one of the most famous women on Earth.

And the mother lived long enough to bury the daughter.

There is no satisfying ending to that.

Only sadness.

THE WORLD REMEMBERED MARILYN AND ALMOST FORGOT NORMA JEANE

After her death, Marilyn Monroe became even larger.

Posters.

Photographs.

Andy Warhol.

Documentaries.

Biographies.

Movies.

Fashion.

Advertisements.

Conspiracy theories.

Her image became merchandise.

The world kept consuming Marilyn long after Marilyn was gone.

But behind that image was Norma Jeane.

That is the woman worth remembering.

A little girl moving between homes.

A teenager who married because she needed somewhere to belong.

A factory worker discovered by a photographer.

A model who transformed herself.

An actress who fought to be taken seriously.

A woman who challenged one of Hollywood’s most powerful studios.

A wife three times over.

A woman who desperately wanted children.

A daughter who never received the relationship with her mother that she needed.

A person who could make millions smile while struggling to find peace herself.

THE SADDEST PART OF MARILYN MONROE’S STORY

The saddest thing about Marilyn Monroe isn’t that she died young.

It isn’t even that she died alone.

It’s that the world gave her almost everything except the thing she had been searching for from the beginning.

Security.

Not applause.

Not sexual desire.

Not photographers screaming her name.

Not men wanting to possess her.

Not studios wanting to profit from her.

Not strangers believing they knew her.

Security.

A place where Norma Jeane could finally believe:

I belong here.

You aren’t sending me away.

You aren’t leaving.

You aren’t using me.

I don’t have to perform for you.

I don’t have to be beautiful today.

I don’t have to be Marilyn Monroe.

You love me anyway.

She spent her childhood without that certainty, and no amount of fame could guarantee it later.

RESTORED LIFE AFTER — THE WOMAN BEHIND THE IMAGE

There is a photograph of Marilyn Monroe for almost every version of her the world wanted to see. Marilyn laughing. Marilyn posing. Marilyn dancing. Marilyn in diamonds. Marilyn in the white dress. Marilyn surrounded by men. Marilyn surrounded by cameras.

But perhaps the image that matters most is one no photographer could take.

A frightened little girl named Norma Jeane wondering when her mother was coming back.

That little girl never completely disappeared.

We do this to famous people constantly. We see the finished image and forget the human being underneath it. We envy the money without seeing the loneliness. We envy the beauty without understanding what it feels like to wonder whether people love you or simply love looking at you. We envy the fame without imagining what happens when millions know your face but very few know your heart.

Marilyn Monroe’s life should not be remembered only as the tragedy of a beautiful movie star who died at thirty-six. It should also be remembered as evidence that external success cannot automatically heal internal wounds.

You can change your name.

Change your hair.

Change your clothes.

Change your address.

Become wealthy.

Become famous.

Have millions of people adore you.

And still carry yesterday into every room you enter.

Restoration requires something deeper than becoming successful enough to outrun your past.

Marilyn spent years creating a woman the entire world would love.

Perhaps the tragedy is that somewhere beneath Marilyn Monroe, Norma Jeane was still waiting to believe she was lovable without becoming anyone else first.

She deserved to be remembered as more than a body, more than a scandal, more than somebody’s lover, and more than the circumstances of her death. She was ambitious, intelligent, vulnerable, funny, complicated and deeply human. She survived a childhood that gave her very little stability and somehow reached the highest level of Hollywood imaginable.

But reaching the top and finding peace are two very different journeys.

Marilyn made the first one.

She never had enough time to finish the second.

RESTORED LIFE AFTER
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