MONROE, MARILYN

MONROE, MARILYN (1926–1962), U.S. actress. Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortensen in Los Angeles, California, to mechanic Edward Mortensen and RKO film technician Gladys Monroe. Her father abandoned the family before her birth, her mother was frequently institutionalized because of paranoid schizophrenia, and Monroe was raised in a series of foster homes. After a failed youthful marriage to James Dougherty and a few modeling jobs she changed her name to Marilyn Monroe. Contracts with Columbia and Fox resulted in small parts in John Huston's Asphalt Jungle (1950), All About Eve (1950), Let's Make It Legal (1951), Niagara (1952), and Monkey Business (1952). In 1953, she appeared nude in the first issue of Playboy, certifying her role as the All-American sex symbol. In 1954, she married baseball player Joe DiMaggio; however, the stormy marriage was brief and the couple divorced the same year. After making Billy Wilder's Seven Year Itch (1954) she broke her contract with Fox and moved to New York City to study with lee and paula strasberg at the Actors Studio. Introduced to playwright arthur miller by Elia kazan , she converted to Judaism in a ceremony officiated by Rabbi Robert Goldberg two days after they married. She went on to appear in a string of successful films, including Bus Stop (1956), Some Like It Hot (1959), and Let's Make Love (1960). In 1961, she starred in The Misfits, which featured a script written   by Arthur Miller. The Huston film was a difficult shoot, and was followed by the death of star Clark Gable 12 days after it was completed. Monroe divorced Miller in 1961, and entered a New York psychiatric clinic later that year. She returned to Fox in 1962 to finish her part in the film Something's Got to Give, but was found dead in her Brentwood, California, home on Aug. 5; an autopsy found a lethal dose of barbiturates. (Adam Wills (2nd ed.)