Photo: Milton Wordley/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive / Getty Images
the famous photo of Marilyn Monroelaughing as her skirt bursts from an exploding subway vent, is filmed on September 15, 1954 during the filming of The Seven Year Itch. The scene infuriated her husbandJoe DiMaggio, who felt he was an exhibitionist, and the couple divorced soon after.
Monroe, born Norma Jean Mortensen and also known as Norma Jean Baker, had a tragic childhood. Her mother, a negative cutter at various film studios, was mentally unstable and institutionalized by the time Norma Jean was five years old. Subsequently, the girl lived in a series of foster homes, where she suffered neglect and abuse, and later lived in an orphanage.
At 16, she dropped out of high school and married a 21-year-old aircraft plant worker named Joe Dougherty.
In 1944, her husband was sent overseas with the Army, and Monroe worked as a paint sprayer at a defense plant. A photographer saw her there and she soon became a popular pin-up girl. She began working as a model and divorced her husband two years later.
In 1946, 20th Century Fox signed her for $125 a week, but dropped her after one movie, from which her scenes were cut. Columbia hired her, but also dropped her after one movie. unemployed, posed nude for a calendar for $50; the calendar sold a million copies and grossed $750,000.
Monroe played a series of small movie roles until 1950, when Fox hired her again. This time, she was promoted as a star and began giving her lead roles in the early 1950s.
In 1953, she acted with Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, playing fortune hunter Lorelei Lee. its tremendous sex appeal and her little girl mannerisms they made it enormously popular.
After divorcing baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, Monroe pursued more serious roles and announced that he was starting his own studio. She began studying acting with the famous Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York.
She gave an impressive comedic performance in Bus Stop in 1955. The following year, she married intellectual playwright Arthur Miller. He appeared on the hit Some Like It Hot in 1959.
Monroe made her last film in 1961, The Misfits, which Miller wrote especially for her. She divorced him a week before the film’s release. She tried one more movie, Something’s Got to Give, but she was fired for her frequent illnesses and absences from the set, which many believed to be related to drug addiction.
In August 1962, he died of an overdose of sleeping pills, his death was ruled out as a possible suicide.
Since his death, his popularity and mystique have endured, with numerous biographies published after his death. her ex-husband Joe DiMaggio continued to send her flowers to his grave every week for the rest of his life.
Keep reading: