Biography of a Famous Person

‘Norma Jean Mortenson’. You probably don’t know who this is. But if you hear or read the name ‘Marilyn Monroe’, you know exactly who she is. She is one of the most famous women ever and a model for women all over the world.

Marilyn Monroe was born on the first of August in 1926. She hadn’t an easy childhood.
Her mother, Gladys Baker (originally named as Gladys Pearl Monroe), had relationships with several men. She was also a drug addict and left the nurture of her daughter to her friends Ida and Albert Bolender.
When, after a couple of years, Gladys took Marilyn back and settled in a old hovel, she got a mental breakdown. Because of the mental conditions of her drug using mother, Marilyn was placed in the family of Grace McKee.
She would never had a good band with her mother. Later, in an interview, she said: “To me, she was just that red-haired woman.”

But when the McKee family had to move to the West Coast of America, Marilyn had two choices. The first one was to go to an orphanage, the second was to get married.
She choose the second. So when she was sixteen years old, she married in 1942 her neighbour of twenty-one, called James Dougherty. But after complications, they divorced four years later.

Meanwhile, Marilyn Monroe was asked by a photographer to pose for a couple of photo shoots.  She said yes because she was looking for a job in Hollywood.
Under the name ‘Marilyn Monroe’, she got a contract by a movie company but, apart from one small supporting role which didn’t make the movie, she wasn’t succesfull.
The only thing she was allowed to do was to dine with business partners of the film bosses.

At the end the fifties, Marilyn set up her own movie company and moved to New York. She took professional actor and singing lessons. She also dyed her hair blond.
In New York, she and had some big successes.
Her first big role was in the movie “How to Marry a Millionair”. Her biggest successes were “Gentleman Prefer Blondes” with Jane Russell and “The Seven Year Itch”. This is the movie with the famous white, blowing dress.

While she gained more successes, her mental conditions changed. She used a lot medicines and alcohol. During the filming of her last movie, called “Something’s Got to Give”, she was almost never on the set.
Her mental problems, which she presumably inherited from her mother, got worse.

An finally, on the fifth of August in 1962, she was found dead by her housekeeper. She’d taken an overdose and probably committed suicide.
Marilyn Monroe is buried on the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.