Next year marks the 50^th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death, but the pop culture machine is already ramping up to review her life and recast her career. Recently, the famous white dress from The Seven Year Itch—a signifier of her star image as Hollywood’s premiere sex symbol—sold for $5.6 million. Next month, a retrospective of her films is playing at BAM, the performing arts center in New York City. Two narrative films featuring Monroe as a character are scheduled for release: My Week with Marilyn (2011), starring Michelle Williams as MM, focuses on the tumultuous production of The Prince and the Showgirl in which an unsympathetic Laurence Olivier attempted to direct a neurotic Monroe; Blonde (in development for 2012), with Naomi Watts as MM, is another adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s imaginary Monroe memoir.

While I welcome renewed attention to her film career, especially a reevaluation of her movies and her importance to film history, I am bracing myself for the inevitable onslaught of merchandising and exploitation. Earlier this year, the rights to her image were sold for $50 million to Jamie Salter of Authentic Brands Group, which partnered with the media company NECA to acquire the Marilyn Monroe estate. Salter envisioned producing new films starring the real MM through the magic of CGI. He babbled to the New York Post: “These celebrities don’t talk back. They don’t go out on the town late. They are ready to film every day.” (I am guessing that “these celebrities” refers to dead movie stars.) Salter continued, “We’re not really interested in the trinkets and trash. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good business—calendars, posters, and shot glasses—but that’s not what we want to do with Marilyn Monroe.” Yikes.

MY BOOK ON MM

Before this landmark anniversary gets too close, and before the stores are swimming in Marilyn merchandizing, I thought I would offer some facts and observations on Marilyn Monroe’s life and career that I find intriguing and thought-provoking. The market is so flooded with MM bios, trivia books, and photo collections that the information can be overwhelming, contradictory, and more focused on the phenomenon than the person. But, a long time ago, I wrote a career biography of Monroe, which concentrated on her impact on the film industry and analyzed the significance of her film roles. In the process, I discovered much about her life and career that had often been recounted but rarely placed in context.

To prevent this post from becoming a small tome, I will divide my commentary into three parts to be posted over three weeks, covering her life, her movies, and the post-death phenomenon. Today, I will offer some facts and information on her life and career. Fans will likely know much of this information, but I hope to present it in a new light to provoke fresh thought on an established icon.

1. Born and raised in a company town. MM was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles, and her life danced around the fringes of the film industry long before she courted a studio contract. Her mother, Gladys Baker, who named her third child after silent film star Norma Talmadge, worked as a film cutter at Consolidated Film Industries, a processing lab for the Hollywood studios, at the time of MM’s birth. Later, she worked briefly as a cutter for Columbia Pictures. During this time, Gladys rented part of her home to an English couple who worked in the industry. The wife was a registered extra, while the husband was a stand-in for George Arliss.

After 16-year-old Norma Jeane married James Dougherty, he went to work for Lockheed Aviation, alongside a young Robert Mitchum. A dozen years later, Mitchum costarred with MM in River of No Return. The following year, Dougherty joined the Merchant Marines, and his young wife went to work at the Radio Plane Company in Burbank, which was owned by actor Reginald Denny. Denny had parlayed his fascination with model aviation into an important wartime business by developing a prototype for a radio-controlled target drone to help train anti-aircraft gunners. The plant produced these drones for the army. In 1945, Denny gave permission for photographer David Conover to do a photo shoot inside the plant for Yank magazine. Conover spotted Norma Jeane Dougherty, and she readily agreed to model for his shoot. The photographer worked for the 1^st Motion Picture Camera Unit, which operated through Hal Roach Studios. His commanding officer was actor-turned-serviceman Ronald Reagan, though whether he saw the photos of Monroe is unknown. The photos in Yank started MM’s journey toward a movie career.

YOUNG NORMA JEANE OF THE RADIO PLANE CO. POSES FOR YANK MAGAZINE.

MM’s life from the beginning touched the fringes of the film industry, painting L.A. as a company town, where millions grow up in the shadow of the business. Given this proximity, perhaps it seemed natural to MM to pursue and attain stardom; on the other hand, this “six degrees of separation” between Norma Jeane and the Hollywood industry also implies that stardom in L.A. can be as far away as it is close, as elusive as it is attainable.

2. Absent mother, absent father, absent siblings. Though MM lived in an orphanage for a time during her childhood, she was not an orphan. Gladys Baker was very much alive during MM’s childhood but incapable of caring for her. Mentally ill, she lived most of her life in institutions, while MM lived with friends of her mother’s, in foster homes (where she was sexually abused), or in an orphanage before marrying at age 16. MM’s father was either Edward Mortenson, Gladys’s second husband, or C. Stanley Gifford, a coworker at Consolidated Film Industries, depending on which biographer you believe. Mortenson died in a traffic accident in 1929, while Gifford wanted no part of Gladys or her child. MM had two half-siblings, a sister named Berniece and a brother named either Robert Kermit or Hermitt Jack (depending on the biographer). Gladys’s first husband, Jack (or, Jap) Baker, took the siblings to Kentucky in the 1920s. The boy died in childhood, and neither Berniece nor Norma Jeane knew they had a sister until after the latter married Dougherty. I interviewed Berniece Baker Miracle while writing my book on MM, and she was a bit defensive about Norma Jeane’s childhood experiences, remarking that she didn’t know what happened to her because she had been kept away from her mother and sister for so many years.

GLADYS BAKER AND HER DAUGHTER NORMA JEANE

So, despite having a father, mother, and siblings, MM grew up alone in foster homes and an orphanage. I can only imagine what that felt like. Throughout her life, MM suffered with issues involving trust, abandonment, identity, and self-worth, resulting in bad behavior on the set, including habitual tardiness. It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out why.

3. Pin-up. Most know that MM modeled as a pin-up for men’s magazines such as Laff, Peek, See, Glamorous Models, Cheesecake, and U.S. Camera. These magazines, which had sprung up as a result of the popularity of the pin-up during WWII, featured women in bathing suits, negligees, towels, etc. While there was no overt nudity, these magazines came as close as possible, making them a direct ancestor to Playboy.

YOUNG NORMA JEANE: PIN-UP MODEL

While a star, MM was famous for her quivering red lips, blonde hair, and come-hither smile. Many studio makeup artists, hairstylists, and studio execs claimed to have invented Monroe’s signature—and, later, signifying—features. In her autobiography, Shelley Winters, who briefly roomed with MM, claimed to have influenced her roommate to adopt the light blonde hair and bright red lips. In my opinion, MM learned about hair and makeup during her tenure at the Blue Book Modeling Agency, where she took classes in modeling from the agency’s owner, Emmeline Snively. Snively taught her to lower her smile to emphasize her mouth and detract from her nose, resulting in a slight quiver to her lips. Long before MM met Winters, she showed a preference for bright red lips and developed her own formula for lipstick—three shades of red covered with a bit of Vaseline or wax.

SYLVIA BARNHART TURNED MM FROM BRUNETTE TO BLONDE.

Hairdresser Sylvia Barnhart of Frank & Joseph’s Beauty Salon turned MM’s hair from a kinky brown to blonde. When I interviewed Barnhart in the early 1990s, she disputed the claim that MM did not want to become a blonde or resisted changing her hair color. The hairdresser changed the young model’s hair gradually over a four or five-month period, and MM wanted the lighter color to accentuate her eyes. Barnhart served as Monroe’s hair stylist and colorist until about 1951.

4. An avid jogger and a college girl. MM began lifting weights when she was married to James Dougherty, who encouraged her to live a healthy life. While a young starlet, she worked out with barbells to strengthen her arms and torso, and she jogged most mornings. Early on, she worked to maintain a healthy body and a healthy mind. She opened charge accounts at various bookstores and took out library cards. She was something of an expert on actress Eleanora Duce, which a Life magazine reporter discovered when he questioned her about Duce’s photograph on her nightstand. While making the film Love Nest in 1951, she attended classes in literature and art appreciation in the adult extension program at UCLA. I like thinking of Monroe in this way, because it counters the studio’s attempts to paint her as a dumb blonde off screen, and it stands in contrast to her later image as an unhealthy, drug-addled victim of Hollywood.

MM EXERCISES WITH HER BARBELLS.

5. Acting student. Most know that during the mid-1950s MM became a student of the Method, which was taught in New York City’s famed Actors Studio by Lee and Paula Strasberg. However, Monroe was serious about acting as art form from the beginning, taking classes from several teachers long before the Strasbergs came into her life. While under contract to 20^th Century Fox the first time, she took lessons at the Actors Lab, paying for her own lessons with modeling jobs. The Actors Lab, which was a West-Coast offshoot of the Group Theatre, was operated by Roman Bohnen, J. Edward Bromberg, and Morris Carnovsky. She studied with Carnovsky for almost two years. While briefly under contract to Columbia, she was assigned to take lessons from Natasha Lytess. In many MM biographies, Lytess is painted as a kind of obsessive interloper who was too controlling of Monroe, because the young starlet requested her teacher be on the set at all times. Not surprisingly, most directors dubbed Lytess a lunatic and deemed her presence as an intrusion. However, Lytess had been a member of an acting ensemble headed by legendary theatrical director Max Reinhardt, and her skills as a teacher should not be dismissed. Lytess worked with MM for seven years, at one point quitting her job at Columbia to work with her most famous pupil. In 1951, MM took an acting course with Michael Chekhov, a Russian character actor who had actually studied under Stanislavski. Apparently, Jack Palance suggested Chekhov to Monroe. Like MM, Palance feared he was being typecast as a heavy and had sought out Chekhov to improve his overall acting skills.

NATASHA LYTESS COACHES HER MOST FAMOUS PUPIL.

Seldom discussed is why Monroe took acting classes, even when she could ill afford them. The obvious answer was that she was serious about learning to act, but I  think it was also because she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress. During the lean years, when she was struggling to stay on contract and land a breakthrough role, Monroe traveled the party circuit, allowing herself to be at the beck and call of studio execs like Joseph Schenck, who graced his poker parties with young starlets. Though hoping to attract the attention of producers and directors, these starlets were auditioning to be mistresses as much as actresses. Perhaps MM wanted to make it understood that she was in it for a career, not a love nest in Beverly Hills. Later, she used publicity about her acting coaches and classes to try to counter being typecast as a dumb blonde on and off the screen.

6. The nude calendar vs. Apples, Knockers and Cokes. At her lowest point financially in 1949, MM posed nude for photographer Tom Kelley for a calendar. Two photos emerged from this shoot, “A New Wrinkle” and “Golden Dreams,” with the former chosen as the calendar shot. A few years later, the photos were reissued for more calendars and other merchandising, with “Golden Dreams” selected as the favored pose. One of my uncles owned a calendar with “Golden Dreams,” and he held onto it long after it was out of date.  I remember finding it hidden under another calendar in his room.

However, MM did not star in a stag film titled Apples, Knockers and Cokes during this time. This black-and-white short featured a stunning blonde opening a picnic basket containing apples and a Coca-Cola bottle. During the 1970s and 1980s, the film surfaced with a false rumor claiming the blonde was Marilyn Monroe.

WHEN A CRITIC COMPLAINED THAT STARLET MONROE WOULDN'T LOOK GOOD IN A POTATO SACK, FOX PUBLICISTS CAME UP WITH THIS PHOTO TO SEND TO NEWSPAPER AND FANZINES.

7. Darryl Zanuck vs. Marilyn Monroe. As much as I admire Zanuck as a producer, he never seemed to appreciate Marilyn Monroe. He did not pick up her option the first time she was under contract to 20th Century Fox. After she was placed under contract again in December 1950, her publicity photos were requested more than those of any other star, even established ones like Betty Grable. Instead of recognizing that she had the potential to be a major star, Zanuck suspected that someone who knew MM was tampering with the mail tabulations on her behalf. After he did realize her appeal with the public, he tossed her in any film that called for a gorgeous, buxom blonde, without a thought to grooming her for starring roles. After a stunning appearance at an exhibitors’ function in 1951, in which theater owners repeatedly asked which films the show-stopping blonde was starring in, Zanuck signed her to a seven-year contract.

However, she was immediately loaned to RKO, who wanted her for the drama Clash by Night in a supporting role as a working class girl who toils in a cannery. Despite MM’s good notices in Clash by Night, Zanuck continued to cast her as the dumb buxom blonde, most notably in Monkey Business with Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers. Finally, she was cast in the drama Niagara as a cheating wife and murderess, which made her a star. Still, Zanuck and MM continued to clash over her roles, with Zanuck insisting on exploiting her image as the sexy but naïve dumb blonde and MM determined to expand on that image.

MM WITH ZANUCK (LEFT) AND WALTER WINCHELL (LEFT)

8. Marilyn, Inc. The dispute with Zanuck and Fox resulted in MM walking out on her contract and heading for New York City. There, she dropped in on the Actors Studio with the intention of putting films such as There’s No Business Like Show Business behind her. Eventually, Zanuck and Fox capitulated to Monroe, their biggest box-office draw, and gave her what she wanted. She did not want more money; instead she wanted a measure of creative control, including director and cinematographer approval. She also wanted her contract to be non-exclusive, allowing her to make films for her own company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, Inc.

The film industry was undergoing a transition in the 1950s because of the Paramount Decree, in which the Supreme Court declared the major studios an oligopoly and forced them to sell their theaters. It was the beginning of the end for the old studios, who began to let go of their tight hold on their actors. Many stars opted out of their contracts and launched their own production companies, including Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and John Wayne, in order to appear in films of their choosing. Few female stars took this route—except for Marilyn Monroe. More than most male stars, she understood the value of creative control over her star image and career. And, more than the male stars of the period, MM took a beating in the press for her defection from Fox.

Next week, I will list the films of MM that are most interesting to her career.