Marilyn Monroe at 100: Celebrating the icon on the centenary of her birth
Marilyn Monroe would have marked her 100th birthday on 1st June 2026. How did she become a Hollywood icon, and what’s the truth about her death?
Image: stock.adobe.com
We all think we know Marilyn Monroe. We recognise her from Old Hollywood films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire and Some Like It Hot. We’ve seen her face on a certain Andy Warhol painting and perhaps even looked up at artist Seward Johnson’s giant statue of her.
But how much do you really know about the 20th century’s most influential ‘blonde bombshell’? Various, rather fraught aspects of her personal life, and even many of her films, have long been unjustly overlooked. However, we at Sky HISTORY are here to smash your preconceptions as fans around the world celebrate Monroe’s 100th birthday.
The inauspicious upbringing of a future star
Marilyn Monroe was born on 1st June 1926 in Los Angeles. Though born Norma Jeane Mortenson, she is unlikely to have been biographically related to Martin Edward Mortensen, her mother Gladys’ husband at the time. Circumstantial and DNA evidence suggests that Norma’s father was instead Charles Stanley Gifford, Gladys’s extramarital lover.
As Gladys was financially incapable of bringing up her daughter herself, Norma’s childhood saw her regularly passed from one foster household to another. At the age of 16, she married her neighbour, James Dougherty. In 1944, he was sent overseas to serve in World War II. Norma also did her bit for the war effort by starting a new job at a munitions factory.
A chance encounter changes everything
In late 1944, photographer David Conover visited the factory to take pictures of female workers, but found himself especially impressed by Norma. On his invitation, she started modelling for Conover and his friends. However, she aspired to become an actress, and got her chance when 20th Century Fox handed her a contract.
One executive of the studio, Ben Lyon, helped her to come up with her glamorous stage name, Marilyn Monroe. The ‘Marilyn’ was a nod to the Broadway star Marilyn Miller, while ‘Monroe’ was Norma’s mother’s maiden name. The newly christened Marilyn Monroe’s future looked promising, but would not include James Dougherty, as the couple divorced in 1946.
Marilyn Monroe’s early Hollywood career
After years of small roles in a string of films little-remembered today, Monroe made a breakthrough (of sorts) when she appeared in All About Eve in 1950. Its leading lady Bette Davis was the big star back then, but Marilyn stole the show despite appearing only briefly.
In 1952, Marilyn started a romance with baseball star Joe DiMaggio, by which time she had become strongly associated with ‘ditzy blonde’ roles. Her appearances in Love Nest, As Young as You Feel and Let’s Make It Legal are all good examples. However, her stardom soared the following year with major roles in Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire.
Professional highs, personal lows
Monroe’s most iconic film scene was the catalyst for the end of her marriage to DiMaggio. The pair had only wed in January 1954, but later that year, Monroe was shooting The Seven Year Itch (1955). Everyone now remembers Monroe’s white dress billowing upwards as she stands above a grate, but the scene enraged DiMaggio.
After Monroe filed for divorce from DiMaggio, her next serious romance was with playwright Arthur Miller. This soon proved problematic in itself, as the FBI were investigating Miller due to his alleged communist sympathies. After marrying Miller in 1956, Monroe delivered critically acclaimed performances in Bus Stop (1956), Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Misfits (1961).
Monroe divorced Miller in 1961, the same year that John F Kennedy became President of the United States. She even sang ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President’ to him at New York’s Madison Square Garden, stoking rumours of an affair between the two.
Suicide or murder?
Monroe was living in Brentwood, Los Angeles when her housekeeper Eunice Murray awoke at 3am on 5th August 1962 and noticed that something was amiss. Light was trickling out under Monroe’s locked bedroom door, but Murray couldn’t get any response when she knocked.
Murray called Monroe’s psychiatrist Ralph Greenson out to the property, where he subsequently broke into the bedroom. There, Monroe was found dead. A coroner’s report indicated that she had died of a barbiturate overdose on the evening of 4th August.
Though the coroner’s verdict was ‘probable suicide’, a number of conspiracy theories suggest that Monroe was instead murdered. That Monroe's name, face and story remain as vivid today as they were in her lifetime, on what would have been her 100th birthday, is perhaps the most fitting tribute of all.
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