Marilyn Monroe With Bibliography

Marilyn Monroe, whose real name was Norma Jean, was born on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles. Her mother, Gladys Monroe Baker Mortensen, was a single working mom. Marilyn did not know her mother well because she often lived with foster families. She moved many times during her childhood. In 1933, she moved into an apartment with her mother until less than a year later, her mom entered a hospital for psychological disorders such as depression. Marilyn soon went to an orphanage. She left the orphanage in 1937 to live with her aunt, Grace McKee. Less than a year later, she went to live with Ana Lower, another aunt.

When Marilyn went to high school, she was known as a shy, average, and somewhat unpopular student. Gradually she gained popularity. When she was sixteen, she married her neighbor, Jim Dougherty, who was twenty-one. Two years later in 1944, Jim went overseas and Marilyn went to live with his mother. Marilyn got a job along with the millions of other women who worked during the war. Her job was to spray glue on aircraft fabric for a minimum wage of twenty dollars for a sixty-hour week.

The beginning of Marilyn's discovery happened in late 1944. She was working when some U.S. Army photographers came to take pictures of women working at the factory. That's when she realized she wanted to become a model so she applied at the Blue Book Model Agency. Immediately, she was taking many classes and taking photos for advertisements and magazine covers. Marilyn appeared on the cover of thirty-three popular magazines. Even though she was really good at modeling, Marilyn said, "...I guess I shouldn't say this, but sometimes modeling just seemed so phony and fake.

In August of 1946, she changed her name from Norma Jean to Marilyn Monroe. Soon after, Marilyn decided to divorce Jim because they didn't have much of a relationship anymore. Later in 1946, she broke into the movies. She signed up for a talent agency and met with Gen Lyon, a manager at Twentieth Century-Fox, a premier film studio in Hollywood. Marilyn was brought up in a Hollywood gossip column. In 1948, she signed a contract with Columbia pictures and got an agent, Johnny Hyde, who dedicated himself to promoting her. In 1949, Marilyn began acting in movies which became pretty popular. She starred in about twenty-five movies between the years of 1949 though 1961. In 1951 and 1962, Marilyn filmed four movies each year! During these times, she signed a seven-year contract with Fox. She was on many magazine covers and was Grand Marshall in the Miss America pageant of 1952. Marilyn was also in a live