Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of when Marilyn Monroe passed away. It’s a paradox of both an unfortunate and extraordinary milestone. The continued fascination with her life and legacy, sixty years after her passing confirms what we know and what Marilyn failed to see during her life time: her continued impact.
I began blogging about Marilyn just a little over a decade ago on Tumblr under the name PerfectlyMarilynMonroe, which has now extended to Instagram, Twitter and TikTok with over 200,000 followers respectively.
And I sit ten years later and proudly reflect on how much has changed. The narrative of her “tragic” life has shifted into a courageous one; the narrative of her “mysterious death” has shifted into exploring her life; the narrative of her being a “home-wrecker, sex-addict” has shifted into her being a blueprint for women. All still relevant to today’s current issues, as well.
Of course, this can’t be said for every person, case, or scenario – some will still believe these theories – but in ten years it has been comforting to watch the shift. Much of which is thanks to the fans and historians who advocate for her regularly.
I want to highlight five important things that I myself learned as a decade long “Marilynette” that I hope is perpetually shared and acknowledged.
1). Marilyn was passionate about mental health and psychotherapy.
For a woman with labels such as possibly committed suicide, pill addict, a depressed and overall sad woman, her association with psychoanalysis, fascination with Sigmund Freud, and the importance of mental health remains absent.
She watched her mother withdraw, have nervous episodes, and be labeled as “crazy.” Marilyn, then Norma Jeane Baker, was moved from an orphan home to various foster homes where she suffered sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and neglect between the ages of eight and fourteen. Marilyn later attributed a lot of her unhappiness to not having a father, as well.
An unpleasant interaction between him, his wife, and Marilyn in 1951 provoked her to reach out for psychiatric help. His wife’s, in more or less words, suggested she get a lawyer if she wanted to contact him. But all she wanted was love and to be acknowledged.
And, so, she searched her life for it.
Marilyn regularly attended therapy for her depression, unbearable anxiety, and insomnia. In 1955, she worked with Dr. Margaret Hogenberg in New York City for as often as five days per week. Sometimes twice a day. Her half-sister, Berniece, found it to be too much in her opinion. Marilyn was too stuck in the past to move on into her future. But her present demanded it.
Through psychoanalysis, Marilyn uncovered much of what she had bottled-up from childhood. At one point, she thought suppression was the best thing for her – to ignore all the abuse and neglect she had suffered. Literally block it out of her mind. But Sigmund Freud theorized repression may allow the individual to obliterate or even forget the memory, but it will manifest through subconscious behaviors and emotional responses.
During therapy, she worked on childhood acceptance, her inability to establish long-lasting friendships, and fears – ones of abandonment, being institutionalized like her mother – and her fascination with dreams and suicide.
In later years, she worked with Dr. Marianne Kris and Dr. Ralph Greenson. She even practiced with Anna Freud in London, who was a friend of Dr. Hogenberg’s. They had many sessions at Maresfeld Gardens in 1956.
During those same years, she was abusing her medication. Tragedy covered her like a blanket. She suffered miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy and two divorces, some of which stalled her therapy. She was too inconsolable to speak. She craved numbness and sleep.
In 1961, she expressed an active plan of suicide to Dr. Kris. She would jump thirteen stories to her death. The only thing that stopped her was guilt, for the people who would witness it. She was immediately institutionalized. In Payne Whitney psychiatric, her biggest fear had come true: she was an “invalid” and “locked up” like her mother, Gladys. Four long days involved suicide threats, mingling with other patients, therapy, until Joe DiMaggio and Dr. Kris worked on her release. Marilyn spent a month recuperating at Columbia-Presbyterian.
Though Dr. Kris made the wrong choice of hospital in Marilyn’s eyes, Marilyn grew more in her work with her than the following year and a half under the care of Ralph Greenson.
Greenson’s therapy would, especially today, be considered highly unethical, inappropriate, and abusive. The relationship between patient and doctor is unequal; a power dynamic. But Greenson invited Marilyn to eat with his family so she could “experience” a family in order for her to get it for herself, his children (ages 22 and 25) were on call if he was unavailable, he was on call to respond and arrive to her house for emergency sessions, manipulated (and insisted) her to cut out friends and to accept Something’s Got to Give, when she knew playing the role of a mother would affect her mental health, and so on and so forth. I fear what happened during sessions. Just days before her death, it’s been reported she planned to fire Greenson. She started to feel how harmful his modes were to her.
While her cause of death remains unknown, what is known her active fight – until the very end.
2). Marilyn was a humanitarian, an activist, and an entrepreneur.
Marilyn was involved with a handful of charities and consistently donated her time and/or money to different organizations. These include St. Jude’s, Toys for Tots, the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation, Muscular Dystrophy, and the Milk Fund. She made appearances (public and private) to children and army hospitals, and orphanages. She made several private donations to crew members on the set of her films, like to help pay funeral expenses.
In her will, she left 25% of her estate to Dr. Marianne Kris “to be used for the furtherance of the work of such psychiatric institutions or groups as she shall elect.” She chose the Anna Freud Children’s Clinic of London. It created the Monroe Young Family Centre.
Marilyn progressively advocated for the rights of the disabled, LGBTQ+ communities, gender and race equality. She made public statements, demanding rights and expressed desires to support the governments strive to make change (despite the narrative she only cared about what was in Kennedy’s pants).
In 1955, after much unhappiness with her contract at Fox, she left and founded Marilyn Monroe Productions with her good friend, and former Look photographer, Milton H. Greene. She hoped to go into all areas of media. She also hoped to find new, young talent and make great films with them. MMP co-produced Bus Stop with Fox, and its only solo production was The Prince and the Showgirl (1957). Greene and Marilyn had a falling out and she no longer made any films under the company.
3). Acting was a job for her, not her life, and one she took very seriously.
During the years when she was climbing up the stature to fame, Marilyn accepted any and all roles she was given. Many of them portraying her as a cute, sexy, secretary, and even a burlesque dancer. Her modeling consisted of mostly bikini shoots and “cheesecake” pin-ups. She didn’t frown upon them – they advanced her career. But she later suffered its consequences when she wanted to be acknowledged as a “serious” actress, rather than a sexy woman shaking her body.
She liked filming comedies, which is often misconstrued. She said, “Don’t forget ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blonde’ was a Broadway hit show. I knew the character I was going to play, and I did see a script, regardless of changes. And where did anyone get the idea I don’t want to do musicals.”
But the idea of a sex symbol was funny to her, and she joked it was better to be a symbol for sex than some “other things they have symbols for.”
Marilyn said, “I feel it is up to me to show them that I am capable of interpreting roles with more depth, more feeling than they have ever seen me do. But I must have approval of the script a good director. I want good stories–not to just be thrown into any old thing. I think I am a serious actress; I want to prove it.”
4). The role she wanted most to settle in was motherhood.
I wrote “acting was a job for her, not her life.” What was her life was building continuous happiness, blending her work with a balance of family life.
From as early as being a little girl herself, she wanted to have children. She was confident in her ability to be a mother, knowing “what a child wants most” because of what she lacked.
Though as much as she wanted a baby, she wanted one when she was emotionally and physically able to care for one. To be there for one. To be completely focused on motherhood. Marilyn suffered with endometriosis, which caused a strain on her fertility. While Marilyn had goals, she wanted to accomplish before motherhood, it could be possible she and Joe DiMaggio tried for children during their nine-month marriage in 1954. An ironic length, she’d later comment on.
In 1957, she learned she was pregnant with new husband Arthur Miller after months of failed attempts. The doctor was less than enthused the pregnancy wouldn’t rupture, but Marilyn was hopeful. She spent several blissful weeks anticipating and celebrating a new life, until it resulted in an ectopic pregnancy. It was terminated to save her life. In 1958, while filming Some Like It Hot, she learned she was pregnant again. It lasted nearly five months before she miscarried. She attempted suicide by overdose after-both.
But Marilyn lived no without hope. She told Louella Parsons she hadn’t lost hope, that perhaps she and Arthur would adopt.
Even in the 60s, though she was anxious about being a single parent, she held onto the hope. And while Marilyn died without a child of her own, she is a figurative mother for many of her fans, through her guidance and example.
“Marilyn Monroe is overrated” is an overrated statement. Actually, I’ve found over the last decade, the woman beneath her powdered skin and red lips, beneath the glistening, jeweled costumes, remains a private, quiet, wonderfully misunderstood and terribly underrated woman. Not quite Marilyn, not quite Norma Jeane, but someone somewhere in-between. And that the single most important thing I’ve learned about Marilyn – the most important – can be summarized in this single sentence:
In her lifetime, Marilyn did not just survive. She thrived.
“Hold a good thought for me.” – Marilyn Monroe
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