WEBVTT - The Woman Who Will Not Die 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:06.320 Oh Why Ozzy Media Productions. Marilyn Monroe was called the 0:00:06.360 --> 0:00:09.840 Woman who Will Not Die by Glorious Steinham. It's true 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:13.120 the world remains obsessed with Monroe even more than half 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:16.360 a century after her death. One of the most famous 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:20.280 stars in Hollywood history is dead. At thirty six, Marilan 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:23.599 Monroe was found dead in bed under circumstances that were 0:00:23.640 --> 0:00:26.880 in tragic contrast to her glamorous career as a comic talent, 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:30.479 Monroe was an icon whose life was cut short. She 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:33.560 started hits like Some Like It, Hot, The Seven Year Itch, 0:00:33.720 --> 0:00:36.800 and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It was said that her films 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:38.920 had grossed more than two hundred million dollars at the 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:42.600 time of her death. She acted, she cracked jokes, and 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:50.479 she sang, I wanna be loved by you, just your else. 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:55.520 But Monroe's death held in irony, as Gloria Steinham later wrote, 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:59.600 America's biggest star died alone. On a Saturday night. The 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:01.800 young actress was found dead in her bed from a 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:06.759 drug overdose. The rumors were numerous, Monroe biographer Sarah Church Well. 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:10.240 Of course, as everybody knows, all kinds of conspiracy theories 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:15.000 have developed around her death. It's been fifty years and 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:18.360 we are still talking about the rumors surrounding her death. 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:22.640 Some believe Monroe committed suicide. Others have more elaborate theories. 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:26.039 So what happens is a lot of people um conclude 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:28.920 that she must have been deliberately murdered, either by one 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:31.640 of the Kennedy's, or by Kristov, or by Castro, or 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:34.480 you know, by aliens landing in Roswell. But of course 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:37.000 that leaps over an enormous excluded middle, which is known 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:39.600 as accident, which is how many many things happen in 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:42.840 real life. Marilan Monroe may have appeared larger than life, 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:45.600 but she wasn't every woman, one who suffered the same 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:48.000 misfortune as others, but out in the open for all 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:51.240 the world to see and without much help. This led 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:54.480 feminist Glorious Steinem to fixate on Monroe. You know, I 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:57.960 just was haunted by the idea that that the women's 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:00.440 movement might have been able to support her enough so 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:03.800 she would still be with us. But like Gloria Steinham, 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:06.640 Monroe lived and worked in a world dominated by men, 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:10.959 and Hugh Hefner, who launched Playboy magazine using Monroe's nude 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:13.840 image was far from the only one to exploit her 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:22.560 along the way. Oh hear me, Lord, I could be 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:32.640 good to love, but then I always discovered the body 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:39.960 every man. Welcome to the Thread a podcast from Azzi Media. 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:43.560 I'm Sean Braswell. This season is about the remarkable road 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:46.080 to the modern day women's movement through one of the 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:49.560 leaders of that movement, Gloria Steinham. So how does Marilyn 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:53.000 Monroe fit in this thread? Well? An episode one, we 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:56.480 heard how Steinham stent as an undercover Playboy Bunny impacted 0:02:56.480 --> 0:02:59.760 her career and her outlook as a young reporter and feminist. 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:03.040 Then in episode two, we told the story of how 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:05.840 the Playboy clubs came to be. They all started with 0:03:05.919 --> 0:03:08.119 Hugh Hefner, who had the idea to create a male 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:12.240 magazine called Playboy, and that magazine's launch was not possible 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:17.360 without its first nude centerfold, Marilyn Monroe. Now, in episode three, 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:21.000 how Monroe wound up in Playboy. It wasn't her choice. 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:25.080 Throughout her brief life, she endured many things, including many 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:29.000 powerful men, and she tried to fight back. Monroe was 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:33.840 a star, a wife, a model, and a silence breaker 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:39.520 for all of her accomplishments. Most people only remember Marilyn 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:43.200 Monroe for the unforgettable persona she crafted for herself, the 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:45.800 good humored, platinum blonde with the ruby lips and a 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:51.240 sultry innocence. Few recognized the achievement behind it. Sarah Churchwell, again, 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:54.240 she had started with nothing, and she went on to 0:03:54.320 --> 0:03:58.560 become the most successful actress of her day, the most famous, 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:01.240 the best known um. But you know, the biggest movie 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:03.840 star in the world, and she remains the biggest movie 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:06.920 star in the world fifty years after her death. And 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:10.320 she just wanted people to recognize that as an accomplishment. 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:13.480 She wanted people to give her the credit for having 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:17.359 achieved that, and they never did. They mostly still don't. 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:20.600 Monroe begged to be taken seriously as an actress throughout 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:24.200 her career. The frustrated star asked a reporter who interviewed 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:27.200 her not long before her death, quote, please don't make 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:30.600 me a joke. That decision to have a very strong brand, 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.960 as it were, this this iconic lookum did have a 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:35.599 lot to do with her success, but of course it 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.200 also led to her being typecast. It meant that she 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:40.800 couldn't break out of that brand identity that she had 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:43.640 created and become the kind of actress that she wanted 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:51.360 to be. Here's Monroe in a television interview. Well, would 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:53.880 it be fair to say that you got rather tired 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:56.160 of playing the same kind of roles all the time 0:04:56.200 --> 0:05:02.480 and wanted to buy something different. Well, I it's not 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:09.279 that I objected doing musicals or comedy. In fact, I 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:11.680 read and enjoy it, but I would like to do 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:16.160 unto dramatic parts too. Through it all, Monroe's hell bent 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:19.960 on self improvement. She took acting classes at every opportunity. 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:22.839 Even once she was a star. She pushed back on 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:25.640 the stereotype that she was a dumb blonde. As she 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:28.560 told one instructor, I want to be an artist, not 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:32.160 an erotic freak. But few in Hollywood took her seriously, 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:40.400 even Steinham did not at first. Monroe's on screen persona 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:42.960 made an impression on the young steinem and it wasn't 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:46.560 a positive one. It was a big Hollywood movie, and 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:51.480 I was a teenager, I think, and I loved the movies. 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:54.080 You know, I was just escaping every Saturday afternoon in 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:57.040 the movies. This is Steinham remembering when she saw the 0:05:57.120 --> 0:06:02.280 nineteen fifty three film. Gentlemen prefer blondes, but watching her 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:08.960 being so vulnerable on screen just made me sad. It's 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:12.480 a terrible thing to be lonesome, especially in the middle 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:15.680 of a crowd, do you know what I mean? And 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:18.920 it also made Steinham angry. Steinham later wrote of Monroe, 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:22.240 how dare she exposed the neediness that so many women 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:25.359 feel but try so hard to hide. How dare she 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:28.480 a movie star be just as unconfident as I was? 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:32.200 Cheap piggy? A girl like I almost never gets to 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:38.320 me really interesting, man, sometimes my brain gets real starting 0:06:39.120 --> 0:06:41.960 Steinham walked out of the movie. She was one of 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:47.480 the images that I grew up with, and she always 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:53.719 seemed so silenced, playing as if she could only come 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:58.479 to the public as as a almost a parody of 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:02.880 a whispery sexy woman not not has her own self. 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:06.200 But as Dynham later discovered, Monroe was more than a 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.119 whispery sexy woman. She was one of the first women 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:11.520 to stand up against the culture of sexual harassment in 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:16.120 Hollywood and to talk about her experiences there. To understand why, 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:18.760 we have to go back to Monroe's early days in 0:07:18.800 --> 0:07:25.400 Hollywood and those famous nude photographs. One of the first 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:28.840 cameramen to film Monroe was blown away by her. She was, 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:31.800 as he put it, sex on a piece of film. 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:34.000 Monroe did not set out to be a model. When 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:36.640 she was still a teenager named Norma Jean Doherty, she 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:39.600 worked at a parachute factory during World War Two, where 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.640 she sprayed and inspected parachutes for ten hours a day. 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:46.200 One day, an Army photographer assigned to take photographs of 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:48.920 women at work in the war effort stopped by the factory. 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:53.320 He realized her potential right away. You're a real morale booster, 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:55.800 he told her, with all of the cheese and sleeves 0:07:55.840 --> 0:07:58.400 of a red blooded American male in the nineteen forties. 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:02.040 Soon marylyn career as a model and morale booster and 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:05.640 men's magazines was off to the races. Well, now your 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:09.280 picture has been on the cover of almost all popular magazines, 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:14.040 hasn't it. No, it's not the lady's ton journey that 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:17.960 you would like. What do you? Men's magazines in the 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:21.400 nineteen forties didn't mean what they meant after the Playboy era. 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:24.320 Um there was no real nudity to speak of in 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:27.000 the magazines that she was modeling in she was wearing 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:29.120 bikinis and you know, swimsuits and that kind of thing. 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:32.679 Marilyn Monroe enjoyed posing and performing for the camera as 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:35.240 a young model, but the job often came with some 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:39.640 additional responsibilities. Models were expected to show their gratitude to 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:43.520 the men who controlled the camera and their livelihoods. Things 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:45.839 were no different when Monroe started to pursue a career 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:50.280 in acting. She talked later about how even in those 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:52.400 early days of modeling, when she was trying to break 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:56.760 into Hollywood, that you know, men would would accost her 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:58.640 and tell her that they could help her break into 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:01.200 the movies and um, and so she was very clear 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:02.880 about the fact that there were always men on the 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:08.360 make um. She called them wolves eager to become an actress. 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:11.160 Monroe tolerated the wolves, but it was not easy to 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:14.640 break into Hollywood without their support. When Marilyn was a 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:19.360 struggling actress and starlett she was uh still finding jobs 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:21.720 hard to come by and living very much hand to mouth. 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:24.840 Monroe struggled to pay her rent. She ate two meals 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:28.680 per day. Sometimes she subsisted on peanut butter and hamburger meat. 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:31.480 She went to auditions and modeling gigs in one of 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:35.640 three dresses, which she washed herself by hand. In the evenings, 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:38.600 she would go out stargazing in Hollywood. She would place 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:41.240 her hands in the handprints of the movie stars. She 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:43.199 would stand for a few hours in front of Clark 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:46.360 Gable's house, hoping to catch a glimpse of her favorite star. 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.800 The beautiful Monroe didn't have to struggle. She had other options. 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:53.839 Many men offered to set her up as their mistress, 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:56.959 to pay for her expenses and her apartment in return 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:00.600 for shall we say, the pleasure of her company, but 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:04.680 Monroe refused. Eventually, she landed her first big job, a 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:09.360 contract with twentieth Century Fox in ninety she was twenty. 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:12.680 The following year, she signed a new contract with Columbia Pictures. 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.560 That didn't stop the unsolicited offers, including at least one 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:20.760 alleged experience with me two parallels. There isn't much question 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:25.760 that Maryland turned down sexual advances from powerful men in Hollywood. 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:28.439 One of the best known was the producer Harry Cohne, 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:32.560 who um ran Columbia Studios, and the story goes that 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:35.960 he um he tried to get Maryland on his yacht 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:39.800 when she was a contract player for Columbia, and when 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:42.040 she refused to go alone with him onto his yacht, 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:44.439 he fired her and she never worked for Columbia again. 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:49.760 Monroe persisted even as she grew more contemptuous of the 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:54.120 wolves who pursued her, and after one of those offers um, 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:56.120 when it became clear to her that that money was 0:10:56.160 --> 0:11:00.320 really becoming tight, she decided that she would instead take 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:03.840 up the offer of a photographer who had been trying 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.840 to convince her to do some nude photos. It sounds 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:08.520 like a risky thing to do for a woman with 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:12.560 serious acting ambitions, but remember Monroe is twenty three years old. 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:15.360 She could never have imagined in her wildest dreams she 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:17.040 would be one of the most famous women on the 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:20.200 planet in a few years. At that moment, she was 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:22.440 just a struggling actress who was worried that the bank 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:25.880 would repossess the car she depended upon to drive to auditions. 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:28.920 She let herself be convinced that the nude photos were 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:31.760 no big deal. The photographer had told her that his 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:33.880 wife would be present all the way through the shoot. 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:37.160 Um he had assured her that that it was above board. 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:40.240 He would pay her fifty dollars and that the images 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:44.600 would be tasteful, they weren't pornographic. Monroe agreed. Here's how 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:48.480 she described the nude photo shoot in an interview. So 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:54.320 we did it, and that's only just to spread up 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:57.800 some red velvets and had me lie down in the red. 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:06.520 It was very simple drafty. Monroe also joked that she 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:10.400 had quote nothing on but the radio. The photographs were 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:15.480 then sold to a nude calendar and they started to 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:20.920 appear on on walls, on in garages and um, you know, 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:24.720 mechanics workshops. Three years after the nude photographs were taken, 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:29.000 Marilyn Monroe was in a completely different orbit. Later, thousands 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:31.240 of fans lined up in front of the Stanley Theater, 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:35.520 located on Atlantic City's famous boardwalk, where Hollywood's newest sterling 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:38.760 arrived for the world premiere of her twentieth century Fox 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:42.319 comedy Monkey Business, in which she co stars would carry 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:45.120 granted ginger rogers. All in all, it was a day 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:48.080 in which Miss Monroe truly won the hearts of these 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:54.520 grateful New Jersey ins. In March ninety two, Maryland was 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:57.120 starting to become a star. She'd had a couple of 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:01.200 big roles and she was starting to be noticed. She 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:06.120 also began dating Joe DiMaggio, the baseball star and you know, 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:08.760 kind of national hero. Monroe had only been seeing di 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:11.040 Maggio for a few days when the scandal over her 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.920 nude photographs broke. Many fans started to recognize her nude 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:18.800 pin up and calendars all over the country. Studio executives 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:21.880 freaked out, and of course, the standard response to that 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:24.679 kind of scandal up until that point would have been 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:26.640 to just deny it was you, and that was what 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:28.880 stars had always done in the studio, would engineer some 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:30.440 kind of cover up and they would just claim it 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:34.200 wasn't her. But Marilyn did not do that. She said 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:37.440 it was her. It was a bold strategy instead of 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:40.920 being shamed or as we might now say, slut shamed. Um. 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:43.440 It worked and she managed to make the scandal die down, 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:47.040 and uh and and people just accepted that it was her. 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:49.920 The photo shoot was forgotten for the most part until 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:52.040 Hugh Hefner got his hands on the image and made 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:54.320 sure that millions more Americans saw her as the first 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:59.640 Playboy centerfold, the centerfold that launched Heffner's Playboy empire. But 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:01.719 the same year that Hefner used her nude image to 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:04.520 launch Playboy. The twenty six year old man Rode did 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:11.000 something far bolder in another magazine. The article that ran 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:14.120 in the January nineteen fifty three issue of Motion Picture 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:18.120 and Television Magazine was called Wolves I Have Known and 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:21.080 was penned by Monroe. At the time, the young actress 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:24.360 was fast becoming a household name. In the article, Monroe 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:27.080 described the different types of men she had met in Hollywood, 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:31.360 men she called wolves. The article covered multiple examples of 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:35.560 harassment and proposition from unnamed men, the directors who cornered 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:38.120 her at parties, the producers who invited her to their 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:41.640 offices on a Saturday afternoon. Maryland was one of the 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:45.040 first um to call out the culture of sexual harassment. 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:47.640 She doesn't use that phrase, but um, but that's what 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:51.160 she's talking about. And to really um call attention to 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:53.480 the fact that it was indemic, that it was pervasive. 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:57.040 Her whole point was to say this happens over and 0:14:57.280 --> 0:15:01.120 over and over. Monroe wrote, quote, there are many types 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:05.000 of wolves, summer sinister. Others are just good time Charlie's 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:07.560 trying to get something for nothing, and others make a 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:10.520 game of it, so she wasn't necessarily naming names, she 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:13.600 wasn't identifying a single individual, but that was the point. 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:17.600 She was talking about a culture in which women were unsafe, 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.640 in which women were treated as sexual objects, and she 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:23.560 was starting to speak out very early. The Hollywood that 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:27.760 Monroe was challenging was extremely powerful, but once Monroe had 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:30.720 star power, she used it to help other women in Hollywood, 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:34.600 and not just in her magazine story. Actress Joan Collins 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:37.480 remembers in a television interview how Monroe helped her when 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:40.040 she met her at a party and then she told me, 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:42.840 she said, watch out for the wolves in Hollywood, honey. 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:45.400 And I said, well, I've been in British films for 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:47.960 three years. I can handle wolves. And she said, well, 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:51.800 not the power busses, honey. And she said, if they 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:54.360 don't get what they want, they'll drop you here contract. 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:57.280 So clearly it was always there, It was always in 0:15:57.280 --> 0:15:59.680 the air. There was no protection. Women had to look 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:03.400 out of themselves. In her unfinished autobiography, Monroe wrote of 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:07.000 the wolves, quote, Phoniness and failure were all over them. 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:09.040 But they were as near to the movies as you 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:12.400 could get, So you sat with them listening to their 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:16.080 lies and schemes, and you saw Hollywood with their eyes, 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:20.680 an overcrowded brothel, a merry go round with beds for horses. 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:24.400 The sad truth is that even Monroe could not avoid 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:28.640 the Hollywood merry go round forever. She once admitted, I've 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:31.280 slept with producers. I'd be a liar if I said 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:37.680 I didn't. For Monroe and many other actresses, it was 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:40.920 a constant struggle both to fend off the wolves and 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:44.000 to get them to take you seriously. What I'd like 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:47.760 to do, that is what I would like to accomplish. 0:16:47.800 --> 0:16:51.200 I would like to be a good actress. Denied shelter 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:54.760 in respect in her career, Monroe sought them elsewhere. Twice. 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:56.760 She put her career on hold at the peak of 0:16:56.800 --> 0:17:00.120 her startom to marry a prominent man, first based all 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:04.800 star Joe DiMaggio in and two years later renowned playwright 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:10.480 Arthur Miller. Marilyn married to symbolic men. But I think 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:12.600 that one of the one of the things that drew 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:16.000 her two men like this was the feeling she felt 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:19.400 great respect for them for their achievements, and the feeling 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:23.840 unconsciously perhaps that that sense of respect might get transferred 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:28.040 to her. Unfortunately for Monroe, it didn't, and Monroe often 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:32.359 struggled to find satisfaction or happiness. Uh do I feel 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:41.919 happy in life? Um? Um, let's see. Let's say I 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:50.560 hope I'm finding happiness right. Well for me, if I 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:55.959 can realize certain things in my work, I come the 0:17:56.000 --> 0:18:01.560 closest to being happy. Monroe constantly saw satisfaction in her career, 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.840 and she gave up a lot just to have one up. Next, 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:07.119 we find out just how far Monroe was willing to 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:09.480 go to launch her career, and we go back to 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:13.359 the moment when Norma Jean transformed into Marilyn Monroe. Without 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:15.920 this period in her life, when she fought for her freedom, 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:36.600 the world would never have had its biggest star. Maril 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:39.520 Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortenson in Los Angeles in 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:44.720 n Her troubles began early on her mother, Gladys, struggled 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:47.439 to care for her young daughter. She was diagnosed as 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:50.680 schizophrenic when Marilyn was a young girl, and Marilyn never 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:53.239 knew who her father was, and the result of that 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:56.240 was that she became a ward of the state of 0:18:56.280 --> 0:19:00.159 California and throughout the nineteen thirties. One, of course, it 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:03.320 was the Great Depression. Maryland was sent to a number 0:19:03.320 --> 0:19:06.400 of foster homes and UM and she was at one 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:09.119 point also sent to an orphanage, which she found a 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:12.040 very traumatic experience because she knew that her mother was 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:14.720 alive and um she wasn't an orphan, but she was 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:20.320 being treated as one, and things only got worse. Monroe 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:22.440 would later claim that she had been molested more than 0:19:22.520 --> 0:19:25.040 once in the foster home she stayed in as a child. 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:27.320 She said that she was living in a boarding house 0:19:27.400 --> 0:19:30.080 at one point in her childhood and that a man 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:35.359 she called Mr. Kimmel Um offered her some money. He 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:37.840 was asking her for some kind of sexual favor. As 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:41.320 a child, Monroe told her foster mother what had happened. 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:44.040 She slapped her and told her not to say such 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:47.160 things about such a nice man. People didn't believe her, 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:52.520 and then this was was only compounded by her later biographers, 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:57.040 who mostly also didn't believe her. Of course, now we're 0:19:57.119 --> 0:20:01.120 all too aware of how frequently women historically have been 0:20:01.160 --> 0:20:04.560 disbelieved when they came forward with stories about sexual assault, 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:09.359 um or molestation. Monroe's life grew even harder when she 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:12.960 faced a difficult choice as a teenager, the orphanage or 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:16.560 an arranged marriage. Her foster family announced that they were 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:20.000 moving to West Virginia, and basically that she wasn't moving 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:24.000 with them. She and her husband were going to West 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:26.560 Virginia and they were going to put me in a 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:32.119 home or you know, like I've been before, or I 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:38.159 could marry this boy who was twenty one. So I'm married. 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:43.359 That twenty one year old was a neighbor named Jim Doherty. 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:45.880 In the span of just a few months, Monroe went 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:49.159 from being a fun loving teenager to a devoted housewife. 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:51.560 She even dropped out of high school to focus on 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:54.440 her marriage, a decision she would regret for the rest 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:57.000 of her life. They didn't know each other, they weren't 0:20:57.000 --> 0:21:00.240 in love. Um. Jim Doherty, by all accounts, was a 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:04.760 perfectly um, a nice decent man um. But you know, 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:07.200 this was not a marriage that was going to last. 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:09.399 You know, it was again, it was two. So he 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:11.639 expected her to stay home and you know, cook his 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:15.879 dinners and um, you know in mendes socks. Doherty enlisted 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:18.639 in the Merchant Marine when America entered the war. He 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:21.879 was overseas for months at a time. Monroe started her 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:25.119 job at the parachute factory, then became a model. She 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:27.880 enjoyed being a working woman and being a model mint. 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:34.000 She was one step closer to her real dream, and 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:36.879 then Monroe had to make another hard decision. She had 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:39.760 signed with a modeling agency run by a professional agent. 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:43.840 That agent was frank with her young client. Hollywood was 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:47.520 not interested in married starletts. No studio wanted to invest 0:21:47.560 --> 0:21:50.719 in a woman who could get pregnant and leave her 0:21:50.760 --> 0:21:53.080 husband wanted to start a family when the war was over. 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:57.760 He didn't understand Monroe's dream. Hollywood is full of beautiful girls, 0:21:57.800 --> 0:22:00.280 he informed her, what makes you think you're any better 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.560 than them. Monroe was just nineteen years old, confronted with 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:07.159 the realization that she could not have a career and 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:12.200 a husband, so she chose a career. Maryland clearly felt 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:14.479 that it would be easier for her to pursue her 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:19.360 modeling and acting career if she were single. In May 0:22:19.480 --> 0:22:23.040 and Row packed her bags. Maryland went to Las Vegas, 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:27.280 where they had in the nineteen thirties. They had loosened 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:30.199 the divorce laws and if you were a resident in 0:22:30.600 --> 0:22:33.359 Nevada for six weeks you could get a divorce, which 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:35.919 was much more difficult to get anywhere else in the country. 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:39.040 Doherty was blindsided. In an interview before his death in 0:22:39.080 --> 0:22:41.760 two thousand five, he recalled the moment he found out 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:45.320 his wife was in Vegas. One day, I was sitting 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:47.679 in the Yanksty River waiting to go into Shanga. I 0:22:47.680 --> 0:22:50.080 had a mail come aboard, and there's a dear job 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:54.560 and it was set by her attorney from Las Vegas, 0:22:55.200 --> 0:22:58.960 and she wanted a divorce. Monroe made plans to stay 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:01.159 with the aunt of one of her former foster mothers 0:23:01.160 --> 0:23:03.560 in Las Vegas. She was not too thrilled to put 0:23:03.600 --> 0:23:05.960 her modeling career on hold to spend a hot summer 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:09.480 in Nevada, but she knew it was necessary. Six weeks later, 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:12.840 on j Monroe sped away from Las Vegas in her 0:23:12.840 --> 0:23:16.040 Ford coupe to Los Angeles. She was a free woman 0:23:16.359 --> 0:23:19.760 in more ways than one. A week after she returned 0:23:19.760 --> 0:23:22.679 from Vegas, Monroe landed a meeting with Ben lyon, the 0:23:22.720 --> 0:23:26.440 head of talent at twentieth Century Fox. The impressed executive 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:28.919 scheduled a screen test for her, and they agreed that 0:23:28.960 --> 0:23:32.160 the young Norma Jean needed a new name. That night, 0:23:32.520 --> 0:23:35.199 the newly christened Marilyn Monroe stood in front of a 0:23:35.240 --> 0:23:38.199 mirror at home. She picked up some red lipstick and 0:23:38.240 --> 0:23:41.600 wrote a seven word manifesto on the mirror. It read, 0:23:42.440 --> 0:23:49.480 this is the end of Norma Jean. We are now 0:23:49.560 --> 0:23:52.320 halfway through the second season of The Thread. In the 0:23:52.359 --> 0:23:54.800 first three episodes, we traced a path through history that 0:23:54.840 --> 0:23:59.560 connects the lives and careers of three American icons, Gloria Steinen, 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:05.080 You Heffner, and Marilyn Monroe. To recap Merril, Monroe poses 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:07.560 for her one and only nude photography session as a 0:24:07.600 --> 0:24:10.280