Marilyn Monroe at 100--The Candle in the Wind

                     

                                    Quintessential Marilyn--frank, inviting, vulnerable.

One hundred years ago on June 1, 1926 baby Norma Jean was born in Los Angeles to an attractive young woman who worked as an RKO film cutter.  Mortenson was the name on her birth certificate.  Her father abandoned the family before her birth and her mother Gladys took to calling her Norma Jean Baker, the name she would use through childhood, after an earlier lover.  She was never sure who her father was and her mother, who battled mental illness kept a parade of men through the house between periods in an institution. 

By age six she was being farmed out to relatives and friends with unhappy periods in foster care.  Her longest term care giver, a family friend, filled her with fantasies of becoming a movie star.  At age nine she began two years of Dickensonian torment in the Los Angeles Orphan’s Home working in the kitchen for 5 cents a week.  She was released to yet another foster home. 

After a brief turn at Van Nuys High School, she took a job at age 16 at a Los Angeles aircraft plant applying dope to canvas wing covers.  She married co-worker James Doughety mostly to avoid being sent to another foster home.  He was soon inducted into the service.  

                         

                                     What started it all--Mrs. Doughety at the defense plant.

A photographer visiting the plant to document women war workers zeroed in on the attractive girl and suggested that she become a model.  Although her first shoot paid only $5, it was enough to get her to quit the plant.  Soon she was getting regular work in pin-up and bathing suit pictures, in addition to some commercial work.  She was modeling under the name Norma Jean Doughety when photos came to the attention of producers. 

In 1946, the same year she divorced her husband in Las Vegas, she signed a development contract with 20th Century Fox, where her name was changed to Marilyn Monroe.  Monroe had been her mother’s maiden name.  Marilyn was borrowed from Marilyn Maxwell, a second-tier Betty Grable.  She was given bit parts and promoted with things like being named Miss California Artichoke Queen in 1947.  After walk-ons and bits, she was cast in a small speaking part as waitress in the turgid teen melodrama Dangerous Years.  Her contract was not renewed, and Marilyn returned to modeling and took acting lessons. 

With an I.Q. above 160 Marilyn was always trying to improve herself and yearned to become a serious actress.  She also read voluminously, focusing on history, biography, and literature.  She felt cheated by her lack of formal education and wanted to be able to hold serious conversations.

She was briefly picked up by Columbia Pictures, where she got the second lead with two songs in the burlesque musical Ladies of the Chorus.  Despite personally good notices for this B-picture, Columbia dropped her contract. 

In 1949 she appeared in the Marx Brothers’ final feature film Love Happy in a brief role as detective Groucho’s client.  By this time, she had changed her light brown hair to a golden blonde and was rooming with another buxom aspiring blonde, Shelly Winters.  Her modeling assignments, which that year included the famous nude calendar art shoot that ended up years later as Playboy’s first centerfold, were getting more attention. Despite lacking a studio contract her personal publicist was giving her the standard starlet build-up and she was beginning to get noticed in gossip columns and fan magazines. 

1950 was Marilyn’s break out year in two small, but unforgettable appearances—MGM’s Asphalt Jungle, and even more memorably as the bombshell at Margo Channing’s (Bette Davis) party in All About Eve.  Her roles were getting bigger and better.  She was a war-buddy distraction to William Lundigan as the husband of June Haver in the domestic comedy, Love Nest.

She was second billed, but this movie made her a top star.

In 1953 Marilyn stunned audiences as the mentally ill hotel babysitter in Don’t Bother to Knock with Richard Widmark, a role which drew on her own insecurities and demons.  The same year she displayed her knack for comedy in Monkey Business with Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant.  It was her first performance as a platinum blonde, a shade selected to differentiate her from her aging co-star Rogers.  The same year her turn as a murderess in the film noir Niagara with Joseph Cotton was another reminder of her serious acting chops.   But it was the busy actress’s role in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with her memorable turn as Lorelei Lee made Monroe a true star of the first rank.  She capped the year playing a very dumb, bespectacled blonde in the ensemble comedy How to Mary a Millionaire with another predecessor as Hollywood’s blonde bombshell du jure, Betty Grable.  

Wedding day with Joe DiMaggio.

In January of 1954 she married baseball superstar Joe DiMaggio and was soon on a famous USO tour to Korea where the attention of the troops stunned her new husband.  The shy and reserved DiMaggio wanted Monroe to quit her career, resulting in a divorce in less than a year, although the pair remained friendly, and DiMaggio famously carried a torch for her even after her death.  Wearing mostly tight jeans and plaid shirt, she made Otto Preminger’s western adventure, The River of No Return with Robert Mitchum and the show-biz musical There’s No Business Like Show Business in which she held her own with musical heavy weights Ethyl Merman, Dan Dailey, and Donald O’Connor.  Her next film was the comic hit Seven Year Itch remembered for its iconic publicity shot of her white dress billowing around her waist as she stood over a subway ventilation grill.

During filming, there were reports of chronic lateness on the set and other problems began to surface.  Always plagued with self-doubt and probably suffering from genetic bi-polar disorder, she also had genuine health problems—a serious gynecological condition, endometriosis, that could be quite painful. 

In 1955 Monroe was suspended by Twentieth Century Fox for refusing to make How to be Very, Very Popular and The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing because she wanted to break away from her image as a sex symbol.  She fled to New York City where she joined Lee Strasberg’s Actor’s Studio to study Method acting.  She also began serious Freudian analysis and spent time with the city’s literary set, where she met playwright Arthur Miller.  After nearly a year off, she returned to Hollywood and played in the screen adaptation of William Inge’s acclaimed play Bus Stop.  This time she finally wowed critics as well as the audience with her nuanced performance as the fragile, innocent sexpot Cheri.

Next up was a trip to England to be directed by and co-star with Lawrence Olivier in The Prince and the Show Girl, where her chronic lateness and her devotion to the Method drove the traditionally trained Olivier nearly to distraction. 

Monroe took most of 1958 off to study and spend time with Miller.  In 1959 she had her greatest success in a comedy in writer/director Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot.  With personal acting coach Paula Strasberg on the set, she was a problem and demanded as many as 83 takes before she felt she had “nailed it.”  Wilder and co-star Jack Lemon were patient with her, but leading man Tony Curtis was so frustrated that he compared kissing Monroe to “kissing Hitler.” 

Monroe’s troubled marriage to Miller was coming unwound with her bouts of depression, angry accusations that Miller did not respect her, and casual love affairs.  A liaison with French actor Yves Montand during the making of George Cukor’s musical comedy dud Let’s Make Love was just one last straw in the marriage.  Monroe by this time was heavily dependent on sleeping pills and sedatives. 

The Misfits, fine dramatic tour de force for the stellar cast, will forever have an aura of doom clouding it after Clark Gable's death.  It was also one of Clift's last films, and Monroe's last completed film.

With their marriage already rocky, Miller wrote gift screenplay for Monroe—The Misfits starring Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, and Eli Wallach directed by John Huston which was shot in 1960 and released in February 1961 following Gable’s fatal heart attack.

Miller and Monroe announced their separation shortly after Gable’s death, for which Marilyn felt guilty.  Soon she was hospitalized in a mental institution so stark that a desperate call to former husband DiMaggio got him to drive from San Francisco to retrieve her and help her find another institution.   

Monroe wore no underwear and had to be sewn into the tight beaded gown she wore when she crooned Happy Birthday, Mr. President to John F. Kennedy causing a scandal.

Upon release she restlessly became involved with serial affairs including liaisons with Rat Pack leader Frank Sinatra and his pal Peter Lawford, who introduced her to his in-laws John and Robert Kennedy.  She had affairs with both, which was an ill-kept secret in Hollywood.  Monroe created something of a scandal and a sensation when she crooned Happy Birthday, Mr. President to John in a shimmering sheath dress so tight she had to be sewn into it.

These relationships, made public in the years after her death, shaped her legend and fed a thousand conspiracy theories.  One conspiracy theory proved to be true—FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover had every room of her Hollywood home bugged in an attempt to get damaging goods on the President and/or his boss Bobby, the Attorney General.  The super-sophisticated bugging equipment was discovered hidden in the house when it was remodeled in 1972.

Her reputation for unreliability made it hard for Monroe to get parts even at her home studio Fox.  They gave her one last chance with the comedy Something’s Got to Give, but production was suspended because of her chronic absences from the set.  Footage released later, including a stunning swimming pool scene, revealed that Monroe remained luminous on film no matter her personal demons. 

With a genius level IQ Marylin sought out the company of great minds like Carl Sandburg and Albert Einstein--and they reveled in her company.

Despite all of these problems Monroe was in discussions for several projects and was reported in good spirits by friends shortly before her death.  In her last days DiMaggio, concerned about “the people she had fallen in with,” reportedly was ready to ask her to re-marry him.  

On August 5, 1962, hours after last speaking to DiMaggio, Monroe was found on her bed with the phone in her hand.  She was naked, but ordinarily slept without clothes.  Several bottles of pills were found.  Her personal physician reported that he found the body after being alerted by the housekeeper. 

Police found several inconsistencies in various accounts given of her final hours and evidence that the scene had been tampered with, including the laundering of the bed linens and removal of any water glass.  Autopsy results indicated death as acute barbiturate poisoning and a likely suicide.  Revelations of the Kennedy connections have fueled dozens of conspiracy theories. 

Joe DiMaggio left roses at Monroe's crypt every year on the anniversary of her death until he died.

DiMaggio claimed Monroe’s body and arranged her funeral.  Famously, he left a dozen roses at her mausoleum vault every year on the anniversary of her death.   Monroe’s will left 25% of her estate to her acting coach, Lee Strasberg and 25% to the Freud Institute for Psychoanalysis. 

Her life, death and career have sparked an industry, including over 600 books.  Marilyn seemed to be everywhere with new books, an award winning 2011 film with Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn, based on her time in England doing The Prince and the Show Girl, the TV series Smash! chronicling the road to Broadway for a Marilyn musical, and Ana de Armas in 2021 in Blonde, the second film version of Joyce Carol Oates’ fictionalized biography. 

But back in 1973 Elton John and Bernie Taupin may have summed up Norma Jean/Marilyn Monroe’s life best: a Candle in the Wind.

Ella Fitzgerald was the First Lady of American Song

Long before Rihanna, in 1972 Ella Fitzgerald sang Mac the Knife with trumpeter Al Hirt at Super Bowl VI in New Orleans as part of a tribute to Louis Armstrong.  Broadway star Carol Channing also performed.  They became the first celebrity artists to perform at the Super Bowl and Ella was the first Black woman.   

Ella Fitzgerald is regarded by many as the greatest female singer of the 20th Century and there is plenty of competition.  Her career spanned decades from a novelty song specialist as a teenager to the undisputed First Lady of Song.  She sang with big bands, invented scat singing, moved seamlessly to jazz improvisation in the bebop era, and reinterpreted the canon of the Great American Songbook introducing generations to popular music as an art form and preserving classics that otherwise might have faded from memory. 

Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia, but moved to Yonkers, New York with her mother and Portuguese-born stepfather in the early ‘20s.  After her mother was killed in an auto accident when she was 15, she left her stepfather’s home quickly and moved to live with an aunt in Harlem.  Most biographers believe she had been physically or sexually abused.  

Despite being an excellent student in Yonkers, Fitzgerald began skipping school and hanging with a rough street crowd.  She was soon acting as a lookout for a bordello and ran numbers for a Mafia game, a common job in Harlem.  Arrested, she was placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in the Bronx and then at the New York Training School for Girls in upstate Hudson.  She may have again been abused there and escaped four times and was sometimes homeless back in Harlem. 

A virtual street urchin with all the predatory dangers that involves, Fitzgerald began busking on the streets dancing and imitating the jazz records of Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and The Boswell Sisters.  Her first break came on November 4, 1934 when she unexpectedly won one of the earliest of the Apollo Theater Amateur Nights.  She got the $25 prize—which must have seemed like a fortune—but not the promised week-long booking at the theater because of her threadbare appearance. 

Young Ella with the diminutive Chick Webb at the drums in one of their famous Savoy Ballroom sets.

But the following January she did sing for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House.  Then she was picked up by drummer Chick Webb’s big band despite his reservations about her “scarecrow appearance.”  She became a favorite with the band in its famous appearances at the Savoy Ballroom broadcast on radio.  She recorded several sides with the band and was highly regarded by her fellow musicians. 

Fitzgerald already had a mid-level hit with (If You Can’t Sing It) You’ll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini) when a ditty she co-wrote, A-Tisket, A-Tasket, became a smash and introduced her for the first time to wide White audiences. That was something of a mixed blessing—all they wanted to hear from the “little girl” were novelty songs.  Eventually it got her in movies with cameo appearances in Abbot and Costello’s Ride ‘em Cowboy in 1942. 

Ella singing A-Tisket, A-Tasket from the back of the bus in the Abbot and Costello flick Ride 'em Cowboy.

But Ella was working, touring, recording, and most importantly no longer hungry or tattered.  When Webb died in 1938 Fitzgerald took over the band, which was re-named Ella’s Famous Orchestra—almost unheard of for a girl singer and a recognition of her serious musical chops.  With and without Webb Ella and that band laid down almost 150 sides before the band dissolved in 1942 when many members went into the service.  Ella easily established a solo career recording at Decca and gained critical attention with her regular appearances with the prestigious Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts. 

With the demise of big band swing after World War II Fitzgerald adapted seamlessly to the new bebop sound.  Working frequently with Dizzy Gillespie, she was credited with inventing scat singing—nonsense syllables improvised around the melody.  It was her way of doing as a vocalist the riffs the other musicians were inventing on the spot.  “I just wanted to do what I heard the horns playing,” she said. 

Ella in 1947 with then husband Ray Brown, left, and Dizzy Gillespie, right--the Queen of Scat and Bebop.

In 1955 with Bop fading in popularity, Fitzgerald shifted gears again when she signed with Verve Records produced by Jazz at the Philharmonic impresario Norman Ganz.  Beginning with Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book together they produced a string of landmark albums featuring what came to be known as The Great American Songbook.  Those highly regarded albums which have never gone out of issue are regarded by many as defining the canon of 20th Century popular song. 

Ella and Marilyn Monroe were close friends.  The movie star was a longtime fan and the two also shared a bond of coming from abusive, troubled childhoods.  Monroe gave Ella's career a big boost in 1955 by convincing the owner of the posh Sunset Strip Mocambo Club to book her by promising to show up stage side every night with celebrity guests.  Although the story is often told that the club would not book her because of her race, the real reason was that the owner did not think the overweight singer had sex appeal and was glamourous enough for the gig.  It did prove a breakout for her from singing in small jazz clubs to the country's top night clubs.

Up to the early ‘90s Fitzgerald toured widely in the U.S., Europe, and Asia performing solo concerts and collaborations with most of the leading bands and her singing peers as well as appearances with symphony orchestras.  She also made many television appearances as guest star or in her own specials.  She continued to record, including two Christmas albums that rate with those of Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, and Johnny Mathis as indispensable holiday classics. 

In her later years, Fitzgerald was plagued by health issues—obesity, diabetes, and repertory failure—which only slowed her down a little.  When diabetes caused the amputation of both legs below the knee in 1993 and her eyesight was impaired, she continued to perform from a seat on stage. 

                                                    Ella was commemorated on a 2007 USPS  Black Heritage stamp.

She died in her Beverly Hills home attended by her adopted son Ray Brown Jr. and granddaughter Alice on June 15, 1996 at the age of 79.