Marilyn Monroe's Birthday

On June 1, 1926, a 24-year-old film editor from the RKO Pictures film studio Gladys Pearl Baker (née Monroe) had a third child, a girl. The girl was named Norma Jeane. Five years earlier, Gladys divorced John Newton Baker, whom she married at age 15. In a divorce, John Baker took the first two children of Gladys with him and left with them from Los Angeles to Kentucky. Norma Jeane learned about the existence of a brother and sister only at the age of 12. Two years before the birth of Norma Jean, Gladys Pearl married Martin Edward Mortensen and broke up with him very quickly.

Who was the biological father of Norma Jean remained unknown for many decades. Only in April 2022 did the media report that genetic scientists managed to determine the name of Norma Jean's biological father. It turned out to be Charles Stanley Gifford, an employee of Consolidated Films. But in the girl’s birth certificate, her name was recorded as “Norma Jean Mortenson,” and at baptism she was recorded as Norma Jeane Baker.

Gladys Pearl practically did not participate in the education of her daughter. First, due to financial problems, and in 1934 she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, as a result of which she was placed in a psychiatric clinic in which she spent the rest of her life until 1984.

Throughout her childhood, Norma Jeane passed from one foster parents to another, from foster parents to orphanage and again to foster parents. And finally, at the age of 18, she became financially independent, getting the job of a photo model. Then she decided on her own name, under which she became famous throughout the world - Marilyn Monroe.

They say more than 300 books have been written about her. The number of publications in mass-media is impossible to count. That is, almost every day of her life is described in detail and from various angles of view. And we, naturally, will not be able, and we are not going to communicate something new to our readers. We just want on her birthday to share memories of our "touches" with this Actress.

The phrase "Marilyn Monroe" became known to me literally at the time of the pink childhood, almost from kindergarten. True, then, at the beginning of the 60s, for us it was precisely a phrase, a myth, a symbol. And even, at the suggestion of Andrey Voznesensky, was pronounced as Merlin Monro. But Soviet humorists in the Soviet Union transformed this name into Marilyn Murlo (“murlo” in Russian pronunciation is a synonym of mug, or muzzle). Yes, this was understandable. After all, just a few people in the USSR knew about her more than Voznesensky wrote in 1963 - “the heroine of suicide and heroin”. Even fewer people saw her.

And so, in the 1966, a rare event happened, if not a miracle, the film “Some Like It Hot” was released on the screens of Soviet cinemas. Moreover, without the Certification "Not for children under 16". My mother and I immediately went to this film. Much later it became known that in addition to us, about 44 million Soviet movie goers came to the cinema for this film only in the first year of its demonstration.

Honestly, me, at the moment just 10-year-old boy, did not care much about the charms of Marilyn. I simply choked with laughter, looking at Jack Lemmon. But older men simply could not take their eyes off Monroe. And how could it be otherwise?

And, what is characteristically, somehow, the henchiness on the topic of “Marilyn Murlo” rather quickly disappeared. Okay, there are women. They see a potential rival in any beauty. But the man, able to call such beauty as mug, or muzzle was perceived, at least, suffering from deviations in sexual orientation. To which the USSR treated, to put it mildly, with suspicion.

And in the poem by Andrey Voznesensky, the center of gravity somehow gradually shifted from the “heroine of heroin” to “I am a weak woman. Could I really cope? better - at once! ”

For many, about 20 to 25 years, Marilyn Monroe remained in the USSR an actress of one role. Other films with her participation did not reach the mass Soviet cinema-goer. And only with the beginning of perestroika, and even more with the collapse of the domination of communist ideology in culture in the early 90s, the Russian audience got access to films with Marilyn Monroe. And frankly, it was a little disappointed. No, with her beauty Marilyn shone and almost overshadowed her partners in almost all films. Like, for example, in the film “All about Eve” (where, having appeared on the screen for just a few minutes, Monroe made the audience and partners in the film look only at her).

But the quality of the films was still much lower than the masterpiece of the comedy film by Billy Wilder.

Along with the flow of films with Marilyn Monroe, books about her have come to Russia. I happened to read one of them, written by Sylvain Rener. It was this book that launched such a catch phrase about Marilyn: "A chest of stone, a brain of cotton." It was in this book that Tony Curtis recalled that when he was kissing Monroe in the role, he had the feeling that he was kissing Hitler. And much more in the same vein. However, all this can be explained by the envy of someone else's success, so characteristic of people of creative professions.

What I remember most of all from this book is that Marilyn’s biggest actor’s dream was to play Grushenka. Not Juliet, not Ophelia, nor any Nora by Ibsen. But Grushenka of Dostoevsky. Of course, she would hardly have ever succeeded. But this dream suggests that Russian literature, at least, its best works, Norma Jean knew and loved. Perhaps even more than some modern Russian actresses.

For her creative film biography, so short, only 15 years old, Marilyn Monroe has played in 26 full-length feature films. Two films of them entered the Golden Thousand. Thanks to this indicator and her stunning beauty and sexuality, Marilyn Monroe is included in the list of the 100 most beautiful and sexiest Actresses in the world cinema, compiled by FilmGourmand. Marilyn Monroe's acting career was marked by 11 film awards, of which the most prestigious is the American Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in the film “Some Like It Hot”.