With no steady work and trying to make a living, Marilyn Monroe posed nude for a calendar spread, earning 50 Dollars for her efforts. When she became famous and the photos resurfaced, the calendar sold more than 1 million copies. The publicity actually helped her career rather than hurt it. In the immediate aftermath of her lost opportunity at Columbia, Marilyn freelanced, hoping to catch on somewhere. She had a small role in the last Marx Brothers movie, Love Happy (1949), and got the attention of William Morris agent Johnny Hyde. He went on to become both her lover and her mentor, guiding her career and getting her small but important parts in such films as The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and All About Eve (1950).
Marilyn Monroe was starting to get press attention, and Hyde succeeded in garnering for her a seven-year contract at TWENTIETH CENTURY–FOX just before he died of a heart attack in 1951. The studio groomed her for stardom, giving her modest roles in films such as As Young As You Feel (1951), Love Nest (1951), Let's Make It Legal (1951), Clash by Night (1951), We're Not Married (1952), and Monkey Business (1952). In most of these early films, she was cast as a dumb blonde, the studio banking on her sensual appeal rather than her acting abilities.
Finally, Marilyn Monroe had her first major role in Niagara (1953), and despite the film's mediocrity, her presence in the movie turned it into a hit. The actress's career suddenly blossomed. Her follow-up film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), teamed her with another busty movie star, JANE RUSSELL, and the hit musical proved that Marilyn could do more than look beautiful. She could sing in her own inimitable breathy, sexy style, and she could dance with provocative bravado. But the real surprise was that she was a surprisingly adept comedienne. Marilyn Monroe continued her successful role as an improbably innocent gold digger in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).
She continued to play a variation on the dumb blonde in There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) and The Seven Year Itch (1955). She played a somewhat wiser dramatic character in the mediocre River of No Return (1954). Although all of her films were big hits, Marilyn Monroe was unhappy at not being given an opportunity to play a wider variety of roles. Attempting to save her integrity as an actress, she walked out on her contract and went to New York to study acting with Paula and Lee Strasberg.
Marilyn Monroe made headlines for her personal life as well as for her fight with Twentieth Century–Fox. After her nine-month marriage to former baseball hero Joe DiMaggio, she met and fell in love with America's leading playwright, Arthur Miller, who became her third and last husband. Meanwhile, Fox finally capitulated and gave Marilyn a new contract with the right to approve scripts and directors. Her next film under that contract was the hit Bus Stop (1956), proving that Marilyn knew what she was doing. For the first time, critics who had previously scoffed at her acting ability began to change their tune.
Unfortunately, her next film was the rather weak The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) with LAURENCE OLIVIER. She bounced back strongly with BILLY WILDER's hugely successful Some Like It Hot (1959). Let's Make Love (1960) was not as successful a film, but it attained a certain notoriety because of Marilyn Monroe's affair with costar Yves Montand.
By this time, though, Marilyn's inconsistent professional behavior was becoming more and more a topic of discussion in the movie industry. She was often late to arrive on the set and sometimes didn't show up at all. Marilyn Monroe was considered extremely difficult to direct; a number of her directors publicly complained about both her tardiness and the constant need to retake her scenes because she could not give a consistently credible performance.
Well aware of her reputation, JOHN HUSTON agreed to direct Marilyn Monroe in a film that Arthur Miller had written for her: The Misfits (1961). Because of delays caused by her emotional problems and dependence on sleeping pills, the film went way over budget. Nonetheless, the star delivered a powerful and elegant performance as an ethereal child/woman. Though generally well received by the critics, The Misfits was not a winner at the box office (at least not on its initial release). A week before the movie opened, she announced her divorce from Miller.
Marilyn Monroe began to make Something's Got to Give (1962), but the film was never finished. After two box-office failures, her unprofessional behavior became intolerable. When the film fell hopelessly behind schedule, she was fired. Through her acquaintance with FRANK SINATRA and Peter Lawford, the actress had met and had become intimately involved with President John F. Kennedy as well as his brother Robert, the attorney general. Marilyn Monroe grew increasingly ill, depending heavily on sleeping pills. She died of a drug overdose under mysterious circumstances, with some reputable journalists claiming that Robert Kennedy was in some fashion involved in her death.
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1. Gilbert Andreson alias Broncho Billy and early Hollywood
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