Identity

Marilyn was a character she played. The breathy voice, the swaying walk, the wide-eyed innocence, all of it was a performance Norma Jeane could switch on and off. Her real speaking voice was entirely different and far more ordinary

Appearance

She was a natural brunette and a US size 8. The platinum blonde was entirely a dye job, Monroe was born dark-haired. She was also a size 8, curvier than the Hollywood ideal, making her look like a persona, a deliberate reinvention

Early Life

She developed stutter as a child. Monroe developed a stutter during her two years at the Los Angeles Orphans’ Home in the mid-1930s and it lingered into her teens. That the woman behind one of history’s most imitated voices once struggled to speak is quietly extraordinary

Intellect

Her personal library had over 400 books. Kerouac, Camus, Hemingway, Tolstoy, many with her own handwritten notes in the margins. The woman in Hollywood cast as the “dumb blonde” was, by most accounts, one of the most well-read people in the room

‘Only parts of us will ever touch only parts of others, one’s own truth is just that really, one’s own truth’     - Marilyn Monroe, from her personal notebooks

Scent

She wore Chanel No.5 to bed and nothing else. When asked what she wore to sleep, Monroe replied, “Five drops of Chanel No.5.” She genuinely wore little else to bed and the tip became one of the most powerful unpaid endorsements in advertising history

Activism

She got Ella Fitzgerald booked at the Segregated club. When the Mocambo in LA refused to book Fitzgerald, Monroe personally called the owners and promised to sit front row every night if they did. Fitzgerald later said, “I own Marilyn Monroe a real debt”

Politics

The FBI had a file on her, suspected communist. Hoover’s FBI tracked Monroe for years, noting her support for civil rights and Fidel Castro and describing her politics as “very positively and concisely leftist.” Hollywood’s biggest star was, quietly, a government concern

Privacy

Her hotel alias was Zelda Zonk. To check in anywhere without causing a scene, Monroe used the name Zelda Zonk. The sheer absurdity of it and the fact that it worked, says everything about the exhausting double life she led

Pop Culture

JFK Jr. asked Drew Barrymore to play Marilyn for his magazine. John F. Kennedy Jr, son of the president Monroe famously serenaded, asked Drew Barrymore to pose as Marilyn for the cover of his political magazine George. History completing a very strange loop

Rare Find

Five hidden 1949 portraits are being auctioned this week. Taken before her nose job and before she went platinum, five photographs by John Ahlhauser have surfaced for the first time for her centennial. In the words of the photographer’s daughter “windows into her soul”