James Spada - Monroe: Her Life in Pictures

She starred in just eleven films over ten years, not a prodigious output of product compared to that of many other screen greats. But her films were just one part of the Marilyn Monroe mystique; she was a total celebrity, one in whom the publics interest did not flag despite often lengthy periods between films.

Her rise to fame in the early 1950s was a cultural phenomenon; barely a day passed when one of the New York newspapers wasnt featuring a Monroe photo, article, gossip column item, or all three. The public found her fascinating: she was a beautiful, successful woman who had spent an abysmal childhood dreaming of stardom; she played dumb blondes, yet was famous for her fast witticisms; she was in many ways vulnerable and nave, yet had a streak of independence and ambition that would surprise many who tried to take easy advantage of her.

Her sexuality was often blatant, yet always there was a childlike innocence about her, a suggestion of the little girl dressed in her mothers clothes and play-acting allure. The playfulness she brought to sex made her carnality at once more stimulating to men and less threatening to women.

She would become, however, Hollywoods ultimate victim, a sensitive, insecure, frightened woman who believed her looks and sexuality were her only key to happiness. Once worldwide fame and adulation had come to her, she realized they were only a partial fulfillment. But by then it was too late to achieve happiness anywhere elseMarilyn Monroe was public property. Her enormous fame destroyed one of her marriages, and the neuroticism that her fame created in her destroyed the other. She was unable to accept happiness from one man, and the love of the masses was merely an empty, temporary tonic.