A hundred years after birth, Marilyn Monroe continues to be one of those figures – literally – timeless, that cinema fails to archive. Not only because his face is still everywhere, from black and white photographs to shirts, from documentaries to exhibitions, but because his history holds together many things that Hollywood has told and often hidden: the construction of the female image, the relationship between fame and fragility, the power of the studios, the way a person can become a bigger symbol of his biography. For this reason the centenary of his birth is also an opportunity to return to a figure that everyone recognizes, but which is often remembered through a few elements – the blond, clothes, voice, premature death – leaving in the background the work with which Norma Jeane Mortenson became Marilyn Monroe.
Marilyn Monroe was born in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926 under the name Norma Jeane Mortenson. Before becoming one of the most famous and celebrated actresses of American cinema, we know that she had a very unstable childhood: the mother, Gladys Pearl Monroe, suffered from psychiatric problems and failed to cope stably with her, which passed between entrusting families, institutes and different houses. It is a part of its history often reduced to tragic premise, but it serves to understand why Marilyn Monroe was also built as a public character: those elements already said – the name, the blonde, the voice, the clothes and even the vulnerability shown on the screen – were elements of a very controlled professional identity, not only the natural effect of a personality out of the ordinary.
His career began with fashion and first contracts in Hollywood, after being noticed in the 1940s by actor and executive Ben Lyon. Success came mainly in the 1950s, when Marilyn became one of the most profitable and discussed faces of the American studio system. Movies like Men prefer blondes, When the wife is on holiday and A someone likes warm fixed a precise image: the seductive and seemingly naive blonde, often smarter than the other characters were willing to recognize.
Monroe died in Los Angeles on the night of 4–5 August 1962, at age 36, for an overdose of barbiturates. The official version spoke of probable suicide, but around his death many undemonstrated hypotheses, often related to Kennedy, Mafia or his psychiatrist Ralph Greenson, have grown over the years. Beyond the conspiracy theories, what is certain is that Marilyn Monroe was a very exposed woman, fragile at some times, but also an actress who tried to have more control over her career, founded a production company and tried to leave the role in which Hollywood had put her.
For the centenary, Italy also dedicates a special programming. The Rai broadcasts today, June 1st, Someone likes to warm on Rai Movie and provides services and insights into the news, on RaiNews24, RaiPlay, RaiPlay Sound and the radios of the group. The documentary Marilyn Monroe – Ascesa di un mito, also dedicated to the 1954 trip to Korea, when Monroe performed in front of American soldiers. On La7Cinema, Marilyn, the 2011 film also known as My Week with Marilyn.
In the United States the centenary was marked above all by the exhibition Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon, opened at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles from 31 May 2026 to 28 February 2027. The exhibition collects costumes, letters, photographs, personal objects and archive materials, with the stated goal of showing the person behind the public image. Among the exhibited pieces there have become part of the history of cinema, annotated scripts, private objects and materials related to the construction of his character. In Palm Springs, 1,037 people dressed as Marilyn Monroe have established a new Guinness World Record for the actress’s greatest sosia gathering, surpassing the previous record of 254 participants recorded in Australia. It’s a little pop and a little touristy, but it says well how Marilyn continues to be recognizable even by those who may have never seen her whole movie.
L’articolo One hundred years of Marilyn Monroe proviene da IlNewyorkese.
