Marilyn Monroe has to be one of the longest-enduring icons of all time. The peroxide blonde bombshell with the bold red lip has become synonymous with glamour and sexual revolution, with many people still intrigued by her mental health struggles and the barbiturate overdose that led to her tragic and early death.
This year, Ana de Armas is set to star to star as Monroe in the new Netflix adult-only biopic: Blonde. The first clip from the film has now been released and sees Ana de Armas explore Monroe's mental health struggles on her journey from being the ordinary Norma Jeane Baker to becoming the most in demand celebrity of her time.
Earlier this year, it was confirmed that the film will have an NC-17 rating in the US (18 in the UK) because of its sexual content. However, the writer and director Andrew Dominik has said this is needless and that the documentary have been made with good intentions. 'My ambition is to make you fall in love with Marilyn,' he told Netflix Queue.
'He wanted the world to experience what it actually felt like to not only be Marilyn, but also Norma Jeane,' added de Armas. 'I found that to be the most daring, unapologetic, and feminist take on her story that I had ever seen.'
When is the Marilyn Monroe biopic starring Ana de Armas out?
Blonde is based on Joyce Carol Oates' novel of the same name and is a fictionalised adaption of Marilyn Monroe's life. Netflix have confirmed that Blonde will be released on September 23, with cast members also including Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale and Julianne Nicholson.
But while we wait for the drama adaptation of Monroe’s life, we can’t stop watching the new Netflix documentary The Mystery Of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, which has raised even more unanswered questions about the star’s death. Here’s everything you need to know.
How old was Marilyn Monroe when she passed away?
Marilyn Monroe was 36 years old when she passed away from a barbiturate overdose on August 4, 1962. It has long been reported that Monroe was found in her bed by her psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson, but in The Mystery Of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, an ambulance company owner Walter Schaefer claims Monroe was still alive when his driver Ken Hunter took her to hospital in Santa Monica.
The journalist John Sherlock has seconded Schaefer’s story and said that Greenson told him Monroe was still alive and that she passed away while being driven to Saint John’s Health Centre.
How did Marilyn Monroe die?
Marilyn Monroe died from a barbiturate overdose. Barbituates are a sedative drug that are prescribed to reduce headaches, insomnia and seizures and reduce the activity of nerves to cause muscle relaxation.
On the day of Monroe’s death, the LA Times reported: ‘An empty bottle found among several medicines beside her bed had contained 50 Nembutal capsules. The prescription was issued only two or three days ago and the capsules were to be taken in doses of one a night… The coroner’s office listed the death on its records as possible suicide while the police report said death was possibly accidental.’
What year was Marilyn Monroe born?
Marilyn Monroe was born on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles, California. Her birth name was Norma Jeane Mortenson, which she changed for her screen name in 1946 after signing a contract with Fox.
What does waif mean?
Marilyn Monroe was regularly reffered to as a waif throughout her life. ‘I’m not calling myself an orphan,’ she says in the new Netflix documentary, The Mystery Of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes. ‘I was brought up a waif.’
A waif denotes a person, usually a child, who has grown up without a home or friends. Monroe mostly grew up in foster homes and also spent two years in an orphanage. Her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker, had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, which left Monroe in the care of a guardian.
Who was Marilyn Monroe married to?
Marilyn Monroe had three husbands: Joe DiMaggio, Arthur Miller, and James Dougherty. She married Dougherty, her childhood friend, in 1942 when she was only 16 years old to stop her from being placed in an orphanage after her foster parents moved away. She divorced Dougherty in 1946 after gaining attention from photographers.
Monroe then began dating the baseball player DiMaggio in 1952 and married him two years later in 1954. The marriage lasted five months when Monroe’s now instantly recognisable white-dress-blowing-up photo was said to have angered him and caused rows.
She then married the playwright Arthur Miller, who she’d had a short fling with in 1951 before she met Joe. Problems quickly emerged between them and the couple announced they were separating in 1960. There were then rumours that Monroe had an affair with President John F. Kennedy. Miller famously declined to attend Monroe’s funeral.
Did Marilyn Monroe have a miscarriage?
The actor Tony Curtis claimed in his memoir, which was published in 2009, that he had an affair with Monroe while filming Some Like It Hot in 1958. She was married to Miller at this time, and Curtis claims Monroe broke the news that she was pregnant while they were admitting the affair to her husband.
‘I was stunned,’ he wrote. ‘I just stood there. The room was so silent that I could hear tyres screeching on Santa Monica Boulevard.' Curtis alleges that they finished shooting the film but that he stayed away from Miller and Monroe, and it was only after filming finished that he found out she had miscarried.