7 Facts That Pierce the Marilyn Monroe Myth

In a 1960 interview, Monroe recalled first stuttering during her time at the Los Angeles Orphans’ Home, where she lived between September 1935 and the summer of 1937. Then known as Norma Jeane, Monroe spent much of her early childhood moving between foster homes and institutions. Her mother, Gladys Baker, struggled with severe mental health issues and was unable to care for her. Monroe said the stuttering recurred in her early teens, and she reflected on her difficulty reading meeting minutes when she was elected as secretary of a school club.

Michelle Morgan, whose books on Monroe include Marilyn Monroe: Private and Undisclosed and When Marilyn Met the Queen, says the star continued to stutter occasionally as an adult. “It would sometimes appear while she was working, and it would surprise people on set because they had not heard her stutter until that moment,” Morgan explains.

In the same 1960 interview, Monroe recounted one such instance when an assistant director yelled at her for stuttering on set. “He said, ‘You don’t stutter!’ I said, ‘That’s what you think!’” she joked.

Monroe used a whimsical pseudonym when she wanted to avoid attention, booking flights and hotel rooms under the name “Zelda Zonk.” But as one of the most recognizable stars of her era, she had to take things a step further. As Morgan notes, “She would often wear a brunette wig, a headscarf and old clothes, and nobody would bother her.”

The alter ego gave Monroe, who was a naturally shy person, a much-needed break from the ever-present spotlight, Morgan says. However, she occasionally felt conflicted about her moments of anonymity. “Marilyn loved her fans and enjoyed spending time with them,” Morgan says. “She once walked past fans while wearing her disguise, only to feel sorry that they hadn’t been able to meet her. The story goes that she took off her disguise and went back, so that her fans could see her.” For Morgan, the moment illustrates Monroe’s humanity and the gratitude she felt toward the people who made her a star.

Monroe left Los Angeles for New York in 1954, fed up with the Hollywood studio system, writes Elizabeth Winder in Marilyn in Manhattan. There, in January 1955, Monroe co-founded her own independent production company with friend and photographer Milton Greene. The move was intended to give her greater control of her career and to make the kind of movies she envisioned for herself.

“That was her way of achieving creative freedom,” Winder told Entertainment Weekly in 2022. “This was her way to be able to be the type of actress she knew she could be and always wanted to be. There wasn’t really a way for her to do it in a smaller way.”

Marilyn Monroe Productions only produced one film, The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), in which Monroe starred alongside director Laurence Olivier.

While filming The Prince and the Showgirl in England, Monroe attended an October 1956 Royal Command Performance of the film The Battle of the River Plate where she met Queen Elizabeth II.

While Monroe’s low-cut gold lamé gown might have raised some eyebrows, her brief encounter with the queen went off without a hitch. According to Morgan, when Elizabeth II approached Monroe in the star-studded receiving line, the actress took her hand and curtsied. She later told reporters that she’d found the queen to be “very warmhearted” and that “she radiates sweetness.” The two, she said, exchanged pleasantries about the fact that Monroe and then-husband Arthur Miller were staying in a rented mansion not far from the queen’s beloved Windsor Castle.

A 1961 article in Australia’s People magazine claimed that following their meeting, the queen was fascinated by Monroe and watched all her films, writes Morgan. An unnamed “friend” told the magazine that Elizabeth II had described Monroe as “a very sweet person,” but had “felt sorry for her, because she was so nervous that she had licked all her lipstick off.”

Monroe had a deep friendship with Ella Fitzgerald, calling the jazz legend her “favorite person” and singer. In the mid-1950s, Fitzgerald was reportedly denied the chance to perform at the prestigious Mocambo nightclub in Los Angeles because its owners doubted a Black female singer would draw crowds. Monroe personally intervened. According to Fitzgerald, Monroe promised the club owners she would sit front row every night if Fitzgerald was booked. Fitzgerald later said, “I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt.”

Recordings from Monroe’s last interview for Life magazine in 1962 further illuminate her desire to use her fame as a platform. According to The Times, Monroe repeatedly urged interviewer Richard Meryman to include her thoughts about the importance of kinship across race and class—comments that were ultimately left unpublished.

The image of Monroe that persists in the public imagination is inextricably linked to the blonde bombshell characters she played in films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire. But Monroe historian Scott Fortner says it’s important to remember that the “Marilyn Monroe” persona was a character the gifted actress performed for the public. Even her trademark breathy way of speaking was different from Monroe’s natural speaking voice, which Fortner says you can hear in the 1962 Life magazine recordings.

“She had this way of physically turning into Marilyn,” Fortner says, recounting a story shared by Susan Strasberg, daughter of famed acting coach Lee Strasberg. “Do you want to see me be her?” Strasberg described how Monroe subtly shifted—tilting her head, changing her walk and flashing her signature “Marilyn” smile—and was suddenly recognized by passersby who moments earlier hadn’t given the pair a second glance.

Monroe dropped out of school at 15, but Fortner says that her lack of a high school education didn’t stop her from striving to better herself and expand her knowledge. At the time of her death, her personal library included more than 450 books, some of which are in Fortner’s collection and include passages that the star underlined while reading.

“A woman reading Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Freud, Joyce and Rilke was actively building an inner life far richer than the image sold by the studios,” Fortner says.

Beyond her intellectual pursuits, Fortner describes Monroe as “sharp and witty,” always ready with a clever comeback when a reporter tried to get the better of her. “She was funny, she was very smart in the moment that way,” he says. “She knew how to position herself in the public and to the public.”