Timur PANKOV
ALMATY, June 3 (THE GLOBE)
From the moment her famous nude calendar shot exploded upon the public scene, Marilyn Monroe was undoubtedly the reigning sex symbol of the fifties. With her canny, instinctive talent, her compelling combination of allure and innocence, and a face and form to make the masses weep and cameramen pray to the gods of photography, it was inevitable that she would become legend. That Monroe was the quintessential Hollywood-manufactured confection is undeniable (director Billy Wilder once remarked of her, �The question is whether Marilyn is a person at all or one of the greatest DuPont products ever invented.�). But just as undeniable is the fact that she possessed a native star quality arguably unmatched by any Hollywood figure before or since. After her luminous but torturous career was cut short by her tragic death at the age of thirty-six, she became an icon of almost mythical proportions.
Born the illegitimate daughter of Gladys Baker (Monroe) and Edward Mortensen, Norma Jean endured a traumatic childhood of privation, neglect, and sexual abuse; at the age of nine, she was placed in a string of orphanages and foster homes after her mentally disturbed mother was institutionalized for a nervous breakdown (her father had deserted her mother before she was even born). She dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen, and entered into an arranged marriage with a Lockheed plant worker named Jim Dougherty that lasted four years. She fell into modeling bathing suits and posing for G.I. pinup shots after being �discovered� by an Army photographer who spotted her during a visit to her place of employment, the Radio Plane Company in Burbank, California. Some of her magazine covers caught the ever-watchful eye of mogul Howard Hughes, who approached her with an offer to do a screen test for his studio, R.K.O.; but Hughes didn�t act quickly enough, and Norma Jean Baker was re-baptized Marilyn Monroe soon after she signed a $125-a-week starlet�s contract with 20th Century-Fox.
The factory worker-turned-model-turned-actress�s exquisite flame burned dimly in the early days of her Hollywood tenure. Dropped by the studio after one inconsequential bit part, in Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay! (1948), Monroe struggled for two years in throwaway roles at various studios before earning two showcase assignments as kept women in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve (both 1950). Fox reassessed their apparently rash decision to drop the incandescent starlet, and re-signed her to a more lucrative contract. Her burgeoning appeal was surprisingly helped, not hindered, by the late-breaking discovery of the series of nude calendar shots she had posed for in 1948 when she was out of work (the photos were published in the debut issue of Playboy in December of 1953). Few could hold them against her when she related that the $50 she received for the photo session kept her out of the breadline. When asked whether she had anything on at all in the photos, Monroe replied, �Yes, the radio.� Audiences and exhibitors were set atwitter by the huge amount of publicity generated from the photographs, so much so that Monroe�s name on a billboard was estimated to add $500,000 to a film�s gross. Consequently, the studio handed her plum assignments, in the Cary Grant comedy Monkey Business (1952), and in three 1953 features that would cement her celebrity: Niagara, Gentleman Prefer Blondes, and How To Marry a Millionaire.
The following year marked Monroe�s marriage to legendary baseball player Joe DiMaggio, whom she had met on a blind date two years earlier. The marriage lasted a scant nine months, failing largely because Monroe didn�t turn out to be the baby-making hausfrau that the retired, celebrity-shirking slugger had in mind when he wed her. For her part, Monroe reveled in the adulation of her very public life, and her constant headline-making caused friction in their relationship. The now-famous scene from Billy Wilder�s The Seven Year Itch in which a gust of air from a subway grating sends Monroe�s skirt billowing up well past her waist was the final straw for the strait-laced DiMaggio. The couple remained close friends following their divorce; and for twenty years after Monroe�s death, DiMaggio faithfully sent roses to be placed on her grave three times a week.
Monroe�s screen persona in all her films dovetailed closely with the voluptuary dumb-blonde archetype, but she always managed to invest what could otherwise have been cardboard cutouts with an appealing combination of innocence and overt, yet vulnerable, sexuality. Her Clash by Night (1952) director, Fritz Lang, remarked of this knowing naivet�, �She was a very peculiar mixture of shyness and uncertainty and�I wouldn�t say �star allure��but . . . she knew exactly her impact on men.� In an effort to move beyond the confines of her perennial employment as a sex object, Monroe moved to New York, where she studied acting under Lee and Paula Strasberg; announced the formation of her own production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions; and fell in with a circle of intellectuals that included playwright Arthur Miller, whom she married in 1956, after converting to Judaism.
Back under a lucrative contract with Fox in 1955, Monroe continued to mature as an actress and to polish her fine comic sense�most notably in 1956�s comedy-drama Bus Stop, and in the 1959 classic Some Like It Hot. Monroe�s many personal troubles began exacting their toll on her always fragile mental and physical health. She succumbed to increasingly narcissistic behavior, relying on stimulants and sleeping pills to keep her going, and undergoing frequent treatment in psychiatric clinics for her chronic depression. Her marriage to Miller ended in early 1961, one week prior to the release of what was to be her last film, John Huston�s The Misfits. Written specifically for her by Miller, the film represented her finest dramatic performance, which resonated poignantly due to the fact that she was so obviously on the verge of mental breakdown. In fact, Monroe entered a hospital for psychiatric care several weeks after the film premiered. Her reputation for professional unreliability finally reached insupportable levels on the set of 1962�s Something�s Got To Give: out of thirty-two days of shooting, she showed up only twelve times. Refusing to indulge her, the studio fired her and subsequently slapped her with a $750,000 lawsuit for unprofessional conduct.
One month later, in August of 1962, Monroe was found dead from an overdose of barbiturates at her Los Angeles home. Though medical examination concluded that the screen goddess had taken her own life, many people suspected�and continue to suspect�that foul play was involved, largely due to rumors that she had been romantically entangled with both President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, in the months preceding her death.
American actress Marilyn Monroe. She is still considered to be icon of mythical proportions.
6 June 1935 - Dalai Lama (Nobel Peace Prize winner: Tibetan spiritual leader)
7 June 1958 - PRINCE (Prince Rogers Nelson) (The Artist Previously Known as Prince: musician, singer: I Wanna be Your Lover, When Doves Cry, Let�s Go Crazy, Purple Rain, Raspberry Beret, Kiss; actor: Purple Rain, Under the Cherry Moon, Graffiti Bridge)
4 June 1896 - Henry Ford took a trial run in his Ford automobile around the streets of Detroit, MI, on this day. Of course, there wasn�t a whole lot of traffic...
4 June 1935 - Gerald Brown and Edward Pollard of London patented an invention called invisible glass on this day.
6 June 1882 - The first electric flatiron, or what we call the electric iron, was patented by H.W. Seely of New York City on this day. We bet he probably had the nicest pressed shirts in the neighborhood.
7 June 1965 - Sony Corporation unveiled its brand new, consumer, home video tape recorder on this day. It sold for $995. Camera not included. (And only in black & white, yet.)
June 8, 1963 - Johnny Depp was born (actor: Don Juan DeMarco, 21 Jump Street, Edward Scissorhands, Platoon, Arizona Dreams, What�s Eating Gilbert Grape, A Nightmare on Elm Street)
June 9, 1961 - Michael J. Fox was born (actor: Back to the Future, The Secret of My Success, Bright Lights Big City, Doc Hollywood, Greedy, For Love or Money, Family Ties; voice of bulldog puppy in Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey)
June 10, 1976 - Paul McCartney and Wings set a record for an indoor concert crowd as 67,100 fans gathered in Seattle, WA to hear the former Beatle and his new group.
June10, 1965 was born two top-models at once: Linda Evangelista and Elizabeth Harley.
June 8, 1989 International exhibition in France was shown russian military helicopter Mi-28. Two days and 9 years later there started World Footbal.
June 9, 1910 is a day when started the longest travel in world history. It was travel of thrown bottle with a note. It was thrown from a ship �Aravatt� near Australia and was found June 6, 1983 on Morton island.
From May 14 to June 18
The Kosteyev State National Museum. Exhibition of the works of Dias Ustemirov.
From June 4 to July 3
The Kosteyev State National Museum. Exhibition of the works of Bakhytbek Talkambayev.
The Kosteyev State National Museum. Exhibition of the works of S. Kalmykov, I. Itkind, V. Eifert, and Rudolf Nuriev�s painting.
From 10.00 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. Closed on Monday.
All Over the Globe is published by IPA House.
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