Had she not passed away in 1962, Marilyn Monroe would have been 90 years old today. Would she have continued acting? Retired to become Mrs. Joe DiMaggio for the second time? Carved out an Oscar-winning career for herself? What could have been remains a mystery, much like Monroe herself. In honor of her birthday, here are 14 things we do know.
1. HER FIRST MARRIAGE WAS ARRANGED.
As a child, Norma Jean Baker was in and out of foster homes, state care, and the guardianship of various family friends. She never knew her father, and her mother had been committed to a psychiatric facility. A 15-year-old Baker had been staying with family friend Grace Goddard, but they decided to move to West Virginia, and couldn’t take Baker. Unless she married, the teenager would have been turned back over to an orphanage. So they turned to 20-year-old James Dougherty next door and suggested a marriage. “I thought she was awfully young,” he later said, but “we talked and we got on pretty good.” They were married just 18 days after she turned 16.
2. SHE OFTEN REFERRED TO “MARILYN MONROE” IN THE THIRD PERSON.
Actor Eli Wallach once recalled that Monroe seemed to flip an inner switch and turn “Marilyn” on and off. He had been walking on Broadway with her one evening, totally incognito, and the next minute, she was swarmed with attention. “‘I just felt like being Marilyn for a minute,’” Wallach remembers her saying. Photographer Sam Shaw often heard her critiquing “Marilyn’s” performances in movies or at photo shoots, making comments like, “She wouldn’t do this. Marilyn would say that.”
3. SHE WAS TRUMAN CAPOTE’S FIRST CHOICE FOR HOLLY GOLIGHTLY.
Truman Capote had Monroe in mind for the lead role Breakfast at Tiffany’s—and she even performed two scenes for him. “She was terrifically good,” Capote later said. In the end, she didn’t take the part because her advisor and acting coach didn’t think it was the type of character she should be playing. Either way, Capote wasn’t at all thrilled with the studio’s choice of Audrey Hepburn, saying, “Paramount double-crossed me in every way and cast Audrey.”
4. “MONROE” WAS HER MOTHER’S MAIDEN NAME.
She chose her new surname because it was her mother’s maiden name. In her ghost-written autobiography, Monroe said she was told that she was somehow related to President James Monroe, but no evidence has ever been found to support that. “Marilyn” came from a studio executive who thought she resembled Marilyn Miller, an actress who died at the age of 37 (Monroe was 36 when she passed away).
5. SHE HAD A THING FOR INTELLECTUAL MEN.
Her marriage to writer Arthur Miller probably tells you that, but there’s more evidence. Monroe was once roommates with actress Shelley Winters, who said they made a list of men they wanted to sleep with, just for fun. “There was no one under 50 on hers,” Winters later reported. “I never got to ask her before she died how much of her list she had achieved, but on her list was Albert Einstein, and after her death, I noticed that there was a silver-framed photograph of him on her white piano.”
6. ACCORDING TO WINTERS, MONROE WASN’T MUCH OF A COOK.
Winters says she once asked the actress to wash lettuce so they could have a salad for dinner. When she walked into the kitchen, Winters found Monroe washing each individual lettuce leaf “with a Brillo pad.”
7. BUT SHE FOUND HER FOOTING IN THE KITCHEN EVENTUALLY.
Several of her recipes were discovered after her death, and in 2010, The New York Times tried making her stuffing recipe for Thanksgiving. They found it surprisingly complex and theorized that “she not only cooked, but cooked confidently and with flair.”