About Me
.. width="425" height="350" ..I was born Norma Jean Mortenson on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles General Hospital. My mother was a film cutter at RKO pictures, but i never really stayed with her for long...sadly she was put in a mental hospital....and i was moved from foster home to foster home to orphanage. In 1942, at the age of 16, i met my first husband james dougherty he was 21. The marriage only lasted four years, we divorced in 1946. By this time I began to model swimsuits and bleached my hair. Various shots made their way into the public eye, where some were eventually seen by RKO Pictures head Howard Hughes. He offered me a screen test but an agent suggested that 20th Century-Fox would be the better choice for me since it was a much bigger and more prestigious studio. I was signed to a contract at $125 per week for a six-month period and that was increased by $25 per week at the end of that time when my contract was lengthened.well anyways,my first film was in 1947 with a bit part in The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947). my next production was not much better, a bit in the eminently forgettable Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948). Two of the three brief scenes I appeared in wound up on the cutting room floor. Later that same year I was given a somewhat better role as Evie in Dangerous Years (1947). However, Fox declined to renew my contract, so I went back to modeling and acting school. But later i starred in Ladies of the Chorus (1948),Love Happy (1949), The Asphalt Jungle (1950),All About Eve (1950), Love Nest (1951),In 1952, I appeared in Don't Bother to Knock (1952), in which I played a somewhat mentally unbalanced babysitter. Critics didn't particularly care for my work in this picture, but I made a much more favorable impression later in the year in Monkey Business (1952), where I was seen for the first time as a platinum blonde, a look that became my trademark.The next year I appeared in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) as Lorelei Lee. I was absent from the set alot during the year and i was taking pills and booze to solve my problems. It was also the same year I began dating the baseball great Joe DiMaggio. Later, I appeared with Betty Grable, Lauren Bacall and Rory Calhoun in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). Well as you might have guessed On January 14, 1954, I got married to Joe DiMaggio, then proceeded to film There's No Business Like Show Business (1954). That was quickly followed by The Seven Year Itch (1955). By October of 1954, I announced her divorce from my dear Joe DiMaggio. In (1956) i starred in Bus Stop, in the same year I married playwright, Arthur Miller (we divorced in 1960). In (1957) i went to britain to film The Prince and the Showgirl, that was fun. After a year off in 1958, I returned to the screen the next year for the delightful comedy, Some Like It Hot (1959) with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. The film was an absolute smash hit, with Curtis and Lemmon pretending to be females in an all-girl band, so they can get work.In 1960 I appeared in George Cukor's Let's Make Love (1960).The following year I starred in The Misfits, sadly this was the final film for my costar and my idol Clark Gable, he died later that year of a heart attack. But the film was popular with critics and the public alike.In 1962 I was chosen to star in Fox's Something's Got to Give (1962). However, me being absent all the time caused delay after delay in production, resulting in me being fired from the production in June of that year. It looked as though my career was finished. Studios just didn't want to take a chance on me because it would cost them thousands of dollars in delays. I went into seclusion in my home in L.A. Sadly, the film was scrapped cause of my seclusion...But after that...i told myself...that i was going to be more...so i stopped all my wicked ways and dumped my pills and booze down the toilet and told myself i was gonna win an oscar one day....yes yes i know this didnt happen...but i felt way better about myself...now im living in seclusion. But im leading a healthy normal life...This profile was edited with Thomas' myspace editor™ V2.5
