Marilyn Monroe

John Hopkins (0:02)

It is a scorching August day in 1946 on the 20th Century Fox Studio Complex in Hollywood. A nervous 20-year-old model is led by an assistant through the blur of trucks, props and purposeful technicians. She follows her guide into a building, and soon she arrives at the sound stage with its high ceilings and insulated walls. A distinguished looking man in his 40s greets her. It's Ben Lyon, the studio's head of talent. Lyon has high hopes for today's screen test. You can never be sure until the camera rolls, but his record for spotting star quality is well known in LA. He even signed the young Jean Harlow. But already things are going wrong. The camera man, Leon Shamroy, demands his model remove the thick make-up that will look dreadful on film. But when she washes her face clean, she breaks out in red blotches. She sweats from the heat and maybe nerves, as the wardrobe mistress holds up costumes from a rail of clothes, working out what will flatter her voluptuous figure. It all feels a bit chaotic, and Lyon worries he has made a mistake. Only last year, this girl was spray painting aircraft parts on a wartime production line, but she was spotted by a photographer, and now scrapes a living in LA posing for pinup photos.

As he prepares his camera, Jamroy puffs on his cigar and raises an eyebrow at Lyon. This looks like a waste of everyone's time. Eventually, the newcomer steps cautiously back onto the set, wearing a low-cut long dress. Jamroy rolls his camera and calls out when it's at speed.

The actress is transformed. She follows the director's orders effortlessly, moving naturally as she crosses the floor in dangerously high heels, then pulls out a high stool and climbs onto it. She strikes a match, lights her cigarette, stubs it out, opens a thick window and gazes through it. But it's her smile that really makes the atmosphere shift. Everyone in the room is captivated, and Lyon can't help but smile back.

After she leaves, the film goes to the lab. Jamroy and Lyon walk across the lot to a cutting room to view the newly developed material, or rushes. The real is loaded on to the movie or the machine, and the men watch on the small screen. Lyon can't tear his eyes away. On film, she's even more stunning than in real life, the genuine article. She has raw sex appeal combined with a rare vulnerability.

Lyon slaps Jamroy on the back and hurries through the busy complex to the management offices. He walks into the boardroom without knocking. He wants his boss to agree to a contract right away before she's signed by another studio. You can trust me on this one, he reassures them. This girl is something special.

When Lyon calls the model to his office to offer her the contract, she's thrilled, but he tells her straight away that she'll need a brand new name. Her surname, Doherty, is hard to pronounce. She suggests her mother's maiden name, Monroe. But that sounds clumsy next to the model's first name, Norma.

Lyon has an idea. As a young actor, he fell for a silver screen actress with this girl's beautiful blue eyes and blonde hair. Her first name was Marilyn. She repeats the full name, Marilyn Monroe. They both smile. That's perfect.

Within seven years of that meeting, Marilyn Monroe will be the most bankable actress in Hollywood. Her private life will also make headlines, as will her turbulent health. But just 16 years after her screen test, Monroe will be dead.

Her untimely demise will cement her iconic status and spark fevered conspiracies that persist to this day. But who was she before she became Marilyn Monroe, and how was she shaped by her disrupted childhood? Did her efforts to take control of her career change Hollywood, or was it Hollywood that destroyed her? And why does her legend still inspire and exert such power 60 years after her death? I'm John Hopkins. From Noiser, this is Marilyn Monroe.

Norma Jean Mortenson is born on June the 1st, 1926, at the Los Angeles General Hospital. Her 24-year-old mother, Gladys, has been married twice. But her second husband has already left, and he is not the baby girl's father. Like many in LA, Gladys works in the movie business, which provides something of an escape from her troubled early life. Her father died in a mental hospital when she was just seven years old, triggering a lifelong fear that insanity might one day afflict her, too.

She was pregnant for the first time at 14, but by the time Norma Jean is born, Gladys has already lost contact with her two children from her first violent marriage. Within two weeks of Norma Jean's birth, Gladys has handed her baby over to foster parents, though it means she can start earning again by returning to her old job of splicing film negatives. For her daughter, it's the start of a long string of abandonments.