She first married when she was 16.
But the love stories of Marilyn Monroe, who died 60 years ago, met the same tragic fate as the movie star.
From President John F. Kennedy to comedian Yves Montand, passing by Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe knows during her career many burning romances with men of stature.
Only three of them will marry the actress of
Five marriages with the test
(1952).
For better or for worse.
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"I never knew Marilyn Monroe"
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James Dougherty and Marilyn Monroe pose near the Avalon military training camp.
(January 1943.) Getty Images
1941. Norma Jeane is not yet the iconic Marilyn Monroe.
And for good reason: the 15-year-old girl, tossed from adoption homes to orphanages, is desperately looking for a way out.
Born of an unknown father on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles, Norma Jeane Mortenson had an early admiration for emblematic male figures.
Especially since her mother, Gladys Monroe, diagnosed with schizophrenia, lets her believe for a long time that she is the daughter of actor Clark Gable.
If the young woman has just moved in with her tutor Grace Goddard, a friend of Gladys, she wants to leave the state and cannot drag Norma Jeane in her wake.
The prospect of returning to a foster home does not delight the future actress.
Then comes James Dougherty, the neighbours' son.
In other words, his passport to freedom.
A former class representative and captain of the football team at Van Nuys High School in Los Angeles, the 20-year-old is the ideal son-in-law.
Having become a worker at the Lockheed Aircraft bomber factory, he married the curly-haired schoolgirl on June 19, 1942.
"The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe", the trailer
"We decided to get married to keep him from going back to foster care, but we were in love," James Dougherty told the
Los Angeles Times
in 2005. Two years later, "Jim" joined the navy. Merchant.
For her part, Norma Jeane was spotted by a modeling agency and marked the start of her career.
The divorce papers reached the young man during a stopover in Shanghai in 1946. "She wanted to sign a contract with 20th Century Fox, and the paper said she could not be married - they did not want to a pregnant starlet," James recalled.
The divorce was pronounced on September 13 of the same year.
Later, James Dougherty will confess: "I never knew Marilyn Monroe […] I knew and I loved Norma Jeane".
A quick wedding
Marilyn Monroe's second marriage took place in 1954. The lucky one?
Joe DiMaggio, legendary New York Yankees baseball player.
The meeting between the gifted sportsman and the rising star of Hollywood could only be a stroke of fate.
However, Marilyn Monroe refuses at the beginning to get to know the one she takes for a personality with an oversized ego.
The reserved temperament of Joe DiMaggio will overcome this reluctance.
"The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe", the trailer
But, beyond this apparent shyness, the baseball prodigy exerts more control every day over his wife's career.
"We knew this wedding wouldn't be easy," the star reportedly told her friend Ben Hecht.
The baseball player dictates rain or shine when it comes to his movie choices.
He despises the film industry;
she was never interested in the ba-ba of the
home run
.
The excess of jealousy of Joe DiMaggio ends up breaking this fragile union.
An obsession fueled first by the famous concert of Marilyn, cast in a sequined burgundy dress, in front of several hundred thousand American soldiers in Korea.
The coup de grace will be inflicted on him on the set of
Seven Years of Reflection
(1955).
While the actress's white dress, standing on an air vent, flies around her under the amused gaze of the team, the last shreds of an aborted marriage go up in smoke.
But Joe DiMaggio will never stop thinking about Marilyn.
He tries many times to win her back, and remains one of her best friends until her last days.
"He is the man who loved her the most, and understood her the least", summed up the American writer Jerome Charyn.
"The brainless and the intellectual"
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Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller attend the premiere of the play "Seen from the Bridge", written by the American playwright.
(London, October 11, 1958.) Getty Images
The essayist Arthur Miller was 41 years old when he married the heroine of
Men Prefer Blondes
(1953), on June 29, 1956. On the one hand, the phlegmatic playwright whose plays
Death of a Salesman
(1949) and
The Witches of Salem
(1953) received critical acclaim.
On the other, the glamorous icon, who produced and shot the film
Bus Stop
.
The duo fascinates the press, cruel, which nicknames them "the brainless and the intellectual".
In 1958, Marilyn Monroe disappeared from radar screens after suffering a miscarriage on August 1, 1957.
In 1959, she returned to center stage with
Some Like It Hot
.
The key, five Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe for best actress in a musical film.
Its popularity is at its peak.
But the luscious blonde gradually sinks into depression.
She has an affair with Yves Montand on the set of The
Billionaire
(1960).
The idyll ends when he announces to her that he refuses to leave Simone Signoret.
The commercial failure of the film precipitates it into the abyss.
Tormented, Marilyn consults the psychiatrist Ralph Greenson, but develops addictions to alcohol and drugs.
Her divorce from a helpless Arthur Miller in the face of her flaws was pronounced in January 1961. A year and a half later, on August 5, 1962, Marilyn Monroe was found dead on her bed.
The medical examiner's report mentions a "probable suicide" due to an accidental overdose of pills.
"A circus of cameras and screams and savagery"
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Joe DiMaggio attends the funeral of Marilyn Monroe, alongside his son Joe Jr, in navy uniform.
(Los Angeles, August 8, 1962.) Getty Images
Only 31 people are invited to the funeral of the star, three days later.
They are welcomed by a crowd of 500 admirers, massed in front of the gates of the cemetery to pay their last respects to their idol.
Arthur Miller, he is absent subscribers.
In an unpublished essay unveiled in January, the writer castigates the "public mourners" rushing to the funeral, partly responsible for the death of his ex-wife.
"Most of them destroyed it, ladies and gentlemen," he wrote in the manuscript acquired by the Ransom Center archives.
The author, overcome by disgust, denounces a "circus of cameras and cries and savagery".
The funeral is organized by Joe DiMaggio.
He carefully dismissed the great Hollywood figures like Frank Sinatra, responsible according to him for the death of the star.
According to
People
's records , Joe would continue to lay six roses at the grave of the love of his life, twice a week, every week until his own passing on March 8, 1999. Which will mark the end of a love of which only Hollywood has the secret.
James, Joe and Arthur: The Three Stormy Marriages of Marilyn Monroe
James, Joe and Arthur: The Three Stormy Marriages of Marilyn Monroe
In images, in pictures
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