The parallels between the two infamous blondes often haunted Marilyn. And before her death, Marilyn had been in talks to portray Harlow in a biopic (much to the approval of Harlow’s mother, Jean Poe Carpenter), but she wasn’t pleased with the script and backed out. Harlow’s final film, Saratoga, costarred Clark Gable, who was Marilyn’s leading man in her last completed work, The Misfits. When Lyon signed Marilyn, he reportedly exclaimed, “It’s Jean Harlow all over again!” Sixteen years earlier, in 1930, when Ben Lyon he was an actor, he had starred alongside Harlow in Howard Hughes’ Hell’s Angels. Years later, Marilyn flew out Harlow’s own hairdresser to Los Angeles every Saturday to peroxide her roots. Norma Jeane, the 19-year-old model, first bleached her hair not only to stand out among her competition, but also to emulate her idol Jean Harlow, who had died nine years earlier at the age of 26. This shy woman, unsure of her own abilities, would eventually become who we knew as Marilyn Monroe. Dressed in a floor-length sequined gown, the 20-year-old performed a multitude of physical movements, like walking across the set, looking out a window, and lighting a cigarette. Two days later, she was back on the lot, on the set of Betty Grable’s Mother Wore Tights, to do her very first screen test. Ben Lyon, the recruiter for new talent at 20th Century Fox, invited Norma Jeane to come in for a meeting. Her Blue Book Modeling agent, Emmeline Snively, was actively pitching her to movie studios. Before the ink was dry on her divorce papers, she set her sights on Hollywood. She’d wed James Dougherty, her high school sweetheart, at 16. Screen Test SuccessĪt 19, Marilyn was in the midst of ending her first marriage.

Here’s the back story of the Marilyn we all know and love. But what do we really know of Marilyn? Who was she behind the facade that agents and movie studio execs made her out to be? The answer, of course, is Norma Jeane - a young woman with stars in her eyes. We see her influence in fashion, in music, and of course, in films. But while she left us long ago, her glorious presence lives on.

Were she alive, Marilyn Monroe would turn 97 next month.

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