[On the early
morning of August
5th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her LA home, in a
moment that quickly became as mythic as
everything else about young Norma Jean Mortenson. So this week I’ll remember
the iconic and singular Marilyn through posts on her life, career, and legacy
as well as her tragic death.]
On how each of
Monroe’s three marriages reflects different American contexts.
I wrote in
Tuesday’s post about the first and least famous of Monroe’s marriages, her 1942,
teenage marriage to her 21-year old LA neighbor Jim Dougherty. In many
ways that marriage was solely and entirely one of convenience and practicality,
a means for Monroe to avoid a return to the orphanage when her legal guardians
left the state. Yet I think it’s quite likely that many 1940s marriages—indeed,
many 20th century American marriages overall—were similarly driven
more by convenience and timing than by romantic ideals of love and partnership.
Or at least that whatever their origin points, those marriages very often
pushed the wives into situations much like how Monroe would later describe
her life and perspective as a 1940s housewife: “Marriage didn't make me sad,
but it didn't make me happy, either. My husband and I hardly spoke to each
other. This wasn't because we were angry. We had nothing to say. I was dying of
boredom.” Long before Betty
Friedan published her groundbreaking work, Monroe experienced, and
fortunately escaped, “the problem that has no name.”
Just under a
decade after her divorce from Dougherty, Monroe married for a second time, and
this marriage could not have been more distinct from her first. Monroe and
baseball superstar Joe DiMaggio had been dating since 1952, and in January
1954 were married in what seemed to be an impromptu service at San
Francisco City Hall. Planned or not, the marriage would be short-lived, as
Monroe very publicly hired attorney Jerry Giesler and filed
for divorce in October of that same year. While of course the details of
their marriage and divorce were and always would be known only to Monroe and
DiMaggio, the entire relationship certainly parallels (and foreshadowed) many
20th and 21st century celebrity romances. I’m not saying
that there wasn’t an actual romantic connection, but it was certainly framed by
their respective celebrity identities and roles, as illustrated by their honeymoon:
they traveled to Japan where DiMaggio had professional business to attend to, and
then Monroe left to travel solo to Korea in order to perform USO shows for
soldiers stationed there. Certainly relationships and marriages can work under
such circumstances, but just as certainly Monroe and DiMaggio’s did not.
In early 1955, before
Monroe’s divorce from DiMaggio was finalized, she began dating her future third
husband, playwright
Arthur Miller. When it comes to celebrity writers are not athletes, but
Miller was certainly one of the most famous writers in America at the time, and
so it would be possible to see this relationship as another celebrity
connection for Monroe (an argument strengthened by the fact that she also dated Marlon Brando
in this period before things got serious with Miller). But I would argue Monroe
and Miller’s marriage was far more personal than that, as revealed by various
details: she converted
to Judaism as part of their marriage; they attempted to have children on
multiple occasions (but the pregnancies ended tragically each time); and the
marriage (while complicated
throughout) lasted nearly five years, from June 1956 through January 1961. I
would also argue that Miller reflected very different sides of Monroe, not just
as a writer (and one with whom she worked on various screenplays for her films,
as I noted yesterday) but also a prominent left-wing intellectual and Cold War
cultural critic. That is, it’s not just that Monroe’s films were moving in a
new and more thoughtful direction during her final years, as I also wrote
yesterday; it’s that her relationships seemed to be doing the same, as
illustrated by this third of her three telling marriages.
Next Marilyn
memories tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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