00:30I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.
00:36Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortensen at the Los Angeles County Hospital on June 1, 1926.
00:47Her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker, was a film cutter.
00:50Marilyn's father's identity was never known.
00:53Because Gladys was mentally and financially unable to care for young Marilyn,
00:57Gladys placed her in the care of a foster family, the Bolanders.
01:03Gladys took Marilyn back in her care when Marilyn was seven years old.
01:07However, shortly after regaining custody of Marilyn, Gladys was committed to a state mental hospital.
01:13Gladys spent the rest of her life going in and out of hospitals and rarely had contact with young Marilyn.
01:20Marilyn was placed into the Los Angeles Orphans' Home in 1935.
01:24Her first film was in 1947, with a bit part in The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, 1947.
01:33Fox declined to renew her contract, so she went back to modeling and acting school.
01:38Columbia Pictures then picked her up to play Peggy Martin in Ladies of the Chorus, 1948, where she sang two numbers.
01:46In 1949, Marilyn agreed to pose nude for a calendar, a fact that was to stir controversy later in her career as a superstar.
01:57She became a blonde and got her own style.
02:01Marilyn Monroe was linked to lots of men, but only few won her heart.
02:05Before her marriages to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, Marilyn was married to James Doherty.
02:11She was 16 when they tied the knot.
02:14Doherty, who later became a detective in the LAPD, was forbidden by his second wife from going to see any of Marilyn's films.
02:22In 1951, she began dating the baseball great Joe DiMaggio.
02:27By October 1954, Marilyn announced her divorce from him.
02:32On May 19, 1962, at a birthday celebration for President John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe shimmied on to the Madison Square Garden stage and stepped up to the microphone.
02:45Happy birthday, Mr. President, she famously crooned in her signature sultry, yet strangely childlike voice.
02:52So everybody believed that the Hollywood sex symbol and the commander-in-chief were secret lovers.
02:59They were two of the most famous, and most attractive, figures in the world at the time.
03:04But according to most accounts, there are only a few times throughout their lives that Kennedy and Monroe could have encountered one another.
03:13For 20 years after Marilyn's death, Joe DiMaggio arranged to have roses sent to her crypt three times a week.
03:19In 1952, Marilyn began filming Niagara, a film that was to establish her stardom.
03:28After her next big film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she and Jane Russell signed their names and placed their hands and feet in the wet cement in front of the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard,
03:40the same place she had visited with Gladys and Grace years earlier as a child.
03:46Marilyn Monroe became one of the world's most enduring iconic figures and is remembered both for her winsome embodiment of the Hollywood sex symbol
03:55and her tragic personal and professional struggles within the film industry.
04:00More than 300 biographies, articles, and reports are devoted to her.
04:05Her life and death are still the subjects of much controversy and speculation.
04:09Her glamorous influence has only grown since her death at the age of 36, in August 1962.
04:17While Marilyn was alive, she was front-page news.
04:20Whether she was on the red carpet, filming with Hollywood's hottest male actors, or being linked to industry heavyweights,
04:27Marilyn Monroe's life story was challenging and unpredictable.
04:31She gained a dazzling success and then lost everything at once.
04:35She was one of her kind, sexy, charming, beautiful, passionate, and sensual.
04:41And there just cannot be another Marilyn Monroe.
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