Slow and Steady Wins the Race!

PEOPLE IN AMERICA - Marilyn Monroe




I'm Shirley Griffith.


And I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program, People in America.

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Today we tell about movie star Marilyn Monroe.






She wanted to be an actress ... and she succeeded. She appeared in a number of Hollywood movies. Millions of people went to see them.

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She has been dead since nineteen-sixty-two. Still, her fame continues to grow.

People born long after she died are watching her movies on television. Objects that belonged to her bring huge prices at public sales. The new Warner Brothers Museum in Hollywood has the white dress she wore in one of her movies, "The Prince and the Showgirl."



Why is the public still so interested in a woman who died so many years ago. A number of reasons. Her exciting but tragic life. Her connections with well-known people. And her image as an especially desirable woman.

In the nineteen-fifties, many Americans believed sex was a very private subject. People often severely judged those who were sexually appealing.


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The story of Marilyn Monroe begins on June first, nineteen-twenty-six. Norma jean was born that day in the west coast city of Los Angeles, California. Her birthplace was not far from the Hollywood movie studios where she would someday be a star.



She would act all the movie parts after she went to a movie. She told this to a long time friend, actor Ted Jordan, who later wrote a book about her.


By the time she was seventeen, Marilyn was trying very hard to be a movie actress. She finally was able to get an actors' agent to help her. He got Twentieth Century Fox company to give Marilyn parts in some movies it produced.

Marilyn continued to change the way she had looked as Norma Jean. She had an operation to improve the appearance of her nose. Her eyes were made to appear larger. She began using a great deal of bright red lipstick on her mouth.









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Huston said her performance as a criminal's girlfriend was good. It gained Marilyn her dream of a long-term agreement with Twentieth Century Fox, the company that had dismissed her earlier. Now its officials gave her a part in "All About Eve." The movie, released in nineteen-fifty, was about ... a movie star. She played a golden-haired woman who did not have much intelligence -- a dumb blonde.


Marilyn Monroe was now a lead actress, a star.


Huge successes now followed. Between nineteen-fifty-three and nineteen fifty-nine she appeared in lead parts in many popular movies ... "How to Marry a Millionaire." "The Seven Year Itch." "Bus Stop." "Some Like It Hot." Her part in "Some Like It Hot" showed that she was very good at making people laugh.



She wanted to be accepted as a good actress. She went to the Actors' Studio School in New York City with many serious actors. She thought she could change the way people thought of her.



She also failed in her attempts at marriage. She admitted that she got married the first time only to escape from being forced to live in a group home for children without parents. In nineteen-fifty-four she married again. Her husband was the famous New York Yankee baseball player, Joe DiMaggio. They were together for only a few months.

Later, she tried again. She married Arthur Miller, a famous writer of plays. That marriage ended unhappily in nineteen-sixty-one, after five years.

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