Marilyn Monroe, 1926-1962

Marilyn Monroe's screen-print by Andy Warhol,1967. Located at the National Portrait Gallery, WDC. Credit - WWP team.

An iconic movie star of the 1950s.

In her short life, she captured the American dream when transformed her life from an illegitimate child into a movie star and a national sensation. Her mother named her Norma Jean, and soon after the birth suffered from a nervous breakdown and was admitted into a mental institution. The newborn girl was shuffled between 12 foster homes, marrying at 16 to avoid going to an orphanage. When she worked in a war factory at 19, a photographer captured her while shooting an article about working women. That image surfaced and opened the doors for her modeling and acting career, which she dreamed of since age 5.

Her success wasn’t immediate, but she kept on pushing – as she is said to have been “raised on a steady diet of rejections.” In an early stage of her career, she took on the stage name Marilyn and her mother’s maiden name Monroe. At 22 she got her first film role in a musical. When she “made it” to a movie star status – the fame was extreme. Some of the indicators of her popularity were a crowd of 4,000 people who came at 3 am to see her shoot a scene in New York, or being invited to sing for the president’s birthday rally in Madison Square Garden. Her film career lasted about a decade and included 33 credited films, some of the most popular are “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” “The Seven Year Itch,” “Some Like It Hot,” and “Don’t Bother to Knock.”

She married two more times, both to famous men, both ending in divorce: baseball star Joe DiMaggio and play-writer Arthur Miller. Shortly after her 36 birthday, she was found dead in her bedroom with an empty bottle of sleeping pills next to her.

She is still celebrated in the global culture as an icon of sexuality, beauty, and fame. Even though she capitalized on her image, she was critical of being treated as a commodity: “The trouble is, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate being a thing.”

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“I was never kept, to be blunt about it; I always kept myself. I have always had a pride in the fact that I was my own.”

“I was never kept, to be blunt about it; I always kept myself. I have always had a pride in the fact that I was my own.”

Fun Facts

  • During her honeymoon with Joe DiMaggio, she left her husband in Japan and accepted US army invitation to go entertain the soldiers in Korea.
  • Her mother worked as a movie-cutter, behind the scenes in Hollywood, before giving birth.
  • In 1955 she left Fox studios to establish her own film company Marilyn Monroe Productions, but she shortly returned to the studios with a better contract.
  • Despite her popularity, she has been severely underpaid compared to her co-stars.
  • In a survey of a haircare company she was selected as “the greatest blonde of all time.”
  • She supported singer Ella Fitzgerald when she was denied the stage at a famous club due to racist policies: Monroe called the owner and negotiated to secure Fitzgerald a booking.

Awards

  • 1954 Photoplay Magazine gold medal award (most popular actress of the year)
  • 1960 Golden Globe Best Actress (Comedy/Musical)

Creations By and About Her

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Category: Theater & Cinema
Tags: Actress and Model

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Alicia-Keys-WWP
Music

Alicia Keys, 1981

Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter, producer, and actress.

Born as Alicia Augello Cook in Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in NYC. Her father left when she was 2 years old, and she was raised mainly by her mother. As a child living in a rough neighborhood, Keys was exposed to drugs, prostitution, and street violence. She credits her mother for leading her to the right path, supporting her interest in music and performance, which began at a young age. In preschool, she sang in her school’s productions, and at the age of 6, began classical training, practicing the piano six hours a day. At 12, Keys wrote and composed her first song. Two years later, she began studying jazz. After graduating at age 16 as valedictorian from the Professional Performance Arts School, she signed a deal with the record producer Clive Davis, first at Arista Records and later at J Records. In 2001, 20-year-old Keys released her debut album “Songs in A Minor”, which included the #1 hit “Fallin”. The album sold more than 12 million copies worldwide, and Keys won 5 Grammy awards. Four years later, Keys released her second album, “The Diary of Alicia Keys”, for which she won 4 Grammys, including best album award and best song award, and for her 3rd album “As I Am”, Keys won 3 more Grammys. Throughout the years, Keys continued to release #1 hits, including “No One”, “Empire State of Mind”, and “Girl on Fire”. Overall between 2001 to 2016, Keys released 6 studio albums, 2 live albums, and 1 EP. In addition to being an acclaimed musician, Keys is also an actress. She acted in various films and TV shows, including “Empire”, “SNL”, “Smokin’ Aces”, and “The Secret Life of Bees”. She is also a film producer and directed one out of five segments of the movie “Five”. In 2004, Keys co-founded and became the global ambassador of ‘Keep a Child Alive’ – a non-profit organization providing medicines in Africa for HIV and AIDS. Alicia Keys is a women empowerment icon; her point of view can often be found in her lyrics as well as in the #nomakeup campaign she launched. In 2016 Keys wrote an essay in which she stated that she lost herself behind eyeliners and lipsticks, and since she is make-up free, she feels more beautiful than ever. She is encouraging other women to discover themselves without the masks. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Audrey-Hepburn-WWP
Theater & Cinema

Audrey Hepburn, 1929-1993

Academy Award-winning actress, fashion icon, and Humanitarian.

Born Audrey Kathleen Ruston in Brussels, Belgium. Her mother was a Dutch baroness, and her father was British with an aristocratic background. In her early childhood, the family traveled between Brussels and England. At the age of 6, after her father left the family, she moved with her mother to the family estate in Arnhem, The Netherlands, and two years later, she returned to England to attend boarding school. In 1939, after the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, Hepburn returned to Arnhem, thinking that it would remain neutral. During WWII, Hepburn and her mother were relatively safe but did endure hardships – her half-brother got deported to a German labor camp, her uncle was murdered, and she suffered from anemia as a result of malnutrition due to the 1944 Dutch famine. After the war, 16 years old Hepburn moved with her mother to Amsterdam, where she worked at the Royal Military Invalids Home and continued her ballet training. At 19, she returned to London to study acting and ballet, supporting herself by working as a model. When she was told that she was too tall and too weak to become a prima ballerina, Hepburn channeled her focus toward acting. At 23, while shooting a film in Monte-Carlo, Hepburn caught the French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette’s attention. who decided to cast her for the leading role in the Broadway adaptation of her novel Gigi. Hepburn received praises for her performance, and in the same year, she launched her Hollywood career, starring in the movie Roman Holiday alongside Gregory Peck. The film was a hit, and Hepburn charmed the audience with her portrayal of the young princess, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe Award. Following her success, Hepburn signed a seven-picture contract with Paramount Studios, which included the film, Sabrina, gaining her another BAFTA Award. In 1954, Hepburn returned to the stage as the water nymph in Ondine, for which she received a Tony Award. At the production, she met her first husband, her co-star Mel Ferrer, and the couple settled in Switzerland, the place she called home when she did not film in the US. In the next decade, Hepburn starred in a series of successful features, such as War and Peace, The Nun’s Story, and Green Mansions, starring alongside A-list actors. In her 30’s, Hepburn began playing more sophisticated and worldly characters. Including her acclaimed appearance as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Regina in the thriller Charade, and Eliza Doolittle in the musical, My Fair Lady. At 40, after her divorce, Hepburn decided to focus on her family and went into semi-retirement for a few years. She married the Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti and had another child. At the age of 47, she resumed her acting career, appearing alongside Sean Connery in Robin and Marian and hosting a traveling documentary-series called Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn. Her last film role was in 1989 as the angel in Steven Spielberg’s Always. Overall, Hepburn participated in more than 20 movies and received more than 10 awards for her performances. Throughout her career, Hepburn was known as a fashion icon, recognized for her distinctive look and fashion choices. She had a unique, minimalistic style, wearing clothes with simple silhouettes and monochromatic colors, associated mainly with the “little black dress” she wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Since 1988, Hepburn devoted herself to her duty as a special Goodwill Ambassador for United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). She traveled to famine-stricken areas to raise awareness of children in need, making more than 50 trips to Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. In 1992, after returning from Somalia, Hepburn was diagnosed with colon cancer. She died in her home in Switzerland at the age of 63. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Audrey-Munson-WWP
Fashion & Beauty

Audrey Munson, 1891-1996

Considered the first American supermodel, first famous American nude artists’ model and film star.

Audrey Marie Munson started her career as a Broadway chorus girl, after moving with her divorced mother to New York City. Her life took a turn at the age of 17, while window-shopping on Fifth Avenue, the teenager was spotted by a photographer who offered her to pose for him. He introduced Audrey to his artists friends, and she soon became a wanted model, often in the nude, for many famous male artists and sculptors. Audrey Munson has posed for iconic sculptures on government buildings and public monuments, many of the statues still in place in the streets of New York city – winning her the title “Miss Manhattan.” Other titles included “The American Venus,” “America’s First Supermodel,” “The Queen of the Artists’ Studios,” and “Panama–Pacific Girl” for modeling for a majority of the carvings at the International Exposition in San Francisco.   Munson took pride in her work, claiming nudity as an expression of female freedom, writing: “Clothes ruined us. They do harm to our bodies and worse to our soul.” She moved to California and shifted her career towards the film industry. She starred in four silent films and is considered the first actress to appear fully nude in an American feature film. She played a sculptor’s model in her first film, “Inspiration” (1915), which is nowhere to be found today. Audrey Munson was also a writer, publishing a series of 20 short stories about her life in the Sunday Magazine. She and her mother became associated with a famous murder case – when their landlord killed his wife, supposedly because he was in love with Audrey. Even though she had no part in the crime, it has affected her reputation negatively. At 40, she was admitted by her mother to a psychiatric institution for depression and schizophrenia. She lived there for the remaining 60 years of her life, until her death at the age of 104. Her gravestone, which was added 20 years after her death, features a small sculpture of an angel figure, dressed. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Ava Gardner The portrait that got Gardner famous. Taken at the Ava Gardner Museum WWP
Theater & Cinema

Ava Gardner, 1922-1990

Actress and singer, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars of all time.

Born as Ava Lavinia Gardner in Grabtown, NC, to a poor family of tobacco farmers, the youngest of 7 children. After graduating high school, she attended secretarial classes for a year. At 18, while visiting her sister in NYC, her brother-in-law, who was a professional photographer, took her portrait and put it on display in the front window of his studio. A legal clerk who worked as an MGM talent scout spotted her photo and suggested to send her info to the studios. Despite her Carolina drawl and with zero acting experience, Gardner was offered a contract and moved to Hollywood. Gardner began taking diction lessons as well as acting, gymnastics, fashion, and makeup lessons, and at 19, she made her first appearance in the film “We Were Dancing”. For the next 5 years, she played mainly small decorative parts, until in 1946, she came to prominence playing the femme fatale Kitty Collins in “The Killers”, a typecast that she would play over and over in her career. During the following 18 years, she played in the biggest movies of the time, acting alongside A-list actors, such as Robert Taylor, Clark Gable, and Humphrey Bogart. As she aged, she struggled landing roles, and at age 42, she played her last major leading role in the film “The Night of the Iguana”. In the 70’s she appeared briefly in several movies, especially disaster films, and in the 80’s she acted mainly on television. At the age of 60, she filmed her last film, “Regina Roma”. When she was 29 years old, after already getting divorced twice, she married Frank Sinatra. It lasted only six years, and after the failure of her third marriage and without children, she moved to Spain and then to London, where she lived for 22 years until her death at the age of 67. In her legendary career, Gardner appeared in more than 60 films and was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and BAFTA Award. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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