50 Bombshell Facts About Marylin Monroe

Marilyn Monroe’s real name was Norma Jeane Mortenson and before she became an actress, she was a surfer.

2. When she was young, Marilyn Monroe’s mentally unstable mother (Gladys Pearl Baker) tried to kidnap her from her foster parents by stuffing her in a duffle bag.

3. Marilyn Monroe is a direct descendant of original Mayflower settlers and so are Alec Baldwin, Clint Eastwood, Sally Field, Richard Gere, Katherine Hepburn, and Ashley Judd.

4. Marilyn Monroe was discovered by Army Photographer David Conover while she was working on the Radioplane assembly line in 1945. He photographed her working on the OQ-3 model, the world’s first-ever remote-controlled drone, which was used in World War 2. He thought she had potential as a model, which led to her first screen test.

5. Marilyn Monroe was naturally a brunette. To make herself more employable, she straightened her hair and dyed it blonde.

Marilyn Monroe viewed Abraham Lincoln as a father figure once saying “Most people can admire their fathers, but I never had one. I need someone to admire. My father is Abraham Lincoln…I mean I think of Lincoln as my father. He was wise and kind and good. He is my ideal, Lincoln. I love him.”

7. Eleanor Jones was a librarian, who in 1916 created a chaperoned dormitory after noticing groups of vulnerable young women in search of Hollywood stardom were congregating in her library with no place to go. The Hollywood Studio Club eventually housed over 10,000 women, which also included Marilyn Monroe.

8. Marilyn Monroe was named Artichoke Queen of Castroville, California when she was 22 years old.

9. Contrary to popular belief, Marilyn Monroe was not a UK size 16, equating to the ‘curvy’ role model she is painted as, but ranged from a UK size 4-8. She had a 22-inch waist and wore a 36D bra.

10. Marilyn Monroe was once a roommate with actress Shelley Winters and they made a list of men they wanted to sleep with. "There was no one under 50 on hers," Winters later said. "I never got to ask her before she died how much of her list she had achieved, but on her list was Albert Einstein."

Marilyn Monroe had synesthesia. Synesthetes can taste sounds, smell colors or see scents.

12. Marilyn Monroe’s signature breathy voice was a strategy to conceal her stutter.

13. Marilyn Monroe suffered from endometriosis, a condition that causes severe pain due to the uterine lining growing throughout the body. She had multiple surgeries for it and couldn’t carry any of her much-wanted pregnancies to term.

14. In 1955, the Mocambo nightclub in West Hollywood wouldn’t book Ella Fitzgerald until Marilyn Monroe said she would take a front table every night Ella played, which launched the jazz artist's career. Ella also later in her career helped Marilyn become a better singer.

15. Marilyn Monroe used to shave her face to exfoliate her skin.

Queen Elizabeth II and Marilyn Monroe met in 1956, when both were 30, at the premiere of “The Battle of the River Plate.” The Queen celebrated her 90th birthday on April 21, 2016, while Marilyn Monroe would have turned 90 on June 1.

17. Marilyn Monroe once took reporters with her to New York and walked around unnoticed, but when she decided to turn her ‘magic’ on, she suddenly became mobbed by adoring fans who had recognized her.

18. In the famous 1955 movie, ‘The Seven Year Itch’, Marilyn Monroe’s character is never introduced or called by name and is simply credited as “The Girl.”

19. Before and after he assumed the presidency, Kennedy reportedly had affairs with a number of women, including Marilyn Monroe, Gunilla von Post, Judith Campbell, Mary Pinchot Meyer, Marlene Dietrich, Mimi Alford, and his wife's press secretary, Pamela Turnure. He was so blatant about it that he once had a drugged-up Marilyn Monroe sing to him to embarrass his wife. He once remarked to the then Prime Minister of the UK Harold Macmillan “I wonder how it is for you, Harold? If I don’t have a woman for three days, I get terrible headaches.”

20. There is a 15-minute video of Marilyn Monroe engaging in oral sex with a man that J. Edgar Hoover was convinced was President John Kennedy. The video was brought by a New York businessman for $1.5 million, who intends to keep it private.

The Carlyle Hotel became known as “the New York White House” during the administration of President John F. Kennedy, who maintained an apartment on the 34th floor for the last 10 years of his life. Marilyn Monroe reportedly used a warren of tunnels to enter the Carlyle secretly with Kennedy and friends.

22. Peter Lawford, brother-in-law of John F. Kennedy and one of the last people to see Marilyn Monroe alive, introduced her as “the late Marilyn Monroe” before her infamous “Happy Birthday Mr. President” performance in May 1962. It was most probably a play on her being habitually late. She died in August 1962.

23. The District Attorney reopened Marilyn Monroe’s death investigation when the coroner claimed coercion to profess suicide. Also, the autopsy file, police report, and her diary had vanished, which they believed had damaging information on the Kennedys. A $10,000 reward was offered for her missing diary.

24. In Jeffrey Meyers’ biography about Marilyn Monroe - “The Genius and the Goddess,” he wrote that in order to get jobs, she would frequently sexually service the studio heads. Due to the severely limited contraceptive options at that time, she got pregnant again and again, which resulted in as many as 12 abortions. He also describes her suffering from clinical depression.

25. Marilyn Monroe rarely bathed, slept in the nude and ate a lot in bed, and shoved what was left on her plate under the sheets before going to sleep.