Eras of Her: The Glory Days of Mon­roe

Photo cour­tesy of Picryl 

Norma Jeane Morten­son, Mona Mon­roe, and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe. All one per­son who had a huge im­pact on women and so­ci­ety as a whole. Who was she and what did she do to change en­ter­tain­ment and so­cial prac­tices? In an in­dus­try dom­i­nated by men, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe de­fied cer­tain rules and ex­pec­ta­tions and made the world her own. Read along to un­cover how Mar­i­lyn changed our so­ci­etal norms for the bet­ter. 

In­stead of giv­ing in to the gen­der roles of the 1950s by be­com­ing a house­wife, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe in­sisted and proved to every­one that she was more than just a beau­ti­ful, ditsy blonde woman. Upon en­ter­ing the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, work­ing for only men, she was lim­ited to roles that de­picted her as the stereo­typ­i­cal ditsy fe­male fig­ure. To help her sit­u­a­tion, she de­manded a dress­ing room for her­self, but of course, it got de­nied, as well as equal pay, as one of her co-work­ers, Jane Rus­sell, made more than her in one of their movies to­gether. Tired of this fe­male stereo­type, she re­fused to act in both The Girl In Pink Tights and How To Be Very, Very Pop­u­lar, caus­ing much frus­tra­tion for the pro­duc­ers and di­rec­tors of Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury Fox. Af­ter re­al­iz­ing they had made a ma­jor mis­take by let­ting her go, they of­fered her a new role in There’s No Busi­ness Like Show Busi­ness, which she ini­tially re­fused, but later ac­cepted upon be­ing of­fered a higher salary. 

As Michelle Mor­gan states in her book, The Girl: Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, The Seven Year Itch and The Birth of An Un­likely Fem­i­nist, Mar­i­lyn had “won an im­por­tant bat­tle, not only for her­self, but for other ac­tresses com­ing up be­hind her. Re­fus­ing a role she was con­tracted to play was an as­ton­ish­ingly brave po­si­tion for an ac­tress of the stu­dio era to take.” Mon­roe even­tu­ally went on to cre­ate her own pro­duc­tion com­pany, with the help of her man­ager Mil­ton Greene, but it was still her own busi­ness nonethe­less, es­pe­cially as she was, as the ar­ti­cle, The Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald, states, “the mas­ter­mind and busi­ness brain be­hind it” (Cam­era 2018). No woman had ever done such a thing yet in her time, so this was truly some­thing im­pres­sive. 

Photo cour­tesy of Picryl 

Also im­pres­sive was that Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe was not afraid to stand up and fight for jus­tice. Upon hear­ing that Ella Fitzger­ald was for­bid­den from per­form­ing at an all-white club, Mon­roe im­me­di­ately called up the club’s owner and promised to at­tend every night in a front-row seat if Ella could play. Once the deal was made, Fitzger­ald felt that she was for­ever in­debted to Mon­roe. As Fitzger­ald once said, “I owe Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe a real debt…she per­son­ally called the owner of the Mo­cambo, and told him she wanted me booked im­me­di­ately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him—and it was true, due to Mar­i­lyn’s su­per­star sta­tus—that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Mar­i­lyn was there, front table, every night. The press went over­board. Af­ter that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an un­usual woman—a lit­tle ahead of her times. And she did­n’t know it.”

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe rose up as a leg­end all on her own in an in­dus­try full of power and sex-hun­gry men, all while chang­ing so­ci­ety, so that women and peo­ple of all color to­day could feel they have a place in this world. 

“My pop­u­lar­ity seems al­most en­tirely a mas­cu­line phe­nom­e­non.” -Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe

Photo cour­tesy of Picryl

Cred­its: 

https://​medium.com/​lessons-from-his­tory/​mar­i­lyn-mon­roe-is-a-fem­i­nist-icon-fc88148f­f330

https://​www.smh.com.au/​en­ter­tain­ment/​movies/​mar­i­lyn-mon­roe-the-un­likely-fem­i­nist-20180628-p4­zo89.html