Michael Ochs Archives What is it — even still — about Marilyn Monroe?
A century after her birth, the woman born Norma Jeane still has American culture hanging on her every breathy vocalization. Monroe remains the ultimate standard-bearer of Hollywood glamour — a woman who died (in 1962, at the tragically premature age of 36) before the sexual revolution but who helped usher in a revved-up sensuality onscreen. The era she inaugurates lives on: A certain stripe of actress will inevitably be compared, first, to Monroe. The star has been the butt of too many mean jokes, the object of veneration and a muse for film and literary retellings that have elevated her into the realm of myth.
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