Original subtitles

The highlight of my life was seen for the source there.

I stood out on an open stage and it was cold, but I swear I didn't see that thing

except good.

It was February 1954, at a loll of the USA's involvement in the Korean War, taking a break

from her honeymoon with Yankees baseball legend Joe Demagio, Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe

performs for around 60,000 U.S. Marines over four days.

She sings, Diamonds are a girl's best friend and a tight sequined dress.

It was the image of America's post-war economic and consumerist boom.

A star in the true meaning of the word.

A burst of blinding light, dazzling and radiant, melting all those who came too close.

And before you know it, once again dispersed into the cosmos.

She became the wide-smiled poster girl of sex, money, and glamour, a true story of the American

dream, a rags to riches fairy tale of transformation.

So we embarked upon 1954, a world-ever new ever-changing distances ever-shrinking, events

and people making history.

But I love that little girl, but it is me, my destiny, but I love that little girl, but it

is me, she likes dancing, and when she does ride and go and take her to the river,

where she is, where she is, where she is, where I love.

American society in the 1950s is marked by the post-war war tuba, the economy boomed.

American consumers eagerly spent the money saved from three years of rationing.

The newly-instated GI bill allowed many returning veterans to buy homes in the rapidly expanding

suburbs.

New home buyers feel their homes with revolutionary household appliances.

The growing economy allowed middle-class families to buy new automobiles and own television

sets.

A baby boom followed the new nuclear family bliss, which recorded four million births

each and every year.

It was the golden age of American capitalism.

Economic recovery after the war and the great depression that preceded it relied heavily

on a culture of mass consumption.

It was a time of the American dream.

A national concept believing that individual upward social mobility was the country's foundation.

You could be no one and become someone if you work hard.

Jonathan had big dreams of the wonderful rewards being in business for himself.

A truck driver becomes Elvis Presley.

An orphan becomes Marilyn Monroe.

Foster home to Hollywood Studio, all through a dramatic reinvention of self.

By the time she landed in Korea, Marilyn was a symbol of this new American icon.

She possessed the classic glamour of Hollywood's Golden Era, with a humble beginning's backstory

that made her both aspirational and relatable to the public.

Importantly, Marilyn was perceived as a specifically American star, described by photoplay

magazine as a national institution as well known as hot dogs, apple pie, or baseball.

In the 1950s after the horrors of the war, Americans were confident that the future promised

only peace, prosperity, and patriotism.

However, the Cold War, the growing threat of nuclear destruction and the resulting red

scare that followed, installed in all permeating paranoia in society.

Any qualities in race, gender, and sexuality would also begin to spark tensions as the decade continued.

Throughout Marilyn's life in the spotlight, she can represent both the rise and fall

of the mid-century American dream, revealing the intrinsic relationship between Hollywood film stars

and the dominant ideologies of their time.

Indulgence of any kind when against America's Protestant ethics before the war,

frugality was valued.

It was during these times that Norma Jean Mortensen was born in California on the first of June

1926.

The contrasting backdrops of the Great Depression and the burgeoning prosperity of the Los Angeles film industry

influenced her early life.

From a young age, Norma's life seemed intertwined with Hollywood.

Speaking about her childhood in a life magazine interview in 1962, Marilyn stated,

I didn't like the world around me because it was kind of ground.

When I heard that this was acting, I said, that's what I want to be.

Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house,

and there I'd sit all day and weigh into the night.

Up in front, there with the screens so big, a little kid all alone.

And I loved it.

Norma didn't know her father.

Her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker, worked as a film negative cutter at consolidated film

industries.

In 1934 Norma's mother had a severe mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid

schizophrenia.

She lived in and out of the hospital for the rest of her life.

Young Norma became a ward of the state, placed in a Los Angeles orphan home.

I could read a film.

I saw an orphan and I put my feet down a side where they had to draw the moon like I'm not

an orphan.

I used to sit up in the window and cry as he could look over and see, oh no,

and I knew my mother had worked there as an cutter there.

She was young, but he was young.

She looked at both.

She wasn't well cared for her.

Her clothes separated her a little bit from the rest of the girl.

She was a little girl, not well developed as some of the industries were.

She just seemed like a nice child, but not very outgoing and not very vibrant.

Norma would go on to stay in nine foster homes, eventually living with a friend of her

mother, Grace Goddard, in 1941.

Grace's husband was soon relocated to West Virginia for work.

California and child protection laws prevented Norma from being able to go with Grace,

leading her to make a decision.

To avoid facing the orphanage again, in 1942, Norma married the neighbor's son, James

Doherty.

She dropped out of high school to become a housewife at age 16.

Norma idolized movie stars like Gene Harlow,

glamorous blonde bombshells dripping in diamonds.

The movie star lifestyle seemed world's away from Norma's reality.

Raised on the same land as the California Gold Rush.

Maybe it was in Norma's blood to know how much things could change,

and how fast this could happen.

The mythic American dream taught her that her country was the land of opportunity,

and Norma knew she wanted ever so badly to escape her predestined origins of poverty and madness.

In April 1944, James was shipped out to the Pacific with the marines and remained there for the next two years.

Norma moved in with her in-laws.

Like many other women in the 1940s, Norma found independence through her contribution to the war effort.

She worked as a technician for radio playing, an American aviation company.

In late 1944, Norma met photographer David Conover,

who had been sent to take morale boosting pictures of female workers.

This encounter led Norma to pursue modeling full-time.

Against her husband's wishes, she signed with blue-book model agency in 1945.

She divorced James Dority the following year.