Trivia of Marilyn Monroe

Trivia of Marilyn Monroe

*Spent most of her early childhood in foster homes and orphanages because her mother was committed to a mental institution. Later, she lived with her mother's best friend, Grace McKee, and her family. McKee, a big fan of Jean Harlow, allowed her to wear make-up and curl her hair and, when she was 15, it was McKee who pierced her ears for her using a sewing needle. At 16, when McKee could no longer take care of her, she got married to avoid returning to the orphanage.

*Was discovered by Ronald Reagan, when he sent a photographer to a factory in Van Nuys to photograph women workers during the war. She was the featured one.

*Although she was perhaps the most famous actress of the 1950s decade, she never made more than $100,000 per picture upfront.

*The dress Marilyn Monroe wore to serenade John F. Kennedy, on May 19, 1962 at his birthday celebration was so tight, that it had to be sewn onto her. She had to sit still for approximately an hour.Her classic shape, according to her dressmaker, is actually measured at 37-23-36.

*She was an avid buyer of books.Her personal library contained over 400 books on topics ranging from art to history, psychology, philosophy, literature, religion, poetry, and gardening. Many of the volumes, auctioned in 1999, bore her pencil notations in the margins.

*In order to fall asleep quicker and stay asleep longer she often mixed champagne with sleeping pills.

*When she died in 1962 at age 36, she left an estate valued at $1.6 million. In her will, Monroe bequeathed 75% of that estate to Lee Strasberg, her acting coach, and 25% to Dr. Marianne Kris, her psychoanalyst. A trust fund provided her mother, Gladys Baker Eley, with $5,000 a year. When Dr. Kris died in 1980, she passed her 25% on to the Anna Freud Centre, a children's psychiatric institute in London. Since Strasberg's death in 1982, his 75% has been administered by his widow, Anna, and her lawyer, Irving Seidman.