What made Norma Jean special was the quality she discovered when, bored with being a teenage bride with a husband in the Merchant Marine during World War II, she took her first and most enduring lover, the camera. At the age of 36, Marilyn Monroe died a Hollywood movie star and an American legend. Her rise to fame, however, had very little to do with her limited talents. Monroe infiltrated Hollywood, swarming with fake names and idealized careers, and pressed herself into its mold. Monroe's personal confessions, along with interviews with friends and contemporaries, reveal the truth behind this Hollywood icon.

In this sensitive, provocative portrait of Marilyn Monroe, Gloria Steinem reveals the woman behind the myth--the child Norma Jean--and the forces in America that shaped her into the fantasy and icon that has never died. 16 pages of full-color photos.

Perhaps no one's death has stirred more interest, controversy, and theories than Marilyn Monroe's August 4 of 1962. In Murder Orthodoxies, author Donald R. McGovern analyzes and examines the many theories that Monroe was murdered by a host of curious characters-from the middle Kennedy brothers to brutal gangsters to aliens. McGovern separates fact from fiction and theory from outlandish rumor. He addresses and debunks the usual allegations related to Monroe's death, the secrets recorded in her little red diary, her scheduled whistle-blowing press conference, the murder plots by organized crime and the brothers Kennedy, and the fatal injection of drugs, along with many others. In Murder Orthodoxies, McGovern restores logic and sanity to the investigation of Monroe's death. His thesis is based upon the premise that the engines of conspiracies are started and fueled by opinion, not by facts. His credible conclusions are based on logic, science, toxicology, and forensic evidence.

Her story did not end in 1962. Now the truth is revealed about her love affair with JFK, her secret pregnancies, and her hidden desires. The definitive book on the endless fascination that is Marilyn. Contains revealing photos--classics and candids.

This explosive and historic must-have book will change the entire way readers view the life and death of Marilyn Monroe. Written by relatives of Marilyn Monroe, the authors painstakingly unravel the myths that have suffocated her legacy for over 50 years. These myths have been regurgitated in biography after biography, depicting Marilyn as an orphan girl and leaving her expansive lineage out of the equation. The facts support that Marilyn was surrounded with family, and many members were upstanding citizens who contributed greatly to their communities. However, Hollywood, Marilyn's New York "friends," and her therapists insulated Marilyn in order to profit off of the ultimate "Cinderella Story." That story was the myth of Marilyn Monroe, which was created to suffocate the truth behind Norma Jeane Mortenson and her family history. It was eventually this forged fairy-tale path and this cast of characters that squeezed funds out of Marilyn Monroe, as well as the final breaths out of the legendary star. The heirs of the opportunists who fleeced Marilyn of both her life and earnings still garner monies through her name today.

Traces the passionate and sometimes volatile relationship between Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, covering their sensational 1954 elopement and the troubles that led to their divorce nine months later.

Written at the height of her fame but not published until over a decade after her death, this autobiography of actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) poignantly recounts her childhood as an unwanted orphan, her early adolescence, her rise in the film industry from bit player to celebrity, and her marriage to Joe DiMaggio. In this intimate account of a very public life, she tells of her first (non-consensual) sexual experience, her romance with the Yankee Clipper, and her prescient vision of herself as "the kind of girl they found dead in the hall bedroom with an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her hand." The Marilyn in these pages is a revelation: a gifted, intelligent, vulnerable woman who was far more complex than the unwitting sex siren she portrayed on screen. Lavishly illustrated with photos of Marilyn, this special book celebrates the life and career of an American icon—-from the unique perspective of the icon herself.