Monroe’s relationship to Joe DiMaggio was an unusual one from the start. What in Blonde’s depiction of the relationship is true to reality? What veers into fiction? Here’s a quick explainer.Ģ022 © Netflix How did Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio get involved?

In Blonde, it’s pretty much all seen as ugly: We watch Bobby Cannavale's DiMaggio abuse Ana de Armas’s Monroe both verbally and physically, belittling her when she’s already reached a mental lowpoint. But their romance, split, and later-in-life friendship has long captivated the public. With a Hollywood output as rich and productive as Monroe’s, and a private life splashed across tabloids, it can be easy to forget all about DiMaggio. She wants agency-she just can’t seem to get it. Monroe (real name: Norma Jeane Mortenson) struggles and fails to get out from under the character the rest of the world has set for her. The plot is structured around a series of cascading traumas suffered by Monroe that circle back on each other in a dizzying, sometimes powerful, sometimes mind-numbing cycle. Directed by Andrew Dominik ( Killing Them Softly), the rare NC-17-rated feature functions as a “dream film” as much about Monroe’s image as her actual life, according to Dominik.

It was Norma Jeane Dougherty, not Marilyn Monroe.Blonde, based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates, is heavily fictionalized yet assembled from a spattering of well-researched truths. 24, 1946, contract with 20th Century FOX. The original version of this article misstated the name that appeared on the Aug. 23, 1956 (four months before she would marry Death of a Salesman playwright Arthur Miller). However, it would be another decade before she legally changed her name to her stage name, which was in Feb. 1946 letter to a friend, she wrote that Clare Norman was also being considered as a screen name, and the names “Meredith” and “Carol Lind” were also reportedly floated, according to another Monroe biographer Lois Banner. It would also end up being an eerily prescient name choice because Miller died at 37, while Monroe died at 36.īut the story doesn’t end there, as many people continued suggesting other names before she settled on Marilyn Monroe.

If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters.

For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered.

My story monroe