Marilyn Monroe’s Dramatic Evolution In Pictures: A Photo For Every Year Of Her Life

You don’t see many pictures of Monroe’s mother Gladys Baker, but she had a huge impact on her daughter’s life. Here she is holding the baby she named Norma Jeane. Before long, sadly, her severe mental illness would mean she had to leave the young girl in a foster home.

Monroe’s early childhood was unfortunately quite difficult. Though she was looked after by her foster mother Ida Bolender, Gladys was suffering badly from paranoid schizophrenia, and once tried to kidnap her infant daughter to take her back. Unfortunately, in those days help with mental health conditions was hard to come by.

Once the young Norma Jeane was old enough to wonder why she didn’t have a dad in her life, she sadly wouldn’t have gotten any answers. The name under “father” on her birth certificate was Edward Mortenson, her mother’s one-time husband. But it’s thought he probably wasn’t her biological dad at all.

Despite Gladys not being able to look after Norma Jeane, she did see her quite a lot throughout her early childhood. According to biographers of Marilyn Monroe who studied her life and family, Gladys badly wanted to be a full-time mom to her young daughter. Unfortunately, she simply wasn’t able to.

Life in the Bolender home definitely wasn’t an ideal environment for a young child. Ida and Wayne Bolender, the married couple who took little Norma Jeane in, were incredibly religious and their foster child couldn’t put a foot out of line. She also had to join Ida and Wayne at church multiple times a week.

Even as a child, the person who would become Marilyn Monroe showed signs of wanting to sing and act and dance. But the fire-and-brimstone Ida and Wayne Bolender wouldn’t accept that sort of thing at all, so Norma Jeane had to do any singing or dancing in private. It was a desperately boring life.

Things changed for Norma Jeane in the early ’30s. Gladys was able to buy a house and her daughter was finally allowed to live with her. Sadly, though, this didn’t last. A couple of years later Gladys suffered a breakdown and was institutionalized, and she would be in and out of hospitals from that moment on.

As Norma Jeane got older, it was easy to see she was going to grow into a beautiful young lady. Here she is in 1936 with a couple of friends, celebrating someone’s birthday and looking happy. But by this point in her life she had already been admitted to an orphanage, which devastated her.

This photo shows Norma Jeane with her “Aunt Ana,” a friend of the Baker family who the young girl lived with for a bit. At this point in her life she was constantly being passed between foster homes. The trauma of such a life left her with a stutter throughout her childhood.

By the time Norma Jeane was a teenager, she was starting to look more like the Marilyn Monroe known the whole world over — except for the hair. Yep, Marilyn wasn’t a natural blonde, she was a brunette. But she loved the idea of being blonde because she idolized actress Jean Harlow.

Once Norma Jean grew to high school age, her life began to change somewhat. She began to receive attention from boys, after a childhood of being mocked by her schoolmates for being too thin. And her good looks also provided her with a way out of the poverty she was in.

When Norma Jeane turned 16, she had the option to marry and thus get herself out of foster care. So that’s exactly what she did. In May 1942 she dropped out of high school and married Jim Dougherty, a handsome young football player who she’d long had a crush on.

The relationship between Norma Jeane and Jim Dougherty didn’t last, but — thanks in no small part to her fame — she was always a part of Dougherty’s life. He told the United Press International in 1990, “I never knew Marilyn Monroe, and I don’t claim to have any insights to her to this day. I knew and loved Norma Jeane.”

During World War II Dougherty became a merchant marine, and he and Norma Jeane moved to Catalina Island. That’s where this little-seen shot was taken. Dougherty told United Press International in the 1990 interview, “We would go down to the beach on weekends, and have luaus on Saturday night. She loved it over there. It was like being on a honeymoon for a year.”

In 1945 photographer David Conover visited a munitions factory, looking to photograph pretty women in order to raise morale among soldiers. There, he found the young Marilyn Monroe working away. He was so taken by her good looks he put her on the front cover of his magazine, and this led to other jobs. Bit by bit, she was starting to get noticed.

This shot shows Norma Jeane — still not quite the blonde bombshell known as Marilyn Monroe yet — posing for a photo shoot in Los Angeles. The same year this picture was taken, Norma Jeane divorced Jim Dougherty. He later claimed she did it because the big film studios didn’t want married stars.

By 1947 Norma Jeane’s hair was considerably lighter. But due to the limited products available at the time, it actually took many months before the young model was a fully-fledged blonde. Around this time, she and her employers began working on changing her name: it was very briefly “Jean Norman.”

In this stunning photograph from 1947, we can see the beginnings of that famous bleached-blonde hair. And we can also see just how well Marilyn Monroe — for that was of course the agreed-upon name — knew how to work a camera. To this day people don’t quite know how she did it.

When this photo was released to the press, the original caption described Monroe as “a lovely newcomer to the screen.” It also announced, “Marilyn is shown here taking the test that landed her a role in a new picture, Scudda Hoo, Scudda Hay.” But alas, her role was more or less cut from the finished film.

Here’s Monroe appearing in her first leading role in Ladies of the Chorus — her hair very nearly finally bleached to the bright yellow-white color we all remember. This B-movie musical took a mere ten days to shoot, had a low budget, and might well have ended up forgotten if the young Monroe hadn’t been in it.

By the end of the ’40s Monroe was taking dancing and singing lessons, but she was also courting scandal. That year she posed for a very risqué calendar in exchange for $50, money she badly needed. Later on, those photos were bought by Playboy magazine, and could well have ruined her.

Monroe’s long-term hairstylist was a woman called Sylvia Barnhart, and it’s her we have to thank for Monroe’s iconic platinum blonde ’do. Apparently, the young actress would go and see Sylvia at her Hollywood Boulevard salon every Saturday at 1:30 p.m. — although she was frequently a few hours late — to have her hair taken care of.

In 1950 Monroe got a massive break: she was cast in an important role in the film The Asphalt Jungle. It was a success, and her performance was given good reviews. It was her breakout role, but if she wanted to make it in Hollywood she had to keep choosing films wisely.

Perhaps you’ve seen this photo of Monroe posing in a potato sack, but there’s a great story behind it you might not know. A bitter columnist once supposedly complained that Monroe’s low-cut dresses were tacky and she’d look better in a potato sack — so she had herself photographed in one. And she looked great.

Monroe was in four films in 1951 — Home Town Story, As Young as You Feel, Love Nest, and Let’s Make It Legal — but she was lauded more for her looks than her acting talents. That year Robert Cahn wrote in Collier’s magazine, “She is particularly concerned with looking her best and spends hours at the make-up table.”

During 1952 Monroe headed to Niagara Falls to film the movie Niagara, and some lucky fans got to meet her. When photos of the filming were posted on the “Niagara History and Trivia” Facebook page in 2022, some of those fans popped back up to share experiences. One said, “I still remember her sitting near the railing by the Falls, even at my young age. She was so beautiful!”

Here’s Monroe sitting down to dinner at the 1953 Photoplay Gold Medal Awards. She won Most Popular Female Star that year, and it was well deserved. You’ll note she looks a little shell-shocked in the photo, and for good reason. She was becoming one of the biggest names in the world.

Monroe is seen with baseball player Joe DiMaggio here in 1953, just before the storm hit. After a whirlwind romance she married him the following year, and they became a golden couple of the entertainment world. Unfortunately, though, after the big wedding, the relationship lasted just nine months before they split.

Apart from her wedding and divorce, another big thing Monroe did in 1954 was go to Korea to entertain American troops — and she took time out of her honeymoon to do so. The image of her standing on a stage and singing her heart out to enraptured soldiers is one of the defining ones of her life.

This image shows Monroe crying in her car after she announced — at the same cottage she honeymooned in, no less — that she was divorcing Joe DiMaggio. Given the choice, she would probably have preferred not to be photographed at such a vulnerable moment. But that was the price of fame.

The most famous Marilyn Monroe moment of all time happened as part of the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch. In it, Monroe steps over a grate and the breeze blows her skirt up, revealing her underwear. Monroe herself reportedly loved the scene — but Joe DiMaggio was enraged about it.

This picture is of Monroe in Bus Stop, a movie that’s considered one of the most interesting flicks she did, despite the fact it’s barely remembered. Before it came out, even the director was insulting her performance. But once the press had seen the finished film, the New York Times reported, “Marilyn Monroe has finally proved herself an actress...”

In 1956 Monroe married her third husband, and to the media he seemed an incredibly unlikely partner for her. He was playwright Arthur Miller, a renowned intellectual, and she was still considered a dumb blonde. But she was, in fact, far from dumb, and she genuinely loved Miller, even though the marriage didn’t last.

Here’s Monroe wearing a fur shawl on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl — where she played the showgirl, of course. Her prince was Laurence Olivier, who also directed the movie. Apparently, the two of them didn’t get along well — not least because Olivier found Monroe’s chronic lack of punctuality a problem.

Monroe reportedly was difficult to work with on the set of crossdressing comedy Some Like It Hot. Her co-star Jack Lemmon said in the 2001 book Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot — The Funniest Film Ever Made, “She had a lot of problems, she was basically an unhappy girl.” Cracks were starting to show.

No matter what, Monroe was still beautiful. Did you ever wonder about that mole on her face? Instead of being a flaw, it was an intrinsic part of her iconic look. During her early career, in fact, she even highlighted it with an eyebrow pencil. This shot from 1958 shows it in all its glory.

Regardless of the behind-the-scenes difficulties and the problems in her personal life, Marilyn Monroe remained very popular indeed. This shot from 1959 shows her signing autographs for fans, who were no doubt delighted to see her. And when Some Like It Hot hit cinemas that year, film reviewers praised her performance.

Arthur Miller wrote The Misfits for Monroe, and you can see her in the picture above smiling on the set of the movie. That smile might be hiding the turmoil she was experiencing at the time, though. Their marriage was completely falling apart as they worked to get the movie done.

Not only did Monroe divorce Arthur Miller in 1961, she spent some time in hospital as well. She went to the Polyclinic Hospital in June to have her gallbladder removed, and the press were there to greet her when she came out. But as her mental health worsened, she was also sent to a psychiatric ward for three days.

This picture shows a mature-looking but also rather sad Monroe at a June 1962 Yankees-Angels game, doing a pre-game charity drive for the Muscular Dystrophy Fund. Sadly, this was one of the last pictures ever taken of the iconic actress. She passed away two months later, at the age of 36.