Marilyn Monroe was an American actress and model. Known for playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million by the time of her death in 1962.
Picnic is a 1955 American Technicolor romantic comedy-drama film filmed in CinemaScope. It was adapted for the screen by Daniel Taradash from William Inge's 1953 Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name. Joshua Logan, director of the original Broadway stage production, directed the film version, which stars William Holden, Kim Novak, and Rosalind Russell, with Susan Strasberg and Cliff Robertson in supporting roles. Picnic was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won two.
William Motter Inge was an American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s he had a string of memorable Broadway productions, including Picnic, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize. With his portraits of small-town life and settings rooted in the American heartland, Inge became known as the "Playwright of the Midwest".
A bus stop is a place, other than a terminal, established for buses to pick up and drop off passengers
Donald Patrick Murray was an American actor best known for his breakout performance in the film Bus Stop, which earned him a nomination for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His other films include A Hatful of Rain (1957), Shake Hands with the Devil, One Foot in Hell, The Hoodlum Priest (1961), Advise & Consent, Baby the Rain Must Fall, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), Deadly Hero (1975), and Peggy Sue Got Married.
The Misfits is a 1961 American contemporary Western film directed by John Huston and written by Arthur Miller, who adapted his own 1957 short story. It stars Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, and Montgomery Clift, alongside Thelma Ritter and Eli Wallach. The plot centers on a newly divorced woman (Monroe), and her relationships with a friendly landlady (Ritter), an old-school cowboy (Gable), his tow-truck driving and plane-flying best friend (Wallach), and their rodeo-riding, bronc-busting friend (Clift). The Misfits was the last completed film for both Gable and Monroe.
The Prince and the Showgirl is a 1957 British romantic comedy film starring Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier, who also served as director and producer. The screenplay written by Terence Rattigan was based on his 1953 stage play The Sleeping Prince. The Prince and the Showgirl was filmed at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire.
On the evening of August 4, 1962, American actress Marilyn Monroe died at age 36 of a barbiturate overdose inside her home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California. Her body was discovered before dawn the following morning, on August 5. Monroe had been one of the most popular Hollywood stars during the 1950s and early 1960s, and was a top-billed actress for the preceding decade. Her films had grossed $200 million by the time of her death.
Picnic is a 1953 play by William Inge. The play premiered at the Music Box Theatre, Broadway, on 19 February 1953 in a Theatre Guild production, directed by Joshua Logan, which ran for 477 performances.
Bus Stop is a 1955 play by American playwright William Inge. Produced on Broadway, it was nominated for four Tony Awards in 1956. It received major revivals in the United States and United Kingdom in 2010 and 2011.
Let's Make Love is a 1960 American musical comedy film made by 20th Century Fox in DeLuxe Color and CinemaScope. Directed by George Cukor and produced by Jerry Wald from a screenplay by Norman Krasna, Hal Kanter, and Arthur Miller, the film stars Marilyn Monroe, Yves Montand, and Tony Randall. It would be Monroe's last musical film performance.
The 14th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film for 1956 films, were held on February 28, 1957, at the Cocoanut Grove, Ambassador Hotel.
Bus Stop is a 26-episode American drama which aired on ABC from October 1, 1961, until March 25, 1962, starring Marilyn Maxwell as Grace Sherwood, the owner of a bus station and diner in the fictitious town of Sunrise in the Colorado Rockies. The program was adapted from William Inge's play, Bus Stop, and Inge was a script consultant for the series, which followed the lives of travelers passing through the bus station and the diner. Maxwell's co-stars were Richard Anderson as District Attorney Glenn Wagner, Rhodes Reason as Sheriff Will Mayberry, Joan Freeman as waitress Elma Gahrigner, Bernard Kates as Ralph the coroner, and Buddy Ebsen as Virge Blessing. Increasingly, as it became difficult to have guest stars be characters arriving by bus every week, the stories became more about people in the town which left little for Maxwell's character to do and led to her leaving the series after 13 episodes. She said, "There was nothing for me to do but pour a second cup of coffee and point the way to the men's room."
My Week with Marilyn is a 2011 biographical drama film directed by Simon Curtis and written by Adrian Hodges. It stars Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, Dominic Cooper, Julia Ormond, Emma Watson, and Judi Dench. Based on two books by Colin Clark, it depicts the making of the 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl, which starred Marilyn Monroe (Williams) and Laurence Olivier (Branagh). The film concerns the week during the shooting of the film when Monroe was escorted around London by Clark (Redmayne), after her husband Arthur Miller had returned to the United States.
Love, Marilyn is a 2012 American documentary film about American actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe's writings directed by Liz Garbus and produced by Stanley F. Buchthal, Garbus, and Amy Hobby. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2012 and is based on the 2010 non-fiction book Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters, edited by Buchthal and Bernard Comment. The production firms that produced the film included the Diamond Girl production company, Sol's Luncheonette Production and the French-based StudioCanal production company, whose parent company owns the third-largest film library in the world.
Andor György Ikafalvi-Dienes, known as André de Dienes, was a Hungarian photographer, noted for his work with Marilyn Monroe and his nude photography.
Natasha Lytess was an actress, writer and drama coach.
Margot Patricia "Pat" Newcomb Wigan is an American publicist and producer. After working for Pierre Salinger, she was hired by the agency of Arthur P. Jacobs and briefly represented Marilyn Monroe in 1956. In 1960, she became Monroe's permanent publicist until her death. She later worked for Barbra Streisand and Natalie Wood. She also worked for the United States Information Agency and assisted Robert F. Kennedy in his political campaigns. In 1969, she founded the Pickwick Public Relations Agency and became vice president of motion picture production at MGM in 1985. She was married to producer Gareth Wigan, who died in 2010.
Gladys Pearl Monroe, also known as Gladys Pearl Monroe Baker Mortensen Eley, was the mother of American actress Marilyn Monroe. Born in Mexico, Baker grew up in the Los Angeles metro area. Her father died in 1909 after suffering from mental illness and alcoholism.
