The Girl, Nature, Goddess, or How Marilyn Monroe Became "the Queen of Glamour"?

‘Did you ever see anything like her?’, Cleveland Amory asked Hedda Hopper while they were both watching the making of the famous ‘bathtub scene’ in The Seven Year Itch (Wilder, 1955). How can one explain the phenomenon of Marilyn Monroe – the ‘queen of glamour’, as her contemporaries called her? This research examines the case of Marilyn Monroe with reference to the model of glamorous femininity which has emerged in modern consumer societies. Monroe is understood as a ‘representative character’, not a real person, and the study aims at reconstructing and deconstructing her public image, not at establishing the ‘truth’ about her personal life. The most influential components of Monroe’s persona are indicated and analysed based on press material from her lifetime and her repertoire, i.e. the pin-up context, the association with nature and the ‘goddess’ aspect. It is maintained that these components accounted for Monroe’s lasting status as an icon of glamour but also best corresponded to the changes in morality and sexuality that American society experienced in the 1950s.