Sheila Says: Marilyn Would Have Been 90 This Week

Marilyn Monroe was born June 1, 1926. If she hadn’t passed away in August of 1962, she would have been 90 tomorrow. Here are some things you may not have known about Marilyn.

1. People often think Marilyn was curvier than she really was. In fact, she was petite and weighed just 118lbs. and was 5ft 5in tall. Her weight fluctuated, but her measurements are most often given as 36-24-34 or 38-23-36 for bust-waist-hips.
2. Marilyn was so paranoid about sweat & blemishes that she washed her face up to 15 times a day.
3. Depression ran in the family – her uncle and greatgrandfather both committed suicide.
4. The night she sang Happy Birthday to President Kennedy at the old Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962, Marilyn was wearing a sheer, flesh-coloured dress with huge 2,500 rhinestones. The gown was so tight she had to be sewn into it.
5. Marilyn married her second husband, baseball star Joe DiMaggio, in January 1954. She asked Joe to promise to leave flowers on her grave every week if she died before him. He later kept his promise.
6. She won a Golden Globe in 1960 for her performance in Some Like It Hot. She was never nominated for an Oscar.
7. Marilyn was a huge fan of Nivea moisturizer.
8. More than 2,000 people gathered to watch as she filmed her famous skirt blowing scene for The Seven Year Itch in September 1954.
9. Marilyn wasn’t just a pretty face. She owned 200 books, including Tolstoy and Whitman, listened to Beethoven and took a course in literature at UCLA.
10. Before she died, Marilyn told her personal makeup artist to make sure she he did her makeup if anything ever happened to her.  He did, one last time. She had a bronze casket lined with champagne-colored satin. She was dressed in her green Pucci dress and a green chiffon scarf, a favorite which she had worn at a press conference in Mexico City earlier that year.