It was important for Marilyn to hear that she was a pretty girl. she needed that reassurance. Maybe that is what caused her depression so that she had to mix pills and alcohol. Interesting enough her mother ended up in a psychiatric ward and the actress did not know about until she was already famous. She had to make-up for parents who were not there by inventing an excuse that they were on a long trip.
But then she learned from her friend Ann that she should never give up, always aim for the top and never loose confidence in herself. Before she met this friend who was actually the aunt of the mother's friend, she went through a period where she went back and forth from a foster home and orphanage and was molested by the husband of the friend that committed her mother to a mental institution. She went to stay at a relative of her mother but was attacked there too.
Norma would later harbor resentment over the fact that her Mom's friend tried to pass her onto to a neighborhood boy to marry, because the friend had to move out of state. To the future star that meant a loveless marriage. She even tried to commit suicide because of the union. During the last year of the war, she would appear as a cover girl for David Conover.
During that time she was employed in the war effort but her beauty attracted model agencies and photo-journalists. It was then that she was noted for her charismatic charm and photographers wanted to take her picture for magazine covers. She was on her way to stardom.
While growing up as a child she was teased for being tall and lanky. That was before her breasts were formed and she became shapely. That emotional scar was probably what caused her lack of self-confidence when she would look in the mirror or have to prove herself in front of the camera in later life.
She lived with the stigma that she moved constantly from one educational institution to another, never learning how to spell properly or do any math problems. Journalists would refer to her as a stupid blond. Perhaps the accumulation of the pressure of wanting to succeed to escape the past or not feeling comfortable with her new persona caused her to pop those pills, although evidence has been collected about mysterious visitors having been to her apartment on the night of her death. Was it that she knew of inconvenient secrets that the public can only speculate on?
