Original subtitles

REPORTER: NBC Monitor News, on the hour.

In California, screen actress Marilyn Monroe is dead.

The 36-year-old film star was found in her bed this morning.

The successful, lonely actress who led such a spectacular, stormy life.

The story of Marilyn Monroe is an authentic tragedy.

It began in tragedy and ended in tragedy,

and in between, there was always a tragic...

Because of the way Marilyn died,

we tend to look at her entire life as a tragedy.

And in particular, the last few years

as being the inevitable fall of this great star.

That simply wasn't true.

Can we start again? Yeah.

SHE LAUGHS

She had agency.

She was hungry for more creative challenges.

Gee! Cut, cut...

She had a lot of strength along with her vulnerability.

I am not at a studio to be disciplined.

She stood up to the old Hollywood guard.

She said, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more."

We are not machines. We are not.

Up until the day she died, she was a fighter.

Get out of here! Gay, darling!

Of course her early death is a tragedy, but that doesn't overwrite

everything that she achieved up until that point.

She became the biggest movie star in the world.

And she remains one of the most famous

and instantly recognisable women in history!

JESSICA CHASTAIN: Excited fans gather on a San Diego beach

to watch Marilyn Monroe shoot her first film in two years.

Billy Wilder directs her in Some Like It Hot,

which is, arguably, her greatest role.

She's... It's incredible what she does in that.

On paper, the role of Sugar Kane is...

..very much an archetype of a dumb blonde.

I come from this musical family.

My mother is a piano teacher. My father was a conductor.

Where did he conduct? On the Baltimore and Ohio.

Oh...

This woman is so dumb that she doesn't even realise

that her two best friends are men in drag.

What's the matter with you anyway?

I'm not very bright, I guess.

But Marilyn transforms this very two-dimensional,

dumb-blonde character into a three-dimensional woman.

The next thing you know, they're borrowing money from you.

They're spending it on other dames and betting on horses.

Marilyn was able to make her characters so relatable.

Even though they were sort of vapid,

you could identify with them.

By this time in her career, Marilyn was always making suggestions,

and it's said she suggested that there be a blast of steam

as she came out on the train station.

The fact she asks Wilder...

Look at that!

..to...kind of shoot steam at her,

as he did in The Seven Year Itch, is very interesting.

Ooh, do you feel the breeze from the subway?

It shows that Marilyn has a real self-awareness of her image

and how to play with it.

The last thing that you will ever hear is the idea that Marilyn

contributed to the comedic genius of Billy Wilder.

She's never given credit for being deliberately funny.

Billy Wilder was not the easiest of directors.

He just wanted the actors to do what he wanted them to do,

but Marilyn was a perfectionist. She wanted many takes.

And she would just ruin a take if she didn't like what had been done.

Her style of acting didn't go well with a highly efficient,

time-driven, money-driven studio system.

And Billy Wilder famously said,

"It was hell."

He said, "It was hell."

This is not cheap even in those days, you know.

A day of shooting cost, like, $20,000.

That's just blown to bits.

So you just say "My God, my God,

"who is going to have a nervous breakdown - me or the money man?"

I cannot help but think about the ways that men are allowed to...

..have a lot of leeway on set in ways women aren't.

It's the way in which we talk about,

"Well, this male actor is passionate. He's a method actor.

"And this actress is just a crazy bitch who's difficult on set."

And I've heard that time and time again.

That has been the language used.

And that is gendered.

ALL: Three, four, five, six, seven...!

As ever, the story is more complicated than

the versions that we get.

And when she was happy with the way that the scene was being interpreted

and felt that she was being listened to,

she was delivering scenes with perfect comic timing.

Look, if you're interested in whether I am married or not...

Oh, I'm not interested at all. Well, I'm not.

That's very interesting.

When I knew I had the final shots, there was a moment of "never again".

Well, all I can tell you is if Marilyn was around today,

I would be on my knees, "PLEASE, let's do it again."

JESSICA: Despite the problems on set,

Some Like It Hot is a huge hit for the studio.

People really responded to it

and some people think it's the greatest comedy of all time.

And if ever she was full of life in a film

and seemed completely at ease in her skin, it's this one.

But for Marilyn, the film's success comes at a time of personal tragedy.

# I wanna be loved by you, just you

# Nobody else but you. #

It turned out, afterwards, that Marilyn was pregnant during filming,

which the people on set did not know.

# Boop-boop-be-doo... #

She actually miscarried after the film wrapped.

# I want to be kissed by you, just you... #

A few years earlier, she suffered an ectopic pregnancy.

And once again, her dreams of motherhood were dashed.

# I couldn't aspire... #

So when she saw herself on-screen, thinking back to

finding out that she was pregnant and all of those things,

it must have been extremely hurtful for her.

# I wanna be loved by you

# Ba-deedly-deedly-deedly-dum

# Boop-boop-be-doop. #

Marilyn had to suffer that pain in the public eye.

She had newspapers and journalists were all gossiping about it.

To be reading about her miscarriages and her difficulties,

that must have been very, very, very trying for her.

The misogyny is absolutely astounding.

There was a sense that she was a failure

because she couldn't have children.

This is a story that is all too familiar to women everywhere.

But Marilyn forges ahead.

She is set to star in a major Hollywood film,

written by her husband, Arthur Miller.

The Misfits had been conceived as Arthur Miller's valentine

to Marilyn, this gift of love

from her genius playwright husband.

And finally, she thought,

somebody was going to write her the role she had been waiting for.

Marilyn and Arthur arrive in Reno to begin filming The Misfits.

The Misfits is written by Marilyn's husband, Arthur Miller.

It's supposed to be able to really show off how far she's come.

I came to work on The Misfits,

and I was delighted to meet Arthur Miller.

I was an admirer of his work.

And the cast were a starry cast.

And Marilyn seemed very sweet

and was friendly with all the rest of the cast.

I'd like you to meet a friend of mine. Gay?

The coup de grace was Clark Gable.

Gay Langland, Mrs Taber.

He was one of her idols when she was a child.

She liked to imagine that he was her father.

How do you do?

She didn't know who her father was, so why not Clark Gable?

Well, what do you do with yourself?

Just live.

The story is of Roslyn, played by Monroe,

who's gone to Reno for a divorce.

Never had anybody much.

Here I am.

The film was inspired when Arthur Miller was in Reno

getting his divorce so he could marry Marilyn.

He even called the character Roslyn,

to make clear that this IS Marilyn,

that he sees Marilyn in this way.

Too rough for you, Roslyn?

I don't mind that.

But the narrative charts a change...their relationship.

He's doing rewrites on the set.

And she hugely resented the way he characterised the Roslyn character.

It seemed to change from being a celebration of everything

that he loved about Marilyn to a parody that showed the contempt

he had started to form for his wife.

We're all dying, aren't we?

All the husbands and all the wives.

Roslyn is not very bright.

And she's just this kind of body who runs around,

hugging trees and hugging men.

It's more than a professional disappointment for Marilyn,

it's also a personal one because she does not feel seen or understood

by her husband, the person who's supposed to know her best.

Come, Guido, I want to show you the rest.

I've changed a few things, though.

There is a scene where there's a locker room door open,

and it has pictures from early in her career.

And what the script makes Marilyn do is

shut the door on those pictures.

And h-how do you like it?

Oh, don't look at those. They're nothing.

Gay just hung them up for a joke.

Her husband has her saying that she is a joke.

Come on, let's have lots of drinks. Come on.

When everything that she had been fighting for was specifically

to be taken seriously.

Marilyn becomes frustrated with this role.

Her addiction to barbiturates and to alcohol

is becoming a problem on the set.

She was always on the sleeping pills at night.

I don't know what the pills were to wake up.

Um, and it was getting worse and worse.

Everyone making the movie falls into two camps.

One around Marilyn, one around Arthur.

Eventually, he moves out of her suite to another suite.

The first time I think I knew the relationship

with Marilyn and Arthur was difficult

was when Arthur said to me one day,

"Oh, can I come in the car with you and John?"

And then, going home, "Can I come back in the car?"

I thought well, you know, they come at different times, true,

but then it was every day.

You're only happy when you can see something die!

Miller seems to have been mining

their lives together for a lot

of his material, and some of the characters are speaking for him.

She's crazy.

They're all crazy.

You try not to believe it because you need them.

He starts talking about women as "them" and men as "you".

You struggle, you build, you try.

You turn yourself inside out for 'em. But it's never enough.

And she said, "To think Arthur did this to me."

And at that point, the marriage became irretrievably over.

I pity you! You're three dead men!

She'd experienced these miscarriages during her marriage to Arthur.

And now her third marriage had ended in divorce.

And it was a very bleak period.

After the divorce, she has a very bad nervous breakdown,

and her psychiatrist felt that she needed to be put in a hospital

to be revitalised and taken off drugs.

So Marilyn voluntarily went to hospital,

thinking basically that she was getting some therapy and some care.

Imagine being in the early '60s, you're a woman,

you're one of the most famous and recognisable people on the planet.

I think her decision to ask for help

shows a tremendous strength and self-awareness within her.

The problem, of course, is sometimes,

the help you get is not the help you need.

She checked into Payne Whitney

and she was basically locked in to a violent psychiatric ward.

And she was constrained against her will for three days,

treated as a violent patient.

She is locked into a room,

and she yells and screams.

It was such a harrowing experience for her.

She was so isolated, so alone.

All of that was compounded by her very real fear that

her mother's mental illness was heritable

and that she might have it as well.

And this made it seem like her worst nightmare was coming true.

And she would do anything to get out.

THEY SQUEAL AND SCREAM DESPERATELY

Early in her career, she had played a psychotic baby-sitter,

of all things.

And then when the Payne Whitney episode happened,

it took her back to that performance.

She said she actually put on a show for them.

You don't want to do that.

How do you know my name?

She thought of this scene that she filmed for Don't Bother To Knock.

Jed...

She'd got a piece of glass and threatened to harm herself.

Give it to me.

They expected her to be crazy, and so she acted crazy...

CLATTERS

..so that she could actually get their attention

and get them to listen to her.

You're going to a hospital now.

Not back there. No, here in New York.

We're going to help you.

And eventually she gets into Columbia Presbyterian,

which was a hospital that had a drug withdrawal clinic.

JESSICA: After three weeks there, Marilyn leaves.

MARILYN: I feel wonderful. Thank you.

REPORTER: Huh? I feel wonderful.

Marilyn was a fighter.

She fell and got up again. Officer, duck down!

And she kept, you know, dusting herself off and starting over again.

Marilyn really wanted to settle down and plant roots.

She set out and found this home in Brentwood.

This was like a new beginning for her. It was a fresh start.

It was a modest home for a movie star,

and it had an inscription

on the floor at the entrance

that said, "This is my journey's end."

It was very unusual, even at that point, for a woman, herself,

to buy a home alone,

so Marilyn is really showing a good deal of independence

by buying that home.

MUSIC SWELLS

JESSICA: It's been over a year

since Marilyn wrapped her last film,

when Fox calls her back to set.

Contractually, Marilyn Monroe owed Fox a movie, and so she signed up

to be the lead in a comedy called Something's Got To Give.

This is her first mature role,

and Marilyn is playing...

..someone who has responsibility for someone else.

She's a mother.

Timmy, come here.

Why?

I want to hug you.

Me too!

In Something's Got To Give, I think you do see a maternal aspect,

which is completely unexpected.

1-9-1.

It naturally brings a certain softness.

You can't help but to wonder what could have been.

And I'm sure I'm not the only person to have thought that whilst

watching those scenes.

Cut it, cut it... BEEP DROWNS SPEECH

SHE COUGHS I start like...

3-8-2.

Going into the movie, she wasn't in the best of health at all.

SHE SIGHS Rolling? OK.

She had colds and sinusitis and was

dependent on prescribed medication.

Marilyn was at a really intriguing turning point.

She is still hungry for more creative fulfilment,

but she's also struggling with mental health issues

that make it very difficult for her to show up on time.

The studio doctor had wanted the film production

to be delayed a little bit,

but 20th Century Fox were going through big problems at the time

with their own finances, so they just wanted it over and done with.

..gives you the special event of the year, a first in television history.

During the 1960s, the film studios were really competing with

the rise in popularity of television.

And one way to get people into the movie theatres was to produce

these huge, big-budget epics, with incredible costumes

and so much luxury that you had to see it

on the biggest screen possible.

FANFARE

And by the time that Something's Got To Give was being

made, they were working on one of their biggest productions ever,

which was Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Marilyn and Elizabeth Taylor had been set up as rivals.

Elizabeth Taylor was getting paid ten times what Marilyn Monroe

was getting paid.

And it is an absolutely disastrous shoot. Liz Taylor is sick.

They have to tear down a bunch of very expensive sets

and rebuild them in Rome.

Nice to see you, Miss Taylor. How are you?

Well, I feel a little weak, thank you.

As a result, they'd had to shut down all productions

except for Cleopatra and Something's Got To Give,

and the financial wellbeing of the studio was effectively on

Marilyn's shoulders.

Are you going to stay long?

I don't know yet. Uh, would you like me to?

But in the middle of production on Something's Got To Give,

Marilyn takes off to New York.

She had a date with the President. SHE CHUCKLES

He was having a big birthday party at Madison Square Garden.

The President is winding up his New York day

here at Madison Square Garden at a sort of pre-birthday celebration.

OPERATIC SINGING

A lot of very famous performers were singing and dancing.

# I hear a knock, knock, knock knock, knock, knock on my door... #

She asked permission from the studio to go off, but because of

the production delays, the studio said she could not go.

And she was furious, because in her view, a star of her stature

had the right to say that she was going to go do this

for a couple of days, and they were just going to have to deal with it.

Marilyn has spent weeks rehearsing for the event.

It was a really big deal.

And she prepared so much for that brief performance.

Marilyn had an association with President Kennedy,

and it links together politics and Hollywood.

And John F Kennedy's presidency was very much a Hollywood presidency.

Mr President...

On this occasion of your birthday,

this lovely lady is not only pulchritudinous, but punctual.

I think the whole world knew that there was a relationship

between Marilyn Monroe and the President of the United States.

It was showbusiness and it was secretive.

Mr President...

Marilyn Monroe.

And that night, the whole Madison Square Garden sat there in awe,

waiting for this princess of the motion picture industry

and our President.

Here she is!

DRUMBEATS

I was late that night. Marilyn was just coming on to the stage.

It was always a great concern as to whether she was going to make it

on the stage!

There's been no one female who meant so much...

But she was well worth waiting for.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

I remember her hair was very exaggerated.

She was almost like a cartoon of herself.

Mr President,

the late Marilyn Monroe.

LAUGHTER

And then there's this body...

CROWD: Who-a-a-a!

..inside this sheath.

And it's just like, "Oh, my God...

"Oh, my God."

I was honoured when they asked me to appear at Madison Square Garden.

You know, I was a little worried

about my voice, but it came out.

But still, I do know this tune. I can't forget the words -

Happy Birthday has always been Happy Birthday.

# Happy birthday to you

# Happy birthday to you

# Happy birthday, Mr President... #

LAUGHTER

# Happy birthday to you. #

It's very erotic.

And the incredibly powerful, overt sexuality in the early 1960s...

..would be seen by many, many people

as just being utterly inappropriate. Just truly inappropriate.

# Thanks, Mr President

# For all the things you've done... #

That song is very deliberately a performance.

Marilyn performing Marilyn.

# We thank you so much... #

Everybody! Happy birthday!

ORCHESTRA PLAYS SONG AGAIN

I definitely think Marilyn was trying to send a message

to the powers that be at 20th Century Fox.

Her performance was a way of highlighting her own power,

in a way that says, "I don't need you - you guys need me."

ORCHESTRAL FINALE

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.

When she sang Happy Birthday, I do remember watching that and...

..being very amused by it.

I think she was playing with him.

But it was certainly...brave.

I can now retire from politics after having had Happy Birthday

sung to me in such a sweet and wholesome way...

LAUGHTER

The standard take on the aftermath is that JFK was publicly embarrassed

and that he dumped her.

The story continues, she was heartbroken,

calling him every five seconds and falling apart.

But her friends at the time said that she absolutely wasn't.

That she wasn't in love with him and that she wasn't forlorn.

But we insist on seeing Marilyn

as a passive victim of the men around her.

Nobody can seem to imagine a different version of the story.

That she was a 36-year-old woman who clearly had

a very pragmatic attitude to sex

and that she could be getting a kick out of sleeping with

the most powerful man in the world.

JESSICA: But Marilyn's trip spells disaster

for her relationship with Fox.

The studio files a breach of contract against her.

I think there's a sense that, going to Madison Square Garden

was her wresting too much control from the studios,

instead of sitting back and doing what she was told.

What happens after is just a sign of this industry's inability

to handle a good thing when they have it.

Speed.

Back in LA, Marilyn has devised a plan

to remind the studio of who they are dealing with.

She enlists the help of photographer Lawrence Schiller.

I went out to her home in Brentwood.

And we started to go through the script.

And there's this scene where she's in a swimming pool

and Dean Martin is looking at her from a balcony.

Ellen! Get out of there.

And Marilyn said, you know, "Splish, splash,

"this would make some interesting pictures."

And I said, "Oh, yeah, there's no question about it."

5-0-1. SHE LAUGHS

And she says, "But, Larry, what would happen

"if I jumped in the swimming pool with my bathing suit on,

"nude colour,

"but I came out with nothing on?"

5-0-4.

She wanted those pictures as publicity to show 20th Century Fox

that she was as popular as Liz Taylor,

who was on the cover of every magazine in the world.

MARILYN LAUGHS

Hey! It's cold here!

I had two cameras around my neck, or maybe three.

And Marilyn said, "Look, in between each of the takes,

"I'll do the posing."

Because Marilyn would look at where my camera was,

look at the light, and turn her body.

She knew exactly what to do.

As a superstar, being on a film set

and just stripping down and being absolutely naked, at that stature,

at that level, highly unusual.

I mean, it's beyond titillation.

It's really pushing the envelope.

Marilyn had approval of my photographs.

So she says, "Come on up to the house."

She knew more about photography than most photographers

that ever photographed her.

And just as I'm driving in, she's about ready to drive out

in a T-Bird convertible.

And she says, "Oh, hop in," and hands me a bottle of Dom Perignon.

I pop the cork and she takes it. Krgh!

Full bottle, like that.

"Let me see the pictures."

She takes the pictures

and she's holding them up to the street lights!

And then she takes out a pair of pinking shears

and she goes zip, and my heart drops.

And she looks at some more. Zip, cuts right through the image.

All the pieces that she's cutting are going on the floor of the car!

And I'm grabbing them, putting them back.

And then I'm looking over and I'm saying...

"You know, she's pretty good at editing."

But that's how Marilyn Monroe edited my colour pictures.

So you might see 30 transparencies that survived

Marilyn Monroe in the T-Bird looking at a street light.

Rolling.

I was afraid you'd misunderstand about that.

Oh, what's to misunderstand? A man's...

JESSICA: On the set of Something's Got To Give,

Marilyn's relationship with the studio goes from bad to worse.

SHE MUMBLES

MARILYN: Can we start again? Yeah.

They say that she's uncooperative and caused costly delays,

and tried to dismiss her as a temperamental star

who overplayed her hand.

All you can think about is the way I behave...

..with this poor little... OK.

With this poor little fly. Yeah.

The studio was looking at what is happening on the set...

Sorry, George, but we can do it... It's fine. Good, good.

..and they're saying,

"You know what? We're not going to make it here."

Yeah, one more... MARILYN GIGGLES

That was good, though, huh?

"And we are going to lose money."

And they...they pulled the plug. They just pulled the plug.

The studio fired her.

They made Marilyn take the fall.

Instead of saying, "We can't afford to keep this going

"because Cleopatra is costing a fortune," they said,

"It's because she's an addled mess and the footage is unusable

"and you can't work with her. Nobody can ever work with her again."

And that's it.

It's shocking that they would let her go, because Marilyn was

the biggest star at the time, even if they didn't want to admit that.

Two weeks after she's fired,

Schiller's sensational photos of Marilyn hit the newsstands.

The public reaction was just overwhelming.

I call her on the phone and I say,

"Oh, Paris Match is running a cover and six pages.

"Der Stern in Germany is going to run a cover and three pages."

And every time I'd get on the phone, her voice would go up another

octave because she was achieving what she wanted to achieve,

and that was worldwide notoriety.

Her weapon was her body. Her weapon...

..was this incredible face.

Her weapon was to knock Liz Taylor

and everybody else off the cover.

It's absolutely stunning that she pulled off what she did.

Really, being smarter than the managers she had.

She really knew what she needed to do better than other people did.

Would you like a drink? No.

Oh, come on. Have a... A little.

JESSICA: That summer,

Marilyn invites Life magazine journalist Richard Meryman

and photographer Allan Grant to her home for an exclusive interview.

I think the Richard Meryman interview is her chance

to control the narrative and appeal to

her fans who had been loyal to her.

The public would be quite disillusioned the way

the industry treats its stars.

I mean, the things they send out about me.

They have never lost sight that I'm not at the studio for discipline,

or to be disciplined.

She talks about herself being really undermined by Hollywood

and badly treated by Hollywood.

If you have a cold, "How dare you have a cold?"

I mean, the executives can get colds and stay home for,

you know, forever, and how dare you get a cold?!

There's an extraordinary moment where Meryman says,

somewhat thoughtlessly,

"How do you crank yourself up for a performance?"

And it really clearly strikes a nerve.

I don't crank anything.

You know, I'm not a Model T.

Yeah, I don't CRANK. I don't know.

But I kind... I think it's kind of disrespectful

to kind of refer to it that way. We are not machines.

No matter how much they want to say we are, we are not.

She was so bold. She was so honest.

I mean, that was really an act of bravery.

To say, "I am a human being with integrity and artistry,

"and I must insist that to you."

JESSICA: As the interview draws to a close,

Marilyn makes a final request of Meryman.

MARILYN: I hope we got something here.

But please don't make me look like a joke.

It's just so sad that, after all those years of being this

leading lady, you know, this...

..this major force in American cinema,

that she has to beg a journalist not to make her look like a joke.

JESSICA: A few days later, Marilyn is called to a meeting

at 20th Century Fox.

Films always cost more than I expect.

After a six-year absence,

Darryl Zanuck is returning as the studio's president.

Zanuck takes one look and says, "You guys are crazy.

"Marilyn's the one who's going to make you money."

So he reinstates Marilyn.

It's ironic that someone who was so opposed to her career

at the very beginning now really saw

what kind of a gold mine he had in Marilyn Monroe.

When Fox rehired Marilyn, she showed them who was in charge.

She had finally forced them to accept her value.

They rehired her at a million-dollar contract.

And that contract has to have meant more to her professionally

than any other victory that she achieved.

She'd been vindicated. She'd made them eat their words.

She was at the top of her game,

she was at the height of her success, and all of a sudden,

the curtain came down.

It's like, "Wait a minute, the movie's not over.

"The movie's not over!"

I had a dream about Marilyn,

and she was in terrible pain.

And I woke up and I said to Milton,

"You better go to Beverly Hills."

He says, "What, are you, crazy? I'm packing up to go to Paris."

But she was...a good friend.

I said, "Listen to me.

"I dream about something, and it happens.

"Always, my whole life.

"She needs you.

"She doesn't have anybody."

He said, "OK, I'll call."

He called, he said to her, "Amy had a dream."

And, you know, she laughed, "Ha-ha."

And they spoke on the phone for three hours.

He was going to fly to Beverly Hills. "Bye."

And she died.

About 5:30 in the morning, I get a phone call and then,

"Marilyn Monroe died last night."

I said, "Don't give me that." Hung up the phone.

I'd seen Marilyn just hours earlier.

REPORTER: She was found dead early this morning,

an empty Nembutal bottle on a bedside table...

But then I turned on the radio, and there it was on the news,

and I went to the house.

There was a couple police officers there. Just a few reporters.

Only one or two photographers.

The word hadn't gotten out yet.

I had a camera with me, but I didn't know WHAT to photograph.

You photographed somebody alive and now...they're dead...

It appears to be one of nature's strange turns that beautiful women

with the world at their feet often feel unloved, inadequate.

I can remember the headlines.

This was...massive.

"Marilyn is dead."

And I remember they showed the bed they found her in.

After she died, there was this kind of glamorising of her dead body,

and the sexualisation of her corpse to a really extreme degree.

She was face down, covered only by a sheet, her hand on the phone.

It's like this woman was never allowed to just be a human being.

She had to be an object of desire for everyone and everything,

even in death.

A simple chapel saw only 23 of Marilyn Monroe's closest

friends and acquaintances inside.

There's this sort of performative...memorial

that happens, in which everyone then is so sad and,

"How could it have happened?"

And yet, no-one in our culture is able to look inward and say,

"Oh, I was part of the problem."

JESSICA: The official cause of death is barbiturate overdose.

We thought she was murdered. Everybody thought she was murdered.

Everybody.

All kinds of conspiracy theories came out. This is the '60s.

We don't believe it because we don't believe what they tell us.

It was a mistake.

Nobody get... I mean...

Don't go there.

Nobody... The Cubans weren't there. The Kennedys weren't there.

Everybody that is supposed to have killed her never happened.

It was a mistake.

She took the damn sleeping pills, then she forgot she took them,

so she took more.

That's how it happens.

A month before her death, Marilyn met her friend,

photographer George Barris, for a photoshoot.

They're very beautiful.

I love these.

These pictures reflect the old Marilyn.

Someone you could talk to,

someone who...is accessible.

It's like you're seeing her soul, in a way.

She's just looking right at the camera.

And, you know, it's like...

It's like she's looking at you.

Marilyn Monroe the person is gone.

The image is not gone,

and it will never be gone.

Her legacy is defined more by the images we see of her,

by her career, that anything else,

despite the tragedies of her life,

she's up there as fresh and new and wonderful as she ever was.

Marilyn Monroe is a mirror for people's ideas

about women's sexuality and women's power -

about whether beautiful women can be intelligent,

whether women have agency in their own careers.

How are they supposed to be treated as equals?

How are they supposed to be respected?

Those are questions that most women,

if not all women, are still struggling with,

and Marilyn Monroe is the symbol of all of that.

If she were alive today, I think she would have been on the front lines

with a lot of activists and organisers.

And she would have become a very big voice in the Me Too movement.

She was so limited by the public's gaze of who she really was

and what she was capable of.

But she broke all of these barriers.

She became the biggest actress in the world

and the biggest cultural icon of the 20th century.

I mean, she really was truly extraordinary.

JESSICA: With the sun setting and one shot of film left in the camera,

Marilyn turns to George.

"This is for you."

MARILYN: You do miss, sometimes, just...

..being able to be...completely yourself,

and someplace and...

..people just know you as another human being.