Marilyn Monroe is one of pop culture's most iconic figures, and her glamorous influence has only grown since her death at the age of 36 in August 1962. While Marilyn was alive, she was front-page news, whether she was on the red carpet, filming with Hollywood's hottest male actors, or being linked to industry heavyweights.
Much has been made about her love life; Marilyn was rumored to have dated lots of famous men (and even a few famous women), but only a handful of people from the extensive list — which includes Paul Newman, Tony Curtis, and then-actor Ronald Reagan — are confirmed to have romanced the star. We've rounded up the five relationships that Marilyn actually had throughout her life.
I Want More! Get our Celebrity & Entertainment newsletter by tapping the button below. Instant Subscribe By signing up, I agree to the Terms & to receive emails from POPSUGAR.1. James Dougherty
Marilyn's first husband was James Dougherty, a Los Angeles police officer. They began dating in January 1942 and were married in June of that year, just 18 days after Marilyn (then Norma Jean Baker) celebrated her 16th birthday. James's family lived next door to Grace Goddard, a friend of Norma Jean's mother, Gladys, who was frequently in psychiatric hospitals. After living in a handful of foster homes, Norma Jean was taken in by Grace and her husband, who wanted to move across the country and couldn't take her with them. To prevent Norma Jean from having to go back into the foster care system, Grace suggested that James marry the teenager.
"We decided to get married to prevent her from going back to a foster home, but we were in love," James said in an interview. He joined the merchant marine and was assigned overseas; Norma Jean moved to Van Nuys, CA, and got a job at Radioplane Co., inspecting parachutes. Photos of the pretty brunette taken at work landed her modeling gigs around LA, and it wasn't long before she caught the fame bug. While James was still stationed overseas in September 1946, Norma Jean filed for divorce.
"I was on a ship in the Yangtze River getting ready to go into Shanghai when I was served with divorce papers," James said in a 2002 interview. He returned home and tried to talk Norma Jean out of the split, but she wouldn't budge. "She wanted to sign a contract with [20th Century] Fox and it said she couldn't be married — they didn't want a pregnant starlet," James said in a 1984 interview. "When I went back to see her, I tried to talk her out of it. She just wanted us to keep on and not be married for the contract. I couldn't do that." After four years of marriage, the couple went their separate ways.
2. Joe DiMaggio
Now the blond bombshell Marilyn Monroe, the actress initially didn't want to meet Joe DiMaggio — she assumed the New York Yankees star would be a "stereotypical arrogant athlete" — but in March 1952, the two went on a date in LA. They struck up a romance that Summer, though from the start, Joe seemed to harbor a distrust of Marilyn's burgeoning career and Hollywood friends and a jealousy of her ability to attract other men. An old-fashioned man from a traditional Sicilian family, Joe believed that women should be at home, and his ideal Marilyn would have been that of a happy housewife and mother.
The couple were married in January 1954 in a quick civil ceremony at San Francisco City Hall. They were each other's second marriages; Joe was previously married to actress Dorothy Arnold, whom he shared a son with. Rumors of emotional and physical abuse plagued their union; in one infamous incident, discussed in The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe by J. J. Randy Taraborrelli, Joe got so upset watching Marilyn film her iconic white dress subway grate scene for The Seven Year Itch that he "slapped her around" that night in her hotel room, and the bruises left from the beating had to be covered up with heavy makeup on set the following day.
On Oct. 6, 1954, Marilyn stepped outside her Beverly Hills home with lawyer Jerry Giesler to announce that she was seeking a divorce from Joe, citing "mental cruelty." And on Oct. 27, just nine months after they were married, Marilyn stood before a judge to get a divorce petition. She called Joe "cold and indifferent" and revealed that days would go by when he wouldn't speak to her. The divorce was granted, and the couple went their separate ways.
In his 2017 book Dinner with DiMaggio: Memories of an American Hero, Joe's close friend Dr. Rock Positano gives further insight into the reasons for Joe and Marilyn's split. "[From] Joe's point of view, they didn't stay married because Marilyn was not able to have children. It was as simple as that. It was not about the published reports of jealousy and not wanting to take a back seat to her fame," Positano wrote, adding that "Joe wanted kids with Marilyn, and Marilyn wanted to reward him with a family. In Italian terms, sex meant kids. Great sex meant great kids. Marilyn gave goddess sex, but no kids." Marilyn's biggest goal in life was to have children, but she suffered from endometriosis, which made getting pregnant that much more challenging.
Though their love story was short-lived, Joe still held a torch for the actress. After Marilyn's death in 1962, Joe stepped in to handle funeral arrangements — and for over 20 years, he had red roses delivered to her grave twice a week.
3. Marlon Brando
Marilyn and Marlon had a brief relationship in 1955 after her divorce from Joe DiMaggio. They attended the premiere of The Rose Tattoo together that year, and Marlon was said to have remained friends with the actress until her death in 1962.
4. Arthur Miller
Marilyn first met famed playwright Arthur Miller in 1950 on the set of As Young as You Feel, but it wasn't until 1955, when she moved from Hollywood to NYC to formally study acting, that she and Arthur reconnected. They began secretly dating — he was in the process of divorcing his first wife, Mary Slattery — and on June 29, 1956, Arthur and Marilyn were married in a civil ceremony at the Westchester County Court in White Plains, NY. Two days later they had a traditional Jewish ceremony at the home of Arthur's agent, and Marilyn converted to Judaism, a move that prompted Egypt to ban all of her movies.
Given the differences in their careers, lifestyles, and outward appearances, the media had a field day with their union — Variety even reported the news of their wedding with the headline "Egghead Weds Hourglass." Marilyn was just 30 at the time (10 years his junior) and, never having a real family of her own, seemed eager to join Arthur's and become a stepmother to his two children.
The couple moved to London that August, where Marilyn was getting read to shoot The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier. Shortly before filming began, Marilyn stumbled upon Arthur's open journal and naturally, she read it — in it, Arthur wrote that he was having second thoughts about marrying her, that she was more of a child than a grown woman, that she wasn't as smart as he thought she was, and that he was worried that his creativity and career would be affected by his association with her.
They returned to the States after filming wrapped and Marilyn took an 18-month hiatus from work, during which she and Arthur split their time between Manhattan and Connecticut. In his book Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, Donald Spoto wrote that Marilyn got pregnant in mid-1957, but that it was ectopic and had to be terminated; a year later, she suffered another miscarriage, which sent her over the edge: her drug use got worse, and she was hospitalized for a barbiturate overdose. Her marriage to Arthur was wearing thin.
After finishing Some Like It Hot (for which she won a Golden Globe in 1960), Marilyn desperately wanted a dramatic role, so Arthur began writing the screenplay for The Misfits, which she would star in. He would go on to say that filming the movie was "one of the lowest points" in his life due to Marilyn's increasing use of both sleeping pills and uppers; she would arrive late to set and have trouble remembering her lines, which also angered director John Huston and Marilyn's costar Clark Gable. Shortly before the film was released in 1961, Arthur and Marilyn divorced after five years of marriage. The Misfits would be Marilyn's last completed role.
5. Frank Sinatra
After her divorce from Arthur Miller, Marilyn found solace in the arms of her longtime friend Frank Sinatra. The singer, who was going through a tough time with his estranged wife, Ava Gardner, let Marilyn stay at his home until she got settled again in LA, and a romance blossomed. The two dated for several months before going their separate ways, and in early 1962, Marilyn purchased her home in Brentwood, CA.
According to the 2015 biography Sinatra: The Chairman, Frank wanted to marry the actress in an effort to "protect her" from her own mental health struggles. Jilly Rizzo, one of Sinatra's closest aides, told author James Kaplan, "Yeah, Frank wanted to marry the broad. He asked her and she said no."
