Women I Admire

Women’s History Month – Marilyn Monroe

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For the month of March, the world celebrates Women’s History Month. I am devoting a week each in March to one woman I am inspired by. 

For this week, I am devoting the week to Marilyn Monroe.

Norma Jeane Mortenson was born on 1 June 1926 to Gladys Pearl Baker at Los Angeles General Hospital. Gladys was not mentally or financially stable or prepared for a child when Norma was born although her early childhood is being noted as being stable and happy. Gladys placed Norma with evangelical Christian foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender in Hawthorne. It was at this time that Norma did not see her mother very often but in 1933, Gladys bought a small house in Hollywood and moved with the 7-year-old to that place. They had lodgers who stayed with them, actors and the like, from time to time. 

It wasn’t long before Gladys had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1934. She spent most of her life in and out of hospitals and rarely made contact with her daughter. Norma became a ward of the state, with her mother’s friend Grace Goddard looking after her. 

In the next sixteen months, Norma lived with friends of her mother and it is assumed she was sexually abused during this time. She’d always been a shy girl but it was around this time that she developed a stutter and became withdrawn. In 1935, she stayed briefly with Grace Goddard and her husband, but just a few months later she was placed in the Los Angeles Orphans Home. It did not last long. Grace returned to take her out of the orphanage in 1937. Unfortunately, this stay did not last as Grace’s husband was molesting her. She ended up staying with friends and relatives of friends in Los Angeles and Compton. 

Norma said that her experiences as a child made her want to be an actress: “I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim…when I heard that this was acting. I said that’s what I want to be.” 

Norma finally found something a little more permanent when she moved in with Grace’s aunt Ana Lower in Sawtelle. This was in September 1938. She was enrolled in school and excelled in writing and contributing to the school newspaper but she was not a bright student in other subjects. Owing to Ana’s failing health, Norma was returned to live with the Goddard’s in Van Nuys in 1941. 

In 1942, Grace’s husband was relocated to West Virginia. California child protection laws prevented them from taking Norma with them, so she was forced to return to the orphanage. Instead, she married her neighbor’s son, James Doughtery, a 21-year-old factory worker on 19 June, 1942, just after her 16th birthday. 

She dropped out of school and later said she was “dying of boredom” during her marriage. In 1943, Dougherty enlisted as a Merchant Marine and was stationed on Santa Catalina Island where she moved. 

Norma moved in with her in-laws when Dougherty was sent out to the Pacific and remained there for two years. Norma got a job in a munitions factory. She met a photographer in late 1944 who was told to shoot morale-boosting pictures of female workers in the factory. Her pictures weren’t used but she still quit her job in 1945 and began modeling for that photographer and his friends. Defying her husband’s wishes, she moved on her own and signed a contract in August 1945. 

She began modeling for the pin-up fashion in magazines and advertisements. She dyed her own hair blonde and straightened it so it would give her more jobs. 

Norma signed a contract with Ben Lyon at 20th Century Fox in 1946, but some executives were unenthusiastic about it. The only reason she was signed was so RKO Pictures, a rival at the time, could not sign her. Lyon and Norma chose the screen name, Marilyn Monroe, for Lyon’s love of broadway star Marilyn Miller and Norma’s mother’s maiden name, Monroe. 

In September 1946, she divorced Dougherty as he was opposed to her career. 

She spent months learning how to sing, dance and act. She was given her first roles in 1947 but after consideration, Fox did not renew her contract in late 1947. She returned to modelling but she was determined to make it as an actress. 

She was signed in March 1948 by Columbia Pictures. Here, her look was modelled after Rita Hayworth and her hair was bleached platinum blonde. She performed in one movie for them. Her contract was not renewed in September 1948. 

It was not until 1950 that she was cast in more than one movie through the William Morris Agency, the vice president Johnny Hyde, was her lover. In 1950, Hyde negotiated a 7 year contract for Monroe with Century Fox. Hyde died only days later, leaving her devastated. This was when her popularity began to grow. 

In early 1952, she began a public romance with retired New York Yankees baseball star Joe DiMaggio. This was around the time her bombshell and sex symbol personality was starting. She wore a revealing dress when acting as Grand Marshal at the Miss America Pageannt parade, and told gossip columnist Earl Wilson that she usually wore no underwear. By the end of the year she was named the “it” girl of 1952. 

It was around this time she gained a reputation for being difficult to work with which only worsened as her career grew. She was late or didn’t show up at all, couldn’t remember her lines, and would demand re-takes. Her problems have been attributed to a combination of perfectionism, low self-esteem, and stage fright. To alleviate her anxiety and chronic insomnia, she began to use barbituates, amphetamines and alcohol. She didn’t become addicted until 1956. 

In 1953, her sex symbol status was confirmed when Hugh Hefner featured her on the cover and as a centrefold in the first issue of Playboy. Monroe did not consent to the publication. The cover image was a photograph taken at the Miss America Pageant parade in 1952 and the centrefold featured on of her nude photographs taken in 1949. 

On January 14, 1954, Marilyn married Joe DiMaggio in San Francisco due to the studio not wanting to renew her contract and not allowing her to choose the movies she wanted to be in. The press followed her new publicity stunt and not the studio’s. Because of this attack, the studio offered her a new contract, a bonus of $100,000 and a starring role in The Seven Year Itch. 

While filming that scene from the movie, the shoot lasted several hours and attracted nearly 2,000 spectators. It also happened to mark the end of her marriage to DiMaggio who was infuriated by it. In October 1954, Monroe filed for divorce. 

1955 saw Monroe undergo psychoanalysis and started to date actor Marlon Brando and playwright Arthur Miller. She legally changed her name to Marilyn Monroe in 1956. Monroe married Miller in June in New York. She converted to Judaism. 

Monroe started to become dependent on alcohol and drugs at this point and even had a miscarriage while working alongside Laurence Olivier. She took an 18 month hiatus to concentrate on her family life. She had an ectopic pregnancy in 1957 and another miscarriage a year later which was linked to her endometriosis. 

During the filming of “Some Like It Hot”, Monroe likened the production to a sinking ship and said, “why should I worry, I have no phallic symbol to lose”. 

The last film Monroe would complete was The Misfits which Miller had written to provide her a dramatic role. Her marriage to Arthur was over by this point. 

Her health was failing, she was in pain from gallstones, and her drug addiction was so severe that her makeup usually had to be applied when she was still asleep under the influence of barbituates. 

In 1961, she underwent surgery for endometriosis and spent four weeks in hospital for depression. She was helped by Joe DiMaggio who had rekindled a friendship with her. She began to date his friend Frank Sinatra for several months. 

Monroe was too sick to work for the next six weeks, but despite confirmations by multiple doctors, the studio pressured her by alleging publicly that she was faking it. On May 19, she took a break to sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” on stage at President John F. Kennedy’s early birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden in New York. She drew attention with her costume: a beige, skintight dress covered in rhinestones, which made her appear nude. Monroe’s trip to New York caused even more irritation for Fox executives, who had wanted her to cancel it. 

Her housekeeper Eunice Murray was staying overnight on the evening of August 4, 1962. Murray woke at 3:00 a.m. on August 5 and sensed that something was wrong. She saw light from under Monroe’s bedroom door but was unable to get a response and found the door locked. Murray then called Monroe’s psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson, who arrived at the house shortly after and broke into the bedroom through a window to find Monroe dead in her bed. Monroe’s physician, Hyman Engelberg, arrived at around 3:50 a.m.  and pronounced her dead. At 4:25 a.m., the Los Angeles Police Department was notified.

Monroe died between 8:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. on August 4; the toxicology report showed that the cause of death was acute barbiturate poisoning. She had 8 mg% (milligrams per 100 milliliters of solution) chloral hydrate and 4.5 mg% of pentobarbital (Nembutal) in her blood, and 13 mg% of pentobarbital in her liver. Empty medicine bottles were found next to her bed. The possibility that Monroe had accidentally overdosed was ruled out because the dosages found in her body were several times the lethal limit.  

Monroe’s doctors stated that she had been “prone to severe fears and frequent depressions” with “abrupt and unpredictable mood changes”, and had overdosed several times in the past, possibly intentionally. Due to these facts and the lack of any indication of foul play, deputy coroner Thomas Noguchi classified her death as a probable suicide.

In 2022, it was proved by DNA that Norma’s father was a Charles Stanley Gifford who passed in 1965. He worked with Gladys and they had an affair in 1925. 

According to The Guide to United States Popular Culture, “as an icon of American popular culture, Monroe’s few rivals in popularity include Elvis Presley and Mickey Mouse… no other star has ever inspired such a wide range of emotions—from lust to pity, from envy to remorse. 

Women’s History Month – Hedy Lamarr

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For the month of March, the world celebrates Women’s History Month. I am devoting a week each in March to one woman I am inspired by. 

For this week, I am devoting the week to Hedy Lamarr.

Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was born 9 November 1914 to Gertrud “Trude” Kiesler (nee Lichtwitz) and Emil Kiesler in Vienna, Austria. She was a film star in Hollywood’s golden age, and has been described as one of the greatest movie actresses of all time. 

At the age of 12, she won a beauty contest in Vienna. She also began to associate invention with her father, who would take her out on walks, explaining how technology functioned. 

Lamarr forged a note from her mother and went to Sascha-Film and was able to get hired as a script girl. While there, she was able to get a role as an extra in Money on the Street (1930) then a small part in Storm in a Water Glass (1931). 

While in Berlin, she met Russian theatre producer Alexis Granowsky, who cast her in his debut, The Trunks of Mr. O.F. (1931). 

In 1933, at the young age of 18, Hedy was given the lead in Ecstasy. She played the neglected young wife of an indifferent older man. The film became both celebrated and notorious fr showing Hedy’s face in the throes of orgasm as well as close-up and brief nude scenes. 

Hedy played a number of stage roles after this. Admirers would send roses to her dressing room and tried to get backstage to see her. She sent most of them away, including a man who was more insistent, Friedrich Mandl. He became obsessed with her. Eventually, she fell for his charming and fascinating personality, partly due to his immense financial wealth. Her parents, both Jewish, did not approve, due to his ties to Italian fascist leader Mussolini and later, Adolf Hitler, but not even her parents could stop headstrong Hedy Lamarr. 

She married Mandl on 10 August 1933 at the Karlskirche. She was 18 and he was 33. She described Mandl as extremely controlling who objected to her simulated orgasm scene in Ecstasy and prevented her from pursuing her acting career. She claimed to have been kept a prisoner in their castle home, Schloss Schwarzenau. 

Mandl had close social and business ties to the government, selling munitions to the country and had ties to the Nazi regime of Germany. Dictators of both countries attended lavish parties at their home. She also accompanied her husband to meetings where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology. This was her introduction to the field of applied science and nurtured her latent talent in science. 

Hedy eventually separated from Mandl in 1937, also leaving her country.  She had described herself as her maid and fled to Paris. 

Hedy arrived in London in 1937 where she met Louis B Mayer who was head of MGM who had been scouting for talent in Europe. She initially turned down the offer he made her ($125/week) but she happened to book herself onto the same New York bound liner as him, and managed to impress him enough to secure $500/week. Mayer persuaded her to change her name to Hedy Lamarr to distance herself from her real identity and her reputation, choosing the surname in homage to the beautiful silent film star, Barba La Marr. Mayer brought her to Hollywood in 1938 and began promoting her as the “world’s most beautiful woman”. 

People were known to say things like, “everyone gasped…Lamarr’s beauty literally took one’s breath away.” 

In future films, she was typecast as the glamorous seductress of exotic origin. Due to her boredom of her lack of lines in her films and her archetypal roles, she took up inventing to relieve her boredom. 

Her off-screen life and personality during those years was quite different from her screen image. She spent most of her time alone, rather than in crowds. When she was asked for an autograph, she’d no idea why they would want it. She also had a penchant for speaking about herself in the third person. 

Although Hedy had no formal training and was primarily self-taught, she tinkered in her spare time on various hobbies and ideas, which included a traffic stoplight and a tablet that would dissolve in water to create a carbonated drink. The beverage was unsuccessful, and was said to taste like Alka-Seltzer. 

During WWII, Hedy read that radio-controlled torpedoes had been proposed. However, an enemy might be able to jam such a guidance system and set it off course. When discussing this with her friend, the composer and pianist George Antheil, the idea was raised that a frequency-hopping signal might prevent the torpedo’s radio guidance system from being tracked or jammed. Antheil succeeded by synchronizing a miniaturized player piano mechanism with radio signals. Antheil sketched out the idea for the frequency-hopping system, which was to use a perforated paper tape which actuated pneumatic controls. 

Antheil was introduced to Samuel Stuart Mackeown, a professor of radio-electrical engineering at Caltech, whom Lamarr then employed for a year to implement the idea. Lamarr hired the Los Angeles legal firm of Lyon & Lyon to search for prior knowledge, and to craft the application] for the patent which was granted as U.S. Patent 2,292,387 on August 11, 1942 under her married name Hedy Kiesler Markey. In 1997, Lamarr and Antheil received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award and the Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Bronze Award, given to individuals whose creative lifetime achievements in the arts, sciences, business, or invention fields have significantly contributed to society. In 2014, Lamarr and Antheil were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Although the U.S. Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are incorporated into Bluetooth and GPS technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi. This work led to their induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

Lamarr became a naturalized citizen of the United States at age 38 on April 10, 1953. From 1966 onwards, she committed shoplifting crimes but charges were dropped in return for her promise to refrain from breaking any laws for a year. By the 1970s, Hedy became secluded. 

In the last decades of her life, the telephone became Lamarr’s only means of communication with the outside world, even with her children and close friends. She often talked up to six or seven hours a day on the phone, but she spent hardly any time with anyone in person in her final years.

She died in Casselberry, Florida, on 19 January, 2000 of heart disease. 

Women’s History Month – Amelia Earhart

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For the month of March, the world celebrates Women’s History Month. I am devoting a week each in March to one woman I am inspired by. 

For this week, I am devoting the week to Amelia Earhart.

Amelia Mary Earhart was born on 24th July 1897 to Samuel “Edwin” Stanton Earhart and Amelia “Amy” Earhart (nee Otis) in Atchison, Kansas. She was nicknamed Meeley or Millie, even answering to it well into adulthood. 

Amelia’s mother did not believe in raising her children to be “nice little girls” and allowed them to wear bloomers. However, her maternal grandmother disapproved of the “bloomers” they wore, and although Amelia liked the freedom of movement they provided, she was sensitive to the fact that the neighbourhood girls wore dresses. Amelia was characterised as a tomboy as a child. In 1904, with the help of her uncle, Amelia cobbled together a home-made ramp, fashioned after a roller coaster she had seen, and secured the ramp to the roof of the family toolshed. Amelia’s well-documented first flight ended dramatically. She emerged with a bruised lip, torn dress and a “sensation of excitement”. She had been noted as saying, “Oh, it’s just like flying!” 

Amelia had a terrible childhood with her father becoming an alcoholic and having to move around, and auction their house to pay for their debts. Throughout her childhood, she had continued to aspire to a future career. She kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about successful women in predominantly male-oriented fields, including film direction and production, law, advertising, management and mechanical engineering. 

During 1917, she visited her sister in Toronto. World War I had been raging and Amelia saw the returning wounded soldiers. After receiving training to be a nurse’s aid, she began work with the Voluntary Aid Detachment at Spadina Military Hospital. Her duties included preparing food in the kitchen for patients with special diets and hanging out prescribed medication at the hospital’s dispensary. It was here that she heard stories from military pilots and developed an interest in flying. 

In 1918, the Spanish Flu reached Toronto. Amelia became a patient, experiencing pneumonia and maxillary sinusitis. During the pre-antibiotic era, Amelia underwent multiple operations to wash out the affected maxillary sinus but it did not work. Chronic sinusitis will affect Amelia’s flying and activities later in life, and sometimes when on the airfield she was forced to wear a bandage on her cheek to cover a small drainage tube. 

In 1920, Amelia and her father attended an aerial meet in California. She asked if she could be on a passenger flight which cost $10 for 10 minutes. She said, “By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly.” 

Amelia had her first lesson on 3 January 1921 at Kinner Field on the west side of Long Beach Boulevard and Tweedy Road, now in the city of South Gate. Her commitment to flying required her to accept the frequent hard work and rudimentary conditions that accompanied early aviation training. To complete her image transformation, she also cropped her hair short in the style of other female flyers. In 1921, Earhart purchased a secondhand bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane, which she nicknamed “The Canary”. 

On October 22, 1922, Amelia flew the Airster to an altitude of 14,000 feet, setting a world record for female pilots. On May 16, 1923, Amelia became the 16th woman in the United States to be issued a pilot’s license (#6017) by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI). 

After Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Amy Guest expressed interest in being the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. After deciding that the trip was too perilous for her to undertake, she offered to sponsor the project. It was then that Amelia was asked. 

Due to her lack of training of the instruments used, she did not pilot the aircraft. Once they landed, she said, “Stultz did all the flying – had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes. Maybe someday I’ll try it alone.” 

Publisher George Putnam, a recently divorce, proposed to Amelia six times before she finally said yes in 1929. She referred to her marriage as a “partnership” with “dual control”. In a letter written on her wedding day, she wrote, “I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. I may have to keep some place where I can go to be by myself, now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage.” 

Her ideas on marriage were liberal for the time, as she believe in equal responsibility for both men and women in marriage. 

Early in 1936, Amelia started to plan a round-the-world flight. Even though others had flown around the world, this flight would be the longest at 29,000 miles because it followed a roughly equatorial route. 

Amelia and Fred Noonan departed Miami on 1 June 1937 after numerous stops in South America, Africa and the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, arrived at Lae, New Guinea on June 29, 1937. Most of the flight had been done, with only 7,000 miles to be completed over the Pacific. On 2 July 1937 at 10 in the morning, they took off from Lae Airfield in the heavily loaded plane. Their intended destination was Howland Island. The expected flying time was 20 hours, so accounting for the two hour time zone difference between Lae and Howland and crossing the International Dateline, the aircraft was expected to arrive at Howland the morning of the next day, 2 July. 

Around 3pm Lae time, Amelia reported her altitude as 10,000 ft but that they would reduce altitude due to thick clouds. Around 5pm, she reported her altitude as 7,000 ft and speed as 150 knots. Their last known position report was near the Nukumanu Islands, about 800 miles into the flight. 

Amelia and Fred disappeared that day, with no sign of their wreckage found despite years of searching. Many reports have turned up over the years of different stories but none have been verified. 

Amelia Earhart disappeared 2 July 1937 and was declared dead 5 January 1939. 

Women’s History Month – Queen Elizabeth II

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For the month of March, the world celebrates Women’s History Month. I am devoting a week each in March to one woman I am inspired by.

For this week, I am devoting the week to Queen Elizabeth II.

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born 21st April 1926 to the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother) in Mayfair, London. Elizabeth had one sister, Margaret. 

Elizabeth was never meant to be Queen. Her uncle abdicated the throne in favour of love and therefore, his brother took over. She went on to be the longest reigning British monarch and had the longest verified reign of any female monarch in history. She reigned for 70 years and 214 days. 

In November 1947, she married Philip Mountbatten, a former prince of Greece and Denmark. Their marriage lasted 73 years until his death in 2021. They had four children, Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward. 

She was known as Lilibet by her loved ones, such as her father, mother, sister and husband. 

She had a love for corgis and horses, having many horses on her properties and a keen interest in horse racing and polo. 

Elizabeth became queen of seven independent Commonwealth countries when her father died in 1952, she was just 25 and a mother of two. 

Upon becoming queen, her duty became paramount and she dedicated her entire life to serving her country and the commonwealth. This was shown when her sister was not able to marry the man she loved who happened to be a divorce and senior to her young age, and keeping silent when the media would hound the family for answers to scandals and the like. She kept her life private. 

Elizabeth endured much in her tenure as the monarch, a lot of scandal, a lot of painful media headlines especially when her former daughter-in-law, Diana, was killed in an accident. She continued to be hounded for decades with multiple scandals, and being called cold due to her inability to speak publicly on private matters. 

Her duty never wavered, even through illness, tragedy. The week of her husband’s death, she returned to work, serving her people as she promised to do. At his funeral, she abided by COVID-19 protocols and sat alone, grieving and saying a final goodbye to her beloved husband. I’m not afraid to admit, I shed a lot of tears seeing her sitting there, frail, and alone. This woman I so adored, so admired, and she was steadfast in her duty. 

In the week of her own death, she met with the new prime minister and was all smiles. She looked frail, and thin. I think we all knew she wasn’t long for this world. Even still, a few days later, when I heard the news. I wept. We’d lost a symbol of womanhood, of inspiration for young girls, an icon. 


Elizabeth died at Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 2022 at the age of 96. Her son, Charles, took over as King.