5 AUGUST 1962
The body of Marilyn Monroe is discovered
The 36-year-old actor dies after overdosing on sleeping pills
“Marily Monroe Dead, Pills Near.” So read a New York Times headline on 6 August 1962, reporting the demise of the era’s most famous ‘blonde bombshell”. The actor born Norma Jeane Mortenson had been found dead in her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles the previous morning. Posthumously described in the same Times article as “a contemporary Venu” the star of films including Some Like it Hot had fatally overdosed on barbiturates.
Monroe had spent the day before her death at home, seeing only her psychiatrist, her publicist, her photographer and her housekeeper, Eunice Murray- perhaps the people she trusted most deeply. Having long experienced depression, crippling endometriosis and insomnia, over recent years
