Written by Mary Zagoritou

Hampstead Garden Suburb, London 

18/07/2026

I just left the centenary Exhibition about Marilyn Monroe titled Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait at London's National Portrait Gallery, and the curation completely shatters the 'dump blonde' stereotype. Stop strolling if you think Marilyn Monroe was just a helpless Hollywood starlet.

Have you read our new Newsletter July 2026 titled Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait, National Portrait Gallery written after Mary Zagoritou Gallery visited the exhibition? This portfolio of text and photographs carefully selected and presented here come to supplement the July 2026 Newsletter and emphasize to our audience Mary Zagoritou Gallery special viewing of the rich number of exhibits, collected and curated at the National Portrait Gallery Ground Floor Exhibition rooms for the 100 years since the birth of the star. Mary Zagoritou Gallery portofolio here aims through visual and written word to give an insight to the untold story of Marilyn Monroe's intellect and agency. The archives show an absolute strategist- a woman who studied literature, attended acting classes, scrutinized job contracts, fiercely edited her own press contact sheets, established her own film company and built her own production studio. She did not just stumble into fame; she actively engineered it. Since she was a teenager called Norma Jeane Baker, Monroe posed in the privacy of a photo booth and playfully created herself her self portrait in emulation of early 'movie-star' portraits. Two photographs show that Marilyn Monroe was maintaining a daily exercise routine at home, underlining her own discipline and personal responsibility for her physique. The 1952 photographic portrait of Marilyn Monroe as Chairman Mao Zedong is a unique collage of Mao Zedong with Marilyn Monroe's face in place of Mao's by artists Dali and Halsman. Salvator Dali literal fusion is an early surrealist experiment, and it stands as one of the most powerful visual commentaries in modern art history, carrying deep philosophical and cultural meaning, creating an absurd, unsettling joke about global icons right at the start of the Cold War. Later in 1959, a photo shows Monroe checking contact sheets when working in collaboration with a photographer, an approach that enabled her to maintain an element of control over her own image. Marilyn Monroe was influential to the image of other women globally. Looking closely to Marilyn's Monroe photograph from the Misfits movie, where she poses in a black dress, it is subsequently easy to see her influence to the greek cinema of the 60s. Marilyn Monroe photograph at the sea inspired many women to pose by the seaside and have their own similar photo shot by the sea. Her influence to the British Pop artist Pauline Boty is central focus point to the exhibition. It starts with 'The only blonde in the world' 1963 painting, created by Pauline Boty, the prominent pioneer of the 1960s British Pop Art movement as a bold and nuanced commentary on the objectification of women in mass media. The artist painted the figure to resemble her own physical features, intentionally blending her own identity with the famous movie star. And to Andy Warhol artwork Marilyns. American artist James Francis Gill triptych painting Marilyn represents to the exact words of the curator William Seitz 'the tragedy of her descend from dazzling stardom as an American goddess of American sexuality to agony and death depicted in three parts step by step'. The left part of the painting is depicted from a phot of Marilyn Monroe laughing but the painter showed it like an agonising scream. 

Marilyn Monroe had a vivid view about happiness, childhood and entitlement:

'I was brought up differently that the average American child. The average American child expects or hopes to be happy... Happiness wasn't anything I ever took for granted'

The above Marilyn Monroe's statement comes from her final interview with Life magazine reporter Richard Meryman in July 1962. Monroe spent her youth in 11 foster homes and an orphanage, facing neglect and instability. She felt disconnected from the standard "American Dream" narrative of guaranteed happiness. Monroe rejected entitlement and believed that happiness is not a default state or an inherent right. Because joy was rare in her youth, she deeply appreciated positive moments when they occurred. The quote emphasizes that material success and stardom did not automatically erase her childhood trauma. Her unstable childhood acted as both the driving force behind her ambition and the root of her professional struggles. Monroe openly admitted that her desire to act was born from the neglect she faced in the foster system. She viewed the movie-going public as a surrogate family. Becoming a star was a tactical strategy to receive the unconditional love and attention she was denied as a child. While living in the orphanage, she could see the RKO Studios water tower from her window, which became her visual anchor for escape and survival. When Monroe joined the Actors Studio in New York, legendary drama coach Lee Strasberg discovered that her childhood trauma made her a natural at Method acting. Strasberg taught her to pull raw, painful memories from her foster care days to fuel her characters. This technique gave her performances a unique, heartbreaking vulnerability that captivated audiences, particularly in The Misfits and Don't Bother to Knock. However, constantly reopening these childhood wounds severely damaged her mental health. The abandonment she experienced as a child manifested as severe psychological hurdles on movie sets. Monroe suffered from crippling stage fright, deeply rooted in her fear of not being perfect, the fear of rejection. She sub-consciously believed that if she performed poorly, the audience—and the studio—would abandon her. This anxiety caused her to spend hours locked in her dressing room fixing her makeup, leading to chronic lateness that infuriated directors like Billy Wilder and cost studios millions of dollars. Growing up powerless in a system where she was passed from house to house made Monroe highly sensitive to being controlled. When 20th Century Fox tried to force her into repetitive "dumb blonde" roles and underpaid her compared to peers, she rebelled. Remembering the helplessness of her youth, she went on strike, moved to New York, and formed Marilyn Monroe Productions, becoming one of the first women in Hollywood to successfully fight the studio system for creative freedom.

Here is a powerful quote by Marilyn Monroe herself that perfectly captures her intelligence, strategic self-awareness, and refusal to be defined by her beginnings:

'I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.'

How intelligently and logically does she describe her own branding and the exact mechanics of her success! Is it not great that she directly draws a straight line linking her identity as a rootless orphan to her ultimate triumph as an autonomous, self-made global icon?

Written by Mary Zagoritou

Hampstead Garden Suburb, London

18/07/2026

For Mary Zagoritou Gallery