Episode Details

Marilyn Monroe was not the dizzy blonde the studios sold to the public. She studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, founded her own production company to gain creative control, negotiated contracts that gave her director approval, and read Dostoevsky and Joyce between takes. The woman Hollywood treated as a commodity spent her career fighting to be treated as an artist — and the system punished her for it.

This episode traces Monroe from her foster-care childhood through the studio system that manufactured her image, the strategic moves she made to reclaim control, and the personal disintegration that ended with her death at thirty-six.

• Monroe's traumatic childhood in foster care and the institutions that shaped her survival instincts
• The studio system's construction of the "dumb blonde" image she spent her career fighting
• Marilyn Monroe Productions, the Strasberg training, and her bid for artistic credibility
• The Kennedy connections, the prescription drug dependency, and her death at thirty-six