The tragic "probable suicide" of Marilyn Monroe in 1962 at the age of 36 rocked the world. A household name around the globe, few stars have achieved the same level of international stardom as this iconic sex symbol, an image which endures to this day. Following a hugely successful career in modelling, Monroe's meteoric rise to movie stardom began in earnest in the 1950s. The list of directors she worked with alone reads as a Who's Who? of Hollywood greats Howard Hawks, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, John Huston and Billy Wilder all hired her for their movies, producing some of the classics of the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema, including The Seven Year Itch, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot. Her personal life proved to be every bit as dramatic and alluring as her on-screen personas, with her romantic engagements the topic of constant gossip in the media. Rumours of her love affair with President John F. Kennedy are well known to this day, and she through her life she was linked to a number of other high-profile men, from Kennedy's brother Robert to Marlon Brando. The constant media attention and fame took its toll, leading to a prolonged engagement with psychoanalysis. In 1962 she was found dead in her home, the cause of death recorded as "acute barbiturate poisoning" deemed most likely a suicide. Few Hollywood deaths have caused so much controversy and sparked as many conspiracy theories as the death of Marilyn Monroe. The Kennedy family, the Mafia and the CIA have all been suggested as being involved in her death, while even wilder theories exist in which Marilyn Monroe is described as a mind-control victim of a secretive government program. Shrouded in a cloud of mystery and enigmas, in death Marilyn Monroe remains as much in the public eye as she did on the silver screen.
