Marilyn Monroe - "Goodbye, Norma Jean," Sings Elton John in his famous tune 'Candle in the Wind,' "Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did." Before she was the iconic blond model, singer and actress Marilyn Monroe, the world's most famous movie star was brunette Norma Jean Mortensen, born in Los Angeles to a mentally ill mother and a father who abandoned them. Despite a childhood spent in and out of foster homes, a teenage marriage and sexual exploitation by Hollywood players, the eventual star of Gentleman Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like it Hot proved you have to be smart to play dumb, shy to play sexy and scrappy to survive career lows, failed marriages (Joe Dimaggio and Arthur Miller) and heartbreaking loss (multiple miscarriages). Her tenuous and fragile hold on life proved fleeting: Norma Jean/Marilyn died on August 5, 1962 at the age of 36 from an overdose of barbiturates, ruled a "probable suicide." Wrote playwright Miller of his former wife, "She was a whirling light to me then, all paradox and enticing mystery, street-tough one moment, then lifted by a lyrical and poetic sensitivity that few retain past early adolescence."