Blonde (2022 film)

Plot[edit]

Norma Jeane Mortenson is raised by her mentally unstable mother, Gladys Pearl Baker. On her seventh birthday in 1933, she is given a framed picture of a man whom Gladys claims was her father. Later that night, a fire breaks out in the Hollywood Hills, and Gladys drives Norma Jeane up there, claiming that her father lived there. However, she is forced to go back home at the orders of the police. Back home, an enraged Gladys tries to drown Norma Jeane in the bathtub when she asks about her father but lets her go. Norma Jeane flees to the house of her neighbor, Miss Flynn, who promises she will be fine. Days later, Norma Jeane is sent to an orphanage while Gladys is admitted to a mental hospital, having been declared unfit to raise a child.


In the 1940s, Norma Jeane has become a pin-up model under the stage name "Marilyn Monroe", featuring on magazine covers and calendars. While trying to break into the acting world, she is raped by film studio president Mr. Z. In 1951, she auditions for the role of Nell in Don't Bother to Knock; the audition goes awry when Norma Jeane breaks down and leaves in tears, but she impresses the casting director enough to give her the part. As her acting career steadily rises, she meets Charles "Cass" Chaplin Jr. and Edward G. "Eddy" Robinson Jr., and becomes a lover to both. Norma Jeane lands her breakout role in 1953 with Niagara, but after she is spotted in public with Cass and Eddy, her agent requests that she limit her appearances with them in public, which upsets her as she feels that her Marilyn persona is just a role and not her real self.


Norma Jeane becomes pregnant by Cass, much to her delight, but eventually decides to obtain an abortion out of fear that the child might inherit Gladys' mental issues. Cass supports her decision. On the day of the appointment, she changes her mind, but her pleas to cancel the appointment are ignored. Following the abortion, she breaks things off with Cass and Eddy. She later meets Joe DiMaggio, a retired athlete who sympathizes with her when she expresses her desire to leave Hollywood and become a more serious actress in New York City. As she films Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she receives a letter from a man claiming to be her father. Norma Jeane feels disconnected from her onscreen performance at the film's premiere, saying it is not her. She returns to her hotel room, having been told that someone is waiting for her. Expecting it to be her father, she instead finds Joe, who proposes to her, which she accepts reluctantly.


Norma Jeane and Joe's marriage sours when Cass and Eddy give Joe some nude publicity photographs of her, which enrages Joe so much that he hits Norma Jeane and demands that she decline making The Seven Year Itch out of principle. She goes through with filming nonetheless, doing the famous publicity stunt with the white dress. When she arrives home, a drunken Joe screams and gets physically violent with her. She divorces him shortly after.


In 1955, Norma Jeane auditions for the Broadway play Magda by renowned playwright Arthur Miller. During a read-through, her performance impresses everyone except Arthur, but he eventually warms up to her when she gives him some insightful character analysis. Norma Jeane and Arthur marry and move to Maine, where she lives a happy life with him and becomes pregnant. However, when walking on the beach one day with a platter of food, she trips and miscarries. Distraught, she returns to acting soon after.


While filming Some Like It Hot, Norma Jeane becomes more uncontrollable and mentally disturbed. She is overwhelmed by the constant press attention, feels that she is becoming a joke, has frequent outbursts on set, especially towards director Billy Wilder, and grows increasingly distant from Arthur. To cope with her stress, she begins taking pills.


By 1962, she has become dependent on drugs and alcohol. Secret Service agents pick up an intoxicated Norma Jeane and take her to a hotel to meet the president, who forces her to fellate him, before raping her, and then has her taken away after she vomits in his bed. Already dazed and drugged on pills, she begins to wonder if this is what being Marilyn Monroe has led to, and she also hallucinates having another abortion before being sent back to her home in Los Angeles. She learns from Eddy on the phone that Cass has died and left something for her, which she refuses to see at first but is convinced by Eddy, who sends it in a package in the mail. Cass' memento turns out to be the stuffed tiger she had found when the three of them were together, and the package also contains a letter where he confesses that the letters Norma Jeane has been receiving, supposedly from her father, were actually written by him.


Shattered by the revelation, Norma Jeane overdoses on barbiturates; as she lies dying on her bed, she has a vision of her father welcoming her to the afterlife.