Inside Marilyn Monroe's Relationship History

Due to her mother's psychiatric health issues, Marilyn Monroe (then Norma Jean Baker) spent much of her early childhood in a foster home, and as a teenager was living with a family friend, Grace Goddard, according to Biography. When Goddard was looking to move away, she suggested that her neighbor, 20-year-old James Dougherty, who had been casually dating 15-year-old Monroe, marry the future starlet. "We decided to get married to prevent her from going back to a foster home ... but we were in love," Dougherty explained, via the Los Angeles Times. Monroe was 16 when they got married in 1942.

The relationship began to fall apart when Dougherty went overseas on a merchant marine assignment. Back home, Norma Jean was well on her way to transforming into Marilyn Monroe after beginning a modeling career. When she was offered a contract with 20th Century Fox, there was only one thing standing in her way: her marriage with Dougherty. Many Hollywood contracts at the time required women to be unmarried, so Monroe sought a divorce from her long-distance husband. Unwilling to continue in the relationship without the security of marriage, he signed the divorce papers and separated himself from the woman who would someday become a legend. "I never knew Marilyn Monroe, and I don't claim to have any insights to her to this day ... I knew and loved Norma Jean," Dougherty told United Press International (via Los Angeles Times).

Writer Robert Slatzer claimed to have had an on-again, off-again relationship with Marilyn Monroe that lasted for years. According to "Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe" by Anthony Summers, they met in the lobby of 20th Century Fox right before Monroe became a massive star. "I think we had an instant affection towards each other ... For me there was something magic about her, different from the other girls the talent men at the studio would fix you up with. I don't know, I think I can say I loved her from the first time I saw her."

Later in life, Slatzer was known for writing books about Monroe. In one, he claimed that they were married for three days in 1952. Whether or not it actually happened has been debated for years. According to The Los Angeles Times, the marriage could never be confirmed. Slatzer wrote in his book "The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe" that the marriage was the end of their relationship. "During this period I'd come to understand how Marilyn felt. She was happy with me, but not happy being married to me ... Our relationship was strained — nothing like it had been before we were married -– and I finally decided that it had to come to an end," he explained. The 1991 movie "Marilyn and Me" was based on the alleged romance.

The relationship between Marilyn Monroe and her acting coach, Natasha Lytess, has long been speculated to be more than just a professional one. Monroe lived with her acting coach for several years, and it has been theorized that they were in a romantic relationship. According to the Daily Mail, Lytess claimedd in a 1962 interview that the movie star would often walk around the house in her birthday suit: "She was always naked in the house. Six or seven or eight hours ... she was naked all day long! And I'm not exaggerating!" Reportedly, when actor Ted Jordan asked Monroe if they were sleeping together, Monroe said, "Why not? ... Sex is something you do with people you like. What could be wrong with a natural act?"

The extent to which their relationship was romantic might never be known, but it can be said with certainty that Lytess helped Monroe blossom into the actor she became and was a near and dear friend. According to Louis Banner's book, "Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox," Monroe once told photographer Anthony Beauchamp, "Miss Lytess made me free. She gave me inner balance and made me understand life. I owe everything to her." Many Monroe biographers have speculated throughout the years that Monroe had more than a few lesbian encounters, per HuffPost.

Elia Kazan was one of the biggest directorial names in Hollywood in its golden era of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, per Britannica. He had married his classmate, playwright Molly Day Thacher, in the 1930s, and she was still his wife when he strayed and had an affair with one of the biggest movie stars of the day, Marilyn Monroe. He confessed about the affair in a 1955 letter to Thacher, published in "The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan." In the letter, he goes into detail about Monroe's personality, writing, "She is nothing like what she appears to be now, or even appears to have turned into now. She was a little stray cat when I knew her ... She is not a big sex pot as advertised. At least not in my experience."

He had no regrets about his time spent with "The Seven Year Itch" star. "I'm not sorry about it ... I'm awful sorry I hurt you. I am human though. It might happen again. I hope not, and I have resisted quite some other opportunities ... If you don't like what I say and feel it necessary for your own sense of honor to divorce me, divorce me," he wrote. His wife never did divorce him over the infidelity; Kazan and Thacher stayed married until her death in 1963, per The New York Times.

At the height of Marilyn Monroe's disintegrating marriage with Arthur Miller, she sparked up an affair with her "Let's Make Love" co-star, French actor Yves Montand. Miller had actually been present in the work of the movie, helping to rewrite scenes, and the affair and his indifference to it was yet another factor in the breakdown of their marriage, according to Biography. Montand was also married at the time, though his wife, Simone Signoret, reportedly commented on the affair by nonchalantly saying, "If Marilyn is in love with my husband, it proves she has good taste. For I am in love with him, too," per the Daily Mail.

The affair ran its course in the bungalows of The Beverly Hills Hotel and became tabloid fodder at the time, per Vogue France. By the time the filming of "Let's Make Love" was wrapped, the relationship was over. He had no intention of leaving his wife, and Monroe was technically still married too. They accepted it for what it was: a brief co-star fling. 

Hollywood legends Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe first encountered one another early on in their careers. According to Brando's 1994 autobiography "Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me," he met Monroe at a party and they struck up a conversation after he accidentally elbowed her in the head. They soon became friends and then eventually more than friends. "She invited me over, and it wasn't long before every soldier's dream came true," Brando wrote. Like many of her romantic partners throughout her life, Brando claimed she was very different than the public had imagined. He added, "Marilyn was a sensitive, misunderstood person, much more perceptive than was generally assumed. She had been beaten down, but had a strong emotional intelligence — a keen intuition for the feelings of others, the most refined type of intelligence."

Monroe and Brando allegedly had an occasional romance that lasted for years. "After that first visit, we had an affair and saw each other intermittently until she died in 1962. She often called me and we would talk for hours," he wrote. According to "The Godfather" star, he had even spoken to her on the phone the week she died and they made plans for the following week. Devastated by the news of her death, Brando was convinced she did not commit suicide. He believed she either accidentally overdosed or was murdered.

Jerry Lewis was a popular comedian in the 1950s and 1960s who starred in films "The Stooge," "Cinderfella," and "The Nutty Professor," just to name a few, per Britannica. Lewis, who was married to Patti Palmer from 1944-1980, had the reputation for having affairs with his co-stars, and in his own words, he was sleeping with numerous people in Hollywood, per GQ. One of his instances of infidelity with his wife was allegedly with none other than Marilyn Monroe.

Though it was a very brief fling, he revealed his affair with Monroe in a 2011 interview with GQ. It had been a complete secret up until that point. He wouldn't go into too much detail, but at 85 years old, recalled that Monroe sought emotional connections with people through affairs. "She needed that contact to be sure it was real," he said, adding that the act itself was intense. "I was crippled for a month," he joked.