Why one woman has persisted as the world’s most shimmery sex symbol – and it wasn’t her looks

June 7, 2026 — 12:29pm

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I’m excited about the big birthday celebration.

Not the crass party that President Donald Trump is having for America’s 250th, with a hulking metal contraption on the South Lawn for the UFC cage fights next weekend, and a solipsistic rally starring Trump, now that most of the “celebrities” have dropped out. (The president says that’s fine because he’s bigger than Elvis.)

For his 80th birthday, he has funnelled millions meant for a bipartisan celebration of this remarkable country to a partisan celebration of his contemptible self.

No, I’m excited about Marilyn Monroe’s centennial bash, which has been playing out across the globe, from a prestigious exhibition at a Paris film museum — Cent Ans de Fascination — to a show at the National Portrait Gallery in London; to a concert in Japan; to a display of costumes and personal artefacts at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles; to a joyous look-alike contest with straights, gays, young, old and even bearded Marilyns in Palm Springs, California, home to Forever Marilyn, the eight-metre-tall, 15,000-kilogram statue of America’s icon of icons in her white-halter, pleated, blowy dress from The Seven Year Itch.

The smart dumb blond who sang the most notorious Happy Birthday of all time to President Jack Kennedy — the only public erotic event in American presidential history — is getting a very happy birthday, indeed. Norma Jeane Mortenson — who survived a mentally ill mother, a father who deserted her, 12 foster homes and some sexually abusive foster parents, a mudslide of sexual predation in Hollywood, very famous husbands who were peevish and........

© The Sydney Morning Herald