Marilyn Monroe at 100: New Book Exposes the Heartbreak Behind the Icon Who ‘Wanted to Be Wanted’

On Monday, June 1, the world will mark what would have been Marilyn Monroe‘s 100th birthday — and a new book is pulling back the curtain on the private anguish that fueled one of Hollywood’s most luminous careers.

Author Andrew Wilson spent years combing through hundreds of hours of previously unheard interview tapes and unpublished letters for his upcoming biography, I Wanna Be Loved by You: Marilyn Monroe: A Life in 100 Takes. The result is a devastating portrait of a woman whose hunger for love was rooted in the deepest kind of rejection — from her own father.

As reported by the Daily Mail, which published an excerpt from Wilson’s book, Monroe’s first agent, Harry Lipton, captured her driving motivation plainly: “She wanted to be wanted — that was the main thing. And I guess she felt that if she were a movie star she’d be loved.”

That longing traced directly back to Charles Stanley Gifford, the man confirmed through DNA testing in 2022 to be Monroe’s biological father through an affair with her mother, Gladys. He never claimed her. Per the excerpt, Monroe’s first husband, Jim Dougherty, recalled a phone call in which the young actress — still going by Norma Jeane — reached out to Gifford, only for him to hang up immediately.

The screen legend, who died at 36, tried again in the summer of 1950, driving out to Gifford’s dairy farm near Palm Springs with friend Sidney Skolsky. According to Wilson’s account, Gifford dismissed her coldly: “Listen, Marilyn, I’m married, I have children. I don’t want you to start trouble for me now, like your mother did years ago.”

Drama coach Natasha Lytess accompanied Monroe on yet another attempt, only to be met with the same cruelty. “He was incredibly rude and horrible,” Lytess said, per the book.

Poet Norman Rosten, a close friend, understood what all that rejection meant, saying Monroe “needed that proof of being adored; it denied the inner dread of being unwanted, the trauma of the illegitimate and motherless child.”

Yet even a century after her birth, Monroe’s hold on the public remains unbreakable. Director John Huston, who worked with her on The Misfits, was once asked what her continuing appeal meant — why the public never let her go. His answer, as quoted in Wilson’s book, said everything: “Well, simply that she’s still alive.”

I Wanna Be Loved by You: Marilyn Monroe: A Life in 100 Takes is published June 2.