The ultimate blonde bombshell and perennial sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe was a legendary film icon who titillated the masses. Her tragic death on 5 August, 1962, aged 36, left millions around the world in mourning.

She is perhaps best known for her roles in the 1950’s smash hits ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ and ‘Some Like It Hot’, but the depression, drug and alcohol dependency which came to haunt her during later years ultimately saw her career decline.

To this day, her enigmatic death is subject to speculation and conspiracy theories. She is generally considered to have committed suicide but there are some who point to the Kennedy connection and even suggest that a drug overdose was administered by intravenous injection.

Nonetheless, she remains a true screen star and, even 40 years after her death, continues to fascinate.

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on 1 June, 1926, in Los Angeles. Placed into a succession of foster homes as a child, she was married at 16 and spent much of World War Two working for the Radioplane Company where she sprayed airplane parts with fire retardant and inspected parachutes.

Army photographer David Conover was at the time scouting local factories. Spotting Ms Monroe, he immediately saw her potential and signed her to The Blue Book modelling agency where she soon became one of their most successful models.

It was not long before she came to the attentions of the film industry either and, in 1946, she was offered a standard six-month contract with 20th Century Fox. With a starting salary of $125 a week, she had minor roles in a number of features, as well as plastic surgery on her nose and chin, before finally hitting the big time with a lead role in 1952’s ‘Don’t Bother to Knock’.

‘Niagara’, ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ and ‘How to Marry a Millionaire’ soon followed and cemented her success as an A-list actress. By the mid-1950s, she was one of the world’s biggest movie stars, even forming her own production company with friend and photographer Milton H. Greene.

In 1959 she scored her biggest hit opposite Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in the comedy ‘Some Like It Hot’. Today consistently rated as one of the best films ever made, it used her comic skills to great effect and saw Ms Monroe win a Golden Globe for her performance.

Her final film, ‘The Misfits’, was also co-star Clark Gable’s. Written by her then-husband Arthur Miller, the hot Nevada shoot was an exhausting one and saw both Ms Monroe and Gable pushed to their limits. It was a commercial failure on its release but nevertheless earned Ms Monroe in particular critical acclaim.

She began filming ‘Something’s Got to Give’ in 1962 but was later fired for repeatedly failing to turn up on set. Her last significant public appearance came in May of that year, singing the now infamous ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President’ at a televised birthday party for then-President John F. Kennedy.

On August 5, 1962, at the age of 36, she was found dead by her housekeeper at her home in Los Angeles. Naked, face down, with a telephone tucked under her torso, it was later revealed that she had taken an overdose of sleeping pills.

For 20 years after her death, a dozen red roses from former husband and baseball star Joe Di Maggio were delivered weekly to Ms Monroe’s crypt in California.

During the months before her death, she had been seeing Mr Di Maggio regularly and the pair had agreed to remarry later that year.

Hugh Hefner, who published nude photographs of Monroe in Playboy magazine early in her career, reportedly purchased the crypt next to her for himself.

While on her honeymoon with Mr Di Maggio in Korea, she performed 10 shows over four days for over 100,000 servicemen.