On June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles, a girl named Norma Jeane Mortenson was born into a hard, uncertain childhood. The world would come to know her by another name — and as something close to eternal.
Marilyn Monroe became the Hollywood icon: the blonde bombshell, the most photographed woman of her age, the smile the whole century recognized. She died at thirty-six — and somehow she never left.
She was Southern California's own — born in Los Angeles, raised in its foster homes, and discovered right here in the desert, at a Palm Springs racquet club in 1949, before Hollywood ever knew her name. She rose to fame in California and never really left it. She rests in Los Angeles still. And here in the desert where she was found, twenty-six feet of her rises against the sky — steel and light, holding the pose the whole world remembers. A hundred years on, she is immortal, and the desert keeps her.
An artist's tribute to that permanence — original poster artwork, and an original song: "Forever Frozen in the Desert Heat," written and recorded by Brit-Asian recording artist Rani, on SunshineFM Records.
“Twenty-six feet of steeled concrete,
forever frozen in the desert heat.
Are you lonely up there in the blue?
Nothing left to win, nothing left to lose.
Norma Jeane, can you hear the sound
of all the tourists on the ground?”
Four ways to keep her
One will own the original.
Everyone can keep the moment.