Bernie Taupin said she lived her life like a candle in the wind.
She played a dumb blonde to perfection yet she wasn’t at all dumb; she wasn’t even blonde. She was arguably the most explosive sex symbol of the twentieth century - and also one of its most tragic celebrities.
Born of a mentally unstable mother in 1926, young Norma Jeane Mortenson soon became a ward of the state and trailed through a string of foster homes, frequently the victim of sexual abuse.
Somehow Norma Jean became Marilyn the sex goddess, Everyman’s fantasy; but the reality of what lay beneath the peroxide hair and the breathless voice was something very different.
