She was born Marilyn Novak on February 13, 1933 in Chicago, Illinois to Blanche and Joseph Novak. Her father was a railroad claims clerk, and he provided the family with an increasingly comfortable lifestyle. Marilyn was the second child; her favored older sister Arlene often overshadowed her. Still, her parents doted on her and the family was close-knit.
Marilyn was a melancholy and shy child. When she reached her teens, Blanche encouraged her to join a local youth club so that she might improve her self-esteem. Though anxious at first, she started to enjoy attending functions and meeting new friends.
Even at fourteen, Marilyn was an alluring beauty. The director of the club encouraged her to take up modeling. She showed no interest in the idea, but somehow she was eventually convinced to try it.
Soon Marilyn was working steadily as a model and winning beauty contests. She attended college briefly, but quit to take a job with a traveling appliance show where she demonstrated refrigerators.
When the show ended in San Francisco, Marilyn was reluctant to give up the freedom she had enjoyed on the road. A friend from the show invited her for a vacation with her mother at the Beverly Hills Hotel; she happily accepted. Unlike most young beauties in Hollywood, Marilyn preferred lounging by the pool to pursuing stardom. However, when her money ran out, she didn't want to go home. She decided to try to make her living modeling.
The modeling agencies appreciated Marilyn's beauty, but she was too heavy for print work. Though she didn't want to be in the movies, she was finally convinced to accept a job as an extra. Her assignment was to stand on a staircase with a group of elegant starlets while Jane Russell and Mary McCarty performed a song for The French Line (1954). Her beauty made an immediate impact; admiring whispers raced around the set.
When a scout from Columbia saw Marilyn on the RKO set, he told her to come to the studio for a screen test. Assuming the scout was giving her a line she took his card, but didn't call.
Nevertheless, Marilyn couldn't avoid being discovered; an agent convinced her that she needed representation. She was not only more responsive this time, but also took the agent's advice and lost weight. She created a sensation when she appeared as an extra on her next movie, Son of Sinbad (1955).
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