Marilyn Monroe The Legend

How to Marry a Millionaire was released on November 1953 and directed by Jean Negulesco. Marilyn's third movie of 1953 cast her as a severely myopic golddigger who walks into walls because "Men aren't attentive to girls who wear glasses". This is her first CinemaScope feature, and actually only the second movie to be filmed with the new CinemaScope process (the first was "The Robe"). Columnists fabricated a feud between Marilyn and costar Betty Grable, whom she was supplanting at the studio, but the two got along well on the set. The same cannot be said of Lauren Bacall, who looked on her with contempt.

Anita Loos's old story from the 1920s about a pair of single women in search of husbands gets a makeover in Howard Hawks's 1953 musical, starring Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe as friends who go to Paris looking for mates. The film is charged by Hawks's stylish snap, a famous set piece or two (Monroe descending that staircase while singing "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend"), Russell's wit, and songs by Leo Robin and Jule Styne. The film may largely be a fluff project best remembered as a showcase for its leading actresses, but then Monroe and Russell rarely got such extended opportunities to prove that they were more than cinematic icons. --Tom Keogh

Niagara is a dramatic thriller, film noir directed by Henry Hathaway on 1953. Unlike other noirs of the time, Niagara was shot in Technicolor and was one of 20th Century Fox's biggest box office hits of the year. The drama features Marilyn Monroe, Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters, and others. Although it was not written as a star vehicle for Marilyn Monroe, she would dominate the film nonetheless. Along with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, it solidified Monroe's status as a bona fide box office draw.