Marilyn Monroe’s Houses: Inside Her Most Notable Addresses

The new Netflix movie Blonde was filmed at some of the icon’s real-life homes, which are still standing today

In the fictionalized biopic Blonde, Ana de Armas attempts to capture Marilyn Monroe in all her complexity. Written and directed by Andrew Dominik, and based on Joyce Carol Oates’s 1999 novel of the same name, the provocative film—with intertwined black-and-white and color sequences, a changing aspect ratio, and recurring CGI fetuses—is an impressionistic interpretation of the iconic actor’s life. It chronicles the young Norma Jeane Mortenson’s chaotic childhood with her mentally ill mother Gladys (Julianne Nicholson), her lifelong yearning for her absent father, and the rapacious casting couch the platinum pinup experienced; it also touches upon Monroe’s multiple (rumored) abortions, marriages to Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale) and Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Arthur Miller (Adrian Brody), and her death in 1962 from a barbiturate overdose at age 36.

Incorporating clips from some of Monroe’s movies, including The Seven Year Itch, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Some Like It Hot, the Netflix film—which likely got its NC-17 rating for a sex scene between the vulnerable star and President Kennedy (Caspar Phillipson)—was shot at some of the real addresses Monroe called home. The humble Los Angeles apartment she shared with Gladys, for example, is in practically the same condition as when Monroe lived there. At her final residence, a Spanish Colonial–style house in Brentwood, California, the production restored Monroe’s bedroom to its original state. She reportedly lived in more than 40 places during her lifetime, and below are some of the notable properties—luxury penthouses, Hollywood mansions, and Connecticut estates—where the screen siren spent seminal moments.

Mediterranean-style mansion in the Hollywood Hills

After stays at a women-only residence, assorted LA apartments and hotels, and the Beverly Hills home of her agent (who left his wife for her), in 1952, Monroe rented a house that she and DiMaggio ultimately lived in during their short marriage. Built in 1938, the two-story walled-and-gated 3,335-square-foot Spanish-style villa has four bedrooms, four-and-a-half baths, and a living room with a wood-beamed ceiling and French doors that open onto a terra-cotta terrace with canyon views. The Hollywood Hills house overlooks Runyon Canyon.

French Normandy–style penthouse in West Hollywood

Before Monroe and DiMaggio called it quits after less than a year, the baseball star accompanied his wife to New York City where they stayed in a St. Regis Hotel suite while she filmed The Seven Year Itch. (As depicted in Blonde, DiMaggio violently objected to Monroe’s famous skirt-blowing subway-grate scene.) After the couple split, she decamped to a French Normandy–style West Hollywood penthouse in a 1930 building designed by architects Leland Bryant and Samuel Coine. The Voltaire Apartments (as it was known in 1954) penthouse still has floor-to-ceiling windows and city views. Now renamed Granville Towers, the building has been home to many bold-faced names, including David Bowie and Nora Ephron.

Connecticut guest house

Later that year, when Monroe relocated to New York in an effort to reinvent herself—taking acting classes with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio— she lived in a hotel close to the studio of her friend, photographer Milton H. Greene (some of whose images are recreated in Blonde). She stayed with Greene—who became vice president of her new film production company—and his family intermittently in a guest suite adjacent to their converted Connecticut farmhouse from 1954 until the summer of 1956, when she married Miller, whom she had started seeing after reconnecting with him at the 1955 opening of his play View From A Bridge.

French country–style lake house

Monroe may not have lived in this home, but it still played a significant role in her life. After a civil ceremony at the Westchester County Court House in White Plains in 1956, Monroe and Miller had a second Jewish ceremony and small reception on the lawn of the Westchester, New York, home of Miller’s agent, Kay Brown. The 4,291-square-foot four-bedroom, six-bath residence built in 1948 still boasts a first-floor private guest suite, glass-walled living room, European-style fireplaces, arched doorways, parquet floors, leaded windows, and wrought-iron elements including a second-floor balconette.

Prewar Manhattan apartment

Though many New York City buildings eschew thirteenth floors, that was the location of the airy prewar East 57th Street apartment where Monroe and Miller lived as Miller wrote the screenplay for what would be his wife’s final film, 1961’s The Misfits. The 2,190-square-foot three-bedroom three-and-a-half-bath apartment has high ceilings, a wood-burning fireplace, and impressive city views of the Queensboro Bridge and the East River. It’s currently for sale.

Colonial Connecticut estate

Monroe may not have lived in this home, but it still played a significant role in her life. After a civil ceremony at the Westchester County Court House in White Plains in 1956, Monroe and Miller had a second Jewish ceremony and small reception on the lawn of the Westchester, New York, home of Miller’s agent, Kay Brown. The 4,291-square-foot four-bedroom, six-bath residence built in 1948 still boasts a first-floor private guest suite, glass-walled living room, European-style fireplaces, arched doorways, parquet floors, leaded windows, and wrought-iron elements including a second-floor balconette.

Prewar Manhattan apartment

Though many New York City buildings eschew thirteenth floors, that was the location of the airy prewar East 57th Street apartment where Monroe and Miller lived as Miller wrote the screenplay for what would be his wife’s final film, 1961’s The Misfits. The 2,190-square-foot three-bedroom three-and-a-half-bath apartment has high ceilings, a wood-burning fireplace, and impressive city views of the Queensboro Bridge and the East River. It’s currently for sale.

Colonial Connecticut estate

The couple also spent time at Miller’s 1769 Revolutionary War–era clapboard farmhouse on 350 acres in Roxbury, Connecticut. The pair thought about knocking down the four-bedroom house that Miller bought in 1949 after writing Death of a Salesman, and replacing it with a new design Monroe had commissioned from Frank Lloyd Wright. But Miller didn’t like the famed architect’s plan and didn’t want to take on a gut renovation. Miller lived there until his death in 2005—requesting that he be taken there from his sister’s New York City apartment while in hospice. Upon his death, Miller donated 55 acres to the Roxbury Land Trust, and in 2015, his daughter Rebecca (with third wife Inge Morath) donated an additional 100 acres.

Mediterranean-style LA home

When the increasingly fragile Monroe’s marriage to Miller ended after five years, she bought her very first house, which she described as “a cute little Mexican-style house with eight rooms.” The gated, L-shaped 1929 Spanish Colonial revival with a red-tile roof on a cul de sac had white stucco walls, two bedrooms (it now has four), adobe walls, and wood-beamed ceilings. Monroe’s bedroom had a tiled fireplace—as did the living room—with patio doors leading to a courtyard. She lived at the place, which she called her fortress, for a mere six months before her tragic death at the home.

Via Architectural Digest