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What's in a name? I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Lebe.

And this is Ghost Town. In the summer of 1926, Gladys Pearl Monroe did not know what her future held, only that it would include a daughter, born on June 1st.

The 24-year-old film cutter was in a complicated situation, estranged from her husband for 10 months,

and having an affair with her superior at RKO Pictures.

Not only that, she was clinically depressed, financially insecure, and without family close by,

her two older children in the custody of her first

husband back in Kentucky. But as records show, Monroe made a choice that day, constructing a new

life for her and her daughter, beginning with little Norma Jean Mortensen's birth certificate.

Norma Jean was the name of a client she liked while cleaning houses back in Kentucky, and Mortensen's birth certificate. Norma Jean was the name of a client she liked while

cleaning houses back in Kentucky, and Mortensen was the family name of her long-estranged

husband, imparting a sense of legitimacy and stability. This document would set the tone for

little Norma Jean's life, a complicated bouquet of aspirational,

arbitrary, personal, and yet highly constructed. But nobody expected the level of complexity

that would manifest when Norma Jean Mortensen transformed into Marilyn Monroe. She would be so much to so many, one of the most successful,

most photographed, and most revered icons in modern history, an emblem of sexuality, a dazzling

screen goddess, and a tragic figure of Hollywood legend. As we record this episode and what would have been Marilyn's

...