Marilyn Monroe By Bertram Stern

Film success
Over the following months, four films in which Monroe featured were released. She had been lent to RKO Studios to appear in a supporting role in Clash by Night, a Barbara Stanwyck drama, directed by Fritz Lang. Released in June 1952, the film was popular with audiences, with much of its success credited to curiosity about Monroe, who received generally favorable reviews from critics.
This was followed by two films released in July, the comedy We're Not Married!, and the drama Don't Bother to Knock. We're Not Married! featured Monroe as a beauty pageant contestant. Variety described the film as "lightweight". Its reviewer commented that Monroe was featured to full advantage in a bathing suit, and that some of her scenes suggested a degree of exploitation. In Don't Bother to Knock she played the starring role of a babysitter who threatens to attack the child in her care. The downbeat melodrama was poorly reviewed, although Monroe commented that it contained some of her strongest dramatic acting. Monkey Business, a successful comedy directed by Howard Hawks starring Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers, was released in September and was the first movie in which Monroe appeared in with platinum blonde hair. In O. Henry's Full House for 20th Century Fox, released in August 1952, Monroe had a single one-minute scene with Charles Laughton, yet she received top billing alongside him and the film's other stars, including Anne Baxter, Farley Granger, Jean Peters and Richard Widmark.