Of all the stars who illuminated the sky over Hollywood in a short burst of light, Marilyn Monroe is still the most radiant. Burned into our retinas and collective consciousness, her portraits and poses are ever-present — so much so that it might even be possible to imagine her appearance at the Golden Globes on the evening of Monday, March 5, 1962.
She wore a V-neck sequined dress — body-hugging, what else. It was black. Not the fiery strapless red number she wore 10 years earlier when she received a trophy as Best Young Box Office Personality, presented by one of the two precursor press groups that later merged into the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
We will never know what Monroe was feeling as she entered the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where she was to be celebrated as the world’s most popular film celebrity. That night, the foreign journalists handed out a special award to a personality chosen around the globe as the World Film Favorite. And the world had chosen Monroe.

She had been nominated for a Golden Globe before (in 1957, for Bus Stop), but at that time she couldn’t come. She was too busy in front of film and photo cameras.
Then, in 1960, Monroe received a Best Actress Comedy or Musical nomination as singer Sugar “Kane” Kowalczyk in Billy Wilder’s comedy Some Like It Hot. This time, she did face the lightning storm of press photographers in front of the Ambassador Hotel. In her white fur stole over a white dress, she looked every bit the ultimate Hollywood movie star.
As the saying went: every man wanted to be with her, and every woman wanted to be her. The Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel was the “in” hotspot of Hollywood at the time. And on this night, March 8, 1960, she was celebrated by the Hollywood in-crowd as a Golden Globe winner.

Two years later came her final appearance, where she would receive the trophy as World Film Favorite. Holding on to her date of the evening, the dashing Mexican screenwriter José Bolaños, Monroe appeared to be in need of support. With our hindsight of 60 years, we can only imagine what later would be called the “Marilyn Mystique” — a world-famous woman who doesn’t want the world to see her, a fragile superstar with an aura so powerful that it must have suffocated her.
Marilyn Monroe’s most famous line from Some Like It Hot, “I’m tired of getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop,” would come to seem prophetic. On August 5, 1962, just five months after Rock Hudson presented her with the trophy as the most cherished movie star on the planet, Monroe died. She was 36 years old.