“No force from outside, nor any pain, has finally proved stronger than her power to weigh down upon herself. If she has possibly been strangled once, then suffocated again in the life of the orphanage, and lived to be stifled by the studio and choked by the rages of marriage, she has kept in reaction a total control over her life, which is perhaps to say that she chooses to be in control of her death.

“And out there somewhere in the attractions of that eternity she has heard singing in her ears from childhood, she takes the leap to leave the pain of one deadened soul for the hope of life in another, she says good-bye to that world she conquered and could not use.” — excerpted from Norman Mailer‘s Marilyn Monroe biography, which originally hit stores in 1973 and has been republished a few times (and in two or three different forms) since.

It’s a good bet that today the Lookee-lous are going to be all over Monroe’s home (i.e., where she died, and the only place she ever owned) at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood.