‘Forced to preserve a monument’: how the fate of Marilyn Monroe’s LA home became a legal saga

House where Monroe died, which hasn’t been occupied in seven years, is in limbo after current owners wanted to demolish it but were stopped by a public campaign Marilyn Monroe is said to have had more than 50 addresses in her lifetime, but only once, in the final months before she died from a drug overdose at the age of 36, did she have a house she could call fully her own. The Hollywood star, burned out by the failure of her marriage to the playwright Arthur Miller and by health problems that prompted a year-long hiatus from acting, bought herself a quintessential hacienda-style Spanish bungalow with a pool at the foot of the Santa Monica mountains in February 1962. Continue reading...

Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles · Sun, May 10, 2026, 8:00 AM
California | The Guardian

‘Forced to preserve a monument’: how the fate of Marilyn Monroe’s LA home became a legal saga

House where Monroe died, which hasn’t been occupied in seven years, is in limbo after current owners wanted to demolish it but were stopped by a public campaign

Marilyn Monroe is said to have had more than 50 addresses in her lifetime, but only once, in the final months before she died from a drug overdose at the age of 36, did she have a house she could call fully her own.

The Hollywood star, burned out by the failure of her marriage to the playwright Arthur Miller and by health problems that prompted a year-long hiatus from acting, bought herself a quintessential hacienda-style Spanish bungalow with a pool at the foot of the Santa Monica mountains in February 1962.

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