Credit: Dangerous Minds / Photoplay Magazine / New York Daily Mirror

Away from the grip they had on her in the movie industry, Marilyn Monroe found it impossible to escape the men obsessed with controlling her, even after her death.

The sad, troubled life of Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson, revolved around men who coveted her. This wasn’t something she longed for, but due to her still utterly astonishing looks, Monroe was desired by every man on the planet. Subsequently, Monroe, who genuinely wanted to be an actor’s actor, became the most famous woman on the planet in the early 1950s, but, frustratingly, not because of her celebrated movie appearances.

No, it was instead the revelation that she’d been conned into posing nude for a calendar a few years earlier, and the negatives of one of those photos being used as the centrefold for the first issue of Playboy against her will. Fuck Hugh Hefner forever, no matter how many fabricated quotes from him pop up on social media, the man saw women as nothing more than money-spinning blow-up dolls that he felt entitled to. Case in point: the disgusting story of his final resting place.

After building his empire, Hefner infamously paid $75,000 dollars to reserve the spot next to Monroe in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in 1992. Because I guess he always felt entitled to her body, I guess, why would that change in the event of her death? Or his, for that matter. A horrible story. One that could only come from a man as rich and despicable as Hefner, right?

Well, no, this is an entitlement that rich men of all persuasions seem to have, including the truly ghoulish story of Richard Poncher.

Poncher wasn’t anyone special. He was a Los Angeles-based businessman who had some considerable success, but not the kind that made anyone really care about them. However, what he did have was money, enough to make his wife agree to a truly heinous stipulation of his burial, one that she confirmed relatively recently. Poncher was completely obsessed with Marilyn Monroe, and like Hefner, bought a spot in her crypt adjacent to her.

However, his demand went deeper than that. It takes a lot to out-crass the man who gave the world Playboy, but Poncher went and did it. He purchased the plot above Monroe, and demanded that his wife bury him upside down, so he could “spend eternity on top of Marilyn Monroe”. Because obviously, Monroe hadn’t suffered enough in life at the hands of creepy, perverted men who felt entitled to her body.

Christ. If you haven’t seen it in a while, throw on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Or Some Like It Hot, or The Seven Year Itch or any of the countless films in which Monroe is charming, vivacious, compelling, and, most of all, hilarious. Hell, it’s not a great movie, but The Prince and the Showgirl is worth a watch simply for Monroe acting a new-to-cinema Laurence Olivier off the screen. There is so much more to Marilyn Monroe than her spectacular beauty.

Maybe one day, men will realise that fact.