Marilyn Monroe’s Palm Springs Home Is On The Market

Dubbed the Marilyn Monroe Doll House, the Hollywood star’s former home in Palm Springs, California is now up for sale. Built in 1961, the property was a vacation home for the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes actress up until her death the following year at just 36 years old.

Inside Marilyn Monroe’s Vacation Home

Back in the day, Vista Las Palmas was a second-home hotspot for many Old Hollywood celebs, with the likes of Elvis Presley and Peter Lawford also owning homes in the area. Designed in the Mid-Century Modern style, for which the Vista Las Palmas neighbourhood of Palm Springs is renowned for, the property was the brainchild of Charles Du Bois (famed for popularising desert modernism across Palm Springs) and built by the Alexander Construction Company, who were similarly renowned for pioneering the area’s iconic look.

Though the home has been updated over the years – with the introduction of new tile flooring, appliances, and an electrical system – the prior owners were careful to renovate the home in line with the Mid-Century aesthetic.

As a result, many original features remain, including the four pastel bathrooms done up in shades of butter-yellow, bubblegum pink and baby blue. And where there have been cosmetic renovations, such as the kitchen, the white and blue cabinetry and mosaic-style backsplash were designed to mimic the original feel of the property.

Spanning 3,000 sqft, the four-bedroom home offers up an open-plan living place, complete with a fireplace, separate dining space, and an original semicircular bar. Sliding glass doors line the main living area and lead to the outside where there’s a covered patio, swimming pool, hot tub, and fire pit – all with sweeping views of the San Jacinto Mountains.

Where Else Did Marilyn Monroe Own Homes?

Marilyn Monroe, real name Norma Jeane Mortenson, was born in LA in 1926. With her mother twice-divorced and not mentally or financially prepared for a child, Monroe was carted between foster care, orphanages, and the goodwill of family friends and relatives. Bar a brief stint living with her mother in their own home in Hollywood, her loving foster parents in Hawthorne, and the care of her family friend Grace, it was a difficult and restless childhood for the star. 

When Grace’s husband was relocated to West Virginia for work, child protection laws prevented Monroe from leaving too. To prevent her returning to the orphanage, it was decided that she would marry neighbour and factory worker James Dougherty, who was five years older than her 16. Together, the pair moved into her first proper home, a studio apartment in Sherman Oaks, before renting out a bigger house in San Fernando. From there, Dougherty’s work with the Merchant Marines took them to Santa Catalina Island and later, he to the Pacific and her to his parents’ home where she began working at a munitions factory in Van Nuys. It was here that she was discovered and her career to stardom first began. With life pulling the couple in two different directions, they divorced in 1946 when Monroe was just 20.

Following the separation, Monroe stayed at the female-only Hollywood Studio Club for under a year in the late 1940s before renting an apartment in Burbank from a couple who were away on holiday. The home was close to Warner Bros Studios, allowing Monroe to embark on her acting career with roles in Dangerous Years and Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!. From here, she moved into the West Hollywood apartment of actor John Carroll for five months before relocating close to Sunset Boulevard with her first talent agent Johnny Hyde.

In a bid to duck circling relationship rumours with Hyde, Monroe eventually swapped his Beverly Hills home for the Beverly Carlton Hotel (now the Avalon Hotel) less than 10 minutes away, before moving into a West Hollywood apartment with her drama coach, Natasha Lytess.

Then, in 1952 Monroe finally found a place to call her own. She moved into a 1930s home in the Outpost Estates neighbourhood, for which she paid $237 rent per month, around $2,898 (£2.2k) today. But her brief stint of independence didn’t last long. That same year she met and married New York Yankees baseball star Joe DiMaggio and the pair began to rent a Beverly Hills home.

It seems, however, that the romance wasn’t destined to last. In October 1954, just 274 days after they tied the knot, the couple got divorced. Forced to head out on her own again, Monroe moved into an 1930s Art Deco apartment building in West Hollywood, then known as Voltaire, now as The Granvilles. No stranger to celebrities, her penthouse apartment was later owned and remodelled by serial renovators Ellen DeGeneres and Portio de Rossi, and put on the market in 2022. 

Despite the building’s charm, less than a year later Monroe started packing her bags for New York City. Around this time she also lived in Weston, Connecticut with fashion photographer (and soon to be co-film producer) Milton Greene and his wife Amy in a bid to avoid the press. Flitting between the East and West coasts she would rent out houses and apartments wherever she needed to be for her work. 

That is, at least, until she fell in love again. This time with playwright Arthur Miller. The pair married in 1956 in New York, and shacked up at Miller’s farmhouse in Roxbury, Connecticut. The couple also rented out a windmill house in the Hamptons completely with rotating blades.

Unable to cope with quiet Connecticut life, the couple split their time between the state and a Manhattan penthouse. Located on East 57th Street, the building was designed by architect Lafayette A. Goldstone in 1927 and boasts a vaulted marble lobby.

But just three years after their marriage, the Hollywood darlings would announce their impending divorce – finalised in January 1961. Following a brief stint in a New York psychiatric clinic, before DiMaggio whisked her away to the Yankees’ Florida training camp, she was back out on her own. And it was then that she started renting this beautiful Palm Springs home to escape the crazed media circus.

Though a perfect retreat, the star had never truly owned a place of her own. But all that changed in 1962 when she purchased her very own property in LA’s Brentwood neighbourhood  for $75,000 (around $812,649 or £604k today), living there with her longtime housekeeper. Built in 1929, the charming Mediterranean-style home boasts a private pool, four bedrooms, and a Mexican-tiled fireplace. However, the home would soon be mired in tragedy. Just four months after she bought the property, the star was found dead there aged just 36. 

On the market for $3.3m. Find out more at realtor.com