She ate in bed and pushed the remains under the sheet; had irritable bowel syndrome and flatulence; rarely bathed; and preferred to sleep in the nude.
No big deal -- except that Norma Jean is, under the screen name Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood's epitome of all that is glamorous, desirable, sexy; the image of feminine perfection, irresistible to a long line of husbands and lovers, that included baseball legend Joe di Maggio and late President John F Kennedy.
An upcoming biography of one such rumored lover, Clark Gable, presents a less than flattering picture of the woman who made 'blonde' and 'bombshell' inseparable.
All talk of a torrid affair between the Hollywood headliners on the set of the 1961 film The Misfits (written by Monroe's then husband Arthur Miller as a Valentine present for her, and directed by John Huston), is rubbish, suggests Gable's biographer David Bret.
Media reports quote Bret, author of Clark Gable: Tormented Star, as saying that though Monroe was hot for her co-star, Gable did not reciprocate.
The Hollywood hunk, Bret says, had a fetish for cleanliness. Monroe, on the other hand, 'could not have been less fastidious regarding her personal hygiene.'
'Like Jean Harlow,' Bret is quoted as saying in the biography that hits bookshelves across the US in September, 'She bleached all her pubic hair and never wore panties. She suffered from what today would be described as irritable bowel syndrome.'
Bret goes on to demolish Monroe's image as the ultimate male fantasy, with descriptions such as this: 'She rarely bathed, slept in the nude and ate a lot in bed -- shoving what was left on her plate under the sheets before going to sleep.'