Slate magazine looks at the ‘cultural history of the all-American babysitter’, mentioning Marilyn’s performance as the disturbed Nell, whose childcare stint doesn’t run smoothly in Don’t Bother to Knock (1952.)
(Of course, the real Marilyn adored children and often babysat for her friends!)
“But even as the baby boom and a more mobile workforce made baby sitters essential, sitters provoked as much anxiety as reassurance. A typical 1952 article in Cosmopolitan, “The Baby Sitter, a New and Baffling American Problem,” relayed tales of girls who murdered or kidnapped their charges. Pulp novels wove tales of insane sitters who wind up institutionalized after violently destroying happy homes. One such book became the basis for the 1952 thriller Don’t Bother to Knock, in which Marilyn Monroe starred as a mental patient turned sitter.”
