Marilyn Monrovia is a stand up comedienne/actress, and a domestic abuse survivor/advocate. This woman was destined to leave her small Midwestern town and so something with her life. Marilyn was born in Emporia, Kansas("halfway to everywhere"). Emporia is the exact halfway point from all the north/south and east/west borders of the U.S. When she was an infant, her parents divorced and her mother raised her in Ft.Worth, Texas. She did not see her father again until she was 14 years old-when she left Texas to live with him in Colorado. She attended high school in Aspen and was married her junior year;it lasted 7 months. When Freytag and a crew was in town doing a piece called "The Women of Aspen" in 1983, they saw Marilyn hitchhiking by the side of the road in the winter. They were so awestruck by her they drove their car two blocks in reverse to go back and ask her to be part of the pictorial. Marilyn went on to study dance at the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Dance Academy and competed in beauty pageants, dance and cheer-leading competitions all over the country. She auditioned to be a pro football cheerleader with the Cowboys 4 times- but the NFL team never hired her. In order to support herself, she worked every job that was available to her while taking acting lessons and stand-up comedy classes. She modeled and booked print jobs for Nike Sports, Obermeyer Ski Apparel and Saks Fifth Avenue, to name a few. She began working as and extra whenever she could and has appeared in over 600 television and film productions, to date...One summer the only job she could find was a job shining shoes. She saw an ad "Who Me? Shine Shoes?" and needed the work. Oddly enough, she was great at it. Marilyn developed quite a following shining boots in Texas. Soon she subleased ten stands in western dance halls throughout Dallas and grew to 16 employees. She found it to be an interesting forum for studying people and also for trying out her comedy and stand-up act. She was once nicknamed the "Benihana of shoe shine" by one of her loyal customers because she was so entertaining...Once she arrived in LA. she thought it would motivate her to get her SAG card if she located her shoe shine business in the foyer of Marie Callender's restaurant, right next door to the Screen Actor's Guild headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard. She soon got her SAG card- along the way she may have gained some weight but she also developed an uncanny knowledge of Calendar's delicious pies. Marilyn worked hard and was successful,so much so that years later she opened the widely popular Bunnyshines Shoeshine Company at Montana's Nightclub in San Dimas, CA, so she would "always have something to fall back on". Marilyn even met the man who was to be her second husband while shining shoes in Texas. They married and moved to Tulsa, OK. He was an auto enthusiast and prolific inventor who experienced extreme bouts of depression. The couple owned two Sheraton franchises and the Doc Severinsen Dinner Theater in Oklahoma City; but their high profile lifestyle was not all it appeared to be. Her husband's many highs and lows- coupled with a failed business venture lead him to commit suicide. By the age of 21, Marilyn was a widow. Voted the "most radical" in high school, the shock of the tragedy lead Marilyn to seek out a radically different lifestyle- so she became a rock groupie. Marilyn packed all her things into the Delorean her husband gave her before his passing and hit the road. Show less «