That said, she did see potential in the ‘round-faced girl with an astonishing bust which made her size 12 dress look too small’. She asked for a photo, and was presented with one of David Conover’s shots, which impressed Snively enough to recommend Norma Jeane attend a $100, three-month long modelling course, which she could pay off with her modelling jobs. Norma Jeane was thrilled, and filled out the application form immediately, lying about her age (claiming to be twenty instead of nineteen), and noting that her hair was blonde and curly, and her height 5 foot 6. She mentioned no ambitions to act, but did say she danced a little, and sang too.
When she was successfully enrolled, Norma Jeane walked into her first modelling class and was friendly to everyone, despite the fact that the other girls all had their mothers with them, while she had arrived alone. Snively gave her lots of attention because of that and the young model soaked it up; mastering hand positions, posture and make-up techniques, as taught by Maria Smith and Mrs Gavin Beardsley. She began studying photos of herself given to her by photographer Potter Heuth and Bob Farr, and learned how to improve her photographic technique, asking the photographers to tell her where she was going wrong. She never repeated a mistake, nor did she ever miss a modelling class, which led Snively to declare that with her gumption, she would become a big star.
However, although she was extremely determined and gifted in front of a camera, Snively did note that clothes were a problem for Norma Jeane. She only seemed to own two different outfits: a white dress with green yoke and teal blue tailored suit ‘that didn’t do a thing for her’. Later, much to Snively’s chagrin, she wore the blue outfit for one of the first photographic jobs she had with the agency: ‘a photo shoot with Larry Kronquist for an American Airlines booklet which was shot at the Douglas Aircraft Company.
On 2 September 1945, a test was shot of Norma Jeane and eight other girls in the grounds of the Ambassador Hotel, then on 5 September 1945 Snively got her a job as a hostess in the Holga Steel Files booth at an industrial show. Her job was to showcase the files and give out leaflets, and she was a hit – the report coming back from the company that she was excellent. Being paid $90 for ten days work, Norma Jeane immediately turned all of it over to Snively in order to pay for her studies. From that moment on, Snively knew she was working with ‘a fair, honest and very fine girl,’ and made a point of getting her as much work as she possibly could.
Norma Jeane attended audition after audition, and built up a good relationship with every photographer she worked with, including Lazlo Willinger, John Randolph, and Larry Kronquist, who had shot the American Airlines photos. Snively recalled: ‘She was sincerely eager. She made everyone she talked to feel as if he were the only guy in the world. She did this naturally without design or premeditation.’
After a failed audition for a Montgomery Ward catalogue, Snively decided that maybe Norma Jeane should specialize in pin-ups because of the way her body looked in a bikini. This did not stop the young model being criticized, however, and her photos were surprisingly difficult to sell, as art directors complained that her nose was too long and her smile cast shadows. Snively later remarked that, ‘She smiled too high, that’s what was wrong, and it made deep lines around her nose. We taught her how to bring her smile down and show her lower teeth.’
During this time she was still having problems within her marriage, and although Snively was aware of this, Norma Jeane never discussed her personal problems with her. Instead, Snively believed that she was still faithful to her husband and refused to date other men: ‘Many of my other girls whose husbands were overseas dated several nights of the week. But not Norma Jeane.’
Marilyn spoke about this herself in 1953 when she said, ‘I used to meet a lot of wolves among the buyers . . . I didn’t have much trouble brushing them off. I found if I just looked sort of stupid or pretended I didn’t know what they were talking about, they soon gave up in disgust.’
She would also drive herself home after photo sessions to avoid any embarrassing episodes with photographers, but her driving almost got her killed when she had an accident in the little Ford that she and Jim owned at the time. When she telephoned Elyda Nelson that night, she was laughing but on the verge of tears: ‘I guess I must have been dreaming again,’ she said, ‘because I drove head-on into a street car. You should see our poor car, it’s completely demolished.’ Luckily, Norma Jeane survived with just a bump to the head; ‘I guess it’s a miracle that I’m alive,’ she told her shocked sister-in-law.
Snively had many photographer friends who were interested in ‘discovering’ a new model, and both she and Norma Jeane jumped on this opportunity, often arriving at studios for ‘test shots’, even though she was already becoming quite established. As a result she was ‘discovered’ by an assortment of photographers, but Snively never considered this to be dishonest, since Norma Jeane’s style was forever changing, making her ‘new’ all the time.
Shortly before Christmas 1945, Jim came home on shore leave, only to be told that Norma Jeane would be leaving to go on an extended modelling trip along the coast with photographer Andre de Dienes. He was understandably perturbed and urged her to cancel, but she refused, stating that if she refused to go, she’d lose that job and anything that came along in the future. They argued once again, and Norma Jeane left the house to spend the next few weeks in the company of another man, much to the dismay of her husband.
Norma Jeane first met de Dienes after he had asked the Blue Book Agency for a girl who might be willing to pose nude. She had arrived at his hotel room wearing a pink sweater with her hair tied in a bow, and although she was wearing a wedding ring, de Dienes claims she told him she was in the process of getting a divorce. ‘Do you love your husband?’ he asked. ‘No,’ she replied.
After posing in a bikini at a nearby beach, de Dienes asked if she would be willing to go on location with him, and after a meeting with Aunt Ana, it was agreed that Norma Jeane could, indeed, go on the trip. Alongside de Dienes, Norma Jeane travelled by car to the Mojave Desert, Darwin Falls, Las Vegas, Cathedral Gorge, Yosemite, Portland and Death Valley, where on 15 December, Norma Jeane sent a postcard to Jim, telling him how much she missed him.
The card (addressed ‘My Dearest Daddy’ and signed ‘All My love, Your Baby’) shows no sign of any problems in the marriage, but it is interesting to note that she mentions nothing about the trip at all. Perhaps she didn’t want to rock the boat by talking about it, or maybe it just wasn’t turning out the way she had originally hoped. Certainly by the end of the journey, Norma Jeane and de Dienes had lurched from one disaster to another: they were accosted by strange men at Cathedral Gorge; they suffered various flat tyres; he discovered he’d left his wallet in one hotel room; and in another their belongings were stolen when Norma Jeane left to go shopping. She was so upset by the latter event that she decided to telephone Jim and return home, but was persuaded not to by de Dienes, who by this point had fallen in love with the girl and begged her to marry him. ‘I wanted to marry this nice young girl. What was wrong with that? I was a nice young boy myself,’ he said in 1962.
Since Norma Jeane was already married, and they had only known each other for a short time, it is hard to know what possessed de Dienes to ask her to be his wife, and it would certainly seem that marrying someone else was the last thing on Norma Jeane’s mind. But her lack of interest did not discourage him, and after a disastrous trip to visit her mother (in which Gladys barely noticed that they were even in the room), de Dienes claims that he and Norma Jeane slept together.
By this time de Dienes was completely besotted and after making love again the next day, he drove her back to Aunt Ana’s house, promising that he would marry her soon. It would take a variety of unanswered letters and tense phone calls before de Dienes realized that marriage to another man was the last thing on Norma Jeane’s mind: ‘I phoned from New Mexico and she said, ‘Andre please don’t come [to Hollywood]. I can’t marry you. Forgive me.’
1946 brought
a variety of changes both professionally and privately, and started with Norma Jeane finally agreeing to have her hair straightened and bleached. Emmeline Snively had tried unsuccessfully for months to get the model to do something with the ‘unruly, shapeless, mop,’ telling her that not only did frizzy hair prevent her from wearing hats properly, it also stopped her fulfilling her potential, since blondes were definitely more in demand. But Norma Jeane had always resisted the temptation, declaring that if she had her hair bleached, she would have to continue doing so and just couldn’t afford it.
Finally, in February 1946 she was persuaded to visit Frank and Joseph’s salon, where they gave her hair a straight permanent to make it more manageable; a regular permanent at the ends after shaping; and an all-over bleach. The result was phenomenal and resulted in a successful job for a shampoo advert.
Once her hair had been fixed, Snively decided that it was time for Norma Jeane to be ‘discovered’ again and on 6 March she sent her along to photographer Joseph Jasgur for some more ‘test shots’. Jasgur didn’t think much of her to start with, deciding that her hips were too broad, her clothes too tight and her figure imperfect, but he did like her eyes; he took test shots of her on a street behind Beverly Boulevard and then took her for something to eat afterwards. Snively later revealed that he believed she was too thin and unsexy, and would always feed her hamburgers when he thought she looked hungry.
And so began a quick succession of modelling jobs for the newly transformed model. On 10 March she had another session with Jasgur, this time at the Don Lee Towers, above the Hollywood sign, and then on 11 March, she posed for photographer Earl Moran, who painted her portrait for potential advertising customers. On 12 March 1946, she was snapped by a young photographer called Richard Miller (who was to use her throughout March and April), and on 18 and 23 March she went with Jasgur to Zuma beach, where she was photographed alone in the sand, and also with the cast of a local production called The Drunkard. (Many years later, Jasgur published a book entitled The Birth of Marilyn, which included a photo of Norma Jeane apparently showing six toes. These photos caused huge media interest and are still talked about today, but the extra ‘toe’ in the Jasgur photos is merely a bump in the sand.)
Amongst the abundance of modelling jobs coming her way, Norma Jeane was also being told she should get into the movies. This got her thinking about the next stage in her career, and she mentioned briefly to Emmeline Snively that she might be interested in doing bit parts. She didn’t immediately share this with her husband, however, who was later shocked when he found a screen test script when he came home on leave.
Declaring that she just had the script out of curiosity, Jim tried to persuade his wife that thousands of young women wanted to be a star, but it fell on deaf ears. ‘I used to confide in my husband sometimes, my childish dreams of becoming an actress. He’d laugh and assure me I’d never make it,’ she remembered. Shortly after, Jim reluctantly drove his wife to a screen test, only for her to discover that it wasn’t a real test at all; the ‘producer’ had borrowed the office from a friend. Once in the room, he told Norma Jeane to recite her lines while performing a variety of reclining poses. ‘He was getting sillier by the minute and I maneuvered over toward the door and made a hasty exit,’ she recalled in 1953. As she got back into Jim’s car, she slumped in the seat and looked at her husband. ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘They’re just a bunch of fresh guys.’
Old flame Bob Stotts was to bump into Norma Jeane that year, after his discharge from the Army. He saw immediately that she had turned into a beautiful woman but noticed a subtle change in her personality – as if she was acting a part in front of him. Norma Jeane told Bob that she was modelling and interested in getting into the acting business. ‘She seemed all starry-eyed about the whole thing, but she didn’t see it as the ultimate goal in her life. I had seen a news stand with half a dozen magazines, all with her image on them and she told me that modelling was more fun than acting tryouts. Screen tests were hard, difficult she said and certainly not as easy as modelling.’
In the entire time Stotts knew her, Norma Jeane had never mentioned a career in the movies: ‘If she had any theatrical aspirations, we never knew about it. Her main ambition seemed to be to eventually become a good housewife.’
‘The last thing in the world that I would have picked was a movie star,’ wrote Stotts’ mother Dorothy. ‘She was a good dancer, but a movie star, well . . .’
Norma Jeane asked Bob to dinner that night, but knowing that her husband was overseas he decided against it. This was the last time any of the Stotts family saw Norma Jeane. ‘We often wished we’d kept in touch somehow,’ wrote Dorothy. ‘Possibly doing so would not have altered the course of events, but friends – real friends – might have made a difference.’
Meanwhile, Norma Jeane was receiving far too much attention from men desperate to ‘make her a star’, and this led Snively to introduce Norma Jeane to Helen Ainsworth, a theatrical agent at the National Concert Artists Corporation. She walked into the office, and immediately the string on her hatbox snapped, leaving a trail of hairpins, lipstick, curlers and make-up strewn all over the floor. Ainsworth’s colleague, Harry Lipton, looked up from the magazine he was reading and saw a young girl who was flushed, confused and looked like ‘a freshly cut piece of strawberry shortcake’. Picking up the entire contents of the box, he made a joke, and was happy when Norma Jeane smiled and seemed to relax.
The interview went well but she didn’t speak much and changed the subject immediately when asked about her personal life; the only thing she did divulge was that she had always dreamed of being an actress. At the end of the interview, both Ainsworth and Lipton agreed that she had possibilities and signed her to the agency, assigning her to Lipton to handle personally. This was the start of Norma Jeane’s venture into the movies, and she couldn’t have been happier – professionally at least.
At home, things couldn’t have been worse. She and Jim were still arguing and on 9 March, when he shipped out again, he left a note for his wife, saying, ‘I’ve gone. After I’ve finished sailing and can settle on the beach we can give it another try if you like. Don’t think there’s someone else, there isn’t, but well I’ve told you how I feel.’ Determined not to give up on the relationship, Jim left on his trip hoping that things could be patched up, but it was not to be.
On 26 April 1946, Norma Jeane appeared on the cover of Family Circle for the very first time, and shortly after started jotting down reasons why she wanted to divorce Jim Dougherty. ‘My husband didn’t support me,’ she wrote. ‘He embarrassed me; he ridiculed me, and treated me like a child’. Finally, she made plans to travel to Las Vegas, where she would have to stay from May to July, in order to legally divorce Jim, who was at this time blissfully unaware that their problems had come this far.
In the months prior to the trip, Norma Jeane become close to her agent, Harry Lipton, often calling him at odd hours of the night, just to be able to talk to someone. She told him that she believed Jim had married her because otherwise she would have had nowhere else to go, but described him as ‘a very nice man’. As a result of her opening up to Lipton, he helped arrange the trip to Vegas, but as he put her on the train, he noted that she showed, ‘neither relief nor joy nor distaste at getting a divorce. Her reaction was that of someone leaving a fairly close acquaintance – not a husband.’
Once in Las Vegas, Norma Jeane settled into 406 South Third Street, home of Grace Goddard’s aunt, Minnie Willett, the widow of Uncle Kirby who had died in a traffic accident almost ten years before. Minnie, aged sixty-nine, was a very well-respected member of the Las Vegas community who was active in civic affairs and establishments such as the Rebekah Lodge, the Old Timers club auxiliary and various other organizations. She was friends with a number of high-profile Las Vegas families, and after her husband’s death had continued her hobbies with great abandon.
While Minnie’s days were a great rush of activities and goals, she hadn’t
had the easiest of lives. Before she had married Grace’s Uncle Kirby, she had given birth to a boy named Frank, who was later raised as one of the Willett family. Frank was a sporty boy who took part in basketball and boxing, but he also had his problems; going missing for weeks at a time and forcing his family to advertise in newspapers to trace his whereabouts.
In 1923 he married Annie Beadle, but the marriage was unhappy and ended in 1928 when she shot herself with Frank’s shotgun, moments after he had stormed out after a huge argument. All this news was reported back to Grace in Los Angeles and it is safe to say that Norma Jeane would have been privy to this family scandal during the course of growing up.
By the summer of 1946, Frank had long since moved away and Minnie was quietly living alone, continuing her civic affairs and organizing various get-togethers. As a result, when Norma Jeane moved into the house she was immediately invited to days out with prosperous Las Vegas families, but even so, she was not at all happy at the thought of staying in Nevada for the entire summer. She didn’t want to leave her Los Angeles modelling career; there were rumours of movies in the pipeline; and to make things worse her health was not excellent. In a letter to an unknown friend, she lamented: ‘I was in the hospital twice – first with an acute mouth infection (I had four wisdom teeth pulled). I was out of the hospital for just one day and they put me back with the measles. Oh what an awful time.’
However, her luck changed one day when she walked on to Aunt Minnie’s porch, wearing white shorts and a halter top, with her hair pulled back and tied with a ribbon.
At that moment, a young man by the name of Bill Pursel was talking to a former high-school friend who was raking the yard. ‘My friend introduced her to me, and she came off the porch so we could shake hands. There was a picket fence between us but our eyes were locked. Her first words were, “Pleased to meet you” and I said “Same here.” We then just stood there staring at one another for a few seconds. Finally I said, “Would you like to go for a walk?” She said “Sure” and we took off.’
Marilyn Monroe Page 9