Marilyn Monroe Read Online Free

Grace and her fourth husband, Erwin “Doc” Goddard, a sporadically employed aircraft worker. But the arrangement did not last. Doc, who drank heavily, made sexual advances to Norma Jeane, so Grace shipped the child off to other foster homes. By the time Norma Jeane was twelve, she had been assaulted in at least two of these homes, and possibly others. Time and again, Grace had to find another family to take her in. That in each instance it was the victim, not the victimizer, who was expelled sent a powerful message to Norma Jeane: She had to be punished because somehow she had brought the attack on herself.
    Through all this horror, one thing appeared to sustain the poor, abused child. Under Grace’s tutelage, she had become completely absorbed by the fantasy of the movies—a world of glamor and beauty that bore no relation to her own existence. Yet that fantasy seemed attainable, if only because she had spent her entire life within a few dozen miles of Hollywood. And it clearly helped that Grace believed in her to the extent that she did. No matter how dreadful Norma Jeane’s day-to-day reality, Grace persisted in her promises that the future would be different: One day Norma Jeane would be a star, and no one would dare mistreat her again.
    That fantasy gave Norma Jeane hope, but it also confused her. Grace was sending mixed signals. On the one hand, Grace repeatedly communicated that Norma Jeane had been thrown out of Grace’s own and other households because she had behaved provocatively. On the other hand, Grace encouraged her to believe that it was precisely her beauty and sexuality that would eventually win her better treatment. Norma Jeane would later be rewarded for the very behavior that had previously elicited punishment. Further confusing the child was the fact that the abuse she had endured had been her only experience of power. Terrible as those experiences were, they suggested that Norma Jeane had the ability to attract attention in a world that was otherwise indifferent to her. All the talk of becoming a movie star reinforced the child’s sense that her sexuality was the one form of power she had.
    When Norma Jeane was fifteen, it was Grace—of all people—who trod on the dream she had done so much to create. Grace announced that she and Doc were moving to West Virginia and could not take Norma Jeane with them. She offered Norma Jeane a choice: either she married a young man Grace had selected, or she would have to return to the orphanage. The prospective bridegroom was James Dougherty, the twenty-one-year-old son of a former neighbor. Norma Jeane chose marriage, though that meant dropping out of high school before she had completed her sophomore year. On June 19, 1942, three weeks after her sixteenth birthday, Norma Jeane Baker married Jimmy Dougherty. She seemed to forget about the movies, apparently forever. Jimmy was a kind, decent man; he gave his young bride so much attention that she didn’t seem to mind that her dream had been put aside. Maybe the attention would do after all.
    Norma Jeane might well have remained a housewife in the San Fernando Valley for the rest of her life if World War II had not intervened. The young husband left his job at the Lockheed aircraft factory to join the Merchant Marine. In spring 1944, he shipped out. Like many wartime wives, Norma Jeane went to live with her husband’s parents and found a job in a defense factory. The Radio Plane Company produced the radio-controlled small airplanes that Army gunners used for target practice. Jimmy’s mother was employed as a nurse in the infirmary. Seventeen-year-old Norma Jeane worked on the assembly line, first as a chute-packer, later as a glue-sprayer.
    In 1945, Army photographers from the First Motion Picture Unit came to Radio Plane to film women in war work. A young corporal named David Conover spotted Norma Jeane and took her picture. When the results came back from the lab, Conover returned to the factory and told