Ted Schwarz - Marilyn Revealed: The Ambitious Life of an American Icon

Marilyn

REVEALED

REVEALED

The Ambitious Life of
an American Icon

TED SCHWARZ

Copyright 2009 by Ted Schwarz

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

Published by Taylor Trade Publishing
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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www.rlpgtrade.com

Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schwarz, Ted, 1945
Marilyn revealed : the ambitious life of an American icon /
Ted Schwarz,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58979-342-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-58979-342-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-58979-413-9 (ebook)
ISBN-10: 1-58979-413-3 (ebook)
1. Monroe, Marilyn, 1926-1962. 2. Motion picture actors
and actressesUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.
PN2287.M69S39 2009
791.43028092dc22
[B]
2008041645

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Norma Jean Mortenson wanted to be famous. It was a goal not much different from that of many other young girls growing into womanhood in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

Not that Norma Jean had a specific profession in mind. The adults she knew worked almost exclusively in the motion picture industry, but so did many of the parents and family friends of the boys and girls with whom she went to school. Hollywood was a company town, just as much as the parts of the country in which the economy was focused on coal mining or manufacturing. The studio moguls were like the mine owners. The support personnelfilm cutters and editors like her mother, seamstresses, carpenters, electriciansrode the same trolley cars, shopped in the same drugstores, bought food in the same grocery stores, and purchased their casual clothes in the same specialty shops as movie stars making a thousand dollars a week per picture.

To a kid like Norma Jean, movie stars were neighbors as they went about their daily lives, exciting to see only when there was a disconnect and they were projected on a giant screen, their names in marquee lights.

Even in Los Angeles, where women had been writing scenarios from the start of the movie industry and many were well-paid employees of the studios, there was little talk of women doing more than marrying and raising families while their men earned the family income. Throughout the nation there was a small but growing number of women entering the medical field, including such male specialties as surgery. Women were reading for the law, an apprentice system considered the equivalent of going to law school, as well as taking university classes when they could gain admittance. And there were entrepreneurs, such as San Francisco resident Sarah Breedlove who died in 1919, just seven years before Norma Jean was born. Using the name Madame C. J. Walker, this woman, the daughter of former slaves, became the first black millionaire businesswoman in the nation.

Despite the realities of the changing times, despite the impact of the Great Depressionwhich saw women as well as men seeking jobs in any field to help their familiesthe 1930s, when Norma Jean was growing into a teenager, was a time in which no one talked about female role models, self-esteem, and achievement outside of motherhood. Norma Jean became infatuated with the older boy down the street, marrying him just before he felt the need to enlist in what had become World War II. Then, lonely and resentful over the lack of her young husbands companionship, Norma Jean, with her mother-in-laws help, got a job working in a defense plant. There she found other young women her age and slightly older: all of them lonely; some married; some despairing the fact that they were not; and all gradually becoming friends in the manner of those who share the same experiences.

Norma Jean forgot about being famous. Her goal, and that of the other young women, was to try to add style and sensuality to the coveralls they had to wear. They might be faceless individuals on an assembly line, but with some adjustments to the coveralls, they could at least pretend to be sexy.

And then David Conover came by. He was a photographer on assignment to boost morale by taking pictures of pretty young women in wartime jobs, then having them printed in the various publications for the soldiers. Officially, the captions would show how everyone was working together, the people at home supporting the boys overseas. Unofficially the images were as close to pin-ups as the boys would see in Yank and the other publications created for their entertainment.

Conover delightedly photographed several of the assembly line women, noticing that Norma Jeans expressions seemed especially responsive to the lens. All the women he used were pretty, but there was something in the one young woman that would make a reader linger a bit longer over her face. He had permission to take extra images for personal freelancing, both to military and civilian publications, so when he was done with his assignment, he arranged for Norma Jean to put on a sweater she kept in her locker and join him outside during a work break.

The photographs were what he desireda pretty girl, young, fresh, enjoying the moment. Norma Jean was paid for her time. Conover was paid by the image. And enough magazine editors responded to the assembly line worker the way he did that he found it profitable to return to the girl for further posing. He also recommended her to other professionals and, eventually, to a local modeling agency.

Once again, Norma Jean wanted to be famous, an ambition no longer a mere fantasyif she limited her thinking to modeling. A few months after meeting Conover, having obtained so much work that she quit her defense industry job, Norma Jeans face could be found on magazine covers sold throughout the United States. It was an achievement most young women would have considered an ultimate goal in itself. But this was Los Angeles, and fame meant something greater than being a pretty face on what was often a pulp magazine cover. Too many other young women had achieved the same success. Norma Jean wanted more, and Los Angeles being the heart of the movie industry, she asked the modeling agency director to help her get even a small role in a film.

The problem with becoming an actress was that Norma Jean could not act. She was beautiful. She came alive for the camera. She was a delight to behold. But so were hundreds of other young women who had flocked to Hollywood with the same goal.

Some, like Norma Jean, had grown up with the film industry, their families or their friends families working behind the scenes or paid as extras. Many had first been models. Others came by train or bus from small towns and big cities having first tasted show business by starring in a high school play where they received standing ovations from siblings, parents, grandparents, and assorted friends. A few had real professional experience as paid actresses on the stage or entertainers in nightclubs. All thought they were at least as good as the stars of the various studios, and all were fiercely competitive.