Norman Rockett; Movie and TV Set Decorator

Norman Rockett, a property man and set decorator for more than six decades who climbed in the shower for a scene with Marilyn Monroe and who reconstructed his own memories of the bombed Pearl Harbor for the filming of “Tora! Tora! Tora!” has died. He was 84.

Rockett, whose accolades included an Emmy, two other Emmy nominations and two Academy Award nominations, died April 5 at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank of heart failure. He had lived for many years in Sherman Oaks.

The behind-the-scenes veteran wound up in the shower with Monroe on the orders of director Henry Hathaway during the filming of “Niagara” in 1952.

Hathaway “didn’t want any problems with the water pressure, the water heat, or anything else,” Rockett told The Times in 1986. “So I got some swimming trunks from the wardrobe guy and crouched down out of sight in the shower. Marilyn was supposed to be nude, of course. But she really wore a body stocking.”

When Rockett built his Oscar-nominated sets for “Tora! Tora! Tora!” the 1970 film about the entry of the United States into World War II, the task proved an emotional experience. He had been assigned as a naval photographer’s mate to the Pennsylvania, only to arrive for duty a month after the ship was damaged in the Pearl Harbor bombing of Dec. 7, 1941.

“We rebuilt almost the whole of the Arizona on a barge and then ‘bombed’ it,” he recalled of the 1970 filming. “I relived the whole thing.”

Rockett was born Norman Walter Harrison, the son of a laundry route salesman and a lingerie saleswoman who lived in Long Beach. After his parents divorced and his mother remarried, he took the name of his stepfather, Al Rockett, an executive with First National Studios in Burbank.

He also went to work for Rockett’s studio on the “labor gang” during his high school summers. After graduation and a year’s travel in Europe, he became “a glorified errand boy” at Fox Film Corp., soon moving up to assistant film editor.

He next joined the property staff at 20th Century Fox. In the early 1950s, he was promoted to property master and, in 1960, became a set decorator.

Among his films were “How Green Was My Valley,” “Marriage-Go-Round,” “The Greatest Story Ever Told” and “Planet of the Apes.”

Rockett is survived by his wife, Audrene; a daughter, Susan, and a grandson, Bryce Bencivengo.