Back When Marilyn Was Norma Jeane

Marilyn Monroe has become one of the most enduring American icons of the 20th century. Images of her in such films as “The Seven-Year Itch” and “Some Like It Hot” have become fixtures on the American cultural panorama along with Babe Ruth at the plate and Norman Rockwell paintings.

But before she was an icon--even before she was Marilyn Monroe--she was Norma Jeane Mortensen, and she lived in the San Fernando Valley.

Norma Jeane was born 71 years ago today in Los Angeles. In 1935, her mother suffered a severe nervous breakdown. After her mother was committed to a state mental institution for a stay that lasted six years, Norma Jeane came to live with her mother’s friend, Grace Goddard, and her husband, Doc. In 1939, the Goddards moved with Norma Jeane to a house on Odessa Street in Van Nuys.

The teenager attended Van Nuys High School, where she auditioned unsuccessfully for the Maskers drama club production of “Art and Mrs. Bottle.” In Van Nuys, she met her first husband, Jim Dougherty, whose family lived on nearby Archwood Street.

Norma Jeane married Dougherty, a Van Nuys High graduate, on June 19, 1942, 18 days after her 16th birthday, and they moved into a studio apartment on Vista del Monte Avenue in Van Nuys. Several months later, they moved into a small house on Bessemer Street, where they lived for almost a year while Dougherty worked at the Lockheed factory in Burbank.

When wartime service took Dougherty to the Pacific, Norma Jeane moved into a house on Hermitage Street in North Hollywood with his parents. With the help of her mother-in-law, she got a job in a defense plant, where a visiting Army photographer shot a photo of her that caught the attention of a modeling agent, Emmeline Snively.

Norma Jeane’s metamorphosis into Marilyn Monroe began soon afterward--and the rest is history.