Before Marilyn Monroe, there was Norma Jeane Mortenson: a curly-haired brunette who never imagined she would be more than a housewife.
While Marilyn Monroe took America by storm with her glitz and glamor in the 1950s, this Hollywood icon had previously lived a tragedy-filled early life under her birth name, Norma Jeane Mortenson.
To this day, few fans of the acting legend know the full story of Mortenson and how Monroe’s troubled youth impacted her entire life.
California. Circa 1940s.Wikimedia Commons
California, 1941.Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
California. June 19, 1942.Michael Ochs Archives/Stringer/Getty Images
California. 1929.Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Aunt Ana's was one of the many homes she would live in through her difficult childhood as an orphan.
Sawtelle, California. 1938.Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
After her Aunt Ana got sick, Norma Jeane had to move in with the Goddard family. She had lived there before, but left their home when she was 11 when her legal guardian, Erwin Goddard, molested her.
Van Nuys, California. 1940. Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
California. 1941.Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
California. 1941.Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
While working at the factory, Norma Jeane was spotted by an Army propaganda officer. He took this photo of her working at her post. It was the first modeling job of her life.
California. 1944.Wikimedia Commons
California. 1946.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
California. 1931.Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Van Nuys, California. 1941.Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
When the pair met, he was her neighbor and five years her senior. The two had little in common. She would later say that they hardly spoke because "we had nothing to say."
California, 1943.Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
California. 1942.Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
California. 1941.Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
California. 1941.Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Avalon, Santa Catalina Island. 1943. Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
California. 1941.Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
After he joined the Merchant Marines, the couple became increasingly distant. In 1944, he would be sent off to the Pacific. From then on, they would rarely see one another.
Avalon, Santa Catalina Island. 1943. Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
California. Circa 1945-1946.Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images
California. 1940s.Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
James Dougherty strongly disapproved of his wife's new career. Less than a year after this photo was taken, their marriage would fall apart and the pair would get divorced.
Los Angeles, California. 1945.Donaldson Collection/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
California. 1940s.Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Los Angeles, California. 1947.Photo by Earl Theisen/Getty Images
Norma Jeane Mortenson was born on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles, California, the third child of Gladys Baker. Her mother struggled with paranoid schizophrenia throughout her life. For the first eight years of her daughter's life, Baker played only a small role, helping a foster family raise her child. In 1934, though, Baker a nervous breakdown and Norma Jeane Mortenson became an orphan.
Norma Jean moved from foster home to foster home, going through traumatic horrors in almost every one. She was sexually abused in her first two homes and started to develop a stutter. In time, she settled in at the home of a friend of her mother's, where she was once again molested by her legal guardian, Erwin Goddard.
In 1942, the Goddards decided to move to West Virginia, leaving 15-year-old Mortenson behind. At her foster mother's suggestion, Mortenson married her neighbor, 21-year-old James Dougherty. The two barely knew each other, but it was the only way to keep her out of an orphanage. Their wedding was held 18 days after her 16th birthday.
The newlywed young woman prepared for life as a housewife. She dropped out of school and dedicated herself to her husband. Dougherty was thrilled. "I felt like the luckiest guy in the world," he would later say. "We loved each other madly."
His love wasn't reciprocated. "My husband and I hardly spoke to each other," she would say years later, after she'd become Marilyn Monroe. "We had nothing to say. I was dying of boredom."
In 1943, Dougherty became a Merchant Marine. Within a year, he was shipped out to the Pacific, leaving his wife behind. Bored, alone, and struggling to make ends meet, Norma Jeane Mortenson started working in a factory building drone aircraft for the Army.
However, she was discovered at the factory by a photographer named David Conover. Soon, she quit her job and started modeling for the Blue Book Model Agency, posing in sensual pin-up photos that infuriated her husband.
In 1946, she moved on with her career and left her husband behind. Norma Jeane divorced Dougherty, dyed her hair blonde, and soon changed her named to Marilyn Monroe. From there, she would become a star in movies like Some Like It Hot and How To Marry A Millionaire. She would marry celebrities, have affairs with presidents, and leave her mark on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
She would become a legend unlike any the world has seen – and leave behind a life as a whole other person with a whole other name.
"I never knew Marilyn Monroe," James Dougherty would say years later. "I knew and loved Norma Jeane."
After this look at Norma Jeane Mortenson, check out these powerful Marilyn Monroe quotes and fascinating Marilyn Monroe facts.
