Page 15 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

“No one wants a girl who’s married,” he declares. Movie studios don’t employ married women. Why waste time and money promoting a girl who’s going to leave and have babies when there are so many single girls in this town who are desperate to work?

CHAPTER 10

HARRY LIPTON, NORMA JEANE’S new agent at the National Concert and Artists Corporation, quickly confirms what his client has heard.

Faced with the choice between a movie contract or a marriage contract, she doesn’t hesitate. “My marriage didn’t make me sad, but it didn’t make me happy either,” Norma Jeane says. “My husband and I hardly spoke to each other. This wasn’t because we were angry. We had nothing to say. I was dying of boredom.”

On May 14, 1946—two weeks before she turns twenty—Norma Jeane files for divorce from James Dougherty after less than four years of marriage.

Legally, she’s supposed to live in Nevada for four months until the divorce is granted, but she spends most of that time on modeling photo shoots in California, while staying in the apartment downstairs from her beloved “Auntie” Ana Lower at 11348 Nebraska Avenue.

Ethel Dougherty is not surprised or disappointed to seeNorma Jeane go.Thatgirl, with her poor institutionalized mother, was bad news from the start. Now Ethel has the blissful satisfaction of being proved right.

Yet Jim Dougherty is blindsided. He’s on a ship in the Yangtze River getting ready to go into Shanghai when he’s served with divorce papers.

Furious, he paces the boat deck, demanding the captain send word that Norma Jeane gets “not one more cent” of his allowance money. She is, however, allowed to keep his car. He’s not a monster. He’ll give her something.

Norma Jeane ends the summer of 1946 with newfound freedom and a 1935 Ford coupe, the same car Dougherty used to ferry her to and from school, not so many years ago.

Not that Norma Jeane thinks or cares about that. She is on her way, straight to the offices of Ben Lyon, former silent movie star and now talent director for the 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation.

Wartime was good to Fox. Americans on the home front, in desperate need of distraction, packed movie theaters. The studio—product of the 1935 merger between 20th Century Pictures and the Fox Film Corporation—capitalized on William Fox’s pioneering theater chain and the Fox Studio Lot in Century City, with its fifteen sound stages and outdoor sets depicting scenes from western towns and the Sahara Desert to cabaret theaters and New York City skylines.

Norma Jeane is fascinated by Lyon, who starred in seventy-two movies and was idolized for his roles on the silent screen.

On her first visit to Lyon’s office, she trips in the reception area. Catching her heel on the door frame, she takes a tumble, scattering headshots and modeling photos all over thelinoleum floor. As she scrambles about on all fours, an Ohio State University journalism student named Robert “Bob” Slatzer lowers himself to the floor to assist her.

“Thank you so much,” she keeps saying, through a mass of blond curled hair. “So very sweet of you.”

She’s what the dreams of a slightly overweight boy from Marion, Ohio, are made of. He immediately falls in love.

Slatzer is scheduled to interview an actor, but he drops the story and instead asks Norma Jeane out to dinner. He borrows a friend’s car for the night, pulls up outside her apartment on Nebraska, and takes her to a little place on Malibu overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Helen “Cupid” Ainsworth, Norma Jeane’s agent at the West Coast office of the National Concert and Artists Corporation, is determined to make a more consequential match.

It’s well known that Howard Hughes, millionaire industrialist and president of California Pictures, has been bedridden since July, when he crashed a prototype Hughes Aircraft XF-11 spy plane in Beverly Hills. Hughes miraculously survived, but his recovery is arduous. He’s immobile in a full-body cast and restless—until he sees Norma Jeane in a bathing suit on the cover ofLaffmagazine. Her sweet smile brightens his days and gives him purpose. He is determined to find out who she is and sign her to a movie contract.

Ainsworth is smarter than most, and she understands the power of the press and generating a little heat. She tips off her friend, the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, and plants an item about Hughes’s interest in her client: “Howard Hughes is on the mend. Picking up a magazine, he was attracted by thecover girl and promptly instructed an aide to sign her for pictures. She’s Norma Jeane Dougherty, a model.”

She then telephones Ben Lyon and tells him that Norma Jeane has yet to sign with Howard Hughes. But Lyon’s window of opportunity is slim.

Norma Jeane is at home with Aunt Ana on the July day when she gets the call. She jumps into her 1935 Ford coupe and speeds to the studio lot, as fast as the engine will allow.

“It’s Jean Harlow all over again!” Lyon exclaims when Norma Jeane walks into his office.

The risk-averse executive recklessly bypasses studio procedure for screen-testing talent and organizes an unauthorized shoot.

A skeleton film crew captures Norma Jeane’s every movement as she performs on a darkened soundstage. She lights a cigarette, smokes it, walks back, sits down, and crosses her legs. She has no lines to recite. No need, when her essence is lighting up the room, and the screen.

On the makeshift set, no one makes a sound. Those few who are present stand stock-still, just staring. Lyon feels a chill run all the way down his spine. Whatever it is, whatever that magicalsomethingis, Norma Jeane has it.

Now he has to convince his boss, 20th Century-Fox chairman and co-founder, Darryl Zanuck.

The well-oiled operation springs into action when it’s time to watch the next round of dailies. Lyon’s secretary calls the projectionist to warn that the Boss is on his way, and the Fox staffers leap to their feet as the big man enters the projection room and takes his place next to Lyon.

The talent director’s mouth is dry. His hands are clammy. His heart pounds in his ears with the knowledge of the sneak attack he’s engineered for Zanuck, a man who dislikes surprises.

Today, after the dailies finish, instead of the lights coming up, the projector keeps rolling, playing an extra bit of film on the end of the reel. Norma Jeane’s screen test.

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