Page 16 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

“What the hell …” says Mr. Zanuck, sitting up in his seat, opening his mouth, and slowly removing his fat cigar. Ben Lyon closes his eyes, waiting to be fired. “Did I authorize this test?”

“No, sir,” mumbles Lyon.

“What’s her name?”

“Norma Jeane Dougherty. She’s a model.”

“It’s a mighty fine test,” he says, rising from his seat. He snaps his fingers. “Sign her up.”

Norma Jeane is offered a six-month contract that pays $125 a week. But as a twenty-year-old woman in 1946, she’s still considered a minor.

As her legal guardian, Grace McKee is thrilled to oblige. “I was the one who believed in you. I was the one,” she crows.

The two women dress in their Sunday best to co-sign the contract alongside a 20th Century-Fox executive and a notary public. Norma Jeane will start work two days from now, on August 26.

While they wait to see Ben Lyon, Norma Jeane remembers how, when she was nine or ten, Grace would come to the orphanage and take her out sometimes. “I would put on yourlipstick,” she muses softly, “then you would take me to have my hair curled. Things like that meant a great deal to me.”

“Mr. Lyon will see you now,” says the talent director’s secretary, opening the door.

“Come in, come in …” Lyon is out of his seat, his hand extended, smiling. His office is spacious. The sofa is soft, the walls are covered in large framed film posters, and his view onto the back lot is splendid.

Norma Jeane cannot stop smiling her not-too-high smile.

“Now,” he begins. “About your name. Dow-erty. Dock-a-tee. Dock-a-tee-tee. How do you pronounce it?” He waves his hands. “Don’t answer that. It’s gotta go.”

Norma Jeane shrugs. Fine by her. She feels no attachment to it.

“And the first name too. Norma Jeane. It’s too old-fashioned. Norma. Or Jeane. One or the other.”

Mmm,she thinks.Who am I? A Norma? Or a Jeane?

“Marilyn Miller, that’s who you remind me of. You’re a Marilyn!” Lyon suddenly snaps his fingers and points straight at her. “Bingo! But we can’t use the same last name.”

“There’s always Monroe,” suggests Grace. “Her mother’s maiden name.”

“That could work.” Lyon nods. “Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe. It rolls off the tongue.”

“Marilyn Monroe …” Norma Jeane smiles. “I think I could be her.”

CHAPTER 11

“MY MOTHER IS actually dead … as is my father.”

The newly minted Marilyn Monroe sighs and looks out the window, pausing her interview with Roy Craft. Twentieth Century-Fox has assigned the formerLifemagazine correspondent and RKO Pictures publicist to be Marilyn’s press agent.

“I was brought up in an orphanage, where I shared a room with twenty-six other girls. It was a terrible place. For birthdays, they brought out a wooden cake with one slice cut into it. One small piece of cake for the birthday boy or girl. I went to many, many foster homes. Too many to count.”

“That’s so sad,” replies the young man sitting opposite. He’s bent over his notepad, scribbling down every word.

“Isn’t it?” agrees Marilyn.

It was Grace’s idea to lie to Roy Craft. Having dead parents evokes sympathy. Being the illegitimate child of a mother whose paranoid schizophrenia had her cycling in and out of institutions risks judgment, shame, and public humiliation—especiallyif a reporter were to track down Gladys at the hospital.

“So?” Craft is waiting, pen poised. “How did they die? Car crash? Drowning? Spanish flu?”

Marilyn panics behind her fixed half smile. She and Grace McKee had not settled on a cause of death, only that the deaths had occurred.

“Mmm, I find it too upsetting to talk about,” she mumbles, rubbing her left eye as if to hold back tears.

---