Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (14 page)

As for Dougherty, he “tried to make her feel desirable and worthy of everyone’s respect and admiration. But by doing so, I may have been undermining my own future with her.” He took her shopping to select a ring before remembering the custom of asking her to marry him—a mere formality in this case, since the decision had already been made for her. Almost distractedly, she accepted, and with the cast and the scenario ready, a date was set for the event.

On June 1, 1942, Norma Jeane turned sixteen. The following Sunday, she and Jim found a one-room bungalow in Sherman Oaks, at 4524 Vista Del Monte. Despite the tiny quarters, they agreed to sign a six-month lease; the owner offered to supply a new “Murphy bed,” which could be easily retracted into a wall cabinet and enlarge the living space. Their few possessions were moved in before the wedding.

The final preparations bore marks of inconsistencies and evasions of truth, which of themselves seem negligible but which actually reveal the tissue of insecurity in which the marriage was wrapped. The invitations had been sent by “Miss Ana Lower” for the wedding of her “niece, Norma Jean Baker,” but on the marriage certificate the bride had signed “Norma Jeane Mortensen.” She wrote that she was the daughter of “E. Mortensen, birthplace unknown” and of a woman named “Monroe, born in Oregon.” She did not supply her mother’s first name; like all her relatives and even the Goddards, Gladys would not attend. Albert and Ida Bolender said they would drive up from Hawthorne, although they disapproved of both the wedding and its setting.

At eight-thirty on Friday evening, June 19, 1942, the ceremony was performed by a nondenominational minister named Benjamin Lingenfelder, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Chester Howell (friends of Grace’s), at 432 South Bentley Avenue, West Los Angeles. Everything was slightly surreal and improvised. A girl Norma Jeane knew only slightly at University High was her matron of honor; Jim’s brother Marion was best man, and Jim’s nephew Wesley bore the ring on a
velvet pillow. The groom recalled how his bride “liked the winding staircase in the front hall, just like in the movies. But she was shaking so she could hardly stand.” Jim, too, was a mite unsteady—“feeling a little undone, because my brother had given me a double shot of whiskey before I arrived.”

A modest reception was held at a nearby restaurant, where a showgirl entertaining another wedding party dragooned Dougherty onto a makeshift stage for a dance. But when he returned to his table, he found his bride “not very happy. She thought I’d made a monkey out of myself, and I did.” About four in the morning, the newlyweds arrived home in Sherman Oaks.

Within and beyond all the details, tasks and tensions of the wedding day, Jim Dougherty retained one memory clearer than any other: his bride “never let go of my arm all afternoon, and even then she looked at me as though she was afraid I might disappear while she was out of the room.”

1
. The story is somewhat more complicated, but this later statement represents her girlhood résumé of it, and her impression is more significant than in her accurate retelling of the plot.

2
. Mortensen died on February 10, 1981, in Mira Loma, Riverside County, California.

3
. As one scholar of the religion has noted, “The controversy about the origins of Christian Science, the obscurity of periods of Mrs. Eddy’s life, and the inaccessibility of the archival materials of the Mother Church are together responsible for the absence of completely reliable standard works on the movement.”

4
. According to Gladys Phillips Wilson, “She never went to fancy places or country clubs because the rich boys just didn’t date her. They probably wanted to, because she was a dish, but it wasn’t done.”

5
. Once Norma Jeane had asked Ana Lower about sex, and she was simply handed an ancient manual.
What Every Young Lady Should Know About Marriage
was a book so coy and evasive that its hottest topic concerned ironing a man’s shirts.

Chapter Five

J
UNE
1942–N
OVEMBER
1945

I’
M THE CAPTAIN
and my wife is first mate,” Dougherty said of marriage; accordingly, his wife should be “content to stay on board and let me steer the ship.” But from the beginning of the arranged marriage between the insecure, virginal Norma Jeane and the confident, experienced Jim, there were signs of occasional mutiny, and eventually the subaltern jumped ship.

Much later, the captain’s two logs appeared: selective, biased, abounding with clarifications of chronology and intimate details but teeming with improvised dialogue and imaginative reconstructions of events. For years they provided the only available chart of the matrimonial voyage—until the discovery of transcribed conversations during which both captain and first mate confided very different accounts of a journey that was headed for shipwreck from the first day.
¹

James Dougherty always publicly insisted that “there were never any problems with our marriage . . . until I wanted a family and she wanted a career.” Such comments for the record reflected his conventional understanding of marriage as dominated by the husband and his wish to present a rosy picture of the first of the three marriages each of them contracted. But in remarks excised from later interviews prior to their publication, he was often more forthright about the thornier aspects of the union. “I wouldn’t be married to another movie actress for anything in the world,” he said. “She had only one thing on her mind—to be a star—and she gave up everything for it. I think Grace had a lot to do with it.”

As for Norma Jeane, she later said, “My marriage didn’t make me sad, but it didn’t make me happy, either. 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.”

For about six months, from June to December 1942, the Doughertys lived in their one-room rented cabin in Sherman Oaks. Here, sixteen-year-old Norma Jeane tried to rise to the unrealistic demands of being a suitable housewife for a twenty-one-year-old independent man. She asked few questions, accepting the role of sexual companion and housekeeper enjoined on her by Grace and now expected of her by Dougherty. But this seemed to her very different from the earlier plan proposed—for her to replace Jean Harlow—and the shift in her prospects confused Norma Jean. “I really didn’t know where I was, or what I was supposed to be doing,” she said later.

Later, Dougherty had to admit,

She was so sensitive and insecure I realized I wasn’t prepared to handle her. I knew she was too young, and that her feelings were very easily hurt. She thought I was mad at her if I didn’t kiss her good-bye every time I left the house. When we had an argument—and there were plenty—I’d often say, “Just shut up!” and go out to sleep on the couch. An hour later, I woke up to find her sleeping alongside me, or sitting nearby on the floor. She was very forgiving. She never held a grudge in her life. I thought I knew what she wanted, but what I thought was never what she wanted. She seemed to be playing some kind of a part, rehearsing for a future I couldn’t figure out.

Transcribed in 1952 but not included in the final published version of the 1953 article “Marilyn Monroe Was My Wife,” this forthright statement provides a clue to the basic psychological gap that separated the couple. It is also an important corrective to the image of a delightful, carefree, passionate young bride artfully but somewhat disingenuously presented in Dougherty’s short book.

For one thing, he realized at once that he was more her father and protector than husband. “She called me ‘Daddy.’ When she packed my lunch for work, there was often a note inside: ‘Dearest Daddy—When you read this, I’ll be asleep and dreaming of you. Love and kisses, Your Baby.’ ”

But Dougherty was a gregarious chap who had many friends, played games, loved to go out and thought that flirting with pretty girls at dances and parties was harmless and permissible. Norma Jeane, on the other hand, was friendless, had few social skills, was nervous about embarrassing them both in public and became jealous, angry and frightened of being abandoned if he paid attention to any other woman. He preferred to save a portion of his income, but she asked for extra cash and spent it prodigally—especially on gifts for him such as expensive Van Dyke cigars and new shirts, as if from his own paycheck she could buy his devotion.

Crucial differences in their sensibilities were immediately evident that summer. Since the shooting of her beloved dog Tippy a decade earlier, Norma Jeane had been extremely sensitive about the mistreatment of animals. “She loved them all and was always trying to pick up strays,” according to Eleanor Goddard; as Grace had pointed out, the same was true of Jean Harlow, who throughout her life had a menagerie of dogs, cats and ducks. Hence when Jim returned one evening with a dead rabbit ready for skinning, she was unable to bear the sight and became almost hysterical. The consequent idea of eating the poor animal was repugnant beyond description.

Related to this, he complained that “she couldn’t cook for ducks.” Deficient in the kitchen and lacking any preparation for ordinary household
tasks, Norma Jeane was constantly anxious, terrified of displeasing her husband and therefore perhaps of being sent away—to where, she knew not. No wonder she clung to his arm so insistently on her wedding day.

She was, therefore, prone to culinary miscalculations. She overseasoned percolated coffee with salt; whiskey was served undiluted, in twelve-ounce tumblers; there were endless helpings of mixed peas and carrots, because she had once been told foods should have a pleasing color combination; and she did not know how to cook fish when her husband returned with a Sunday catch. When Norma Jeane once inadvertently brought a trout to the table virtually raw, her husband muttered sarcastically, “You ought to
cook
dinner once in a while,” which elicited her tearful reply, “You’re nothing but a brute.” There followed a terrific argument that ended only when he pushed her, fully clothed, under a cold shower. “I went out for a walk, and when I came back she’d cooled off.” Such treatment quite naturally increased her feelings of incompetence and her fear of abandonment.

As for their intimate life, Dougherty was often publicly rhapsodic: “Our life was idyllic, sexually and otherwise.” Consistent with this, there is attributed to him the description of Norma Jeane as an insatiable nymphette who, while riding in a car, would suddenly shout to her husband, “Pull off the road here! Pull off here!” Demanding instant sexual intercourse, she forthwith redefined the term autoeroticism. Neatly concocted by imaginative editors at the Playboy Press eager to serve the later tabloid image of the eternally sexy Marilyn Monroe, such anecdotes are not to be found in Dougherty’s more discreet notes for his memoir.

More significantly, this sort of assertion is wildly variant from her private conversations with friends. To director Elia Kazan she later confided that she did not enjoy “anything Jim did to me—except when he kissed me here,” whereupon she gently touched her breasts; after he was satisfied, Jim usually fell asleep, leaving her awake, confused and discontent. She spoke frankly with other friends, too, about her marriage with Dougherty—in artless but thoughtful recollections, unconcerned with self-justification, much less retribution:

Of course I wasn’t very well informed about sex. Let’s just say that some things seemed more natural to me than others. I just wanted to please him, and at first I found it all a little strange. I didn’t know if I was doing it right. So after a while, the marriage itself left me cold.

To be sure, Dougherty was never cruel; but in his youthful ardor, manly egoism and spirit of independence, he was perhaps equally unprepared for the demands of marriage. As he admitted in his franker moments,

I used to stay out and shoot pool a lot with my buddies, and this hurt her feelings. I shouldn’t have done that, I know. She cried easily when I left her alone, which maybe I did too much.

Far from finding security with a “daddy” during the first year of her marriage, Norma Jeane quickly learned that in a crucial way her new relationship to this man bore a familiar pattern: she again felt nonessential.

“Her mentality was certainly above average,” Dougherty added privately. “She thought more maturely than I did, because of her rough life.” But given his attitude toward marriage in general (and this marriage in particular), he may have resented Norma Jeane’s maturity: thus his distance from her, and his occasional unwittingly callous attitude. He had considered the union as a favor to a sweet and attractive girl—and “an enchanting idea” for himself; it was also undertaken as a gesture by which he could give her a home with his mother when he went to war.

But however innocent and even benevolent, these are not the best motives for matrimony—a commitment for which he, as well, was apparently too emotionally callow. They both seem to have been aware of this complex of issues, for they mutually and firmly agreed on a crucial matter: they would not have children. In any case, Norma Jeane, little more than a child herself, was “terrified of the thought that I would become pregnant. . . . Women in my family had always made such a mess of mothering, and I was still getting used to being a wife. Becoming a mother was something I thought of as far off in the future.” Aware of the problems in their union (and of his eventual departure for military service) as well as their increasingly different perspectives, Dougherty was blunter: “I insisted on birth control.”

*    *    *

For a few months in early 1943, they lived at 14747 Archwood Street, Van Nuys—the home of Dougherty’s parents, who were living for a time outside Los Angeles. Jim continued to work at Lockheed, where his co-worker, the future actor Robert Mitchum, noticed that Dougherty brought the same lunch to work each day: a cold egg sandwich.