Page 10 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

“HAVE YOU EVER modeled before?”

Private David Conover of the Army’s First Motion Picture Unit wears a camera around his neck as he casually questions the attractive female factory worker.

“Just clay,” she replies.

Norma Jeane Dougherty is dressed in her uniform, overalls she wears cinched in at the waist and unbuttoned at the front.

I was surprised they insisted on putting us girls in overalls. Putting a girl in overalls is like having her work in tights, particularly if she knows how to wear them .

Norma Jeane certainly knows how to wear them.

At the Radioplane factory specializing in drone warfare, Conover can’t believe his luck. Right here in Burbank is the worker elected “queen” of the company picnic. She has a smudge on her face and her hair’s tied up in a scarf, but her eyes have more soul than he has ever seen.

“You don’t belong here,” he declares.

“Where do I belong?” she asks.

“On the cover of a magazine!” he says. “You’re a cover girl, that’s for sure.”

Her mother-in-law, Ethel Dougherty, got her this job.

She works at the Radioplane factory, too, as a nurse.

Though Norma Jeane starts off as a typist, “I only did thirty-five words a minute and didn’t do them very well, so they gave me a job inspecting parachutes,” she says.

Now she works ten-hour shifts inspecting and spraying parachutes with flame retardant.

Though she won a $50 war bond at the picnic, her regular salary is $20 a week.

With Conover’s encouragement, Norma Jeane takes off her head scarf and clips up her auburn curls, then smooths down her shirt and reapplies glossy red lipstick.

She poses, smiling, with a propeller. She is a natural in front of the camera. Exuding life from every pore. What a paradox—so unconfident in real life and yet so vibrant on film.

She’s intrigued to discover that the army private also has a stutter, the same speech impediment she’s had to overcome.

Conover invites her to visit his photography studio on the Sunset Strip.

“But I am a married woman,” she says.

“So much the better,” he replies with a wink. “Strictly business.”

Conover manages to negotiate for her to be allowed a few days leave from the factory.

Keen to learn, Norma Jeane squints over every print, asking about lighting and positioning and why one photograph works better than the other.

His earlier photo of her didn’t make it into Yank magazine’s issue on women in industry, but he’s eager to have another shoot.

Norma Jeane writes to Bebe Goddard that Conover tells her “I should buy all new clothes to go into the modeling profession…. He said he had a lot of contacts that he wanted me to look into.”

He photographs her in the Hollywood Hills wearing a white romper, a blue and white striped top, and a red sweater. The camera loves Norma Jeane. Conover snaps away, his hands shaking with excitement.

“How am I doing?” she asks, shielding her eyes from the sun. “Am I photogenic?”

“Hell, yes!”