Page 13 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

Their dreams in their backpacks, their longing written all over their overly made-up faces, these hopefuls trawl the streets of West Hollywood, exuding hope and desperation.

Weighed down with their headshots and well-thumbed scripts, they wait at bus stops and queue at diners for temporary jobs—just until their big breaks hit.

They talk about the times they were “an extra on Broadway,” how they can do “tap and jazz and can sing like an angel,” or how they were voted “Miss Teen Texas three-years-in-a-row.”

Norma Jeane lies in bed at night, listening to the staccato snoring of Ethel Dougherty through the paper-thin walls of the two-bedroom house in Van Nuys, and dreams of escape.

The war is over, the economy is booming, and everyone else seems to be getting on with their lives, except for her.

She feels trapped, living with her disapproving mother-in-law, writing letters to her husband, who never seems to reply.

She’s heard no news from him in weeks. Though the war is over, he’s been recalled to help transport men and supplies back to Europe and the United States after the Allied victory.

She’d tried to impress him with her modeling career, that she was working, earning a living. The last time she’d seen him, she’d shown him the magazine covers, piled high on the small table in Ethel’s living room. She’d waved about the adverts and fashion spreads.

He’d cared only about the bills. “You took all the money we had in savings and bought clothes with it,” Dougherty accuses her.

She’d written him about her new blond hair.

He wasn’t interested. She’d known, as he’d shipped himself off yet again, full of promises of a speedy return and fidelity, that the most important promise had already been broken.

She could no longer ignore the splendid beauty of Hollywood.

All actors and actresses were geniuses sitting in the porch of paradise—the movies.

Acting became something golden and beautiful.

It wasn’t an art. It was like the bright colors I used to see in my daydreams—like a game that enabled me to step out of a dark and dull world, into worlds so bright they made my heart leap just to think of them.

From time to time, I took drama lessons when I had enough money.

They were expensive. I paid ten dollars an hour, and I often used to say my speech lessons out loud as I was walking around …

The idea of the movies kept going through my mind.

Emmeline Snively believes Norma Jeane might have what it takes to make it in the movies.

She recommends the girl to her friend Helen “Cupid” Ainsworth—a comedic actress who now works out of the West Coast office of the National Concert and Artists Corporation and refers to herself as the “biggest agent” in Hollywood.

Charmed by the sweet-natured, bottle-blond Norma Jeane, Ainsworth puts her straight on her books, with Harry Lipton as her special “motion-picture” representative.

In May 1946, Norma Jeane heads down to Schwab’s Pharmacy at 8024 Sunset Boulevard.

Part diner, part drugstore, Schwab’s sells cigarettes in one corner and cigars in the other—and has a newsstand up front and a pinball game at the back.

It’s the place to be, where the actors gather to hear about who’s who, and what’s what. It’s where movie star Lana Turner was discovered, so they say. Now it’s full of hundreds of girls in tight sweaters, sucking on cream sodas and trying not to smear their lipstick.

The noise, as Norma Jeane swings through double doors, is overwhelming. The steaming coffee machines, the clatter of knives and forks, the thunderous laughter, the ping-pong of gossip. It is difficult to know where to put herself.

She glances up and down the counter.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” she asks a young man with slick hair and a shiny suit, hunched over a notepad.

“Sure,” he says looking up and pushing his heavy-rimmed glasses back up his long nose. “Go ahead, it’s not taken.”

“That’s really very sweet of you,” she replies with her not-too-high smile, as she climbs up onto the leather stool in her tight black pencil skirt and places a folder of headshots onto the counter. She sighs. “So, what does a girl drink in here?”

“Well, it depends,” replies the young man, stubbing out his cigarette and looking her up and down.

“On what?”

“On what sort of a day you’ve had.”

“Well, honestly, it’s not been great. I’ve been sitting on a hard bench so long in the sun, along with all the other hopefuls, waiting for a part, any part, a walk-on role, an extra, a chance …

I think might have burnt my nose.” She taps the end of her nose with the tip of her index finger. “I feel it must be quite pink.”

“Let me see,” asks the man, bending over to take a closer look. She smells of talcum powder and pears, he thinks. “It looks perfectly fine to me.”

“You’re just saying that to be sweet.”

“No one calls me sweet.”

She sits back to look at him. “But you do look sweet with your thick glasses and your smart tie.”

“I’m a journalist, ma’am.”

“But that’s so brave.”

“I specialize in gossip.”

“That’s so fun!”

“I’m Sidney—Sid—Skolsky. I write a newspaper column called ‘From a Stool at Schwab’s’ for Photoplay magazine.”

“And here you are, on a stool in Schwab’s!”

“Here I am indeed. What can I get you?”

“Hmm.”

“Did they ask you to come back after sitting in the sun? Or did they say, ‘See you around’? Or worse, ‘We can’t see you today at all’?”

“We can’t see you today at all.”

“Then you, my dear, will be needing a bourbon.”

“A bourbon-bourbon?”

“A ‘We can’t see you at all’ bourbon.”

She smiles and extends her hand. “I’m Mrs. Norma Jeane Dougherty.”

“Well, in all my life I have never heard a more terrible name for such a beautiful young woman.”

Turns out that Sid Skolsky is quite the guy. He knows everyone, everything: all the deals, the casting directors, the producers, the directors, who’s up and coming, and who’s on their way down.

The reason he works mostly out of Schwab’s—or “the Schwabadero, the wannabes’ Trocadero,” as he calls it—is because he doesn’t know how to drive.

He has a phobia of cars, to go along with his phobia of cats, dogs, germs, and children.

Others put forward the uncharitable explanation that Skolsky’s legs are too short for his feet to reach the pedals of an automobile.

Norma Jeane listens, her mouth slightly open as she soaks up his every word.

“Say,” he says, pointing the end of his lit cigarette in her general direction. “You do know that no major studio will put you under contract?”

“Why not?”

Is it her nose? Her hair? What?

“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?