Page 14 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

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. ”

Ethel Dougherty is not surprised or disappointed to see Norma Jeane go. That girl, 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 the linoleum 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 of Laff magazine.

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 the cover 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 magical something is, 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.

“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 your lipstick,” 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.”