Saturday, June 6, 2020

"That's Miss Monroe To You"


Marylin Monroe was another fan favorite of our boys. In February 1954 she traveled to Korea to entertain the troops. She performed a quickly thrown-together show titled Anything Goes to audiences which totaled over 100,000 troops over 4 days. Then tour was also a chance for the film star to overcome a degree of stage fright. She remarked that the Korea trip “was the best thing that ever happened to me. I never felt like a star before in my heart. It was so wonderful to look down and see a fellow smiling at me”.

She was also married to a sailor before she hit the big time. James Dougherty, a retired Los Angeles police detective who earned a niche in Hollywood history when he married a pretty teenager named Norma Jean Baker in the early 1940s, years before she became the iconic sex symbol Marilyn Monroe. They were married for four years before she hit the big time. He only referred to her as Norma Jean. 

After Dougherty received an overseas assignment, his wife moved back to Van Nuys. She landed a job at Radioplane Co., where she initially packed and inspected the parachutes that attached to miniature, remote-controlled target planes.


After a photographer assigned to take pictures of women working as part of the war effort used her as a subject, the young Mrs. Dougherty became a sought-after model in the Los Angeles area.

Hollywood soon beckoned. And, when her marriage to her absent husband crumbled as her career ambitions rose, she sought a quickie divorce in Las Vegas; the marriage was officially over in September 1946.

I guess that’s just how it goes in love and war! I hope you enjoy the photos…






(Norma Jean and her First Husband)


































(Good Bye Norma Jean)

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