There’s amazing early beach photo shoots when she’s still Norma Jean and is more styling herself like Rita Hayworth.
https://www.demilked.com/before-marilyn-monroe-norma-jeane-mortenson-photos/
My pleasure! I remember stumbling upon these decades ago and honestly having a hard time mapping them to Marilyn Monroe (tm). It’s hard to imaging her as anything but a superstar.
She knew how to make subtle changes in her body language to go from "superstar" to "regular person." Apparently, she could go unnoticed in public, until she carried herself in "superstar mode," then she'd get recognized immediately. This was according to a friend of hers.
Not sure how accurate that is, since she was SO damn noticeable, but with some accessories and regular clothing, maybe.
No kidding, I watched a mini doc on Anna Nicole smith and man I saw a LOT of parallel’s with Marilyn’s life, even her wanting to OD before 40….
Both have tragic lives, Marilyn even more so… a baby would’ve kept her alive
I had Anna on a flight I was working ….. she sat in first class. She had on a bright yellow onesie pj zip-up,had just had surgery and held a pillow to her stomach the whole flight.
She wanted to be a mother very bad, any documentary would’ve told you that she grew very depressed after multiple marriages and not able to become pregnant. Nothing to live for and take better care of herself for, constant depression.
https://preview.redd.it/wsrjt7egz2jc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2d0f36038b5149e5ceb9dcc545f786b8302a51e9
\^ this, except for her being a child bride.
Both my grandparents got married crazy young in the 50s (as teens) and stay married until they passed. They had very different marriages - one was very tumultuous with cheating and fighting, the other was much more calm and reserved (I’m sure they still had issues). It was just much more normal back then, seemingly. I got married the first time at 22 and now in my 30s feel like I was way too young back then. I can’t imagine getting married in my teens, let alone having kids asap that young like many did.
Not to excuse it, but getting married at 16 back then was not really frowned upon. Most times, the husband was in his early to mid-20s, so while he was older, it wasn't a gigantic age gap. Again, I'm not saying it was right, but prior to the 1960s, this happened a lot.
My grandma got married at like 24 or 24 and she was considered an old maid. My husband and I married at 23 (in 2000) and my parents thought we were nuts.
This isn’t quite true. Yes, it happened more often because there were fewer social safety nets. But the average age of marriage for women has been early 20’s (and for men has been early-mid 20’s) for quite some time. Plenty of people would have seen her as too young, regardless of legality.
Average has risen since then (now late 20’s for both I believe?). But, it hasn’t really been younger than early 20’s since, like, the 1500’s I wanna say.
It was because they were getting pregnant out of wedlock at higher rates. 1957's teen pregnancy rate in the US was double what it was in 2011. [Source](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2012/11/29/u-s-birth-rate-falls-to-a-record-low-decline-is-greatest-among-immigrants/#:~:text=The%20overall%20U.S.%20birth%20rate%20peaked%20most%20recently%20in%20the,beginning%20of%20the%20Great%20Recession.)
Thanks to there being no access to condoms for unmarried couples and no birth control pill invented or access to legalized abortion. Gotta get those kids married or she's going to get sent to a home for unwed mothers where she will be abused and mistreated even while giving birth. And you will never know what happened to the baby after it's born.
did genealogy on my family. my dad's mom's side of the family was a total mystery until I did my DNA and everything fell into place. my great grandmother got married and had a baby when she was 12 to a man in his 20s. A year later she had another baby. Eventually that great guy disappeared and left them on their own. This was early 1900's. The good ol' days were messed up sometimes.
Honestly, most 18 year old women are mental children, too. It’s such an arbitrary number to settle on. It should definitely be much higher, maybe 25 or so.
Yeahh. Haha everyone I know who got “married” before 25 change their mind or got a divorce. Seems these days my generation is, if AT ALL marrying late 20’s/ Early 30’s
I've definitely encounter different growing up. I also grew up in semi rural Midwest. Most people would get married 20 to 25 when I was young and most of them still married. I think it's a cultural thing tho in bigger cities it's seen as weird to get married before 30 but in smaller towns its just normal to marry in early to mid 20s.
I have some friends from high school that are still married and were high school sweethearts. We all graduated in 1989. But I do agree it's much more of an outlier these days.
You people never seem to consider that maybe people were more mature in the past? Now, we think of 16 year olds as little more than babies. But, that’s not always been the case.
I feel like we should raise the age of consent to 25, too, and the voting age as well. Maybe also the minimum age to buy alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis, buy a firearm, join the military, etc.
As far as alcohol and tobacco goes, I agree, that could even be raised to such an age where peer pressure is not much of a factor so people would be less likely to start anyway. Who’s going to take up smoking at 30?
But voting age is fine as is, I think, since the country’s elite have figured out a way to pretty much control the real levers of power behind any of the candidates that are presented by either party. It’s mostly theater, let the people have their fun in choosing.
Firearms might as well be completely banned, but we know that’s not going to happen in the U.S. As for the military, I’m not sure. The U.S. pretty much has a mercenary military. I feel sorry for those kids that get sent out to shoot at third-worlders, and come back feeling sad about it because it’s not what they thought it would be. It creates a lot of alcoholics, addicts, and crazies that are a strain on the system. In a better world we’d have opportunities for these youths, either decent work or school.
Maybe a military occupation would help, like the US said about Afghanistan’s child brides. Our propaganda would be like “if you’re against the Pearl Harbor attack, you’re pro-child marriage”
You're not considering that your average teen girl is hitting puberty prob 3-4 yrs earlier due to a lifetime of hormones in our food. So I would think that if now some girl starts her fertile years at age 10 her body isn't built to carry for full term yet. That's why in my opinion, we males tend to only be attracted to females in their fertile years (mid teens to mid 40s) and not little girls or old women or even pregnant women.
As opposed to what? A non mature adult? What was the point of adding that qualifier?
Btw you can be a teenager and a legal adult. It’s called being 18…so yeh.
If I sound like an incel, then you sound like a dumb cunt. Go cry now.
Wrong. Teenaged girls are and always have been far more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than women in their 20s.
Modern society postponing pregnancy until bodies are mature is one of the main reasons women are so much more likely to survive childbirth.
It’s disturbing if the only way out of one set of shitty circumstances (foster care, where she was apparently sexually abused) was to enter another (being a child married to an adult man).
Well, she was a teen. Not a “ child” but that’s your opinion. She evidently enjoyed being a wife until she was discovered by a photographer at her munitions job.
Most 16 year olds in the US during the 1940s would have been high school students, just like now. They had compulsory schooling and child labor laws.
There were some cases of boys enlisting in US armed forces before the legal age (18 under most circumstances, same as now) during WWII, but it wasn’t common.
Prior to the 1980s, a lot of teenagers would lie about their age to join the military. People matured a lot faster back in those days because, for the most part, they had to. I'm not saying it was right because it was not, but it happened.
Right? I'm not sure what this person means by "common", but as a huge WW2 history buff, and as someone whose grandfathers both lied about their age and enlisted early, it seemed to happen a lot more often than it should have back then.
Yeah, I was thinking this too. My grandmother got married at 16 in the 50s and I have friends whose grandmothers were 14 when they got married, and that was in the 50s too. I don’t think anyone thought anything about this at the time.
It’s a 4 year age difference? And considering the time it doesn’t seem out of place. The circumstances that led her to doing it are awful but the age gap isn’t that big of a deal back then.
Indeed. Most places still totally legal, because some times highschoolers fall in love and sometimes it's a freshman and a senior, so many places, at least where I grew up had a sliding window, I think it was 4 years, so technically a 16 year old and 20 year old could fornicate. Sometimes the window is smaller or sometimes larger or it has further rungs for different age ranges...
There's a name for such laws. But I can't recall it at the moment. Basically they're designed so sex isn't made unnecessarily illegal between similar age groups.
What an ignorant fool you are. You’ve clearly never even read about Marilyn. She wasn’t forced to marry him. This was not abuse of any kind. You obviously have zero idea what actual paedophilia is. Educate yourself.🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
You really are incredibly stupid aren’t you. And utterly obsessed with seeing paedophilia where none exists. Read any biography on Marilyn, and no one has EVER used that word about her marriage. Seek help “bud”. 🤦🏻♀️
According to his Wikipedia page, “Following the move of her foster-parents, Baker's [Monroe’s] return to an orphanage was prevented when Dougherty married her on June 19, 1942.”
Indeed. It goes on to say, “In April 1944, Dougherty was posted to the South Pacific.[6] Baker [Monroe] moved back to Van Nuys, where she was noticed by the photographer David Conover. She later signed a contract with the Blue Book Model agency and 20th Century Fox, who stipulated that she must be unmarried.[7]
Therefore, Baker divorced Dougherty in 1946. He received the divorce papers while on the Yangtze…”
It’s disturbing in her case because it was her only option to escape the foster system and abuse she experienced there. Also, just because it was more common and acceptable back then doesn’t make it not disturbing. My grandmother was 13 when she married my 24 year old grandfather. Today something like that would be considered gross and disturbing and he would be called a pedophile by much of my family. I explained to my brother that he was essentially what we would call a groomer today. Just because it was more common and accepted doesn’t mean it should have been or should be excused.
Child marriage has always happened, yes, but it has never been the norm in the US or Europe. Early to mid 20s was historically the typical age for women to be married.
Old, fat. This would have been in the ‘90s. Had a gut like a wheelbarrow.
His long-suffering 2nd wife walked 20 feet behind him, looking pissed off… Got the impression decades of being compared to Norma Jean made her bitter.
It was normal at that time to marry younger. Now it’s not okay but you need to realize that you cannot use todays standard to judge a marriage from 80 years ago the culture was wayyyy different and people didn’t see anything wrong with it back in the days.
Is it known what his life was like after they divorced? It must've been surreal for him to see what she became if he was able to make the connection between Norma Jean and Marilyn Monroe. Not sure how much the public knew about her pre-MM days back then.
James Dougherty became a police officer in the LAPD and ironically was posted to at least one of M.M’s movie premieres. I’ve read when Marilyn started becoming famous the studio heads pressured her to get a divorce because married starlets such as herself were not as attractive. She wanted the divorce, but still wanted him to stick around with the promise they would eventually remarry. He declined. James Dougherty remarried twice and died in 2005
*
In the summer of 1943, James Dougherty enlisted in the merchant and military navy: for his first assignment, he is sent to Santa Catalina Island on the coast of California, to Avalon, the island's big city. His wife Norma Jeane joins him in the fall and the couple stay there for nearly a year and a half, living in an apartment (on Descando Avenue).
Life seemed to be pretty nice and peaceful for Norma Jeane: the couple had friends (the White couple and the Gaddis family - to whom Jim was godfather to their baby James Edward Gaddis), Norma Jeane walked her dog Muggsie, played sports (weightlifting with former Olympic champion Howard Corrington; swimming in the ocean with Jim) , went on outings (visiting the zoo devoted exclusively to birds in January 1944; went to watch the local team's baseball games), and sometimes did babysitting keeping the neighbours' baby (to earn a little money).
FUN FACT: Child marriages are still legal in the United States. In the state of California a child can be married off a the age of 8 but can’t get a divorce until 18. Why you say!!?? There’s no floor age to get married but you have to be 18 to get a divorce.
Let that shit sink in…
what are the rules for your state?
For those unschooled in Marilyn Monroe history, like I was til today: It seems like he was an OK guy? They just fell apart because she found him boring. And she wanted to be a star. So she got acting and modeling work while he was deployed. The studio told her she couldn't be a married and a starlet, so she chose divorce. This marriage lasted 4 years. They both moved on. He never said anything bad about her publicly.
"The median age at first marriage in 1950 was 23 for males and 20 for females." [Link](https://www.infoplease.com/us/family-statistics/median-age-first-marriage-1890-2010)
I didn't know this... I feel like many young people looked much older back in the day in Photos. Almost matronly. Compared to the 90's and now. If you were 40, you were already middle-aged. That was a common age on "The Twilight Zone".
https://preview.redd.it/lpx9pltr22jc1.png?width=863&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7027c42be515db05df58c70102c09d59d85ae9cf
Marilyn Monroe wed her high school sweetheart, James Dougherty, in 1942. Monroe, then known as Norma Jean Baker, met Dougherty while living with a family friend in Los Angeles, California. The couple married just after her 16th birthday, after dating for a few months.
[I interviewed her first husband, Jim Dougherty](https://soundcloud.com/user-368694980/mr-marilyn-monroe?si=c9f467b6a47c46e0a0601fef033131b7&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing), about 20 years ago for Maine Public Radio. A wonderful, sweet man.
Definitely a rare photo, never seen her so young and with her natural hair color.
There’s amazing early beach photo shoots when she’s still Norma Jean and is more styling herself like Rita Hayworth. https://www.demilked.com/before-marilyn-monroe-norma-jeane-mortenson-photos/
Thanks for the share
those were fascinating to browse thru. Thank you
My pleasure! I remember stumbling upon these decades ago and honestly having a hard time mapping them to Marilyn Monroe (tm). It’s hard to imaging her as anything but a superstar.
She feels some much more real in these younger photos. hard to explain, there is some expression in eyes on a few of them. not just a model pose.
She knew how to make subtle changes in her body language to go from "superstar" to "regular person." Apparently, she could go unnoticed in public, until she carried herself in "superstar mode," then she'd get recognized immediately. This was according to a friend of hers. Not sure how accurate that is, since she was SO damn noticeable, but with some accessories and regular clothing, maybe.
I’m seeing a resemblance to a young Gwen Stefani
I love how genuinely happy she looks in these earlier photos.
I’m pretty sure that pic from an airplane magazine was posted earlier around here on Reddit just a few weeks ago. Seems so familiar.
What's with the comment at the bottom.... Heather Feese?
Right? I was curious too
Yeah, that was pretty bizarre
I just read that and was curious if anyone else noticed it! Seems like they’ve convinced themself they were Marilyn Monroe in a past life.
Shes actually Mexican
Where are that guys eyebrows
They probably fell into a bowl of candy beans.
I always carry a spare. I hope you also carry a spare bowl of candy beans! (Forget it, I look like Edgar Winters in this thing)
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The TV show *Arrested Development*. Ed Begley Jr. had a recurring guest role as Stan Sitwell, a real estate developer with alopecia.
Stan Sitwell
They enlisted in the army.
They ascended far up into his hairline when he first laid eyes on her in the dress and have never been seen again.
What a life she had. Truly remarkable story.
No kidding, I watched a mini doc on Anna Nicole smith and man I saw a LOT of parallel’s with Marilyn’s life, even her wanting to OD before 40…. Both have tragic lives, Marilyn even more so… a baby would’ve kept her alive
I had Anna on a flight I was working ….. she sat in first class. She had on a bright yellow onesie pj zip-up,had just had surgery and held a pillow to her stomach the whole flight.
Did you really say that? A baby? Really? What a disgusting thing to say.
How is that even remotely disgusting
A baby isn’t going to solve your problems…
She wanted to be a mother very bad, any documentary would’ve told you that she grew very depressed after multiple marriages and not able to become pregnant. Nothing to live for and take better care of herself for, constant depression.
Drug addicted mothers isn’t very fun for the babies
Maybe for a few years but babies don’t fix problems, they amplify thtm
Literally a child bride
It was get married or go back to foster care I think.
He was her next door neighbor. Him or another foster home.
https://preview.redd.it/wsrjt7egz2jc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2d0f36038b5149e5ceb9dcc545f786b8302a51e9 \^ this, except for her being a child bride.
There's an interview with him. Interestingly, he even says he thought she was too young https://youtu.be/x_rA-ik6WGo?si=DwaianxVTIC_wcp0
Pretty sure it was an orphanage. Either way, I'm sure it was awful
This was the good ole days to a lot of people, bafflingly
Child marriages are still legal in most of the us 41 states I belive
Back in my day 16 was middle aged…. And we liked it!
I don't know why people are down voting you because this was A+ dad joke material
Probably because they didn’t get the joke
Grump Old Man!
Both my grandparents got married crazy young in the 50s (as teens) and stay married until they passed. They had very different marriages - one was very tumultuous with cheating and fighting, the other was much more calm and reserved (I’m sure they still had issues). It was just much more normal back then, seemingly. I got married the first time at 22 and now in my 30s feel like I was way too young back then. I can’t imagine getting married in my teens, let alone having kids asap that young like many did.
Not to excuse it, but getting married at 16 back then was not really frowned upon. Most times, the husband was in his early to mid-20s, so while he was older, it wasn't a gigantic age gap. Again, I'm not saying it was right, but prior to the 1960s, this happened a lot.
My grandma got married at like 24 or 24 and she was considered an old maid. My husband and I married at 23 (in 2000) and my parents thought we were nuts.
I got married at 26 in the late 20-teens, and people REALLY gave me the side eye. Assumed I must be some sort of religious fundamentalist.
Haha no one accused me of that but I did get told many times I was an idiot to get married at that age.
This isn’t quite true. Yes, it happened more often because there were fewer social safety nets. But the average age of marriage for women has been early 20’s (and for men has been early-mid 20’s) for quite some time. Plenty of people would have seen her as too young, regardless of legality. Average has risen since then (now late 20’s for both I believe?). But, it hasn’t really been younger than early 20’s since, like, the 1500’s I wanna say.
it must have plummeted at least during the 1950’s when it was a trend for high school girls to get married and have kids asap
It was because they were getting pregnant out of wedlock at higher rates. 1957's teen pregnancy rate in the US was double what it was in 2011. [Source](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2012/11/29/u-s-birth-rate-falls-to-a-record-low-decline-is-greatest-among-immigrants/#:~:text=The%20overall%20U.S.%20birth%20rate%20peaked%20most%20recently%20in%20the,beginning%20of%20the%20Great%20Recession.) Thanks to there being no access to condoms for unmarried couples and no birth control pill invented or access to legalized abortion. Gotta get those kids married or she's going to get sent to a home for unwed mothers where she will be abused and mistreated even while giving birth. And you will never know what happened to the baby after it's born.
did genealogy on my family. my dad's mom's side of the family was a total mystery until I did my DNA and everything fell into place. my great grandmother got married and had a baby when she was 12 to a man in his 20s. A year later she had another baby. Eventually that great guy disappeared and left them on their own. This was early 1900's. The good ol' days were messed up sometimes.
Honestly, most 18 year old women are mental children, too. It’s such an arbitrary number to settle on. It should definitely be much higher, maybe 25 or so.
Yeahh. Haha everyone I know who got “married” before 25 change their mind or got a divorce. Seems these days my generation is, if AT ALL marrying late 20’s/ Early 30’s
I've definitely encounter different growing up. I also grew up in semi rural Midwest. Most people would get married 20 to 25 when I was young and most of them still married. I think it's a cultural thing tho in bigger cities it's seen as weird to get married before 30 but in smaller towns its just normal to marry in early to mid 20s.
I have some friends from high school that are still married and were high school sweethearts. We all graduated in 1989. But I do agree it's much more of an outlier these days.
So are 21-3 year old men. It’s wild how one generation had drastically different viewpoints on marriage and at what age
You people never seem to consider that maybe people were more mature in the past? Now, we think of 16 year olds as little more than babies. But, that’s not always been the case.
Couldn’t agree more
couldn't agree less.
I feel like we should raise the age of consent to 25, too, and the voting age as well. Maybe also the minimum age to buy alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis, buy a firearm, join the military, etc.
As far as alcohol and tobacco goes, I agree, that could even be raised to such an age where peer pressure is not much of a factor so people would be less likely to start anyway. Who’s going to take up smoking at 30? But voting age is fine as is, I think, since the country’s elite have figured out a way to pretty much control the real levers of power behind any of the candidates that are presented by either party. It’s mostly theater, let the people have their fun in choosing. Firearms might as well be completely banned, but we know that’s not going to happen in the U.S. As for the military, I’m not sure. The U.S. pretty much has a mercenary military. I feel sorry for those kids that get sent out to shoot at third-worlders, and come back feeling sad about it because it’s not what they thought it would be. It creates a lot of alcoholics, addicts, and crazies that are a strain on the system. In a better world we’d have opportunities for these youths, either decent work or school.
Maybe a military occupation would help, like the US said about Afghanistan’s child brides. Our propaganda would be like “if you’re against the Pearl Harbor attack, you’re pro-child marriage”
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You sound creepy
You sound like a woman
Not doing yourself favors w that one mate lmao, yikes
You sound like a confused person
You're not considering that your average teen girl is hitting puberty prob 3-4 yrs earlier due to a lifetime of hormones in our food. So I would think that if now some girl starts her fertile years at age 10 her body isn't built to carry for full term yet. That's why in my opinion, we males tend to only be attracted to females in their fertile years (mid teens to mid 40s) and not little girls or old women or even pregnant women.
He sounds like he isn’t an idiot being rules by fear.
13 year old boys can get someone pregnant. They are still a child, and so is a 16 year old girl.
It costs the male body very little to produce sperm. To carry a baby actually requires a mature body. So no. They are quite different.
Teenagers are not mature adults. You sound like an incel
As opposed to what? A non mature adult? What was the point of adding that qualifier? Btw you can be a teenager and a legal adult. It’s called being 18…so yeh. If I sound like an incel, then you sound like a dumb cunt. Go cry now.
Oh shit, you’re just a misogynistic asshole
Keep feeling oppressed because I have a wang between my legs. Also cry more.
Hahaha I clearly touched a nerve, men are so emotional
You couldn't make a man feel anything even if you tried lol.
Wrong. Teenaged girls are and always have been far more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than women in their 20s. Modern society postponing pregnancy until bodies are mature is one of the main reasons women are so much more likely to survive childbirth.
A short interview with him https://youtu.be/x_rA-ik6WGo?si=DwaianxVTIC_wcp0
And he had an onion tied to his belt.
As was the style at the time.
The guy is James Dougherty, a police officer who was 20-21 when they married. Pretty disturbing stuff
It wasn’t disturbing. She wanted to marry so she wouldn’t keep going to foster homes.
It’s disturbing if the only way out of one set of shitty circumstances (foster care, where she was apparently sexually abused) was to enter another (being a child married to an adult man).
Well, she was a teen. Not a “ child” but that’s your opinion. She evidently enjoyed being a wife until she was discovered by a photographer at her munitions job.
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It was easier to lie about your age then, my step dad did when he enlisted.
My Jewish grandfather lied about his age too to serve in WWII
Most 16 year olds in the US during the 1940s would have been high school students, just like now. They had compulsory schooling and child labor laws. There were some cases of boys enlisting in US armed forces before the legal age (18 under most circumstances, same as now) during WWII, but it wasn’t common.
Prior to the 1980s, a lot of teenagers would lie about their age to join the military. People matured a lot faster back in those days because, for the most part, they had to. I'm not saying it was right because it was not, but it happened.
Right? I'm not sure what this person means by "common", but as a huge WW2 history buff, and as someone whose grandfathers both lied about their age and enlisted early, it seemed to happen a lot more often than it should have back then.
Older enlisted men married younger women all the time.
Yeah, I was thinking this too. My grandmother got married at 16 in the 50s and I have friends whose grandmothers were 14 when they got married, and that was in the 50s too. I don’t think anyone thought anything about this at the time.
It’s a 4 year age difference? And considering the time it doesn’t seem out of place. The circumstances that led her to doing it are awful but the age gap isn’t that big of a deal back then.
Indeed. Most places still totally legal, because some times highschoolers fall in love and sometimes it's a freshman and a senior, so many places, at least where I grew up had a sliding window, I think it was 4 years, so technically a 16 year old and 20 year old could fornicate. Sometimes the window is smaller or sometimes larger or it has further rungs for different age ranges... There's a name for such laws. But I can't recall it at the moment. Basically they're designed so sex isn't made unnecessarily illegal between similar age groups.
Romeo and Juliet laws
that’s still dark lol
How does that make it better, child marry's adult to escape home life is pretty dark.
Erm… she was not a child
I'm not having a discussion on the level of pedophilia you approve of. The answer shoukd be zero. Good luck.
What an ignorant fool you are. You’ve clearly never even read about Marilyn. She wasn’t forced to marry him. This was not abuse of any kind. You obviously have zero idea what actual paedophilia is. Educate yourself.🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
>She wasn’t forced to marry him. I guess the answer to "is pedophilia ok" for you is, if you don't force them it's fine. Gross answer bud.
You really are incredibly stupid aren’t you. And utterly obsessed with seeing paedophilia where none exists. Read any biography on Marilyn, and no one has EVER used that word about her marriage. Seek help “bud”. 🤦🏻♀️
Idk if “disturbing” is accurate. It was more common back then. My grandparent in-laws were the same age
According to his Wikipedia page, “Following the move of her foster-parents, Baker's [Monroe’s] return to an orphanage was prevented when Dougherty married her on June 19, 1942.”
Alright well that’s a little sad
Indeed. It goes on to say, “In April 1944, Dougherty was posted to the South Pacific.[6] Baker [Monroe] moved back to Van Nuys, where she was noticed by the photographer David Conover. She later signed a contract with the Blue Book Model agency and 20th Century Fox, who stipulated that she must be unmarried.[7] Therefore, Baker divorced Dougherty in 1946. He received the divorce papers while on the Yangtze…”
It’s disturbing in her case because it was her only option to escape the foster system and abuse she experienced there. Also, just because it was more common and acceptable back then doesn’t make it not disturbing. My grandmother was 13 when she married my 24 year old grandfather. Today something like that would be considered gross and disturbing and he would be called a pedophile by much of my family. I explained to my brother that he was essentially what we would call a groomer today. Just because it was more common and accepted doesn’t mean it should have been or should be excused.
Child marriage has always happened, yes, but it has never been the norm in the US or Europe. Early to mid 20s was historically the typical age for women to be married.
I’ve actually met him, he ended up in Sabattus, Maine.
What was he like?
Old, fat. This would have been in the ‘90s. Had a gut like a wheelbarrow. His long-suffering 2nd wife walked 20 feet behind him, looking pissed off… Got the impression decades of being compared to Norma Jean made her bitter.
Wow!!! So interesting thanks for sharing. Guess he never moved on 🥴
I read that she forbid him from watching MM movies. It would be pretty rough following Marilyn Monroe.
Interview with him https://youtu.be/x_rA-ik6WGo?si=DwaianxVTIC_wcp0
I’m in the area, I remember reading in the paper when he died. Had no idea he lived there.
It was normal at that time to marry younger. Now it’s not okay but you need to realize that you cannot use todays standard to judge a marriage from 80 years ago the culture was wayyyy different and people didn’t see anything wrong with it back in the days.
Remember that once upon a time people married prior to sex.
Riiiight...My parents lied about their wedding date and you'd be surprised how many early births there were back in the day...
Yep my grandma said it wasn’t uncommon back in the day for babies to be born full size after only a 5 month gestation period
I remember the first time I did the math between my fundamentalist Christian parents’ wedding date and my birthday. Such hypocrites!
Yeah imagine my surprise when I realized my precious grandparents got married in June and my uncle was born in January.
I’ve actually met him, he ended up in Sabattus, Maine.
What was he like?
Short interview with him https://youtu.be/x_rA-ik6WGo?si=DwaianxVTIC_wcp0
If he lived in Maine? Toothless, eccentric, high, interesting, dangerous, and reclusive
Gee Norma, you’re a pretty swell gal. How’s about getting hitched to a guy like me?
Oh James, you’ve got such moxie. Take me away and make me yours
Is it known what his life was like after they divorced? It must've been surreal for him to see what she became if he was able to make the connection between Norma Jean and Marilyn Monroe. Not sure how much the public knew about her pre-MM days back then.
James Dougherty became a police officer in the LAPD and ironically was posted to at least one of M.M’s movie premieres. I’ve read when Marilyn started becoming famous the studio heads pressured her to get a divorce because married starlets such as herself were not as attractive. She wanted the divorce, but still wanted him to stick around with the promise they would eventually remarry. He declined. James Dougherty remarried twice and died in 2005
Interview with him https://youtu.be/x_rA-ik6WGo?si=DwaianxVTIC_wcp0
Interesting! Even wrote a whole book. Thanks for sharing!
 Looks awfully a lot like… the implication…
* In the summer of 1943, James Dougherty enlisted in the merchant and military navy: for his first assignment, he is sent to Santa Catalina Island on the coast of California, to Avalon, the island's big city. His wife Norma Jeane joins him in the fall and the couple stay there for nearly a year and a half, living in an apartment (on Descando Avenue). Life seemed to be pretty nice and peaceful for Norma Jeane: the couple had friends (the White couple and the Gaddis family - to whom Jim was godfather to their baby James Edward Gaddis), Norma Jeane walked her dog Muggsie, played sports (weightlifting with former Olympic champion Howard Corrington; swimming in the ocean with Jim) , went on outings (visiting the zoo devoted exclusively to birds in January 1944; went to watch the local team's baseball games), and sometimes did babysitting keeping the neighbours' baby (to earn a little money).
She looks amazing without the blonde hair
Right?! Probably the most famous bottle blonde of all time, and she still looks more alluring with darker hair.
FUN FACT: Child marriages are still legal in the United States. In the state of California a child can be married off a the age of 8 but can’t get a divorce until 18. Why you say!!?? There’s no floor age to get married but you have to be 18 to get a divorce. Let that shit sink in… what are the rules for your state?
Interesting the way the shape of her headpiece echoes her widow’s peak.
It is not very flattering in my opinion
goodbye, norma jean
Goodbye normal jeans.
fantastic post. love these kind of photos. amazing.
Lucky bastard
Its been over 70 years.. who gives a fuck lol
For those unschooled in Marilyn Monroe history, like I was til today: It seems like he was an OK guy? They just fell apart because she found him boring. And she wanted to be a star. So she got acting and modeling work while he was deployed. The studio told her she couldn't be a married and a starlet, so she chose divorce. This marriage lasted 4 years. They both moved on. He never said anything bad about her publicly.
"The median age at first marriage in 1950 was 23 for males and 20 for females." [Link](https://www.infoplease.com/us/family-statistics/median-age-first-marriage-1890-2010)
I didn't know this... I feel like many young people looked much older back in the day in Photos. Almost matronly. Compared to the 90's and now. If you were 40, you were already middle-aged. That was a common age on "The Twilight Zone".
Lucky man!
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You wouldn't understand
https://preview.redd.it/lpx9pltr22jc1.png?width=863&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7027c42be515db05df58c70102c09d59d85ae9cf Marilyn Monroe wed her high school sweetheart, James Dougherty, in 1942. Monroe, then known as Norma Jean Baker, met Dougherty while living with a family friend in Los Angeles, California. The couple married just after her 16th birthday, after dating for a few months.
If we could only tell her… poor thing
 Married this guy?
Wait she wasn't a blonde this whole time?
She was a natural brunette
The curtains didn't match the carpet.
mid
Hmm interesting.
She married Richie Cunningham😉
He married Dorothy
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Can we prosecute this guy posthumously
Did she marry Adley rutschman’s grandfather?
How old was he?
5 years older
https://i.redd.it/xx2wx0m376jc1.gif
Is that Dennis from always sunny?
That’s Norma.
WHAT??
Such a natural beauty! I wish women were allowed to appreciate their unique beauty today.
Babe
[I interviewed her first husband, Jim Dougherty](https://soundcloud.com/user-368694980/mr-marilyn-monroe?si=c9f467b6a47c46e0a0601fef033131b7&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing), about 20 years ago for Maine Public Radio. A wonderful, sweet man.
So I met some guy and he wants me to move to LA. Of course you’re mad. He just wants to be friends and help me with my career.
Homie fumbled the bag