Norma Jeane Dougherty, model. If the little girl was never told she was pretty, the older girl was. In 1945 army photographer David Conover, snapping pictures of home-front girls working to support the war effort, saw her and asked, “Where have you been all my life? Have you got a sweater?” His pictures prompted the developer at Eastman Kodak to inquire, “Who’s your model, for goodness’ sake?”

She agreed to be paid five dollars an hour only if her pictures were sold to magazines. Quite a few were. Soon she was working for Emmeline Snively, founder of the Blue Book Models School. “The graduate I’m most proud of,” Miss Snively later wrote, “is Marilyn Monroe. Not only because she is the most successful and well known of my students, but because she started with the least. She was cute-looking, but she knew nothing about carriage, posture, walking, sitting, or posing.”

Miss Snively told Norma Jeane she’d look much better if she lowered her smile and straightened and bleached her hair. She practiced the smile but resisted dyeing her hair, fearing it would look unnatural. But when she was told that more jobs would come her way as a blonde, she relented. Her first job after the transformation was a shampoo ad (previous page). It was never used.