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"I WOULD PRETEND I WAS ALICE IN WONDERLAND”
When I was a little girl I would pretend I was Alice in Wonderland looking into a mirror, wondering what I would see. Was that really me? Who was that staring back at me? Could it be someone pretending to be me? I would dance around, make faces, just to see if that little girl in the mirror would do the same.
I suppose every kid's imagination takes over. The looking glass can be magical, like acting, in a strange way. Especially when you're pretending to be someone other than yourself. This did happen when I put on my mom's clothes, tried to fix my hair as she did and powder my face with her big powder puff, and, oh yes, her red rouge and lipstick and eye shadow. I would imagine I was sexy, like the top movie star in those days, Jean Harlow.
I'm sure I looked like a clown with all that makeup, because when I made my entrance to show myself off to my mom and her friends, they just couldn't stop laughing. I started crying. Then Mom came to my rescue. She said that cosmetics were mostly used by women when they lost their natural God-given looks. She told me nature's beauty had been given to little girls. There were no cosmetics that could match this. Mom said, “I'll let you know when it's time to give nature a hand.” That was my mother as I remember her. Always there when a little girl needs her mother.
I remember seeing Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. I sat there in a trance until my worried mother came to take me home. I asked her if there was another world out there or if it was just my imagination. Could dreams really come true? I wondered, Are the movies a make-believe land, just an illusion? Those huge images up there on the big screen in the dark theater a happy place? And looking into a mirror, Who is that looking back at me? Is it really me?
You know, children when they become adults are still at heart children. Sometimes I watch adult men. They act like little boys who have never grown up. I suppose it depends on the mood you are in. Our emotions play an important part in our lives. We cannot hide from them. My mother, bless her, used to say, “NormaJeane, make the most of it, because that's all you've got.”
GEORGE BARRIS: A quality often remarked in Marilyn was her “naturalness.” She had a face that seemed ageless, and she reminded me of the barefoot contessa. She hated to wear shoes, and her golden locks were constantly falling in front of her right eye. It was easy to understand why as a nineteen-year-old model she had become so popular, so in demand for bathing suit pictures. Given her appearance on all those magazine covers then, it was only a matter of time for her to be discovered by Hollywood film studios.
Even at thirty-six, she looked and acted like a teenager. During one of our beach photography sessions, she wore a bikini that revealed almost all of the physical Marilyn.
Being poor those early years acted in some ways as a blessing in disguise. I didn't have the money to go to beauty parlors for permanents orfacials, so I learned to do with what nature blessed me with, the natural look.
You know, I don't remember using makeup until I was twelve years old. That was when I was attending Emerson Junior High in Van Nuys. What got me started was that the other girls were doing it. I felt if I didn't at least use some makeup, they would snub me and I would feel out of place. Girls can do that. Believe me. They loaded their faces and hair with permanents, false eyelashes, eye shadow, mascara, rouge, powder, and loads of lipstick, with a touch of Vaseline to give their lips the moist look they were told makes them alluring. Me, I used very little lipstick. That was all.
I used to laugh to myself when I'd see these girls all made-up. They really looked awful, but I would never tell them. You know, girls that age would think I was just jealous. The boys at our school would make fun of these girls, telling them clowns at the circus looked better than they did. Me? The boys never would laugh at me. All they wanted to do was touch me all over. But my mom told me to tell them, Just keep your hands to yourself!
Even then, at twelve, when I wore a tight skirt and sweater, the boy's eyes would pop and they would whistle at me and just stare. It's true I started to blossom out in all directions at that tender age, in the front and the rear, too. In the front my boobs were
Well after she had become adept at the artifice of makeup, she was willing to show her public the real Marilyn Monroe, the real Norma Jeane. She would hide nothing in our photos. No magic, no makeup or retouching of our finished photographs.
At an interval in the shoot, a fan came up and asked me a question. He had noted the scar on Marilyn's stomach (from her gall bladder surgery), the prominent freckles on her arms and body, including her legs, and he even mentioned the traces of babylike fuzz on her face. Why didn't these “flaws” show up in photographs of the star? When I told this to Marilyn, she laughed and said, “Well, I guess that only proves I'm human.”
sprouting and in the rear my little tush became more firm and round. Like the boys would say, it looked like I was carrying two melons upfront and two more in the rear. The boys would get excited. They'd say that Norma Jeane shakes like Jell-O, up and down and even sideways. I'd let some of the nice boys walk me home, but it was always, “Hands off, guys.” If I liked a certain boy after he walked me home, when there was no one around I'd let him hug me and give me a peck on the cheek, but no funny stuff, as we called it in those days.
The boys knew better than to get fresh with me. The most they could expect was a good-night kiss on the cheek, and, as I told you before, if I really liked a boy he could
give me a hug around the waist friendly-like. I'd wrestle with the boys on the beach in a friendly way. Every boy wanted to wrestle with me.
I always looked older than my age, I guess it was my growing-up time. You know, some kids develop sooner than others. Why, when I was only ten, I shot up to my full height of five feet, five inches, except I was skinny and looked boyish. But when I was twelve, I all of a sudden became a sweater girl and caused a sensation where the boys were concerned.
At thirteen everyone said I looked eighteen, and the boys in their twenties were trying to date me. I may still have been a baby on the inside, but on the outside I had
the body of a woman. The boys would always whistle and flirt as if I was the only girl on the block. I started dating when I was thirteen. All the other girls became jealous of me. I guess they were afraid of losing their boyfriends.
Just three weeks after my sixteenth birthday, I was married to the boy next door, Jim Dougherty. In those days I would be considered a child bride. I guess even by today's standards I'd be considered one, too.
Guess who designed my wedding gown? Aunt Ana. I was so proud; I was listed as her niece on my marriage certificate. You know, at my first wedding I had six mothers claiming me and all weeping when I marched down the aisle. I guess they all considered me their daughter even though they were my foster mothers only—at one time or another in my young life.
I didn't know anything about marriage, especially the sex part of it, and I was scared to death of what a husband would do to me—but I'll tell you more about this later on.
I may still have been a baby on the inside, but on the outside I had the body of a woman.
