June 19th, 1942

On this day in 1942, 16 year old Norma Jean Baker marries James Dougherty after a few months of dating. 
James Dougherty was a retired Los Angeles police detective. Over the decades, Dougherty was repeatedly asked about his four-year marriage to the legendary star: "I never knew Marilyn Monroe, and I don't claim to have any insights to her to this day," he told United Press International in 1990. "I knew and loved Norma Jean."
A former Van Nuys High School football captain and class president, Dougherty was 20 and working the night shift at Lockheed Aircraft when he began dating 15-year-old Norma Jean Baker in January 1942.
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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kathleen Turner turns 63

Image
Born June 19, 1954 in Springfield, Missouri. Graduated from American School in London in 1972. After the death of her father, the Turner family moved back to the United States where Kathleen later enrolled at Missouri State University for two years, and earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in 1977.   Body Heat  (1981) was her debut role, as the relentless Matty Waker. Kathleen continued to flourish with performances in  The Man with Two Brains  (1983),  Romancing the Stone  (1984),  Crimes of Passion (1984),  The Jewel of the Nile  (1985),  Prizzi's Honor  (1985),  Peggy Sue Got Married  (1986), Julia and Julia (1987), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), The Accidental Tourist (1988),  The War of the Roses  (1989), V.I. Warshawski (1991), Undercover Blues (1993),  Serial Mom  (1994) and The Virgin Suicides (1999) among others.
Read more

Nicole Kidman turns 50

Image
Nicole Mary Kidman was born on June 20th, 1967, in Honolulu, Hawaii, while her Australian parents were temporarily in the United States on educational visas. Her breakthrough roles were in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. She came to worldwide recognition in a series of Hollywood blockbusters: Days of Thunder (1980) and Far and Away (1992) in which she starred opposite her future husband Tom Cruise, and Batman Forever (1995). Her performance in To Die For (1995) earned her her first Golden Globe award for Best Actress, then starred in Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady (1996), and right after she finished the long shooting of Stanley Kubrick's opus Eyes Wide Shut, she divorced Cruise and starred in The Others, and Moulin Rouge! (2001) for which she got Golden Globes and Academy Awards nominations (2001). Her performance as Virginia Wolf in The Hours (2002) received acclaim and earned her the Oscar, the BAFTA, The Golden Globe and the Silver Bear in the Berlin International
Read more

June 16-18 Weekend Box Office in the US

Image
Debuting with $53 million, “ Cars 3 ” took in $53 million, showing a clear slow down on the franchise, but still solid if you consider Pixar relies on all the licensed product sales as much as in the movie itself to bring in the cash.  “ Wonder Woman ” stands at $274 million domestically becoming the third highest grossing film in North America. Worldwide it has totaled $571 million to date. The biggest loser seems to be “ The Mummy ,” which continues to flop in the U.S. even if it's about to hit $300 million worldwide in week two thanks to  China .  The big surprise of the weekend belongs to  Tupac Shakur  biopic, “ All Eyez On Me .” with $27 million. The film also had the second highest per-screen average of the films in the top ten. “ Rough Night ” flopped with $8 million and this is even more shocking when you see “ 47 Meters Down ” outperforming at $11.5 million. “ Guardians Of The Galaxy ” is going to hit $400 million domestically soon will cross the $900 million
Read more