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.

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