“She started out with less than any girl I ever knew,” so recalled Hollywood modeling agent Emmeline Snively of her client Norma Jeane Dougherty at the age of 19. “But she worked the hardest. She wanted to learn. She wanted to be somebody more than anybody I ever saw before in my life.”This book focuses on the late summer of 1946 when Norma Jeane Dougherty became Marilyn Monroe.
It’s a story that’s often been told but here we see it through the eyes of all but a select few insiders.
Providing a dramatic approach to a factual commentary drawn from a variety of sources, Glaeg paints a portrait of Norma Jeane as a girl with starry-eyed ambition. From her nearly disastrous screen test, she’s shepherded toward fame by a bevy of handlers, including the makeup artist Whitey Snyder, who transforms her face and the executive Ben Lyon, who bestows her legendary new name. Before she’s famous, however, Norma Jeane faces her own family’s disapproval—save for a few supportive aunts—over her chosen career.
The narrative describes the three women who raised her, even as her own mother disappeared into a mental institution. Far from being merely the “blonde of the day,” Norma Jeane ultimately proves herself worthy of Hollywood stardom, with a mixture of radiant inner beauty and the keen ability to adapt to the role. The transformation is marked by a paradox: She’s simultaneously a fabrication and an honest soul.
The author makes no direct comments on the emotional and psychological toll of such a transformation, but the reader observes her divorce, her mother’s disapproval and the relationship between Norma Jeane and her half sister, Berniece Miracle.Fans will appreciate this modest look at how a star is born and the transformation of this “pretty but plain” starlet, that was to become the most photographed, most talked about, and most written about woman of the 20th Century.
By Fraser Penney
