MARILYN MONROE IN 1942 AT AGE 16 ON FILM

Before the glitz and the glamour that was Marilyn Monroe, there was Norma Jean Mortenson: a curly-haired brunette who never expected to be anything more than a housewife, born in California in 1926. At her foster mother's suggestion, Mortenson married her neighbor, 21-year-old James Dougherty. The newlywed young woman prepared for life as a housewife. She dropped out of school and dedicated herself to her husband. Dougherty was thrilled. "I felt like the luckiest guy in the world," he would later say. "We loved each other madly." His love wasn't reciprocated. "My husband and I hardly spoke to each other," she would say years later, after she'd become Marilyn Monroe. "We had nothing to say. I was dying of boredom."