CAMELOT FANTASIES

On June 1, 1926, a little girl named Norma Jeane was born. The sad story of her childhood would be one much repeated and capitalized upon when this child became the most famous female star in Hollywood history. Norma Jeane did spend considerable time in foster homes, and very little of her childhood with her mother, Gladys. But the tales of childhood woe told later in her life were often exaggerated. Nonetheless, Norma Jeane had a difficult childhood, and suffered emotional problems throughout her life as a result of her lack of stability in childhood, and her feeling of being unwanted.


She tried to replace the father and mother, the family she never really had, through her marriages and by attaching herself to the families of others. Norma Jeane married James Dougherty in June of 1942, when she was just sixteen. He was older, something common to all of her husbands. The marriage was not, from most reports, particularly unhappy, but it was doomed to failure. Norma Jeane had higher aspirations than just being Mrs. Dougherty. In 1944, while working at a parachute factory, a new model was discovered, and Norma Jeane Dougherty's face began to appear on numerous magazine covers. Her rise to stardom had begun.