By Michelle Morgan and Astrid Franse
November 21, 2015 | 6:00pm
One day, while shopping for vintage items for their shop, Bennies Fifties in the Netherlands, Astrid and Ben Franse bought a box of old Marilyn Monroe memorabilia from a dealer in Los Angeles. They didn't know what they really had: a treasure trove. In the box were letters and never-before-seen photos from Miss Emmeline Snively, who had run the Blue Book Modeling Agency - the agent who had signed a young Norma Jeane Dougherty. In the new book "Before Marilyn," Astrid Franse and co-author Michelle Morgan reveal for the first time this archive and how Snively helped turn Norma Jeane into Marilyn Monroe.
In early August 1945, a photographer friend took Norma Jeane Dougherty from her home in West Los Angeles to be introduced to Miss Emmeline Snively, owner of the Blue Book Modeling Agency.
"Before Marilyn: The Blue Book Modeling Years" by Astrid Franse and Michelle Morgan (St. Martin's Press)
Norma Jeane was married, bored - and beautiful. Raised an orphan, she wed at 16 to escape a series of foster homes. But her husband shipped off with the Merchant Marines, and she worked an exhausting shift at the local defense plant.
Her face was her escape. She was noticed by propaganda photographers in the factory and after the war went looking for a job at Blue Book.
Snively, who had seen every kind of girl the profession had to offer, did not think there was anything too out-of-the-ordinary about the girl standing in her office at the Ambassador Hotel. She noted in her file: "Norma Jeane had been brought to the hotel by photographer Potter Hueth, wearing a simple white dress and armed with her modeling portfolio, which offered no more than a few choice snaps . . . You wouldn't necessarily wear a white dress to a modeling job, and it was as clean and white and ironed and shining as she was."
Norma Jean, then 19, was staring at the magazine covers and publicity photos gracing the walls.
"Those are the prettiest girls I've ever seen," she muttered, almost to herself, before turning to Miss Snively. "Do you think I could ever get my picture on a magazine cover?"
Snively looked her up and down. "Of course," she smiled. "You're a natural."
Snively noted her statistics on an agency card: "Size 12, height 5.6, 36 bust, 24 waist, 34 hips. Blue eyes, perfect teeth and blonde, curly hair." "Actually," she later wrote, "her hair was dirty blonde. California blonde which means that it's dark in the winter and light in the summer. I recall that it curled very close to her head, which was quite unmanageable. I knew at once it would have to be bleached and worked on."