of the still camera and hardly ready for a movie career.
She has not yet had her first acting lesson. Emmeline Snively,
however, is like a character in a Hollywood fight film — a
small-time fight promoter with the boy of his life, ready to turn
the fighter over to a big manager, if only for the love of the
game. So Emmeline comes up with a publicity item, and sends it to
Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons (who conceivably owe her a favor).
The item is printed. Because Howard Hughes is on the front page of
every newspaper after just surviving an airplane crash, and Norma
Jean Dougherty does not sound like a model, the squib — a wholly
functional factoid — reads as follows:
Howard Hughes must be on the road to
recovery. He turned over in his iron lung and wanted to know more
about Jean Norman, this month’s cover girl on Laff magazine.
It creates a little interest at movie
studios. The most mysterious property of a factoid is that it is
believed by the people who put together the factoid printed next to
it. So in many a Hollywood mind, Howard Hughes is interested
in her. Another Jane Russell? Even Norma Jean may not be convinced
Howard Hughes didn’t look at the cover. On this publicity zephyr
she soars into higher altitudes of identity and decides to become a
blonde, a blonde-blonde, which is to say honey-blonde,
golden-blonde, ash-blonde, platinum-blonde, silver-blonde — the
blonde will be on call. This conversion has been a campaign of
Emmeline’s ever since our heroine first came into the Blue Book
Agency. Norma Jean’s own light brown hair, described scornfully by
Emmeline as “dirty blonde,” photographs much too brunette, whereas
a blonde’s hair can be controlled by exposure to print light or
dark. But the psychological reason has to be deeper, equivalent
perhaps in some recess of Snively’s brain to the foot-binding of
Chinese ladies — when you want the role, commit yourself to it. If
you think to stand in the world for all to see, then give up your
piece of identity. Norma Jean’s resistance to the change has been
intense. She has so little identity to give away that the act of
becoming a blonde may blur the last of her few points of reference.
Besides, it must be frightening for her to conceive of the further
intensification of her sex appeal. As she will say in her Meryman
interview more than fifteen years later, “I’m always running into
people’s unconscious.” She is timid. We can do well to give her
credit, then, for the bravery, desperate perhaps, to think to walk
into the center of attention with all she knew of the violence
loose in the unconscious of everyone around her.
Norma Jean went to Frank and Joseph, hair
stylists, Hollywood: “. . . cut short, given a straight permanent”
— farewell to dungarees and bubble gum — “and then bleached a
golden blonde . . . styled in a sophisticated upsweep. She thought
it looked artificial. . . . ‘It wasn’t the real me .’ Then
she saw that it worked.”
She has her magazine covers, her divorce, her
publicity item, her new hair, and now, by way of Emmeline, a
Hollywood agent, Harry Lipton of National Concert Artists
Corporation. When she is famous he will say “so unsure of herself —
that terrible background . . . it gave her a quality that set her
apart.” She gets in to see Ben Lyon, the former actor, who played
with Jean Harlow in Hell’s Angels and now is casting
director at Fox. She is tongue-tied, helpless, bereft of film
credits, not particularly well-spoken, “I’ve tried to pick up all
the camera experience I can around the photographers who’ve used
me,” and a vision. Lyon, believing perhaps in Hughes’ interest,
orders a quick screen test, and in color — he wants her presence to
stand forth rather than her lack of training as an actress. He gets
Walter Lang (who is directing Betty Grable in Mother Wore
Tights ) to oversee the test after shooting for the day is done,
and gambles on using a hundred feet
She has not yet had her first acting lesson. Emmeline Snively,
however, is like a character in a Hollywood fight film — a
small-time fight promoter with the boy of his life, ready to turn
the fighter over to a big manager, if only for the love of the
game. So Emmeline comes up with a publicity item, and sends it to
Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons (who conceivably owe her a favor).
The item is printed. Because Howard Hughes is on the front page of
every newspaper after just surviving an airplane crash, and Norma
Jean Dougherty does not sound like a model, the squib — a wholly
functional factoid — reads as follows:
Howard Hughes must be on the road to
recovery. He turned over in his iron lung and wanted to know more
about Jean Norman, this month’s cover girl on Laff magazine.
It creates a little interest at movie
studios. The most mysterious property of a factoid is that it is
believed by the people who put together the factoid printed next to
it. So in many a Hollywood mind, Howard Hughes is interested
in her. Another Jane Russell? Even Norma Jean may not be convinced
Howard Hughes didn’t look at the cover. On this publicity zephyr
she soars into higher altitudes of identity and decides to become a
blonde, a blonde-blonde, which is to say honey-blonde,
golden-blonde, ash-blonde, platinum-blonde, silver-blonde — the
blonde will be on call. This conversion has been a campaign of
Emmeline’s ever since our heroine first came into the Blue Book
Agency. Norma Jean’s own light brown hair, described scornfully by
Emmeline as “dirty blonde,” photographs much too brunette, whereas
a blonde’s hair can be controlled by exposure to print light or
dark. But the psychological reason has to be deeper, equivalent
perhaps in some recess of Snively’s brain to the foot-binding of
Chinese ladies — when you want the role, commit yourself to it. If
you think to stand in the world for all to see, then give up your
piece of identity. Norma Jean’s resistance to the change has been
intense. She has so little identity to give away that the act of
becoming a blonde may blur the last of her few points of reference.
Besides, it must be frightening for her to conceive of the further
intensification of her sex appeal. As she will say in her Meryman
interview more than fifteen years later, “I’m always running into
people’s unconscious.” She is timid. We can do well to give her
credit, then, for the bravery, desperate perhaps, to think to walk
into the center of attention with all she knew of the violence
loose in the unconscious of everyone around her.
Norma Jean went to Frank and Joseph, hair
stylists, Hollywood: “. . . cut short, given a straight permanent”
— farewell to dungarees and bubble gum — “and then bleached a
golden blonde . . . styled in a sophisticated upsweep. She thought
it looked artificial. . . . ‘It wasn’t the real me .’ Then
she saw that it worked.”
She has her magazine covers, her divorce, her
publicity item, her new hair, and now, by way of Emmeline, a
Hollywood agent, Harry Lipton of National Concert Artists
Corporation. When she is famous he will say “so unsure of herself —
that terrible background . . . it gave her a quality that set her
apart.” She gets in to see Ben Lyon, the former actor, who played
with Jean Harlow in Hell’s Angels and now is casting
director at Fox. She is tongue-tied, helpless, bereft of film
credits, not particularly well-spoken, “I’ve tried to pick up all
the camera experience I can around the photographers who’ve used
me,” and a vision. Lyon, believing perhaps in Hughes’ interest,
orders a quick screen test, and in color — he wants her presence to
stand forth rather than her lack of training as an actress. He gets
Walter Lang (who is directing Betty Grable in Mother Wore
Tights ) to oversee the test after shooting for the day is done,
and gambles on using a hundred feet
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