Marilyn Monroe and Jim Dougherty (1942 - 1946)
Throughout Monroe's childhood (when she was still going by her original name of Norma Jean Baker), she was in and out of foster homes while her mother, Gladys Baker, was hospitalized due to paranoid schizophrenia. By the early 1940s, she was placed under the care of Grace Goddard, a friend of her mother, according to The Express. When a job opportunity forced Goddard to leave Los Angeles for West Virginia, she gave Monroe, who was still a ward of the state of L.A., an ultimatum. In an interview about her first marriage (via The Express), Monroe recounted, "[Goddard] arranged it. She and her husband were going to West Virginia and they were gonna put me in a home, you know like I had been before, or I could marry this boy who was 21 at the time. So I married." Monroe was only 16 when she married Dougherty in 1942.
During this time, the United States was a year into World War II, so Dougherty joined the Merchant Marines and was stationed overseas in 1944. Left behind by her husband, Baker started modelling after she was discovered by a photographer at her factory job. By 1945, she had signed a contract with the Blue Book Modelling Agency and transformed her once timid, cookie-cutter image into that of a bombshell model. As Baker's modelling career took, she also sought to work in film, and in 1946 signed a contract with 20th Century Fox.
To her dismay, the stipulations of the contract were that she had to be unmarried, so in September 1946, Baker filed for divorce. According to Doughtery himself, the soon-to-be starlet wanted to remain in a relationship, just without being legally married. He told UPI in a 1984 interview (via The LA Times), "She wanted me to be there — she just wanted us to keep on and not be married for the contract. I couldn't do that."
After her marriage from Dougherty ended, Baker changed her name to Marilyn Monroe and worked her way to the top of Tinseltown.