American police officer noted as the first husband of 16-year-old Norma Jeane Mortensen who would become the famous actress Marilyn Monroe. During their short marriage from 1942 to 1946, the brunette Mortensen dropped out of high school, dyed her hair blonde, began her modelling and acting career, and adopted the stage name “Marilyn Monroe”.
In early 1942, the company that employed Monroe’s foster father Doc Goddard relocated him to West Virginia. California child protection laws prevented the Goddards from taking Monroe out of state, and she faced having to return to an orphanage. As a solution, she married their neighbours’ 21-year-old son, factory worker James Dougherty; the wedding took place on 19 June 1942, just after her 16th birthday. Monroe subsequently dropped out of high school and became a housewife. She found herself and Dougherty mismatched and later stated that she was “dying of boredom” during the marriage. In 1943, Dougherty enlisted in the Merchant Marine and was stationed on Santa Catalina Island, where Monroe moved with him.
In April 1944, Dougherty was shipped out to the Pacific, and he would remain there for most of the next two years. Monroe moved in with his parents and began a job at the Radioplane Company, a munitions factory in Van Nuys. She quit working at the factory in January 1945 and began modelling. Defying her deployed husband, she signed a contract with the Blue Book Model Agency in August 1945.
As a model, Monroe straightened her curly brunette hair and dyed it blonde to make herself more employable. Ambitious and hard-working, by early 1946, she had appeared on 33 magazine covers.
Monroe signed a contract with an acting agency in June 1946. 20th Century-Fox head executive Darryl F. Zanuck gave her a standard six-month contract to avoid her being signed by rival studio RKO Pictures. Monroe’s contract began in August 1946, and she adopted the stage name “Marilyn Monroe”. In September 1946, she divorced Dougherty, who was against her having a career.
Dougherty became a police officer and spent 25 years working in the LAPD. He wrote two books about his relationship with Monroe, The Secret Happiness of Marilyn Monroe (1976) and To Norma Jeane with Love, Jimmie (1997).
He married two more times and had three children. Dougherty died at age 84 on 15 August 2005 from complications of leukaemia in San Rafael, California.
Link to Wikipedia biography