Norma Jeane settled easily into married life and for a while it appeared that she had found the stability that she had craved for all her life.
For Jim Dougherty the marriage was a happy one until, in 1944, he was shipped to Australia at the peak of the war.
With her husband away, Norma Jean took a job at a defense plant, packing parachutes.

One day, a photographer from the army, David Conover, visited the plant, whilst working on an assignment focusing on the women of the war. It was this assignment that launched Norma Jean on her modeling career and set her on the road to fame. Norma Jeane recognised that Hollywood was more likely to entertain a single starlet than a housewife. Her brief marriage was over Norma Jean ceased to exist and from the ashes emerged Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn was later to say that the marriage had been one of convenience.