Rediscovering 19-Year-Old Norma Jeane : San Marcos Photographer to Auction Pre-Marilyn Pictures

It’s time, Bill Carroll figures, to unload the pictures of Norma Jeane Dougherty, a $20-a-day model he photographed in 1945.

The San Marcos resident hopes the 100-plus pictures will fetch more than $50,000 later this month in New York City at Christie’s, the international auction house.

The pictures are being pitched as perhaps the largest personal, unpublished collection of photographs of sex goddess Marilyn Monroe.

But Carroll says he’s not trying to sell pictures of Marilyn Monroe. He never knew that woman, he said. These are pictures of a very talented, charming teen-ager with a smile that wouldn’t quit. Surely that day on the beach at Malibu, Carroll reckons, the 19-year-old never visualized becoming the most legendary screen figure of the 1950s--only to escape that world by a drug overdose in 1962.

“The girl people recognize as Marilyn Monroe, I don’t believe ever existed. That was a put-on,� said Carroll, 72, a writer and photographer who lives in semi-retirement.

“If she was as confused as people say she was, that’s because she recognized that her motion picture image wasn’t her,� Carroll said.

He thinks he captured the real, untainted Norma Jeane on 96 color slides and seven black-and-white prints. They show a vibrant, beaming young woman with light brown hair, flowing from pose to pose without even a prompt: scribbling in the sand, dancing in the water and leaning up against rocks, with the bright blue Southern California sky providing the perfect backdrop.

“The best I did was to keep the camera active and move us around for the best light,� Carroll said. “She was a natural model. She even suggested we stay away from bathing suits so we wouldn’t offend mom-and-pop customers at my business.�

Carroll paid her $20 for her day’s work of modeling so he could use the best of the pictures as a display at his film processing and printing laboratory in Los Angeles.

He never saw her again and never saw her films. In fact, it wasn’t until 1968--six years after her death--that he stumbled across the pictures after moving from Los Angeles to San Marcos. The name on the boxes of slides--Norma Jeane--rang a bell, and he wondered if she might be Marilyn Monroe.

He asked some friends to look at the slides. “That’s Marilyn Monroe!� they proclaimed.

Tucked Pictures Away

Carroll still was not struck by the potential fortune. He stashed the pictures away, and promptly forgot where he put them. In 1972, he found them again but was unsure what to do.

It wasn’t until last year that he realized he might be sitting on a substantial treasure, at least among Marilyn Monroe memorabilia collectors. Carroll read that 25 pictures of Norma Jeane Dougherty were sold for $25,000 at a Christie’s auction in London in 1987.

That particular collection is believed to represent the very first pictures for which Norma Jeane/Marilyn Monroe posed.

Carroll figures--and other Monroe authorities concur--that his day with Norma Jeane was only her third professional photo session. Indeed, the first of Monroe’s photographers had recommended her to a second, who in turn offered her phone number to Carroll.

Carroll said he wants his pictures published because, “while I am very pleased to have them, I would be more pleased to release them, for others to enjoy, to see how the real Norma Jeane looked before she was changed.�

The pictures’ value will be determined at the June 21 auction--the same auction where a pair of Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from “The Wizard of Oz� movie will be sold. For now, there is little consensus on the worth of Carroll’s collection.

Julie Collier, who heads the collectibles department at Christie’s in New York, said she believes that, though Carroll’s pictures might not be as historically significant as the set sold last year, they are of better quality.

“In the six weeks between the first shoot and Mr. Carroll’s, she got her hair a little straighter and it looks like she put some blond streaks in. She’s more relaxed-looking, more natural. And there’s not a dud picture in the group.

“And these pictures are so interesting because here she is, right at the threshold of being discovered, but still working for $20 a day,� Collier said. “Whenever I look at them, I think to myself, ‘Little did she know . . . ‘ She looks so happy. If only she could have seen ahead.�

Bought by Canadians

A group of Canadian investors last year purchased the 25 pictures of Norma Jeane Dougherty, but it hasn’t yet decided how to use them, group representative Gregory Cheadle said.

“We are very much investors and very little Marilyn Monroe fans,� he said. “We are now negotiating with several agencies in the United States on how we might use the pictures.�

Those photographs were taken by David Conover, an Army private who was a professional photographer in his civilian life and who was asked by his commanding officer, Capt. Ronald Reagan, to photograph and distribute pictures of pretty girls as morale boosters for men at war.

Cheadle maintains that his pictures are virtually priceless because “they have been authenticated as the first-discovery photographs of Marilyn Monroe. Anything subsequent to the discovery photographs are merely more of the same. What we have are the first.�

For that reason, Cheadle says, he will not bid on Carroll’s collection.

Roger Richman, whose Los Angeles-based merchandising and advertising agency handles the accounts of more than 25 Hollywood stars or their estates--including Clark Gable, W. C. Fields, Mae West, the Marx Brothers and Marlene Dietrich as well as Marilyn Monroe--said he is not terribly impressed by yet another surfacing of heretofore-unpublished Norma Jeane photographs.

“These pictures seem to be coming out in an increasing crescendo,� said Richman, who has extended to 62 companies representing 100 products the license to use Marilyn Monroe’s name and picture.

Norma Jeane hasn’t proven to be as popular to consumers as Marilyn Monroe, Richman said. “The general public has expressed an interest in owning pictures of Marilyn Monroe as she appeared in the later years,� he said. “Some of the fashions she wore in the beach scenes make her look ridiculous.�

Still, he acknowledged, “There may be a lot of Marilynphiles out there who want this stuff.�

Another Marilyn memorabilia dealer who asked not to be identified said Carroll’s photographs will probably be valuable only to a book publisher, who may later contribute to the 47 books already published on Monroe.

“This may be just what someone needs to come up with another book or calendar,� he said. “But what they’re worth is only in the eye of the beholder.�

Bob Colman, who owns the Hollywood Poster Exchange, which specializes in memorabilia of the stars, said it may never be known how many pictures of Norma Jeane still exist, perhaps forgotten and filed away, much the same way that Carroll’s were.

“Nobody will ever know,� Colman said. “But to me, the good stuff, the valuable stuff, is the early stuff. And I’m sure that Christie’s is happy to have this collection. There are more collectors than there is original material.

“And Marilyn is definitely the most collectible star of the ‘50s. She is still No. 1 among collectors of the ‘50s, and when you’re No. 1, your material is valuable. And this may be one of the great collections. It is absolutely valuable,� Colman said.

Carroll hopes Colman is right.

“I hope there is one buyer for the whole lot, who can then publish them,� Carroll said. “Then Marilyn Monroe fans will realize she’s different than the one they saw on the screen.

“I read in books later that she was a tart. But here, in these pictures, she’s a delightful, joyful young lady. I never thought she was innocent, and I knew she wasn’t naive. She was going through a difficult marriage at the time (her first of three), and so was I, and we talked about that.�

But moreover, Carroll said, “She was intelligent, capable and joyful. Somehow she impressed me. I’m pleased to have photographed her, and now I’m more pleased to release the pictures.�