When she began modeling at 18, the head of the Blue Books Modeling agency noted that she was unusually photogenic—“Eyes: Blue…Bust: Excellent…Teeth: Perfect,” her first resume would state. But far more impressive than her natural prettiness was her desire to improve herself. She studied every photo taken of her, asked how to make the pictures better, never repeated an error, eagerly worked on her posture, how to stand, how to gesture. She initially resisted bleaching her deep auburn hair to blonde, but once committed to a more “unnatural” (as she put it) image, she never looked back. Reflecting, years after Marilyn had become famous, the head of the modeling agency stated, “A lot of them ask, ‘How can I be like Marilyn Monroe. But they’ll never be another like her. No one ever worked harder, or had more belief in herself.” And it was a belief that she would not stay forever a model—no matter how successful—or return to the anonymity of being a California housewife, married to a G.I. When photographer Andre DeDeins pressed her to pose nude in 1946, she became angry, screaming, “No, No, No. I won’t. I’m going to be a great movie star someday!” Her course was set. (She soon divorced her soldier husband, needless to say.) Several years later, with rent due and her car impounded, she would pose nude; not realizing those calendar shots would come to immortalize her.

When movies called, intrigued by the popularity of her pin-ups, she began timorously, like so many others. Signed by Twentieth Century Fox, she was dropped after a year and a walk-on. Signed by Columbia, she was starred in a little B-movie that showcased her beauty and her singing and dancing abilities. She was dropped when she resisted the advances of Columbia studio head Harry Cohn. Back to modeling, struggling. Another bit part in a Marx Bros. movie. More struggle. She was asked by a friend at this point, “What if 90% of everybody in Hollywood told you to give up?” Marilyn replied, “If a 100% told me that, all one hundred would be wrong.”

MGM noticed her and she was cast in the small but pivotal role as the baby-doll mistress of Louis Calhern in “The Asphalt Jungle.” Her insecurities blossomed prior to her audition for director John Huston. The script described her character as “sexy.” Marilyn arrived with her perfectly proportioned bosom padded. Huston reached into her blouse, pulled out the padding and told her to read. She got the part. She was superb, but MGM already had a blonde, Lana Turner. Marilyn was on the slow track to nowhere. And then she met agent/manager Johnny Hyde, thirty years her senior. He had helped discover Rita Hayworth and Lana. Marilyn did not resist his advances. Hyde did more than promote her. He respected her ambitions—to be famous and to be whole. He did not mock her reading, her aspirations to be better educated, her desire to be taken seriously. He saw that she was more than what she appeared to be. And less. He recognized the un-pretty agony beneath the beauty. Hyde left his wife of many years for Marilyn. He wanted to marry her. She refused. She loved him, but was not “in love.” Nor did his money attract her. When it was suggested she would be the very rich Mrs. Johnny Hyde, she said, “But I would be taken even less seriously than I am now!”

She was the total opposite of the avaricious gold-diggers she would come to play. Hyde negotiated a new contract with 20th Century Fox for Marilyn. Darryl Zanuck, the studio head was resistant; he did not find her appealing. Spyros Skourous, the chairman of the board of Fox, did find her appealing—he was impressed by her dramatic late arrival at an industry gala. Zanuck conceded. But before the ink was dry, Johnny Hyde suffered a fatal heart attack. Now Marilyn was seen as the little tramp who lured the much-admired Johnny Hyde away from his wife, “got” him to arrange a big studio contract, and essentially killed him with her sex-appeal. If, as the years went on, Marilyn seemed somewhat paranoid about Hollywood’s attitude toward her, she had cause.