Marilyn Monroe was forced into marriage at 16

Marilyn Monroe had a number of lovers but none of them remained with her for very long.

Before passing away from an overdose at age 36 in 1962, she had gone through three divorces. A Los Angeles police officer named James Dougherty was Marilyn’s first husband.

Dougherty married his neighbor, 16-year-old Norma Jean Baker, in 1942 when he was 21 years old. Grace Goddard. James’ family lived next door to Grace Goddard, a friend of Norma Jean’s mother, Gladys, who was frequently in psychiatric hospitals.

After living in a handful of foster homes, Norma Jean was taken in by Grace and her husband, who wanted to move across the country and couldn’t take her with them. Grace suggested that James marry Norma Jean so that she wouldn’t have to return to the foster care system.

“They wanted to move back to [West] Virginia, and they couldn’t take Norma Jean,” Dougherty said in the 1990 interview. “She would have gone back to an orphanage or another foster home, so her foster mother suggested I marry her.

“I thought she was awful young, but I took her to a dance. She was a pretty mature girl and physically she was mature, of course. We talked and we got on pretty good.”