My journey ends here...
1936
Norma
Jeane spent this new year at the Los Angeles orphanage (
,
,
;
), and kept attending the Vine Street School (4th
et 5th grade) (jusqu’en juin 1937).
It was during her stay that she learn how to swim; she also belonged to the soft-ball team.
Grace continued to visit her but irregularly, which engendered to Norma Jeane a relative trust in her guardian.
Nevertheless, she regularly paid the pension of the girl (15$ a month ) and bought her some clothes.
But with a guardian such as Grace, Norma Jeane's discouragement couldn't last.
Grace regularly took her to the beauty salon where she waited with anxiety that the hair curlers, the curling iron and the brushes changed Norme Jeane into a seduction object.
Sometimes she was led to the lady restrooms of a tearoom or a movie theater for a demonstration of the appropriate
techniques of applying powder or lipstick. Eye pencil and a
delicate perfume completed what a passer-by would have looked as the
strange and premature illustration of a preteenager.
In
1935 and 1936, 2 movies where Jean
Harlow played (
,
) released in Hollywood :
"China Seas" and "Libeled Lady". Grace reaffirmed her conviction :
Norma Jeane would follow the great movie star trail. Jean Harlow
was a vision built for black and white movies : platinum hair, stunning
wardrobe, immaculate settings, white residences.
After having seen several movies of Jean Harlow, those years, Grace bleached her hair and went through a period where she only wore white color, only purchase white clothes to Norma Jeane and even planned to make the girl a platinum blonde. She had the wisdom to give this project up : the orphanage wouldn't have been crazy about such a changing to a 10 years old child.
JUNE
The
blonde star Jean Harlow announced that, after having played for 10
years under her mother's maiden name, she took it offically on her own.
From then on she was Jean Harlow and burried Harlean Carpenter McGrew
Bern Rosson (she had been married 3 times).
At the same time, it had been learned that she was one of the celebrities who campaigned for President Franklin Roosevelt re-election, a political commitment which much impressed Grace.
END OF THE YEAR
For 5 Saturdays in a row, Grace didn't come to the orphanage. Norma Jeane fell in desperate sobs. One of the administrator of the orphanage, Mrs Dewey, reminded her that many children of the institute didn't expect any visit , but it was a very small reassurance for little Norma Jeane.
Before Christmas, she belonged to the orphans who visited the RKO studios.The RKO showed them "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and offered them some gifts (a fake pearls necklace) and candies (icecreams, cakes, fruit punch) from the hands of actors and actresses short of humanitarian publicity.
Many years earlier, her mother Gladys, had worked there as a movie cutter.
During this year, Gladys was still hospitalized at the Norwalk State Hospital.
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