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Authors: James Glaeg
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this moment right in the middle of posing ten ravishingly beautiful fashion models in New York’s finest hotels and most spectacular seaside mansions for Montgomery-Ward’s winter catalogue, when something inside him snapped.
Suddenly de Dienes realized he was fed up with waiting forever for bad telephone connections to Los Angeles. All he wanted to do was get in his car, drive straight to the West Coast, and marry Norma Jeane. Summarily, therefore, the photographer quit his posh assignment to the astonishment of friends and associates who concluded that the impetuous thirty-two-year-old had been driven by overwork into a nervous breakdown.
“But André,” came a tortured admission from Norma Jeane over the crackling long-distance line after a struggle within herself when pressed by de Dienes to meet him in Las Vegas, “I don’t want to get mm-mm-married. I want to get into the mm-mm-movies.”
Six days later nonetheless, the strapping blond Transylvanian was waiting at the corner of Sunset and Vine at exactly the hour of the afternoon when Norma Jeane had promised over the phone to meet him. But Norma Jeane did not appear. He waited there for two more hours and then drove to her apartment in Santa Monica with a certain possibility of mischief lurking in his heart.
It was a little one-room pied-à-terre she’d taken on the side—strictly a secret from the family on Nebraska Street till her Nevada divorce became final and the two of them should be free to marry. Or so at least she’d allowed the love-struck photographer to view her peculiar living arrangement. He was just parking there when, sure enough, out of her building came a nicely dressed gentleman, perhaps in his late forties, whose discreet manner immediately suggested to de Dienes that he’d been there to visit Norma Jeane. The man strode coolly over to an expensive car, got in, and drove away.
De Dienes went up to her door.
Opening unsuspectingly to his knock, Norma Jeane turned pale. She clutched a negligée more tightly around herself, precipitating glimpses of black lace sliding over the curves of her otherwise naked body which set loose in de Dienes’ rattled mind the singular phantasm of a sleek young panther freshly sprung out of its cage and peering dangerously about after prey—a conceit totally at odds, however, with the stunned look on her face as sputteringly and stutteringly she tried to explain why she hadn’t been there to meet him on the corner of Sunset and Vine. Either she’d forgotten or she hadn’t believed he was really coming. He himself was too stunned to decipher which.
De Dienes could scarcely speak. Slamming through his head came a host of denials, Absolutely not a hooker! being the first of them to solidify into a distinct thought—as in his memory he flashed on how she’d appeared at his hotel door at the Garden of Allah less than a year before, a brand-new girl sent to him by Emmeline Snively. She’d worn an immaculate pink sweater, her curly brown hair tied with a ribbon to match, and checkered gray slacks. Unsure of herself, de Dienes had observed at once, Awkward and young… They’d spoken for only another minute or two before he’d further noted, Childlike smile…Strikingly clear gaze…Particularly clean!.. For he was only too personally aware that unbeknownst to Miss Snively, a few of her Blue Book girls were hustling. Absolutely not a whore! he’d concluded of Norma Jeane without a shadow of a doubt. He’d been enchanted.
Now at her own apartment door, the fact of her having gone golden blonde in the meantime lent in de Dienes’ eyes, if anything, a certain enhancement to that freshness and innocence foremost in his memory. His shock lay purely in what the black lace telegraphed, as reinforced by a single instant of frightened recognition fleeting across her face. She was exposed.
“I made my way into a cluttered room,” de Dienes would write many years afterward of the scene before him. “Very
Suddenly de Dienes realized he was fed up with waiting forever for bad telephone connections to Los Angeles. All he wanted to do was get in his car, drive straight to the West Coast, and marry Norma Jeane. Summarily, therefore, the photographer quit his posh assignment to the astonishment of friends and associates who concluded that the impetuous thirty-two-year-old had been driven by overwork into a nervous breakdown.
“But André,” came a tortured admission from Norma Jeane over the crackling long-distance line after a struggle within herself when pressed by de Dienes to meet him in Las Vegas, “I don’t want to get mm-mm-married. I want to get into the mm-mm-movies.”
Six days later nonetheless, the strapping blond Transylvanian was waiting at the corner of Sunset and Vine at exactly the hour of the afternoon when Norma Jeane had promised over the phone to meet him. But Norma Jeane did not appear. He waited there for two more hours and then drove to her apartment in Santa Monica with a certain possibility of mischief lurking in his heart.
It was a little one-room pied-à-terre she’d taken on the side—strictly a secret from the family on Nebraska Street till her Nevada divorce became final and the two of them should be free to marry. Or so at least she’d allowed the love-struck photographer to view her peculiar living arrangement. He was just parking there when, sure enough, out of her building came a nicely dressed gentleman, perhaps in his late forties, whose discreet manner immediately suggested to de Dienes that he’d been there to visit Norma Jeane. The man strode coolly over to an expensive car, got in, and drove away.
De Dienes went up to her door.
Opening unsuspectingly to his knock, Norma Jeane turned pale. She clutched a negligée more tightly around herself, precipitating glimpses of black lace sliding over the curves of her otherwise naked body which set loose in de Dienes’ rattled mind the singular phantasm of a sleek young panther freshly sprung out of its cage and peering dangerously about after prey—a conceit totally at odds, however, with the stunned look on her face as sputteringly and stutteringly she tried to explain why she hadn’t been there to meet him on the corner of Sunset and Vine. Either she’d forgotten or she hadn’t believed he was really coming. He himself was too stunned to decipher which.
De Dienes could scarcely speak. Slamming through his head came a host of denials, Absolutely not a hooker! being the first of them to solidify into a distinct thought—as in his memory he flashed on how she’d appeared at his hotel door at the Garden of Allah less than a year before, a brand-new girl sent to him by Emmeline Snively. She’d worn an immaculate pink sweater, her curly brown hair tied with a ribbon to match, and checkered gray slacks. Unsure of herself, de Dienes had observed at once, Awkward and young… They’d spoken for only another minute or two before he’d further noted, Childlike smile…Strikingly clear gaze…Particularly clean!.. For he was only too personally aware that unbeknownst to Miss Snively, a few of her Blue Book girls were hustling. Absolutely not a whore! he’d concluded of Norma Jeane without a shadow of a doubt. He’d been enchanted.
Now at her own apartment door, the fact of her having gone golden blonde in the meantime lent in de Dienes’ eyes, if anything, a certain enhancement to that freshness and innocence foremost in his memory. His shock lay purely in what the black lace telegraphed, as reinforced by a single instant of frightened recognition fleeting across her face. She was exposed.
“I made my way into a cluttered room,” de Dienes would write many years afterward of the scene before him. “Very
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