Marilyn Monroe and Las Vegas
Okay all you Las Vegas history buffs. Time to put on your thinking caps. We have a reader who has been reading a book about Marilyn by Adam Victors. According to the book, Marilyn (then Norma Jean) lived in Las Vegas in 1946.
The house was at 604 S. 3rd Street. Today, the plot of land is a parking lot. Our reader was wondering when the house was destroyed.
Also, he is looking for information about the old Las Vegas Hospital at Ogden and 8th. The hospital construction was spearheaded by Dr. Roy Martin in the early 1930s.
"He told the Las Vegas Evening Review-Journal that he had retained architect A.L. Warwick to design the hospital, which would be "a two-story structure, built of gypsum blocks, stuccoed outside, finished in white with a red tiled roof, in the typical Spanish style so well adapted for this country." Total cost would be about $100,000. The Las Vegas Hospital was a state-of-the art, 35-bed facility. It had laboratories, maternity ward, an X-Ray machine, five treatment rooms, a tilting operating table, and an advanced lighting system in the operating room. " (The First 100)
The building stood long after it was abandoned as a hospital. It burned due to a fire of suspicious nature (too often the case to buildings preservationists are trying to save, it seems) but I can't remember the year. Can you?
Anyone got any other Marilyn in Las Vegas stories to share?
LasVegasLynn
in Cultural Tourism, Current Day, Fremont Street, Historic Homes, Historical
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Reader Comments (6)
If any body can help. I'm looking for info on her house when is was knocked down, and if you have pictures that would be great.
and info on the Las Vegas General Hospital .the address , when it shut down, when it was knocked down.
i found the thing about the sands on line.
jun 14, 1961 - First was a surprise party for Dean at the Sands Hotel
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=gMEVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yBAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7093,1779348&dq=sands+history+marilyn+monroe&hl=en
I hope to see you all there!
Mycki Manning as Marilyn Monroe
www.GentlemenPreferMarilyn.com
BY J. RANDY TARABORRELLI could help :)
Jim Dougherty was in service in Shanghai at the end of May 1946 when he received the “Dear John” letter. He later said it had come directly from Norma Jeane personally, but actually it was much more impersonal than that: It was written by her lawyer, C. Norma Cornwall, who informed him that she had filed for divorce in Las Vegas. As it happened, Norma Jeane had made up her mind that she wanted the marriage to be ended. She wasn’t sure how to proceed, but she knew of one woman who was always able to think of a solution to any problem: “Aunt” Grace. Of course, Grace had encouraged Norma Jeane into a marriage of convenience, and her plan had worked in that Norma Jeane was spared the misery of another orphanage. Now she was twenty and ready to be free. Grace knew that the quickest way to obtain a divorce was to file in Las Vegas and then live there for the six months it would take for residency to be established and the paperwork to be filed. Conveniently, Grace had an aunt there. So Norma Jeane was off to Las Vegas in early May to begin the process. The first thing Jim Dougherty did when he got the letter announcing Norma Jeane’s intention was to cut off the stipend that wives of militarymen received at that time from the government. He was angry. In his view, Norma Jeane had gotten what she wanted and now she was done with him. Certainly he knew what she had gotten out of the deal; he just wasn’t sure how he had benefited from it. In his view, he could have been single for the last few years and enjoying the benefits of being a bachelor in the military. One thing was certain: He wasn’t going to make it easy for his wife to get out of the marriage. He was determined not to sign the papers until he was able to meet with her. When he returned to the States in June, Jim planned to drive to Las Vegas to meet with Norma Jeane. Much to his surprise, though, she was not in Nevada. She was in Los Angeles at Aunt Ana’s, where she’d been staying. On September 13, 1946, a few months after that ghastly confrontation with Jim Dougherty, Norma Jeane and the woman with whom she said she was living—a sixty-nine-year-oldsixty-nine-year-old widow named Minnie Wilette—appeared in front of a judge in Reno, Nevada. In her suit for divorce, which was uncontested by Jim (and he could have fought it, actually, since Norma Jeane clearly had not spent the required six months in Las Vegas), she had said that he’d inflicted “extreme mental cruelty that has impaired [my] health.” Now, at the hearing, her attorney asked a few questions. Did she intend to make Nevada her home and permanent place of residence? Yes, Norma Jeane answered. Had that been her intention since she arrived there in May? Yes. Was it her plan to stay in Nevada for an indefinite period of time? Yes. Then, when asked to outline the way Dougherty had mistreated her, Norma Jeane responded by saying, “Well, in the first place, my husband didn’t support me and he objected to my working, criticized me for it and he also had a bad temper and would fly into rages and he left me on three different occasions and criticized me and embarrassed me in front of my friends and he didn’t try to make a home for me.” She said that his actions “upset me and made me nervous.” She maintained that she didn’t see the situation as ever improving and that there was no chance for reconciliation. The judge granted the divorce. The whole matter took about five minutes, and then Marilyn hopped on a plane back to Los Angeles. By the time Marilyn got back to