When the War ended the soldiers came home looking to take up with their pre-war lives or start new ones. One of the first things they looked for were American girls like this one, Norma Jeane Dougherty, who had been ” working in the Radioplane Munitions Factory, mainly spraying airplane parts with fire retardant and inspecting parachutes.”
While most young American women were happy to find husbands from the ranks of the newly mustered out men, Norma Jeane had other ambitions. An agent here and a name change there and she transformed herself from an All-American Girl to an All-American Myth:
It was an early warning sign that the United States had gone to war as one kind of nation and come home from war as another kind of nation. Nothing… was going to be left as it was.
