Dougherty was the youngest of five children of Edward and Ethel Dougherty, who had moved there from
Colorado. He attended
Van Nuys High School where he acted in plays, and played
football.
Marilyn Monroe and Dougherty married on
June 19, 1942, eighteen days after Norma Jeane turned sixteen.
In
1943, Dougherty joined the
United States Merchant Marine (where he served alongside
Robert Mitchum). He was ordered to boot camp on
Santa Catalina Island, California, then sent overseas in 1944. Norma Jeane started to work for Radioplane Company, where she was discovered. She moved out of her mother-in-law's home and stopped writing to Dougherty. She filed for divorce in
Las Vegas, Nevada; it was finalized on
September 13, 1946.
Dougherty married Patricia Scoman in 1947, and joined the
LAPD. He was one of the police officers that held back the crowd at the premiere of his former wife's movie,
The Asphalt Jungle.
In
The Secret Happiness of Marilyn Monroe and
To Norma Jeane with Love, Jimmie, he claimed they were in love but dreams of stardom lured her away. She always maintained theirs was a
marriage of convenience. She was furious when he claimed to
Photoplay in 1953 she threatened to jump off the
Santa Monica Pier if he left her. He later appeared on
To Tell the Truth as "Marilyn Monroe's real first husband". He sold signed copies of his books on his website
http://www.jimdougherty.com/.
In the 2004
documentary Marilyn's Man, Dougherty made three new claims: he was her
Svengali and invented "Marilyn Monroe", Fox forced her to divorce him, and he was her true love. The evidence does not support this. When informed of her death, the
New York Times reported he replied "I'm sorry" and continued his
LAPD patrol; he did not attend her
funeral. He admitted to
A&E Network his mother asked him if he'd marry Norma Jeane. Although he maintained in his books that he didn't mind if she modeled, his sister wrote in the 12/1952
Modern Screen Magazine he left Norma Jeane because she wanted to pursue modeling. He admitted to
Lifetime's "Intimate Portrait" that he cut off her monthly allotment when he was served with divorce papers. More telling, the
1999 Christie's auction of Monroe's estate revealed that, while she had kept items from
Joe DiMaggio and
Arthur Miller, she kept nothing from Dougherty.
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