Mona (Marilyn) Monroe – The $10 an Hour Pin Up Model Who Became a Legend

Daniel Holland
10 minutes ago
7 min read

Collage of Marilyn Monroe posing in vintage photos, some in lingerie. Text reads "'Mona' Monroe Before She Became Marilyn." Retro vibe.

There is something quietly fascinating about how Marilyn Monroe rose to legendary status. Before the fame, before the name, there was a young woman called Norma Jeane Dougherty, trying to make a living in post war Hollywood. She was nineteen, alone, and looking for work. For a short time, she called herself “Mona Monroe” and took on modelling jobs that paid ten dollars an hour.

In 1946, Hollywood was full of young women with dreams of becoming film stars. Norma Jeane was one of them, staying at the Hollywood Studio Club, a residence for aspiring actresses. Rent was due and she needed to find money quickly.

At that point, she was not yet Marilyn Monroe. For the less glamorous modelling assignments, she used the name “Mona”.

A Young Woman in Need of Work

Norma Jeane’s early connection with modelling came during the war years. While working at the Radioplane Munitions Factory, she caught the attention of an army photographer documenting women at work for morale boosting publications. The photos led to some commercial work and small magazine shoots.

By 1945, she was separated from her husband, Jim Dougherty, and living on her own. The glamour she dreamed of seemed distant. Acting lessons and rent both needed paying.

She later recalled that time in simple, honest words:

“It was at a time when I didn’t seem to have much future. I had no job and no money for the rent. I was living in the Hollywood Studio Club for Girls. I told them I’d get the rent somehow. So I phoned up Tom Kelley, and he took these two colour shots, one sitting up, the other lying down. I earned the fifty dollars that I needed. You’ll do it when you get hungry enough.”

The Tom Kelley photographs she referred to would later become the famous nude images used in Playboy in 1953. But even before that session, Norma Jeane had worked for one of America’s most popular pin up artists, Earl Moran.

Earl Moran and the Hollywood Studio Years

By the mid 1940s, Earl Moran was well known in the United States. His bright, idealised images of women appeared on calendars, posters and Esquire magazine covers. His art combined a wholesome charm with a touch of glamour that reflected the mood of post war America.

When Moran moved from Chicago to Hollywood, he hired models through Los Angeles agencies to pose for photographic reference material that he later turned into paintings. In 1946, one of those models was a young woman who introduced herself as “Mona Monroe”.

She had auburn hair, a friendly manner, and an ability to hold poses naturally. For ten dollars an hour, she would pose in swimwear, lingerie or simple costumes, often smiling or laughing between takes. Moran’s aim was not to sell the photos but to use them as the basis for his paintings.

Learning Confidence

For Norma Jeane, the work with Moran was practical and steady. It was not glamorous, but it paid the bills and gave her valuable experience in front of the camera. Moran would later say that she was one of his best models.

“She had a real sense of how to pose, how to move. There was an energy about her even when she was still.”

Monroe later credited Moran with helping her confidence. She once said, “Earl made my legs look better than they ever were.”

The two worked together for about four years, and the sessions became a regular source of income for her. During that time, she was taking acting classes and beginning to be noticed by agents.

How the Images Were Used

Like many pin up artists of the period, Moran often combined elements from different models to create one “ideal” woman in his paintings. It was common to use one model’s body and another’s face. This meant that although Norma Jeane’s body appeared in many of his works, her face was sometimes replaced or altered.

Only years later, after she became famous, did collectors and historians connect Moran’s reference photographs with the future Marilyn Monroe. The photos were discovered in his archives after his death in 1984 and are now regarded as early, significant glimpses of her development as both a model and performer.

Life at the Hollywood Studio Club

The Hollywood Studio Club where she lived was a supervised residence for young women working in or hoping to enter the film industry. It offered affordable rooms, meals and a safe environment in a city known for its challenges.

The Club was run by the YWCA and had strict rules. There were curfews, visitors were carefully monitored, and no men were allowed upstairs. It was designed to help women build careers in a respectable environment at a time when Hollywood could be unforgiving to those without connections.

Many future stars passed through its doors, including Kim Novak, Donna Reed, and Barbara Eden. Residents described the atmosphere as supportive, with shared meals and long conversations about auditions, scripts, and agents.

Norma Jeane was known for her politeness and determination. She read constantly, studied film magazines, and practised her poses in front of mirrors. Actress Shelley Winters, who also stayed at the Club, later said, “Even then, she had something. You couldn’t take your eyes off her.”

Her time there, supported by small jobs like modelling for Moran, allowed her to keep pursuing auditions and lessons that would lead to film opportunities.

The World of Pin Up Art in the 1940s

To understand the significance of Marilyn’s modelling work with Earl Moran, it helps to look at what pin up art represented in post war America. The 1940s saw the height of the pin up’s popularity. These images, often seen on calendars, posters, and aircraft nose art, offered a mix of glamour and familiarity.

They were not photographs of movie stars but painted ideals of womanhood, created by artists such as Gil Elvgren, Alberto Vargas, George Petty and Earl Moran. Their work portrayed women as playful, self assured, and subtly suggestive, but rarely indecent.

During the war, these images had become symbols of optimism for soldiers stationed abroad. They reminded men of home and of the life they were fighting to return to. After the war, the same style carried into popular culture, decorating everything from barbershops to service stations.

Artists like Moran depended on real models to create these works. The women who posed were often ordinary workers or aspiring actresses looking for a steady income. They learned how to present themselves to the camera with charm and confidence, a skill that translated naturally to acting and film.

For Norma Jeane, modelling for Moran was both a source of income and a subtle education in how to be seen. She learned how lighting shaped a mood, how to use her body to suggest movement and personality, and how to create connection through expression.

The Beginning of “Marilyn Monroe”

In 1946, while still modelling for Moran, Norma Jeane met talent agent Ben Lyon from Twentieth Century Fox. He saw her potential but suggested she needed a more memorable name. Together, they created “Marilyn Monroe”, borrowing “Marilyn” from Broadway actress Marilyn Miller and “Monroe” from Norma Jeane’s mother’s maiden name.

By the end of that year, she had a new contract, a new name, and was beginning to appear in small film roles. The days of ten dollar modelling jobs were behind her, though she never distanced herself from them. When the nude photos resurfaced years later, she spoke openly about her reasons, saying, “I was broke. I needed the money. That’s all.”

The Hidden Images

When Earl Moran’s archives were examined after his death, many photographs of Monroe were found. They showed her in casual poses, sometimes playful, sometimes serious, and always with a natural presence. The photos were not taken for publicity or fashion; they were working images for painting reference.

Today, those early photographs are valuable to collectors and art historians. They capture Monroe before fame, still using her first modelling name, learning how to move in front of a camera and discovering her visual power.

In several of Moran’s finished pin ups, her posture, expression or figure is clearly recognisable, even when the face has been modified. These small details connect the anonymous model “Mona Monroe” to the woman the world would later know simply as Marilyn.

After Earl Moran

After 1950, as Monroe began gaining recognition in Hollywood, her time as a pin up model faded quietly into the background. Her work with Moran and other photographers had been purely practical, a way to earn money and experience.

When Playboy published the Tom Kelley photos in 1953, some studios worried about scandal. Monroe handled it with honesty and dignity, admitting she had posed out of necessity. Her openness only increased public affection for her.

In later years, Moran’s works featuring her image became highly collectable. Auction houses like Heritage Auctions have sold prints and photographs for significant sums, and several museum exhibitions have included the Monroe sessions as part of studies on American pin up art.

These rediscovered images remind viewers of the link between Hollywood glamour and mid century illustration. They show Monroe as part of a wider cultural moment, where art, advertising and film all drew from the same pool of visual ideas about femininity and charm.

Finding Her Way

The story of Mona Monroe is not a dramatic tale of scandal but a small and very human chapter in the life of a woman building a future. Those ten dollar sessions were practical choices made by a young person doing what she could to survive and to learn her craft.

The work helped her understand light, posture and confidence. It also gave her a measure of independence at a time when women in Hollywood often struggled for control over their image.

When later photographers such as Milton Greene or Bert Stern commented on how Monroe could instantly command attention on camera, that skill likely traced back to these early years when she was simply another model earning her living.

The Legacy Of The Images

Earl Moran’s pin up illustrations featuring Monroe are now among his most collected pieces. They represent not only a particular moment in American visual culture but also a glimpse of an unknown young woman who would later reshape ideas of beauty and fame.

The photos from Moran’s studio show a person who had not yet learned to perform the part of Marilyn Monroe but who already had an ease and openness that translated effortlessly through the lens.

As Monroe once said, “I wasn’t born with anything. Everything I have, I had to make myself.”

That making began in small rooms, for ten dollars an hour, with an artist who saw something in her that others had not yet noticed.