First posted here on March 2, 2014
William ‘Bill’ Carroll, one of the first professional photographers to work with Marilyn, died at home in San Marcos, California, on January 27th, 2014, aged 98. He was born in San Francisco in 1915, and raised in Southern California. His brother was jazz musician Jimmy Pratt, and Bill is survived by his four daughters.
“Bill was an intelligent, charismatic, mercurial and independent man. He accomplished many things in his 98 years, starting as chef, aircraft inspector, inventor and professional photographer – one of the first to use and process color film in California. While building his photographic business, he used a new model, Norma Jeane Dougherty, for some advertising material. She later became known as Marilyn Monroe. His adventurous spirit inspired him to ride his motorcycle over the Pan-American Highway to Central American and the Panama Canal where he started his career in journalism. Bill returned to California a couple of years later to continue writing and became well known as an automotive journalist, free-lance writer and publisher. Later, with the sponsorship of Ford Motor Company, he drove the Pan-American Highway from Alaska to Brazil writing about his month odyssey in Aventura Alaska Brasil. During the ensuing years, Bill became involved with various local public activities and moved from Southern California to New Mexico and Northern California. He enjoyed hiking and traveling the world while continuing to write and publish numerous books and short stories.” – Legacy
In 2010, Bill Carroll’s photos were featured in Becoming Marilyn, an exhibition at the Andrew Weiss Gallery in Los Angeles, and shared his memories in an interview for LA Weekly.
Photographer Bill Carroll, Monroe’s last living photographer of her pre-Marilyn years, shared his portraits of a nineteen-year-old Norma Jeane at the exhibit and made a personal appearance at the private reception on June 24.
‘It was right after World War II,’ reminisced Carroll who took some of the first photos of the future icon. ‘I opened a laboratory, processing what was called Ansco colour film. It was a film that the Americans had expropriated from the Germans where it was called Agfacolour. There were two laboratories processing that film. One in New York called Favelle and my laboratory in Los Angeles. Eventually, it grew into quite a good-sized business and I needed a cover card for the drug stores so they could see what I was doing.’
He continued, ‘About that time, a man by the name of David Conover, an Army photographer based in the Santa Anita racetrack in an Army photo center commanded by Captain Ronald Reagan, finds this pretty little girl and spends a couple of weeks running around California with her and drops off a roll of film to process. Well I was looking for a girl for my counter card who was a girl next door. I didn’t want a model. I wanted a good-looking Plain Jane, the kind of kid you’d like to live next to.’
Carroll asked Conover for her phone number and scheduled a shoot.’ It was her first modeling job,’ he said. ‘In fact, she got paid 20 dollars!’
After that day, Norma Jeane eventually signed on with a modeling agency and Carroll never saw her again nor did he ever know that she blossomed into Marilyn Monroe until 1985 while on a backpacking expedition through Yugoslavia.
‘I was bitten by ticks and I came down with Lyme Disease,’ he said. ‘That’s a bitch, I gotta tell ya. One day I woke up and my whole body collapsed. So I’m sitting in a doctor’s office and I’m leafing through Time Magazine. There’s a story about a photographer named David Conover. There’s a picture in there, which I recognized as one of the pictures I had processed!’
Carroll spent the next six months digging through boxes of negatives filled with photos dating back to his first gig in 1934 until he found his buried treasure: photos of a young Marilyn Monroe posing on Castle Rock (which no longer exists) in Santa Monica in her own outfits.
‘I sincerely believe that my pictures present a different woman than the one they know. I had no idea who Monroe was until I read that Time magazine 40 years later. I had no idea I had photographed the same woman.'”
Bill also spoke about the sessions in detail with Michelle Morgan, author of Marilyn Monroe: Private and Undisclosed, revealing that although he first spotted Norma Jeane in David Conover’s photos, the introduction was actually made by another early Monroe photographer, Potter Hueth.
“Heuth gave Carroll Norma Jeane’s number, and he rang her that day. He remembered: ‘Norma Jeane was very calm and sounded serious as she questioned me as to the source of her number and my contacts with Potter and David. At this point in time I’d say she was concerned about my level of professionalism, to eliminate the potential trouble of working with an amateur photographer who is just trying to meet a pretty girl.’
And so it was that Carroll made the journey to Aunt Ana‘s house early one summer morning, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Norma Jeane was not only ready on time, but she also lived up to his expectations. She came with a supply of clothes, and also her makeup case, which she placed on the seat next to her, before the couple headed off towards the sea and, in particular, Malibu … The results from this photo session are quite beautiful; her hair was lighter than usual as a result of the summer sun, although the natural beauty is everywhere apparent.
‘She had no professional manner,’ remembered Carroll. ‘We had many laughs and shared ideas easily … at this point she had little professional experience except for a two-week trip with David [Conover], whose pictures preceded mine by just a few months.’
Although still wearing her wedding ring, Norma Jeane shared some of her marriage woes with Carroll, who even now refuses to discuss what was said; ‘We did talk at length, during our lunch break, about personal problems and pleasures. I had recently ploughed through a difficult divorce … but her personal comments were hers and should not be made a source of public concern.’
At the end of the session, Carroll drove his model home, paid her $20 for the day’s work, and then rang her about a month later: ‘She told me she had signed with the Blue Book Modelling Agency. Her daily rate (set by Blue Book) had jumped to $50 a day, a figure I decided I would not pay so never used Norma Jeane again.'”
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