Marilyn Monroe's marriage to Jim Dougherty ended due to shocking reason

Bryan Johns, President and CEO of the ICON Collection, revealed how Marilyn Monroe’s first husband, Jim Dougherty, found out about her profession.

For those unaware, Monroe was just 16-years-old when she tied the knot with Dougherty, who was her classmate at Van Nuys High School.

In a talk with PEOPLE magazine, Johns revealed that Dougherty did not know she was a model when he married her until he saw a picture of her on a navy ship.

He said, “When he was married to her, she was 16, and the reason he married her was that she was going to have to go to another foster home."

"The foster home she was living in at that time was the family she was closest to. Her aunt, as she called her, had to move across the country. She was like, 'Please don't take me back to the orphanage,’” Johns shared.

With the help of Grace McKee Goddard, her neighbour’s son, Dougherty, agreed to tie the knot with her in 1942 but their relationship started to crumble when she started doing modelling while her husband joined the Merchant Navy.

Johns recollected, "He was deployed. He was in the Navy, and he happened to see the guys on his ship. They had a pin-up of his wife, and he didn't know she was doing that.”

“She was working at an aircraft factory making parachutes and stuff. There was a famous photographer, a guy named David Conover, who saw her at the time and picked her out of the working line making the parachutes, and said, 'Oh, will you pose for me?' And that's what started her career,” he explained.

Despite securing a position in the world of glitz and glam, Monroe would love to “just kind of slum around,” as she was “messy” and “wouldn't wash her hair for a week.”

“I mean, that's kind of where she lived. She was really kind of... I think a lot of people don't know how generous she was or how human she was. She loved to do the dishes. She was very proud of how clean she could get dishes. And our friend said she'd come over to her house, and she would love spraying champagne down the staircase, and then she'd spend two hours cleaning it up,” Johns shared.

It is pertinent to mention that after her divorce from Dougherty in 1946, Marilyn Monroe married Joe DiMaggio in 1954 but ended up annulling her marriage in 1955. Her third husband was Arthur Miller, whom she was married from 1956 to 1961.