Photograph from Hulton Archive / Stringer via Getty Images
In 1949, before Marilyn Monroe cooed and shimmied her way to becoming a screen goddess, she was just another shapely blonde starlet trying to get noticed. Which is why, one hot June day, she appeared in the little Adirondack town of Warrensburg, a few miles north of Lake George, to stand on the lawn of a brand-new prefabricated house.
Photoplay magazine had brought her there from New York City, where she was promoting her new film, Love Happy, to help present a dream home being given away in a contest.
The U.S. was in the midst of a major postwar housing crisis, so the modest, fully furnished ranch-style home was a sought-after prize; the magazine received 250,000 entries. The winner was a young widowed mother named Virginia MacAllister, whose touching story made for good copy in the magazine’s feature article about the giveaway. MacAllister and her five-year-old son, Rusty, were living with her parents in Warrensburg following the 1945 polio death of her husband, a minister in New Jersey. A registered nurse, she worked summers at Niaweh, her parents’ nearby camp for girls, and winters as a ski instructor in North Creek. When she learned she had won the contest, MacAllister told the magazine she wanted her dream house to be built in Warrensburg. “It was my husband’s last request,” she said. “A few hours before he died, he asked that I bring up Rusty in Warrensburg. I know that there are many wonderful towns and many wonderful people. But Warrensburg is—well, it’s special.”
Several hundred onlookers, including the local media, gathered for the giveaway ceremony. Aside from Monroe, the magazine enlisted several other minor film celebrities—Lon Mc Allister (no relation), Don DeFore and Dan Buka, whose careers would soon be eclipsed by their cherry-lipped companion’s. At the time, though, Monroe was barely known; her résumé included only a handful of small roles. But the marketing power of her beauty was already apparent; she was photographed marveling over sponsors’ products, like the Thor Automagic Clothes Washer, and chatting amiably with the contest winner.
What happened to Monroe’s career next is well known, and MacAllister had her own professional success. She remarried a few years later and changed her name to Virginia McDonnell, moved to New York City and penned a number of paperback novels aimed at teenage girls. She eventually became a writer for soap operas, including Guiding Light and The Young and the Restless. She died in 1998 in California, where her son, Rusty McDonnell, became a stockbroker.
The house still stands on James Street, its humble appearance offering no hint of its long-ago brush with fame.
