Linda Darnell was born Monetta Eloyse Darnell in Dallas, Texas, one of five children of a post office worker and his wife. It was evident at an early age that she would be a ravishing beauty, and her mother encouraged her to model. By age 11 she was modeling clothes for an area department store. She had no trouble getting modeling jobs even at such a young age, mainly because her beauty was so striking that potential clients, agencies and even government officials would think she was five or six years older than she actually was–something that neither she nor her mother did anything to discourage.
