Two celebrated movie sex symbols of the 1940s and '50s began storied romances while they were students a few years apart at Van Nuys High School.

Before Howard Hughes cast her as Rio in the "sex western" The Outlaw, Jane Russell grew up a self-described tomboy, roaming her family's La Posada ranch on Sherman Way near Woodman Avenue. At Van Nuys High she caught the eye of football star Bob Waterfield. They dated and cruised Van Nuys Boulevard on weekends. In her autobiography, Russell describes how they put off making love until her graduation night -- and 18th birthday -- when she took her man to the dairy barn where she had played in the haystacks as a girl.

By the time they married five years later, Waterfield had starred at quarterback for UCLA and was on his way to becoming the city's first homegrown pro sports hero, leading the Los Angeles Rams to their only championship in 1951.

Hughes exploited Russell’s busty, raven-haired appeal so much that censors held up release of The Outlaw for several years. Even now, the uncut version is unavailable.

Later in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Russell played the brunette to another Van Nuys girl, Marilyn Monroe. As a teenager named Norma Jeane Baker, she lived on Odessa Avenue. To avoid being sent back to an orphanage, she accepted the courting of a neighbor, Jim Dougherty, a night-shift fitter at Lockheed who took her on outings to Pop's Willow Lake in the Valley foothills.

They married on June 19, 1942, three weeks after Baker turned 16. The couple moved into a studio apartment at 4524 Vista del Monte in Sherman Oaks.

It was wartime, and after Dougherty signed on with the Merchant Marine, Baker took a job inspecting parachutes at Radioplane, a Van Nuys war plant. An Army photographer under the command of Capt. Ronald Reagan snapped a sexy picture of her at work that caught an agent's eye. An American icon was in the making. Dougherty was soon out of the picture -- to be followed by Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller -- and Marilyn Monroe left the Valley behind.