Marilyn Monroe (2 page)

Michelle Morgan

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Marilyn Monroe’s mother – Gladys Pearl Monroe – was not a happy child. She was born on 27 May 1902, to Della and Otis Monroe, and together with her brother, Marion, spent her first few years constantly on the move. When she was seven years old her father died within the confines of the California State Hospital for the mentally ill, and although it was later revealed that the cause was syphilis of the brain, his relatives believed he had died insane, hence beginning a legacy of fear that would haunt the entire family.

By 1910 Gladys was living with her mother, brother and ten lodgers at 1114 East 10th Street, Los Angeles, and by 1912 Della had married Lyle Arthur Graves, a switchman who had once worked with Otis. The marriage was short-lived, and the two eventually divorced in January 1914 when Lyle moved to Ohio, where he later remarried. Della, too, was on the lookout for new adventures and by 1916 had sent her son Marion to live with a cousin in San Diego, while she moved with Gladys to a boarding house at 26 Westminster Avenue, Venice, Los Angeles.

Shortly afterwards Della met and fell for Charles Grainger, a widower who worked in the oil industry. He had been working in Rangoon since April 1915 and had arrived back in the United States on 19 July 1916, just months before he met fortyyear-old Della. She wished to live with him at his home at 1410 Carrol Canal Court, but Gladys’ disapproval and Grainger’s reluctance to take on the judgemental offspring put a spanner in the works, and Della was left wondering how she could rid
herself of her fourteen-year-old daughter. She didn’t need to wonder long, however, as along came Jasper Newton Baker, who, despite being twelve years her senior, courted Gladys and shortly afterwards made her pregnant. This, of course, gave Della an instant reason to rid herself of the teenager; she insisted that the pair marry on 17 May 1917 and even swore Gladys to be eighteen years old, when actually she was just shy of her fifteenth birthday.

Della was then free to move in with Grainger and Gladys. Her new husband lived at 1595 21st Street, while he worked as a hotel manager at 219 South Spring Street. Eight months after the wedding, Gladys bore Baker a son called Robert Jasper (aka Jackie or Kermitt), and several years later a daughter named Berniece Gladys. The marriage was not a happy one, and by 1920 both Gladys and Baker were broke and living at 343 Fifth Avenue with Baker’s eighteen-year-old brother Ardry, a concessionaire at an amusement park.

Jasper believed Gladys to be an unfit mother, especially as their son, Robert, had once almost lost an eye when Gladys left some broken glass in the trash. Then on another occasion the Bakers were arguing in the front seat of their car, whilst Robert managed to open the door in the back, falling from the seat and severely injuring his hip in the process. It would be unfair to blame Gladys directly for Robert’s problems, but Jasper never forgot the incidents: ‘Your mother was a beautiful woman,’ he told Berniece, ‘but she was also very young, too young to know how to take care of children.’

Baker was also known to beat his wife, and on one occasion whilst visiting relatives in Kentucky he took offence at her spending time in the company of one of his brothers, beating her across the back with a bridle until she bled. Terrified of her husband, Gladys finally filed for divorce in 1921, and during divorce proceedings (in which she claimed they were married one year earlier in order to cover up the fact that she was pregnant) she disclosed that Baker had called her vile names, had beaten and kicked her, and had caused ‘extreme mental pain,
anxiety and humiliation, as well as to suffer grievous bodily pain and injury’. The divorce became official in May 1922 but this was not the end of the drama, as during one fateful weekend Baker decided he no longer wanted his children in the care of Gladys, and snatched them out of California to live a new life with his mother in Kentucky.

Gladys was understandably devastated by this turn of events, and spent all her savings trying to get her children back. She went to Kentucky and begged Baker’s sister for help. However, instead of gaining assistance, Gladys found herself banned from visiting her daughter and unable to take her son, who had been admitted to hospital to try and fix his ongoing hip problems.

Waiting for Robert to be released from hospital, Gladys gained temporary employment at the home of Harry and Lena Cohen, who lived at 2331 Alta Avenue in Louisville. There she acted as housekeeper and looked after the Cohens’ daughters, Dorothy and Norma Jean. The family were used to having staff around the house: according to census reports, in 1920 eighteen-year-old Effie Newton worked as a servant for them, and by 1930 they had grown to employ not only a maid but a chauffeur, too. So the arrival of Gladys in the Cohen home caused not even a stir, and her presence and departure were all pretty uneventful. Later rumours would surface that Gladys caused many ‘uncomfortable’ moments in the Cohen household, but in fact so unmemorable was Gladys that the family did not even realize she went on to become Marilyn Monroe’s mother until many years later, and long after the death of both Harry and his wife Lena.

Norma Jean Cohen’s daughter Bonnie confirmed this in 2009: ‘There were no letters or stories, and we know that my grandmother, Lena Cohen, had no idea that her ex-employee was Marilyn Monroe’s mother. I knew my grandmother for over thirty years so I know this is true. Plus this would have been good “family history” information but it was never discussed; and it would have been if we had known.’

After working with the Cohen family for a short time, Gladys became disillusioned about regaining her children. Baker had
remarried and the family seemed settled, so Gladys reluctantly accepted the fact that she’d lost them. She visited the family to say goodbye and then disappeared from their lives.

On her return to Los Angeles, Gladys obtained a job at Consolidated Film Industries, where she became friends with a colleague called Grace McKee. The two spent quite some time together, going out dancing, having fun and gaining something of a reputation among the male employees at Consolidated.

Whilst living at 1211 Hyperion Avenue, Gladys shocked everyone when, on 11 October 1924, she suddenly married Martin Edward Mortensen, a twenty-seven-year-old divorcee who worked as a meter man for the Los Angeles Gas and Electric Company. He was in love with his new wife, but it was not reciprocated; she complained to friends that he was ‘dull’ and it wasn’t long before she had fallen for Charles Stanley Gifford, a twenty-five-year-old divorcee and one of the bosses at Consolidated.

‘Gifford was a real likeable guy,’ remembered one friend; while another described him as ‘well-dressed, and always drove a pretty nice car’. He had a dark side, however, as witnessed by his first wife, Lilian, and detailed in divorce papers submitted by her shortly after they separated in 1923: Gifford ‘continuously pursued a course of abuse, threats and intimidation calculated to harass, annoy, hurt and worry the plaintiff’. This was just the tip of the iceberg. Lilian said she also experienced physical injury and accusations that she was being unfaithful to him, when actually she believed that he was undertaking affairs with women where he worked, as well as taking illegal drugs. Things had come to a head during June 1923, when Gifford verbally abused her before striking her so hard on the cheek that she was ‘knocked against the bed post’, sustaining severe bruising. The divorce papers also claim that a blood clot was formed under her cheek and urgent medical attention was required to remove it.

Whether or not everything cited by Lilian was true will never be known, but certainly the marriage had been turbulent and by
the time the divorce was finalized and Gladys Baker arrived in his life, Gifford was enjoying his new-found freedom and had no plans to settle down. Unfortunately for Gladys, she believed she could persuade him to change his mind, and on 26 May 1925, walked out on Martin Edward Mortensen.

During the autumn of 1925, Gladys became pregnant. It has been said that there were various men who could have been the father, including a twenty-eight-year-old colleague called Raymond Guthrie. Friends at the studio claimed that Gladys had dated blue-eyed, brown-haired Guthrie for several months that year and that he could very well be the father. Raised by his aunt and uncle since a baby, Guthrie had also recently divorced and was certainly in a position to date Gladys, though all records indicate that she never considered him to be her baby’s father.

The official ruling is that the father was unknown, though evidence suggests it was Gifford, and this was most certainly the belief of Gladys. For instance, family letters and memories show that both Gladys and Norma Jeane named him as the father on several occasions, and in August 1961, an article appeared in
Cavalier
magazine which said: ‘[Marilyn’s] father is very much alive and residing in Southern California. He was once connected with the movie business, although he no longer is today.’ This would certainly be a nod in Gifford’s direction, since by that time he was living south of Los Angeles, where he was running a dairy farm.

Gladys broke the news of the pregnancy to Gifford during a New Year’s party at the family home, presumably that of his father, carpenter Frederick Gifford, who lived at 12024 Venice Boulevard. Later, as the pregnancy became obvious, it created quite a stir in the Gifford family; particularly with his sister Ethel, who lectured him intensely, demanding to know what he intended to do about the situation. The argument culminated with Ethel telling her brother, ‘Look, either marry the woman or do something.’ According to relatives, Gladys was not seen at their home any more.

Shunned by the Gifford family, Gladys then tried to gain sympathy from her mother, who by this time was living on her own at 418 East Rhode Island Avenue, while Charles Grainger was now working overseas. Della acknowledged disgust that her daughter was once again pregnant with an illegitimate child, and then sailed off to South-East Asia on 20 March 1926 in order to visit her husband.

When Gladys gave birth on 1 June 1926, she had hoped Gifford would accompany her to the hospital. She was greatly disappointed, however, as he purposely stayed away, refusing to have anything to do with her or the child. Gladys perhaps would not have been shocked by this had she known that in 1922, when his wife Lilian gave birth to their son Charles Stanley Jr, Gifford took her to the Lomashire Hospital, excused himself immediately and walked out of the building.

Knowing that Gifford was to play no part in the child’s upbringing, Gladys reluctantly decided to get on with her life. She named the child after the little girl she had looked after whilst in Kentucky and, for the sake of respectability, also gave the surname of her former husband, hence naming her Norma Jeane Mortenson (she added an ‘e’ to Norma Jean and changed Mortensen to Mortenson on the birth certificate). Shortly afterwards she changed her mind and declared that both she and her daughter would be known by the surname of her first husband, Baker.

Shortly after the little girl’s birth, perhaps feeling mild curiosity or a pang of guilt for the way he had treated her in the past, Gifford asked Gladys if he could see the child. His plea fell on deaf ears, however, and she refused point-blank to let him have anything to do with her. ‘He felt the mother had been unfair,’ remembered Gifford’s minister, Dr Liden. ‘She had cut him off and didn’t allow him to see the child.’

On leaving hospital, Gladys took Norma Jeane to her apartment at 5454 Wilshire Boulevard, but it was only a matter of days before she made a trip to East Rhode Island Avenue to deposit her child at number 459, the home of the Bolender family.

Ida and Wayne Bolender lived across the road from Gladys’
mother Della, on a two-acre plot of land in Hawthorne; an agricultural area dominated by lots of space, dairies and farms. A postman for many years, Wayne and his wife had applied to become foster-parents just before the Depression and for the next thirty-five years continued happily opening their home to any child who needed their help.

Contrary to popular belief, Gladys did not immediately abandon her child with the Bolenders; instead, she moved in with the family and left Norma Jeane in their care while she commuted to and from her job in Hollywood. ‘Mrs Baker was with me,’ Ida later told
Cavalier.
‘She stayed in Hollywood when working nights as a negative cutter and stayed with me while working days.’ However, the long journey and the responsibility of single-motherhood soon became too much for Gladys, and she ultimately took the decision to return to her old life.

Leaving her baby behind, Gladys moved in with her friend and colleague, Grace McKee, and the two shared a space at the Rayfield Apartments at 237 Bimini Place. Going from the quiet seclusion of the Bolender home to this colourful apartment block must have been something of a thrill for Gladys. But in spite of now living the life of a single girl once again, she didn’t give up on her daughter and always paid $25 a month to the Bolenders for her care. She also often stayed at the weekend, involving herself with family life, and later showed up on the 1930s census as a ‘boarder’ in the Bolender home. Norma Jeane ‘was never neglected and always nicely dressed,’ said Mrs Bolender. ‘Her mother paid her board all the time.’

On 15 August 1926, Della sailed from Hong Kong and arrived in San Francisco on 8 September. On her return to East Rhode Island Avenue, she was introduced to her granddaughter for the first time, though she never developed much of a bond with the child, seeing her as more of a sin than a joy. Sick with malaria and often delusional, she made her feelings quite clear just months later when she was caught trying to smother the child with a pillow. She was immediately banned from the
Bolender home, but Della still tried to gain access to Norma Jeane, as Ida Bolender later recalled: ‘She did come over one day for no reason I know of. She just broke in the glass of our front door and I believe we called the police.’

For Della, this sequence of events was the beginning of the end and she soon found herself admitted to the Norwalk Mental Hospital, suffering from manic depressive psychosis. She was never to leave the hospital, and when she passed away, Della Monroe Grainger contributed to the legacy of mental illness that had begun with the death of her husband.