Marilyn Monroe (3 page)

After the turmoil of recent days, the Bolender family tried their best to continue life in a normal way for their foster-children, Norma Jeane and a baby boy called Lester. Born on 23 August 1926 whilst his parents, Pearl and Carl Flugel, were living in a tent, Lester had come to the Bolender home after the Flugels decided they were too young to care for him. Married for just over a week before the birth of their son, the couple handed the baby to Ida Bolender and returned to their home state of Washington, where they later had four more sons, Milton, Gerald, Robert and William. The couple kept their first son a secret from their family, and it wasn’t until Pearl’s death in 1988 that they discovered a 1927 letter from Mrs Bolender, describing Lester’s life in California. The now elderly Lester travelled to meet his long-lost family but unfortunately, even at this late stage, one of the brothers refused to believe they were related and apparently never accepted Lester as his brother.

But back in 1926, when both Lester and Norma Jeane were just babies, they were nicknamed ‘the twins’ and raised as brother and sister. ‘They have great times together,’ wrote Mrs Bolender. ‘Lots of people think them twins. I dress them alike at times and they do look cunning . . .’

Eventually the Bolender family made a decision to officially adopt Lester, and asked Gladys if they could adopt Norma Jeane too. Gladys, having already lost two children, was appalled at the Bolenders’ plans and turned them down flat. However, they were not the only ones interested in the child as, according to
several reports, Charles Stanley Gifford also had plans to raise her. By this time he was living on his own at 832 N. Alta Vista Boulevard, and had learned that Norma Jeane had been placed in a foster home. He contacted Gladys to tell her he intended to raise the little girl himself, but was sent away with nothing more than a scolding from his ex-lover, who had developed a deep loathing for him since her troubled pregnancy.

How Gifford thought he could possibly raise the child on his own is a mystery. He was not listed as her father on the birth certificate, and divorce records from his first wife Lilian show that he had been verbally abusive and distant from his other children, calling them derogatory names on many occasions.

But even if his temper was not an issue, there was no way Gladys was going to let the man she claimed to detest raise her child. Instead, she continued to visit her daughter at the weekends, though as Norma Jeane grew, the stopovers became more and more confusing for the child. One day when she referred to Ida Bolender as ‘Mama’, she was immediately put in her place. ‘The woman with the red hair is your mother,’ explained Ida, though this did not end the confusion. ‘But [Wayne] is my daddy,’ exclaimed Norma Jeane. ‘No,’ replied Ida. After that, the child became afraid to call anyone mummy or daddy, as not even Gladys referred to her as a daughter.

As for her father, Gladys told Norma Jeane that he had been killed in a car crash either before she was born or when she was a young baby – the story differing according to Gladys’ mood at the time. Her story was cruel but contained a kernel of truth, as in 1929 she was told that the man she had named as Norma Jeane’s father – Martin Edward Mortensen – had been killed in a car crash. Unknown to Gladys, it later transpired that it was a completely different person who had died, and her ex-husband was actually alive and well and living in California. For his part, Mortensen added to the confusion by years later claiming to friends that he was Norma Jeane’s real father, but this is extremely unlikely – and certainly not the belief of Marilyn or her mother.

At irregular intervals, the young child would travel to her mother’s home in Hollywood, and stare quietly at a photo of Charles Stanley Gifford, which hung on the wall despite Gladys’ claims of hatred towards him. Gifford bore a striking resemblance to Clark Gable and, from that moment on, Norma Jeane always thought of the actor as something of a surrogate father. Unfortunately, looking at the photo was the only thing Norma Jeane enjoyed about her visits to her mother, who was so uptight that she would often chastise her for turning the pages of a book ‘too loudly’. As a result the child spent most of her time hiding in the closet, waiting to be taken back to the Bolenders’ house.

Gifford, meanwhile, was living just miles away at 3014 Chesapeake Avenue, in a house that he jointly owned with none other than Raymond Guthrie, the laboratory technician whom Gladys had dated in 1925. How the two men ended up buying a home together is a mystery, and we can only imagine the interesting conversations that could have occurred within those four walls. The two shared the house for several years before Guthrie moved on, but Gifford was to stay there throughout Norma Jeane’s childhood and well into her first marriage. It is not known if he ever tried once more to gain access to his daughter, but if he did, Gladys kept very quiet about it and never discussed it with Norma Jeane.

There has been a great deal of talk as to the kind of upbringing provided by the Bolender family, with various stories concocted by the film studio and Marilyn herself to present her tale as something of a Cinderella story. These stories may have provided a good deal of public sympathy for the star, but according to her foster-sister, Nancy Bolender, they gave her parents nothing but heartache: ‘Mother and Daddy always felt bad about the things written about Marilyn Monroe’s young life that said she was brought up in poor homes and not loved or taken care of.’

In later years, Ida Bolender became very upset about the way Norma Jeane’s life was misrepresented, and told reporters, ‘We treated her like our own child because we loved her.’

Unfortunately, this affection didn’t protect them from the constant rumours that have circulated ever since and while Norma Jeane’s early years were not exactly the best, life with the Bolender family was not one of hardship and destitution. ‘Life was safe, secure and comfortable,’ remembered Nancy, ‘with plenty of playmates. [The Bolenders] truly loved us and protected us and nurtured us with all of their hearts.’

The family did have strict values and religious beliefs, and certainly no idle time was allowed. ‘Idle hands are from the devil,’ was something Lester Bolender frequently told his foster-siblings. However, while Ida was very schedule-oriented and was never known to laugh, she did have her reasons. A childhood bout of scarlet fever had left her with hearing loss in one ear, and later she had to use hearing aids and learn to lip-read in order to communicate with friends and family.

Life had been hard for Ida and looking after a team of children in the 1920s was no picnic, but her mother lived next door and she often helped out. The children always had clothes made for them by Ida herself, and most of the food was grown on their land: there was an abundant supply of apples, tomatoes, corn, watermelon, and string beans, and the only items they had to buy from the store were flour, butter, sugar and coffee. On such occasions the family would pile into Wayne Bolender’s Model T and travel into town, where Ida would do her shopping and the children stayed in the car with Wayne, playing guessing games, singing songs and telling stories.

On some occasions Norma Jeane even took great joy in sitting on her foster-father’s lap, while pretending to drive the car. Wayne loved little Norma Jeane as one of his own, considering her his baby, and the child spent a lot of time with him, sitting on a stool while he shaved and asking questions such as, ‘Who is God?’, ‘Where does he live?’ and ‘How many people live in the world?’

For Norma Jeane, there were many happy times with the Bolender family, and she would often find herself spending days at nearby Redondo beach, or climbing the apple tree outside
her bedroom window, with Lester in tow. The two would drag blankets up to the branches in order to make a fort, while in the yard, the chickens, rabbits and goat would go about their business, oblivious to the antics above.

Norma Jeane was also the proud owner of a small dog called Tippy, which she spent many hours playing with, and there were afternoons spent playing hopscotch on the sidewalk with Nancy. While going to the cinema was frowned upon (although Marilyn later claimed that she snuck into a movie theatre once or twice), Norma Jeane was still allowed to listen to the radio – her favourite shows being
The Green Hornet
and
The Lone Ranger.
‘I used to get terribly excited,’ she said about listening to
The Lone Ranger.
‘Not at the horses and the chases and the guns, but the drama. The wondering how it would be for each person in that situation.’

On a creative level, there was always music in the house, as Ida loved listening to symphonies on the radio and the family would often sing when they got home from church. Norma Jeane even learnt to play the piano that sat proudly in the Bolender home, and she carried this passion throughout her life, always having a piano in her own home as an adult.

The religious beliefs of the Bolender family were also passed on to the child and, according to Nancy Bolender, she was taught about God and told that he was utterly trustworthy and bigger than any situation she could face in her lifetime. It is this aspect of her life with the Bolender family that has been blown out of all proportion over the years, with stories emerging of the family being so consumed with religion that they had no time for the children, and continually criticized Norma Jeane for doing what they considered to be sinful acts. However, this is certainly not how Nancy remembers her parents: ‘I never heard them criticize or talk badly about anyone. They accepted people for who they were and loved them unconditionally.’

On 14 September 1931 it was time for both Norma Jeane and Lester to start school. Foster-sister Nancy remembered watching ‘the twins’ skip to the Washington Street School, followed
by Tippy, Norma Jeane’s beloved dog. The children continued their schooling there until the Los Angeles earthquake struck on 10 March 1933, when they were relocated to the 5th Street School (now the Ramona School). Years later, music teacher Evelyn Gawthrop remembered Norma Jeane as a timid child who nevertheless got on well with the other children.

However, being timid did not prevent Norma Jeane from realizing that making up stories was a good way of gaining sympathy and attention for herself. She began telling tales about the Bolenders to her school teacher and on one occasion even went so far as to fabricate a story that she had seen little Nancy being pushed against an oven by her foster-parents. In later years – in the privacy of her notebooks – she admitted this was done only as a way of gaining attention from the trusting teacher, and that the incidents she described had never happened at all.

Norma Jeane loved singing at school, and her skills were put to good use when she was chosen to perform in the Easter sunrise services at the Hollywood Bowl. The event consisted of a children’s chorus standing in the shape of a cross, all wearing black capes. As the sun rose over the Bowl, the children were instructed to take off the black robes and reveal their white clothes underneath, thus changing the cross from black to white. Marilyn later lamented that she became so engrossed in checking out all that was going on around her that she forgot to take off her robe, thus becoming a black spot on an otherwise white cross. However, the mistake must have soon been rectified, since all photos of the children’s cross taken around that time have no ‘black dots’ to be found.

Norma Jeane’s time with the Bolenders came to a sudden halt in 1933 when two never-to-be-forgotten events occurred. The first was the death of Norma Jeane’s dog, Tippy, who, it is said, was killed by a neighbour after a particularly noisy barking session. Shortly after this, Norma Jeane’s mother decided that she’d had enough of living without her daughter, and announced that she wanted to buy a house for them both to live in together. The couple were obviously shocked but could
do nothing to prevent the removal of Norma Jeane from their home, even though they surely must have been worried about what her future would bring.

Norma Jeane was not keen on moving away with the ‘lady with the red hair’ and when the day of her departure finally arrived, the children became so upset that they hid in the closet, hoping they would not be found. No matter what Norma Jeane thought of the family, the idea of living with the mother she hardly knew was even more disturbing, though she was quickly found in the closet and marched to her mother’s waiting car.

The family were absolutely devastated to lose her and never forgot the little girl who had touched their lives for so long: ‘It was a sad time for Mother and Daddy,’ remembered Nancy Bolender, ‘because they truly loved her. They had raised her from infancy to eight plus years of age. That’s a long time and when so much of yourself is put into training, nurturing and loving a child it is like losing your own flesh and blood.’

Once Gladys had reclaimed her daughter, she moved the child into the home of English couple George and Maude Atkinson, and their twenty-year-old daughter, Nellie.

In 1915 George Atkinson had left his family’s fishmonger business in Grimsby, and sailed to the United States in the hope of getting work in Hollywood. Maude and Nellie followed him, arriving on the 27 October 1919, and together they settled in an apartment located at 4716 Santa Monica Boulevard, where George tried to etch out a role for himself in the entertainment industry. He did not have quite the success he had hoped for, however, and finally settled for bit parts in movies, and as a regular stand-in for fellow British actor, George Arliss. By 1930 the family had moved to a small house at 1552 La Baig Avenue, just yards away from all the major film studios in town, before relocating once again to Afton Place, where they became acquainted with Gladys Baker in 1933.

For Norma Jeane, living with Mr and Mrs Atkinson was a completely different experience to living with the Bolenders. The English couple were described by Marilyn as being ‘happy, jolly, and carefree’. However, the happy-go-lucky existence of the couple confused the child, particularly because she had spent the first seven years of her life being told that much of what she was now witnessing was wrong. Norma Jeane prayed for them and felt guilty whenever she enjoyed their company and the stories they told of their acting life. ‘They liked to drink a little, smoke, dance and sing and play cards – all of the things
that I had been taught were sinful. And still they seemed like very nice people to me.’