The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe (14 page)
Read The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe Online
Authors: Donald H. Wolfe
Into the Abyss
I gave her Christian Science treatments for approximately a yearâwanted her to be happy and joyous.
âGladys Baker
T
he Bolenders took the children to Sunday school each week, and Norma Jeane learned to sing “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know.” It became her favorite song and Ida Bolender recalled her singing it constantly. “Nearly everybody I knew talked to me about God,” Marilyn remembered. “They always warned me not to offend himâ¦but the only one who loved me and watched over me was someone I couldn't see or hear or touch. I used to draw pictures of God whenever I had time. In my pictures he looked a little like Aunt Grace [McKee] and a little like Clark Gable.”
In 1933, Gladys's grandfather on Della's side, Tilford Marion Hogan, committed suicide; but far more devastating was the news that her son “Jackie” had died at the age of fourteen. Though Gladys had tried to blot out the memory of Jackie and Berniece, her son's death was a terrible shock. According to Berniece, Jackie received an injury that led to tuberculosis of the bone, and he was hospitalized. Jasper Baker took Jackie out of the hospital against the doctor's recommendations. When his condition grew rapidly worse, and it became apparent that Jackie was dying, Jasper attempted to catheterize Jackie himself at home. Subsequently the boy died in extreme agony on August 16, 1933.
The news threw Gladys into bouts of depression. Blaming herself for Jackie's death, she turned to Christian Science for spiritual support, spending long hours at night reading her “science” and the Bible. According to Inez Melson, who in later years would become Gladys's conservator, “The underlying problem that led to the deterioration of Gladys's mental state was guilt and self-recrimination.”
Recalling an incident that occurred shortly after the news of Jackie's death, Marilyn later related, “One day my mother came to call. I was in the kitchen washing dishes. She stood looking at me without talking. When I turned around I saw there were tears in her eyes, and I was surprised. âI'm going to build a house for you and me to live in,' she said, âIt's going to be painted white and have a back yard.'”
Determined to establish a conventional home for Norma Jeane, and dreaming of regaining custody of Berniece, Gladys began working double shiftsâat Columbia during the day and at RKO in the evening. Grace McKee tried to advise Gladys against taking on the burden of a home at the height of the recessionâthe economy was in turmoil and employment had become tenuous.
By 1933 the American public had lost faith in the banking system, and Friday, March 3, was marked by a run on the banks. President Roosevelt called a “bank holiday,” and with the banks closed the Hollywood studios couldn't meet their payrolls. On March 9, Roosevelt signed the Emergency Banking Relief Act and the banks reopened; however, Hollywood producers announced that all employees' wages would have to be reduced by 25 to 50 percent because of the hard times. The seismic news hit the film industry like the major earthquake that rocked Los Angeles on March 12, 1933âHollywood trembled. For the first time in the history of Hollywood, on March 13, the IATSE unions went out on strike and the studios were closed.
During the Hollywood labor disputes and prolonged strikes of 1933, Grace McKee elected not to cross the picket lines, but among the strikebreakers was a desperate young woman who was scrimping and saving every penny she could to put a down payment on a house. According to fellow IATSE member Olin Stanley, Gladys was pictured in the newspaper as she jumped over the fence at RKO Studios to avoid the picket line and maintain her employment.
By February 1934, Grace McKee became concerned about Gladys's mental state. Suffering from anxiety and insomnia, Gladys wasn't eating, and she was obviously exhausted and depressed. Grace persuaded Gladys
to see a neurologist, who placed her in a Santa Monica rest home where she remained for several weeks before returning to work. Though Grace tried to convince Gladys that the cost of owning a home was beyond her means, Gladys's determination to start a new life for herself and Norma Jeane had become obsessive.
“I told her not to buy it. I begged her not to buy it,” Grace stated, but Gladys purchased a six-thousand-dollar house with a down payment of $750 on October 20, 1934. Norma Jeane was told to pack her things. Now eight years old, she was to move to her new home in Hollywood with her mother.
The handsome two-story house in Hollywood had a Georgian portico in front and stood at 6812 Arbol Drive in the Cahuenga Pass, not far from the Hollywood Bowl. True to the promise, it was painted white and had a back yard.
“My mother bought furniture, a table with a white top and brown legs, chairs, beds, and curtains,” Marilyn remembered. “One day a grand piano arrived at my home. It was out of condition, but it had once belonged to the movie star Fredric March. It was for me. I was going to be given piano lessons on it. âYou'll play the piano over here, by the windows,' my mother said, âand here on the sill by the fireplace there'll be a love seat. As soon as I pay off a few other things I'll get the love seats, and we'll all sit in them at night and listen to you play the piano!'”
Faced with economic realities, Gladys rented the upstairs of the house to the Kinnells, a British couple who worked in motion pictures. Murray Kinnell was a character actor who had appeared with George Arliss in the Darryl F. Zanuck production of
The House of Rothschild
. Norma Jeane's move to her mother's house with its Hollywood milieu was a radical departure from the values instilled in her by the Bolenders. She remembered being shocked to see that her mother, Grace McKee, and the Kinnells smoked tobacco and imbibed alcohol.
“Life became pretty casual and tumultuous, quite a change from the first family,” Marilyn recalled in later years. “They liked to dance and sing, they drank and played cards, and they had a lot of friends. Because of that religious upbringing I'd had, I was kind of shockedâI thought they were all going to hell. I spent hours praying for them.”
The changes in her life were bewildering. She soon learned that not everyone was as devout as the Bolenders. “We're churchgoers, not moviegoers,” Ida Bolender had said, but suddenly Norma Jeane was thrust
into movieland. The conversation at the dinner table with the Kinnells was often about the movies, and when Norma Jeane wasn't at school she was frequently given a dime to go to one of the opulent movie palaces on Hollywood Boulevard. “There I'd sit all day and sometimes way into the nightâup in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it.” Marilyn remembered. “I didn't miss anything that happened.” She loved musicals and often sat through them two or three times, memorizing the songs, singing them to herself as she wandered home in the dark, late for supper.
But the dream ended abruptly. Though Gladys seemed in better spirits after establishing the home for Norma Jeane, she still had bouts of anxiety and depression. Grace McKee's attempts to help Gladys were of no avail. At times she refused to eat and couldn't sleep, often wandering through the house at night weeping, muttering prayers, and studying her “science.” During the day she spent long hours at work to meet the mounting bills that had accumulated to pay for her dream house and its furnishings. Despite all her efforts, it became increasingly evident that the house was beyond her means. She had fallen behind in her payments and was ebbing into the darkness of despair when an incident occurred in December of 1934 that pushed her over the edge and into the abyss of madness.
The only reliable source regarding the incident is Marilyn Monroe. In an interview with Ben Hecht in 1953, she stated very clearly that she was eight years old:
I was almost nine, and I lived with a family that rented a room to a man named Kimmell. He was a stern-looking man, and everybody respected him and called him
Mister
Kimmell. I was passing his room when his door opened and he said quietly, “Please come in here, Norma.” I thought he wanted me to run an errand.
“Where do you want me to go, Mr. Kimmell?” I asked.
“No place,” he said and closed the door behind me. He smiled at me and turned the key in the lock.
“Now you can't get out,” he said, as if we were playing a game.
I stood staring at him. I was frightened, but I didn't dare yellâ¦. When he put his arms around me I kicked and fought as hard as I could, but I didn't make a sound. He was stronger than I was and wouldn't let me go. He kept whispering to me to be a good girl.
When he unlocked the door and let me out, I ran to tell my “Aunt” what Mr. Kimmell had done.
“I want to tell you something,” I stammered, “about Mr. Kimmell. Heâ¦he⦔
My “Aunt” interrupted.
“Don't you dare say anything against Mr. Kimmell,” she said angrily. “Mr. Kimmell's a fine man. He's my star boarder!”
Mr. Kimmell came out of his room and stood in the doorway smiling.
“Shame on you!” my “Aunt” glared at me, “complaining about people!”
“This is different,” I began. “This is something I have to tellâ¦Mr. Kimmellâ¦heâ¦he⦔
I started stammering again and couldn't finish. Mr. Kimmell came up to me and handed me a nickel.
“Go buy yourself some ice cream,” he said.
I threw the nickel in Mr. Kimmell's face and ran out.
I cried in bed that night and wanted to die. I thought, “If there's nobody ever on my side that I can talk to I'll start screaming.” But I didn't scream.
Nine years after relating the incident to Ben Hecht, Marilyn Monroe told the same story to photojournalist George Barris, who photographed her for
Cosmopolitan
just weeks before she died. Again she stated that she was eight years old and referred to Mr. Kimmell as the “star boarder.” But instead of saying she ran to her “aunt,” Marilyn said, “I ran to my foster mother and told her what he did to me. She looked at me shockedâ¦then slapped me across the mouth and shouted at me, “I don't believe you! Don't you dare say such things about that nice man!”
I was so hurt, I began to stammer. She didn't believe me! I cried that night in bed all night, I just wanted to dieâ¦. This was the first time I can remember stammeringâ¦. Once afterward when I was in the orphanage, I started to stutter out of the clear blueâ¦.”
In both recollections Norma Jeane was only eight years old when the molestation incident occurred; therefore it was before June 1935, and before she entered the orphanage. The only boarder she lived with prior to the age of ten, prior to the orphanage, and prior to the onset of stuttering, was at her mother's house. Clearly the “Aunt” and the “foster mother” was Gladys; and Mr. Kimmell, the molester, was Murray Kinnell, the British actor who stayed upstairs at the house on Arbol Drive.
Kimmell
is scarcely a disguise for
Kinnell
, but in referring to her mother as her “aunt” or “foster mother” Marilyn was protecting Gladys. The loss of her star boarder would have meant the inevitable loss of the house, and the end of her desperate dream. That her mother hadn't defended her, however, was beyond Norma Jeane's comprehension, and the incident explains to a degree the estrangement Norma Jeane would always feel
toward her mother: “If there's nobody ever on my side that I can talk to, I'll start screaming.” Though in time Norma Jeane tried to understand and mend the relationship, it was never to be the same. Having failed to protect Norma Jeane, just as she had failed Jackie, Gladys lost the hope of her daughter's love and respect, the only hope remaining to her. In doing so, she lost everything.
Custodial records indicate that it was during the Christmas season of 1934, shortly after the incident with Mr. Kinnell, that Gladys was taken away to a mental institution.
Grace McKee described Gladys's breakdown to Berniece in 1942: “When Gladys bought her own place, she brought in an English family to share the house. They stayed until she found out they were treating Norma Jeane unkindly and we got rid of them. The happy days didn't last long. In a few months Gladys had her nervous breakdown. It seemed like a lot of things happened all at once to put pressure on her. Overworkâ¦the trouble with the English couple. One day she was lying on the couch and sheâthere were steps in the living room leading upstairsâshe started kicking and yelling, staring up at the staircase, and yelling âSomebody's coming down those steps to kill me!'”
Marilyn told Ben Hecht she was having breakfast when
Suddenly there was a terrible noise on the stairway outside the kitchen. It was the most frightening noise I'd ever heard. Bangs and thuds kept on as if they would never stop. “Something's falling down the stairs,” I said. The English woman held me from going to see. Her husband went out and after a time came back into the kitchen.
“I've sent for the police and the ambulance,” he said.
I asked if it was my mother.
“Yes,” he said, “but you can't see her.”
I stayed in the kitchen and heard people come and try to take my mother away. Nobody wanted me to see her. The Englishman said, “Just stay in the kitchen like a good girl. She's all right. Nothing serious.” But I went out and looked in the hall. My mother was on her feet. She was screaming and laughing. They took her away to the Norwalk Mental Hospitalâ¦. It was where my mother's father and my grandmother had been taken when they started screaming and laughing.”
Gladys was institutionalized at the Norwalk State Hospital for the insane in December 1934, scarcely three months after purchasing her dream house. On January 15, 1935, she was declared legally incompetent. Grace McKee became guardian of the estate and took custody of Norma Jeane.
The dream house was sold along with the furnishings to settle Gladys's debts. The piano was sold to Grace's aunt, Ana Lower.
“All the furniture disappeared. The white table, the chairs, the beds and white curtains melted away, and the grand piano, too. The English couple disappeared also,” Marilyn recalled. “Aunt Grace had lost her job at the studio and had to scrape for a living. Although she had no money she continued to look after meâ¦. When she ran out of money and had only a half dollar left for a week's food, we lived on stale bread and milk. You could buy a sackful of old bread at the Helms Bakery for twenty-five cents. Aunt Grace and I would stand in line for hours waiting to fill our sack. When I looked up at her she would grin at me and say, âDon't worry, Norma Jeane, you're going to be a beautiful girl when you grow up. I can feel it in my bonesâ¦' She was the first person who ever patted my head or touched my cheek. I can still feel how thrilled I felt when her kind hand touched me.”
