![]() During this time, they both renewed ties with Norma Jeane’s half sister Berniece, and the three women wrote to each other fairly regularly. In the years ahead, Norma Jeane lived with Grace, and friends and family, while Gladys was moved to a facility in Portland. “I used to sit at the window and cry”, Marilyn said, “knowing that my mother had once worked there.” Ironically, the building had a full view of the RKO water tower. ![]() She placed the child with a series of family friends, relatives and acquaintances, before moving her for a time to The Los Angeles Orphans Home. Grace took over Gladys’ affairs, and Norma Jeane’s care. “I didn’t know my mother was alive for many years.” “I figured my mother was really dead but they wouldn’t tell me because they didn’t want me to cry”, Marilyn said. Grace told Norma Jeane her mother was sick, but the child remained confused. In January 1935, Gladys had a breakdown and was committed to the State Institution at Norwalk, where doctors diagnosed her with paranoid schizophrenia and said she would never be able to return to her job at RKO. I’d line them up on a plank beside the road and when people drove along, I’d say ‘Wouldn’t you like some whisky?’.” Gladys and her mental health struggles Norma Jeane spent a lot of time on her own, playing with empty whisky bottles: “I must have had the finest collection of bottles any girl ever had. The news left Gladys devastated.ĭuring 1934, her mental health deteriorated. Not long before moving into the new house, Gladys’ grandfather committed suicide, and then her 15-year-old son, Robert, died of tuberculosis of the kidneys. Unfortunately, this new happiness did not last. Gladys bought a piano, and the home was often filled with singing, dancing and music. In 1933, Gladys bought a house, where she and Norma Jeane lived with several lodgers. ![]() She was somewhat afraid of Gladys, however, as the woman would rarely make conversation, and often reprimanded her for turning the pages of a book, “too loudly”. When she occasionally visited her mother in Hollywood, Norma Jeane would gaze at a photo of Gifford. Norma Jeane referred to her as “The woman with the red hair”, and on at least one occasion, she was corrected when she called Ida, “Mama”. Norma Jeane settled into her life with the Bolenders, but while Gladys continued to visit her daughter at the weekends, her presence was confusing for the child. ![]() “Her mother paid her board all the time.” A difficult start to life “(Norma Jeane) was never neglected and always nicely dressed,” said Ida Bolender. Eventually, she moved in with her friend Grace McKee, staying at the Bolender home occasionally, and always contributed to her child’s care. While it began with good intentions, the commute from Hollywood to Hawthorne and back turned into a struggle for Gladys. Ida later said, “She stayed in Hollywood when working nights as a negative cutter and stayed with me while working days.” Just weeks after the birth, Gladys and Norma Jeane moved to the home of Ida and Wayne Bolender – a religious couple who lived across the road from Gladys’ mother, Della. When she gave birth to Norma Jeane (Marilyn's real name) on June 1, 1926, Gifford was long gone, and Gladys was on her own, trying to care for her child, and hold down a full-time job. While there has always been debate on who the father was, Gladys believed it to be Gifford. In May 1925 Gladys left Mortensen, and that autumn, became pregnant. There, she became friends with a colleague called Grace McKee and, in 1924, married Martin Edward Mortensen, though shortly after began an affair with Charles Stanley Gifford, one of the bosses at Consolidated. A heartbroken Gladys followed her children, but she could not win them back, so returned to Los Angeles, where she worked in the processing lab at Consolidated Film Industries. When Gladys filed for divorce, Jasper deemed her an unfit mother and, in 1922, he snatched his children – Berniece and Robert – and moved them from California to Kentucky. The relationship was abusive, with Baker calling her vile names and causing “extreme mental pain, anxiety and humiliation”. Of all the relationships Marilyn Monroehad, perhaps the most complicated was the one with her mother, Gladys.īorn on May 27, 1902, Gladys was pregnant and married to the much-older Jasper Baker, just before her 15th birthday.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |