Page 45 - All About History - Issue 28-15

Becoming Marilyn

Norma was fond of
animals ever since she
was a young child

ith her famous curves, bleached blonde hair, red lips and
high voice, the Marilyn Monroe that is remembered today
is almost a caricature of the ‘ideal’ woman. This is the
version of Marilyn that has become immortal – a life of
W scandals, glamour and tragedy. But she was so much more
than that. She was a woman who adored life, who spent hundreds
of dollars trying to save a storm-damaged tree, and who cared for
animals in her yard. She was loud, gentle and joyous. But she was also
self-absorbed, and crippled with doubt and stage fright so terrible that
sometimes she couldn’t emerge from her trailer. She could be cutting,
and say the sharpest words with the softest voice. She was bad at
remembering lines, bad at arriving on time and bad at keeping men.
Because of her glittering rise and tragic end, the Marilyn that has
entered legend is a surface image of the one that lived and breathed.
Before she bleached her hair, when she struggled to pay her bills and
nobody paid attention to her, she was a girl called Norma Jeane, and
Norma Jeane was very different to the icon she became.
Nobody knows who Norma’s father was. Upon her birth on 1 June
Norma chose 1926, her mother Gladys Baker registered her ex husband, Martin
‘Monroe’ as it
was her mother’s Edward Mortenson, as the father, but it is likely that she added
maiden name him to avoid the sting of illegitimacy. Instead, it may have been
Charles Stanley Gifford, a handsome man who worked with Gladys
at Consolidated Film Industries. Either way, by the time Norma was
born, both men were gone. When she was a child, Norma was shown
a photo of Gifford and described him as looking like Clark Gable. This
would morph into a lie that she told her friends as a teenager – that
Gable was her secret father, a man who belonged to another world,
but who would one day whisk her away to a land of glamour and
opportunity. Ever since she could speak, Norma looked outwards, and
sought for something more.
It is no small wonder that Norma looked anywhere for a sense of
importance. She had no roots on one side, and on the other a long
history of insanity. Her grandfather had been confined to a state
asylum, her grandmother eventually followed the same path, her
uncle had killed himself and her mother would drift in and out of
asylums for most of the young girl’s life.
Gladys couldn’t afford to look after Norma, so when she was just
a baby she was placed with a deeply religious family, the Bolenders,
who agreed to look after her for a fee of $5 a week. Gladys hadn’t
abandoned her child – she had a plan. She would work until she was
able to afford a house, then take her daughter back. She took trolley
rides from Hollywood out to Hawthorne, where Norma lived, every
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