Marilyn Monroe 1926-62

Today is the anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe, who was one of my favourite film stars.  She wasn’t a great actress, and while pretty she wasn’t classically beautiful and her life was sadly tragic and messy.  But she had a lovable quality that helped her to light up the screen.

She had a free and easy attitude to sexuality that was unusual in the repressed 1950s, and she was willing to exploit her looks.  But she had suffered from an abusive unhappy childhood and in later life, she found that men were very willing to abuse her as well or to make money out of her sexuality.  Although she was a big money-maker for the studios, she didn’t do that well financially herself..  She was born in Los Angeles, as Norma Jeane Mortensen.  L.A was by then a film town, in June 1926.  Her mother, Gladys Baker was a girl from an impoverished background, who had married young to a man named Baker and had 2 children by him.  She divorced him later but he took her children..  Marilyn didn’t get to know her half siblings for many years.

Gladys got a job as a film cutter and then married another man, Martin Mortensen but that marriage broke up soon. 

Marilyn never knew who her real father was, but she used the names of Mortensen and Baker at various times. Gladys tried to provide a stable home for her daughter but she ha mental problems and was poor, and found life very difficult. 

Marilyn was placed with foster parents at times. But then in 1934, Gladys had a complete breakdown and had to be institutionalised. Norma Jeane was moved around, and saw little of her mother form then on.  She became the ward of her mother’s friend Grace Godard but when Goddard took her into her house, it seems that her husband molested the child… It was the first of many betrayals of her innocence.

In 1938, when she was 12, she was fostered by Grace Goddard’s Aunt, who was kind to her… She didn’t do well at school but was reasonably happy for a time.   In 1941, she had to return to the Goddards because the elderly aunt could not look after her, and then the Goddards had to leave California for a new job.  Marilyn was nearly 16 and couldn’t go with them because of child protection laws which ruled that they could not take her out of state.

Grace – trying to help, arranged a marriage for her to James Dougherty a neighbour’s son who was fond of her..  He was 21 and they had nothing in common but she wanted to escape going back to the orphanage. She dropped out of school and became a housewife.