Part 3 (2/2)

Also at this time, Gladys began wearing a white uniform, white stockings, and white shoes every day as if she were a nurse. She never explained why, and her family could never figure it out. Perhaps she had idealized the nurses she'd known at the sanitarium and thought they led good lives. After all, they were free to leave at the end of the day and be with their loved ones while she and the rest of the patients had to remain locked up. Or maybe she just viewed the nurses as powerful and in command-as she never had been in her own life. As soon as she was out, she began taking temporary jobs in convalescent homes. Norma Jeane found it disconcerting that her mother was tending to people in any kind of medical setting. Others, like Dora, actually hoped Gladys would become a practical nurse, now that she had finally gotten the freedom she so longed for.

Gladys's Plea to Norma Jeane.

In December 1945, Jim Dougherty returned from his tour of duty for the Christmas holidays. He had been gone for eighteen months. In that time, things between him and Norma Jeane had definitely changed, and he knew it as soon as she greeted him at the train station. ”She was an hour late,” he recalled. ”She told me she had a modeling job, and that was her excuse, which didn't exactly make me happy. She embraced me and kissed me, but it was a little cool. I had two weeks off before resuming s.h.i.+pboard duties along the California coast, but I don't think we had more than three or four nights together during that time. She was busy modeling, earning good money. It was my first inkling of her ambition.”

Norma Jeane wasn't totally finished with her marriage. She still hoped that she would wake up one day to find that Jim had had a sudden change of heart. ”Yes, yes, yes,” he would tell her in her fantasy. ”I get it now. I understand. And yes, I approve of your career!” Perhaps she hoped for just such a reaction when she showed him her recent photos taken by a rather famous photographer named Andre de Dienes. She hoped he would like them-she knew they were very good-and perhaps they might convince him that she had found her calling. She also displayed some of the many magazine covers on which she had appeared of late. She was keeping a sc.r.a.pbook, which she also proudly displayed, thumbing through the pages and explaining where each photo was taken and for what purpose. By this time, she had even been doing pinup modeling in bathing suits-which she must have known wouldn't make him very happy. The c.u.mulative effect of all of this accomplishment was impressive even to her, as perhaps it would have been to most people, considering how many covers she had racked up in such a short time-how could her husband not be amazed at her achievements? How could he not want her to continue? How could he not want her... to be happy?

”So far as I was concerned, she was turning into another human being,” he later recalled. ”She showed me the pictures, her new dresses and shoes-as if I cared about such things. She was proud of her new popularity at Blue Book [the modeling agency with which she had signed] and she expected me to be, too.” Jim's lackl.u.s.ter reaction did not bode well for him or his marriage. Norma Jeane was disappointed and couldn't understand why he wouldn't at least try to act as if he were happy for her.

Jim felt that he needed time alone with his wife so that he could talk to her and try to resolve some of their issues-in other words, get her to acquiesce to his desire that she quit her career. He decided that the two of them should drive to Oregon and visit Gladys at her Aunt Dora's home. Norma Jeane agreed, though reluctantly. She knew she had to see her mother, but she also knew that every time she had done so in the past she had regretted it. She also probably had ambivalent feelings about being alone in a car with her husband for so many days, especially since they were not getting along.

The visit did not go well, according to Jim. ”My first encounter with Gladys was a little of a shock,” he later recalled. ”She didn't seem to connect with me at all. Her mind was out in left field somewhere.” Jim also was surprised at how much Gladys and Norma Jeane resembled each other. ”You could almost see what Norma Jeane was going to look like when she got to be that age. Gladys was a pretty woman. With proper makeup and her hair done, she would have been a gorgeous person.”

Gladys sat upright in a wicker chair and was completely unresponsive when he and Norma Jeane walked into the room. She was wearing a white nylon dress and blouse and white stockings and shoes-her ”nurse's uniform.” Norma Jeane knelt at her mother's feet and held her delicate hands, gazing into her vacant eyes, trying to divine what it was she was thinking, how she felt about seeing her.

”How are you, Mother? Are you happy to finally be out?” she asked her, somewhat tentatively.

Gladys smiled absently.

Still on her knees in front of her mother, Norma Jeane tried to fill the void by talking about her recent trip to see Berniece. ”She can't wait to come and see you, Mother,” she told Gladys. However, it didn't matter what anecdote Norma Jeane relayed, nothing seemed to interest her mother. ”Mother, please,” Norma Jeane said, a searching expression on her face. Gladys answered her plea with total silence. But then, suddenly, Gladys tightened her grip on Norma Jeane's hands, leaned in, and whispered in her ear that she wanted to come and live with her.

Norma Jeane looked at her, a startled expression lingering on her face. She didn't know how to respond. Truly, that was the last thing she'd expected, or even wanted. She was getting ready to leave an old life-her marriage-behind, and, hopefully, begin a new one-her career. Gladys represented a huge responsibility. No doubt, if the two had enjoyed a warm relations.h.i.+p over the years, she would have been much more inclined to take on such a burden. However, this woman before her was one she didn't know at all, and was also unstable and unpredictable. Yet, still, she was her mother. Quick tears came to Norma Jeane's eyes. She let go of Gladys's hands and stood up. ”We have to go now, Mother,” she said, gathering her coat while shooting Jim a desperate look. ”I'm going to leave you Aunt Ana's address and phone number, so you know where I am. Call me anytime.” Then, with tears by now streaming down her face, she bent down and kissed Gladys on the forehead. Gladys had no reaction. Norma Jeane and Jim turned and walked away.

The days driving back to Los Angeles were spent quietly, Norma Jeane deep in thought and terribly unhappy. The trip certainly did not go as Jim had planned. He didn't have the chance to really talk to Norma Jeane about his concerns relating to their marriage and her career. However, when they got back to Aunt Ana's, it all came out. ”I've had enough of this modeling business,” he told Norma Jeane, putting his foot down. ”I'm not going to put up with it another moment. Here's what's going to happen. When I get back here in April on my next leave, I want you back in our own house. And I want you to have made up your mind that you're finished with this silliness, and then we're going to have children. Do you understand, Norma Jeane?” She nodded, but didn't say a word. She would later recall her heart pounding so much that evening, she couldn't sleep. A photographer had given her a bottle of prescription sleeping pills in case she was unable to get a good night's sleep before a session, but she was afraid to take them.

Jim Gets a Surprise: Gladys.

The first four months of 1946 were busy. Norma Jeane, now almost twenty, had never worked so hard. All of the photographers who took her picture were amazed at how well they came out, and it was clear that she was no longer a novice. She'd known what she wanted in terms of results from the very beginning. Now she was getting those results. She was working nonstop-so much so that one friend, Jacquelyn Cooper, wondered if perhaps she was sleeping with the photographers. ”I said she could tell me because I won't breathe a word of it if you're having affairs with these fellows,” she recalled. ”She said, 'Absolutely not!' And what did I think she was? Very bothered, like that, like I'd hurt her feelings even wondering if she was sleeping with these fellows. In fact, she was so bothered she didn't pay attention to me for days.”

”Men who tried to buy me with money made me sick,” Marilyn recalled years later. ”There were plenty of them. The mere fact that I turned down offers ran my price up.”

She was working a great deal. But she confided in one photographer that she would sometimes, as she put it, ”get down in the dumps.” She said that she would have ”dark moods that came from nowhere.” In those times, she said, it was as if she ”didn't have the answers to anything.” These particular comments from her are interesting because they call to mind what her grandmother, Della, and mother, Gladys, used to call ”the doldrums.” But perhaps the following terribly prophetic statement says it best about Marilyn's dark mood swings during this time in her life: ”Yes, there was something special about me, and I knew what it was. I was the kind of girl they found dead in a hall bedroom with an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her hand. But things weren't entirely black-not yet. When you're young and healthy you can plan on Monday to commit suicide, and by Tuesday you're laughing again.”

During this time, while Jim was away and she was working with a series of different photographers, something else happened that would change things for Norma Jeane and, in a lot of ways, for future generations of admirers. It occurred in February 1946. At the suggestion of her agent, Emmeline Snively, Norma Jeane had her hair first straightened and then stripped of its chestnut brown color and changed to a shade of golden blonde. It was all in preparation for a shampoo print advertis.e.m.e.nt. Now, more than ever, Norma Jeane Baker Mortensen Dougherty was starting to look very much like Jean Harlow. But more important, she began to look like another great screen star, one of the greatest, in fact, of all time. She began to look like Marilyn Monroe. The transformation was almost complete. Norma Jeane Mortensen was almost a woman of the past, certainly as far as her husband was concerned.

In April, Jim returned from duty-as he had promised. However, Norma Jeane did not meet him at San Pedro Bay-as she had promised. Upset, he jumped into a taxi and went straight to the small house that the couple shared in Van Nuys. After paying the cabbie, he walked toward the home and noticed the drapes open. He peeked in. All of the furniture seemed to be in place. He caught a glimpse of Norma Jeane walking by. Apparently, she had done what he had demanded. She was there, at least. Now he might have a chance to talk some sense into her, and perhaps save his marriage. He must have been relieved. However, any sense of relief was to be short-lived. Jim Dougherty put his key into the lock and opened the door. And there she stood.

Not Norma Jeane.

Gladys.

How Gladys Lost Her Children.

She's been through so much in her life,” Norma Jeane told Jim. ”I can't put her out on the street.”

”But she's crazy,” Jim said in protest.

”If you'd been through what she's been through, maybe you'd be crazy, too.”

Norma Jeane had a great deal of empathy for her mother because she was privy to a story only those closest to the family knew. It was the story of how Gladys's children-Norma Jeane's half brother and sister-were kidnapped.

Back in 1922, Gladys Baker-who was twenty-two, just two years older than Norma Jeane was in 1946-had already married and divorced Jasper, her first husband. She now had custody of their children, Berniece and little Jackie. However, Jasper was concerned about his ex-wife's behavior, claiming that she was unfit due to her overactive social life and her heavy drinking. Despite his concerns, Jasper left Los Angeles and headed for his native Kentucky, vowing to return to check in on his children.

Months later, he arrived unexpectedly at his mother-in-law Della's home and found the children alone with her. He easily tracked Gladys down at a speakeasy a few blocks away. Gladys didn't see him, though, when he arrived at and then left the smoke-filled ”diner.” A few minutes later, one of the other revelers mentioned to Gladys that he had just seen her ex-husband. It was impossible, Gladys said, because Jasper wasn't even in town. ”But I could've sworn I just saw him,” her friend said. The moment hung awkwardly. Gladys shrugged and returned to her tipsy afternoon with the fellows. To hear her later recall the incident to relatives, she had convinced herself, at least for a short time, that her friend was mistaken. Yet, as she sipped on her drink, she grew concerned that maybe Jasper had had been skulking around. As she sat thinking, her mind became flooded with terrible memories of their troubled relations.h.i.+p. He had told her on more occasions than she could count that she wasn't fit to be a mother. It didn't take long before Gladys's worry built to the point where she simply had to leave the diner and return home to make sure her children were safe. been skulking around. As she sat thinking, her mind became flooded with terrible memories of their troubled relations.h.i.+p. He had told her on more occasions than she could count that she wasn't fit to be a mother. It didn't take long before Gladys's worry built to the point where she simply had to leave the diner and return home to make sure her children were safe.

As she reached her block, she began sprinting toward her home, her youth apparent as she flew down the street. When she finally got to the house, she stopped dead in her tracks. On the front steps stood her mother, Della, smoking a cigarette and weeping. Gladys bolted up the steps and burst through the front door. Her children were gone.

The first few weeks without her son and daughter were a confusing period for Gladys Baker. After she contacted Jasper's family and they convinced her that he had not returned to Kentucky, she set out on foot to find him and her two children. First she headed to San Diego, where he had once mentioned he might find work as a longsh.o.r.eman. Thus began a four-month-long odyssey of hitchhiking, cheap motels, and the obligatory speakeasies that had become Gladys's only social outlet. From the road, she wrote to a cousin, ”I am doing what I can. I do not know if it is enough. I don't know how I am getting by.” The trip was fruitless. Gladys seemed hardened by her pointless quest, and Della decided that she would never interrogate her daughter about her awful time searching. ”It was as if her smile had died,” Della told one relative a number of years later. ”She always seemed like a child to me before, but when she returned she was a woman. To tell you the truth, I had grown used to arguing with her. But she had no gumption left. She was just a very sad woman.”

After Gladys returned to her mother's home, she found a letter from her brother-in-law, Audrey, which had been delivered in her absence. Concerned for her emotional well-being, Audrey confessed in his letter that he'd been concealing vital information from her: His brother, Jasper, had actually been living with their mother for the past four months in Flat Lick, Kentucky-with the children. He suggested that Gladys move on with her life and not attempt to contact Jasper.

Della later recalled watching tears run down Gladys's face as she read Audrey's letter. Although Della tried to lighten her daughter's spirits, there was nothing she could do for her on that day. It was spent mostly in somber silence. That night, before bedtime, Della brought Gladys a large bowl of soup. The next morning, when she went in to awaken her daughter, the dish sat on the nightstand, untouched-and Gladys was gone.

Gladys. .h.i.tchhiked most of the way to Kentucky, riding the occasional bus when she grew tired of thumbing rides and being pa.s.sed up. Her first stop was Louisville, where she decided to spend a day putting herself back together. She knew that the months spent traveling had not been kind and she wanted to at least appear well-rested when her children saw her for the first time.

On the day she got to Flat Lick, her plan was to march up to her mother-in-law's front door and demand that her children be handed over to her. They would all then return to Los Angeles and, hopefully, forget the events of recent months. Gladys's intentions to wrench her children from their paternal grandmother's arms did not go as she intended, however. Something had gotten in the way of her plan, something so simple-laughter.

While standing across the street from her mother-in-law's modest home, Gladys watched as Jackie and Berniece playfully chased each other. As the two giggled and ran around the yard, she couldn't help but notice little Jackie's p.r.o.nounced limp. How well she remembered that injury. It had happened back in 1920, when Jackie was three. While driving from Los Angeles to visit Jasper's mother at this very home, the couple began a fierce argument. Jackie had been sitting in the backseat, unattended. In a moment almost too terrible to imagine, the toddler tumbled out of their 1909 Ford Model T roadster, a doorless vehicle, while his parents were busy arguing. When they finally arrived in Kentucky with the injured child, Jasper's family was of course horrified and wanted to know what in the world could have happened. Even though Jasper had been the one at the wheel, he told everyone that his negligent wife had been responsible for the accident because she'd not been properly minding their child. For her part, Gladys was already distraught because of what had occurred, and to now be solely blamed for it by Jasper was almost more than she could bear. She couldn't fathom that the man she so loved had turned against her that way. Meanwhile, young Jackie had suffered a serious hip injury, from which he would never fully recover.

Now the boy's limp was a reminder of his terrible accident. Gladys watched her children for a bit, unnoticed. They seemed so happy in the large yard with a tire swing amid what appeared to be acres of woods surrounding the home. Gladys turned and walked away, unseen.

However, she simply couldn't leave Kentucky without her children. But how would she ever be able to retrieve them from the place they currently called home? She knew that her deficiency as a mother would be Jasper's primary defense for having taken Jackie and Berniece. If she were going to get them back, she saw only two options. She could steal them-just as Jasper had done. Or she could prove that she was a new woman. If Jasper and his family saw her as someone capable of caring for her children, maybe they would willingly allow her to take them. So, for a time, Gladys would begin a new life in Louisville.

Within weeks, she had altered her appearance dramatically, wearing simpler, more matronly attire. She also began to go without makeup, something she hadn't done for many years. Her toned-down appearance may have helped her land the precise position she sought. She was hired as a nanny for a well-off couple, Margaret and John ”Jack” Cohen, on the outskirts of town. This job would not simply be a way for her to survive financially, it would afford her the opportunity to become the kind of woman she hoped her ex-husband would approve of, a woman worthy of being called a mother.

The Cohens were a happily married couple, and their daughter, Norma Jeane, was a well-behaved three-year-old child. The new Gladys was, in this family's mind, the ideal caretaker, treating their daughter as if she were her own. However, Gladys's only goal was to one day regain custody of her own children.

Months later, when she believed her transformation had been completed, she knocked on the Bakers' front door. Her mother-inlaw answered, with only a few awkward words spoken through the crack in the door. When her ex-husband appeared, he asked Gladys to come into the house. As she entered, she saw a wide-eyed little girl standing by the kitchen. However, before Gladys even had a chance to say h.e.l.lo, the youngster's grandmother grabbed the girl and disappeared with her into another room.

Gladys's meeting with Jasper was strained, her attempts to present herself as an improved woman falling on deaf ears. Jasper was firm in his position that she would not get the children back, no matter what she said or did to convince him that she had changed. She asked if she could at least visit them. Jasper said she could see Berniece, but not little Jackie. After months of being in agonizing pain, the boy was now in a hospital and there was no telling how long he would have to remain there. Jasper reminded Gladys that her neglect was primarily to blame for the child's desperate condition. Devastated, Gladys then spent a short time with Berniece before her ex-mother-in-law asked her to leave.

Now, back in the home of the perfect family with the perfect child, things felt different to her. She no longer saw the Cohens as role models. In fact, their very existence seemed to mock her inability to change, to truly alter the woman she had once been and become someone new, someone respectable. ”Each idyllic day with that family was another dagger in Gladys's broken heart,” says a cousin of hers interviewed for this book. ”She couldn't help but mourn the loss of what once was, what could have been.”

While Gladys did her best to appear as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred during her weekend away-supposedly with her aunt-her sinking mood made that impossible. As had happened so many times in her past, she slipped into the dark place that was by now all too familiar to her. The progress she had made, the many joyful scenarios she had imagined, the hope she once had-all of it was gone. The ”new” Gladys Baker was dying a slow death.

The First Norma Jeane.

It's been written in countless Marilyn Monroe biographies that Gladys Baker's baby, Norma Jeane, was named after the actress Jean Harlow. However, this can't be true, since Jean Harlow's real name was Harlean Carpenter and wasn't changed until 1928, two years after Gladys gave birth. Other accounts have it that the child was named after another actress, Norma Shearer. Still others insist it was Norma Talmadge. None of this is true. In the 1960s, Gladys explained the derivation to Rose Anne Cooper, a young nurse's aide at the Rock Haven Sanitarium.

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