Kill Marilyn. Secrets That Kill: Hollywood Under the Rule of the Elite

– Anthony Summers, Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe, 1985.

“Gladys never hugged her. Marilyn recalled that her mother kept her distance even when the girl was sick or crying. ‘She said that love makes children weak,’”

– Donald Spoto, Marilyn Monroe: The Biography

A study of the Baker family genealogy reveals cases of mental illness and suicides among close relatives. Gladys was hospitalized more than 20 times during her life, indicating the chronic and progressive nature of her illness. She spent her final years in strict isolation and died under complete isolation in 1984, in a psychiatric hospital. Marilyn’s older half-brother (on her mother’s side), Robert Kermit Baker, was born in 1917. He also suffered from serious mental disorders like his mother. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital in his youth and died there at the age of 30, in 1933, when Marilyn was only 7 years old. Marilyn never saw him. He disappeared from her life before she even realized she had a brother. His name was rarely mentioned – as if people wanted to erase the very fact of his existence.

Quote from biographer Donald Spoto (Marilyn Monroe: The Biography):

“Robert was a taboo. No one spoke of him. It was as if he did not exist. He was the first ghost in her family, and far from the last.”

Bernice Baker Miracle, born in 1919, was Marilyn’s sister, but Marilyn only learned of her existence at the age of 12. Until then, she did not know she had a sister. In their youth, they never interacted because Bernice was given into the care of her father in Kentucky. Their mother did not maintain contact. They met for the first time when Marilyn was already a teenager.

“When we first talked, I thought she was joking. A sister? Mine? But then I saw something familiar in her – her eyes, lips, expression.”

– Marilyn, recalling Bernice’s memories.

Later, when Marilyn had already become an actress, they occasionally corresponded and met rarely, but their relationship remained strained. Bernice later wrote:

“I was like a strange reminder of the past she was running from. She didn’t know how to talk to me – we were almost strangers.”

In this family, there was neither kinship nor warmth – only the genes Marilyn feared she might inherit. Her childhood was spent in orphanages and foster homes, where she was unloved, misunderstood, and often treated cruelly. Constant relocations and the feeling of rejection and helplessness shaped a sense of complete social insignificance. Norma Jeane understood perfectly well that there was almost no chance to escape such an environment. Her memories are full of bitter phrases:

“I am nobody. No one wants me, no one waits for me, I was just thrown into the garbage.”

“I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know why I was born. I didn’t know who I belonged to. And I learned: to no one.”

– Norma Jeane Baker (Marilyn Monroe), in conversation with Ben Hecht, 1954

Marilyn Monroe was born out of wedlock, and her life from the very beginning was a stark, ugly demonstration of how the system treats children whose parents are absent. Her mother, Gladys, suffered from a severe mental disorder and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital shortly after giving birth. Her father – Charles Stanley Gifford – tall, well-groomed, and proper, refused to acknowledge paternity. He neither paid support nor visited. She was neither adopted nor rescued – she was passed “from hand to hand.”

“I was something like luggage to them, something that could be handed from one person to another.”

– Marilyn Monroe

In 1926, when Norma Jeane was eleven days old, she was placed with the Bolender foster family, strict Christian Pentecostals from Hawthorne, California. She lived there until she was seven, calling her foster mother, Ida, “Mom,” unaware that she had a real mother. The Bolenders received state payments for her care and also had other foster children. Their neighbor later said:

“She was quiet, obedient, and tried not to interfere. But something in her was already ringing alarm bells – she looked at the world as if she could see something frightening behind it.”

– Georgia Winslow, neighbor of the Bolenders

The family was not cruel – but neither were they loving. They considered her simply “the girl we were given” and strictly monitored her behavior. No affection. Only discipline, prayers, and coldness. Norma Jeane lived there until she was seven. Suddenly, Gladys decided to take her daughter back. She rented a house on Arbolea Drive, then suffered a nervous breakdown, and the girl witnessed her mother in a fit of madness, snatching her away from her foster parents. This was her first encounter with insanity – and not the last. Soon, Gladys was admitted to a psychiatric hospital again. After Gladys’s final hospitalization, Norma Jeane was sent to the Los Angeles orphanage. There, she first learned what it meant to be “one of many.” Dirty beds. Mockery. Fear. The girl with a mop of light brown hair slept in a communal bedroom, ate from aluminum dishes, and waited for someone to “take her” again – like a box from the attic.

“In the orphanage, I learned to be silent. Nobody wanted to listen there.”

– Marilyn Monroe, interview, 1956

She was taken by families for short periods, often simply for state subsidies. In some cases, abuses occurred.

Marilyn later admitted:

“They molested me. More than once. I would leave, and they would send me somewhere else again. They thought I was lying and just wanted attention.”

– Marilyn Monroe, recounted in Norman Rieglers’ book

Norma Jeane was only nine when she was once again placed into “safe hands.” Grace McKee – her mother’s best friend – had married a man named Doc Goddard and decided that she now had a “real family.” She took the child from the orphanage and brought her to a new home, which smelled of half-drunk whiskey. Grace McKee, the official guardian, played an ambiguous role in her life. She was the first to tell Norma Jeane about cinema. She took her to studios, let her wear makeup, and even indulge in fantasies.

“I was supposed to be grateful. I had a mattress, I had a pillow. But I feared the night more than the cold or hunger.”