The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Della’s Terrible Fate

Within just days of surrendering Norma Jeane to Ida and Albert Wayne Bolender, Gladys Baker began to feel remorse over the decision. “It occurred to her, I think, that maybe she could have done for this child what her mother had not done for her—love her, be there for her,” said one of her family members. The deal was that she would pay the Bolenders twenty-five dollars per week to raise Norma Jeane, which she did the entire time Norma Jeane was in their care. In the beginning, though, she gave them a few extra dollars a week so that she could stay with them on occasional weekends and at least be with her baby. That didn’t last long, though. “The truth was that Gladys had a problem watching Ida raise her child,” said Mary Thomas-Strong, whose mother was a close friend of Ida’s. “Ida could be strict and controlling. She felt she knew what was right. She was a professional mother, in a sense. She wanted to have her way with Norma Jeane and it was hard for Gladys to be on the sidelines. Therefore, she moved back to Hollywood determined to visit the baby every weekend. She was back and forth a lot.” In a 1930 census the Bolenders and Gladys were reported to live all in the same household.

Adding to Gladys’s bewilderment at this time was the arrival of her mother, Della, who returned from India with malaria. Her “husband” Charles Grainger decided not to come back to the States with her, leaving most people to believe that their relationship was over. Della was delusional and sick with a fever for many weeks. It took a terrible toll on her.

In summer of 1927, Della walked across the street from her home to the Bolenders’ with the intention of seeing Norma Jeane. She banged on the front door, but Ida didn’t want to let her into the house. It’s unknown why Ida took this position, but she may have felt that Della was out of control and a danger to the baby. Indeed, Della broke the door’s glass with her elbow and let herself in. The family history has it that she confronted Ida and said she believed that Norma Jeane was dead and that no one had told her or Gladys. Alarmed and not knowing how to handle the situation, Ida let Della see Norma Jeane sleeping in her crib. She went to get Della a glass of water and when she returned she found Della smothering the baby with a pillow. “Ida became almost hysterical,” said one friend of Gladys’s in the telling of the story. “She grabbed the child. Della said that the baby’s pillow had slipped and she was simply readjusting it. But Ida was very upset and demanded that Della leave the house.” Marilyn Monroe—and even the Bolenders—would tell variations of this story many times over the years.

“Ida and Wayne called the police,” said Mary Thomas-Strong. “When they came, they found a very mixed-up Della babbling incoherently. With Norma Jeane crying in her bedroom, and Ida shouting accusations at Della, it was such a chaotic scene the police didn’t know what to do about it. So they escorted Della back to her house and left her there. What they should have done was taken her to a hospital.”

For a long time, Della had been filled with an aching sadness. Now it was not only more acute but had also turned into abject anger directed at whoever happened to be in the room with her—and unfortunately, that was usually Gladys, who had recently moved in with her mother to care for her. After a battery of tests, it was determined that Della was suffering from a weakened heart, and probably heart disease as well. Of course, that diagnosis certainly did not account for her many years of unpredictable behavior, which had started back when she gave birth to her children. Once she began taking the prescribed medication, things went from bad to worse. Her swift decline reminded some family members of the sudden descent into madness that had been suffered by Della’s late husband, Otis. Gladys couldn’t help but fear the worst. The horrifying likelihood was that the same thing that had happened to her father was now afflicting her mother.

A few nights after Gladys moved into the house with her, Della came rushing into her bedroom screaming that Charles Grainger had broken into the house and raped her. Gladys didn’t even have to check the property to verify that Grainger wasn’t on it—she just knew he wasn’t. However, there was no calming Della that night. A couple of days later, she started to complain that the local butcher had put shards of glass in her ground beef. Then, a week later, on August 1, Della took a turn for the worse, so much so that Gladys and Grace had to rush her back to the doctor. “He said there was no doubt about it, Della needed to be institutionalized,” said Mary Thomas-Strong. “Gladys couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t going to allow it. But then the strangest thing happened.”

According to the family’s history, handed down a generation, on August 3 mother and daughter were having a silent and contemplative meal at the kitchen table. Perhaps Gladys was trying to sort through her emotions, maybe attempting to divine how she might proceed with her mother. Over the years, Della had become Gladys’s most loyal confidante. After all, mother and daughter shared the same kinds of mental problems, and often one would have to convince the other that the voices being “heard” were not real, that the people “watching” were imaginary. How could Gladys say goodbye to Della now? In her absence, who would be there for her? She had already lost her three children, and now her mother, this woman sitting across from her with an empty look in her eyes? Gladys couldn’t accept it, especially with the knowledge that when her father had been sent to a similar place, he never returned. His fate had rarely left her thoughts, especially during the last couple of weeks.

Suddenly, in a moment of surprising lucidity, Della looked up from her plate and stared at her daughter with sad eyes. “You must let me go, Gladys,” she said earnestly. “It’s time for me to go. I want to go.” Mother and daughter looked intently at each other for a long, infinitely heartbreaking moment. Then, as the tears began to roll down Gladys’s face, Della went back to her meal.

On August 4, 1927, Della Monroe was taken to the Norwalk State Hospital. Nineteen days later, on August 23, she died. She was buried in the Rose Hill Cemetery in Whittier, California, next to her first husband, Otis. She was just fifty-one.