The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

A Frightening Encounter with Gladys

By the fall of 1929, with Della Monroe dead for two years, Gladys had become accustomed to not having anyone in her life upon whom she could totally depend. She hadn’t been able to make any of her romantic relationships last, and her children had either been taken from her or given away by her. Her job at Consolidated Studios offered her little opportunity to build friendships. In fact, as a film cutter, her role was menial. She was told where and how to cut and splice together pieces of film so they could be viewed as a whole. The irony of that vocation most likely never occurred to Gladys, but it could be considered an interesting metaphor representing the major challenge of her mental state: putting the pieces of her life together. It’s true, she had made a good friend in Grace McKee. However, since Della’s death, Grace hadn’t been able to reach Gladys. It was as if something in Gladys had been switched off and she simply didn’t care that much about connecting with other people. Perhaps it was because Gladys was simply not able to quiet the increasingly loud voices in her head. After all, only her mother had possessed the key to settling her back into a more reasonable thought process. On her own, she lacked the ability to view her circumstances from a distance. Without that perspective, each moment became about exactly what was happening right then and there. Goals were impossible to set, consequences impossible to calculate. She was in a mental tailspin, and everyone in her life knew it but didn’t know what to do about it.

While her moment-to-moment experiences may have been torturous, Gladys was still able to complete tasks. For instance, she could show up for work on time, go grocery shopping, and remember to water the plants. Therefore, if someone’s life could be judged solely by her daily agenda, Gladys Baker would have appeared quite unspectacular. Yet it was how she experienced and reacted to the string of events that made her different.

Even toward the end of Della’s life, she had been a somewhat stabilizing factor for her daughter. In part, it may have been because Gladys was responsible for managing her mother’s health and state of mind. This duty helped keep her focus off her own paranoid delusions. That paranoia, however, was now building—and during Gladys’s time alone she began to find it more difficult to remain rational. Naturally, her first plan of action was to find a man, which she would do often at one of the nearby speak easies. Of course, these unions rarely lasted more than an evening or two. Also, it was getting harder for her to lure the opposite sex, not so much because of her reputation as a woman of loose morals, but because something just seemed a little “off” about her. Through it all, though, Gladys felt she had a reasonable expectation of having at least one person with her all the time: Norma Jeane. She was her daughter, after all. When she gave her to Ida, it was in the hope that she would one day be capable of caring for the baby herself.

One afternoon, in the middle of what must have been a full-force episode of paranoia, Gladys pounded on the front door of the Bolender home. The daughters of a friend of Ida’s from church—both interviewed for this book—explained for the first time the exchange that occurred, as described to them by their mother:

“Where’s Norma Jeane?” Gladys demanded, pushing past Ida.

“What is it, Gladys?” Ida replied, regarding her carefully. “What’s happened?”

Gladys said that Norma Jeane could no longer stay at the Bo-lenders’. She had come to take her, she insisted, as her eyes darted about the small home. It was impossible to reason with her. Ida told her that she wasn’t making any sense and suggested that she sit down and talk to her. However, Gladys was adamant. With her eyes flashing, she cried out again that Norma Jeane was her daughter and that she was taking her home. Ida grabbed Gladys’s arm, delaying her momentarily. “This is her home,” she told her. “We just haven’t made it official yet… but once we get the adoption papers together…” Gladys then insisted that there would never be an adoption. Norma Jeane was hers, she said, not Ida’s. With that, she yanked herself free and ran to the backyard, where the three-year-old was playing with a dog that had followed Wayne home one day and whom Norma Jeane had named Tippy. Ida followed Gladys into the backyard, begging her to come to her senses. However, Gladys insisted that she was only taking what was rightfully hers. Then she scooped up a now crying Norma Jeane and said, “You’re coming with Mommy, sweetheart.”

According to the story passed down a generation, there was mayhem—a barking dog, a weeping child, and Ida pulling at Gladys in an effort to save a little girl from a confused, possibly dangerous woman. Still tussling as they got to the kitchen, Gladys managed to push Ida outside, slamming the back door and quickly locking it.

Frantic, Ida pounded on the door. Then she tried to force it open with all her weight. After a few moments of futile effort, she ran down the driveway, around the house, and entered her home through the front door. By this time, she was out of breath, panting. She listened for a moment. Nothing.

Ida then ran back out the door again to see if Gladys had somehow made it out to the sidewalk in front of the house. Once outside, she looked both ways down the street—no one was in sight. At a loss, she was about to burst into tears when suddenly the front door flew open. It was Gladys, her face now flushed and red.

Then Ida heard the muffled screams of Norma Jeane. To Ida’s horror, Gladys had managed to stuff the child into a large military duffel bag that Wayne Bolender had used to store his tools. The bag hung on her shoulder, completely zipped shut. Gladys, now moving clumsily with her awkward baggage, attempted to cross the lawn. Ida grabbed one of the handles of the canvas sack and tried to free it from Gladys’s grip. This bizarre tug-of-war would last only moments, ending with the bag splitting open and the helpless Norma Jeane tumbling onto the ground. Norma Jeane’s weeping ceased for a moment before she finally screamed out, “Mommy!” Both women turned and looked down at the child, whose arms were now outstretched—in Ida’s direction. Ida whipped the child quickly up into her arms and ran inside the house, locking the door behind her.

Now inside, an extremely shaken Ida Bolender stood in a doorway to the kitchen. Clinging to little Norma Jeane with everything she had, she kept her eyes on the front door, all the while ready to run out the back if Gladys tried to get into the house. All she could hear was the child’s whimpering as she watched the front doorknob turn slightly back and forth. Gladys could not get into the house. Ida spent the next few minutes peeking out various windows as Gladys circled the house, muttering to herself and occasionally trying to open a window or a door. Finally, Ida screwed up enough courage to shout through a closed window, “I’ve called the police! They’ll be here shortly!”

With the now quiet Norma Jeane still in her arms, Ida Bolender listened. There was silence. Gladys Baker had disappeared just as abruptly as she had arrived.