The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Norma Jeane’s Troubling Visit with Gladys

Late in 1934, it was decided that Gladys Baker would be able to obtain leave from the sanitarium on occasional weekends. Because her medication seemed to be working, her doctors thought it might be beneficial if she were able to travel in the outside world, just as long as her time away from the facility was supervised by a responsible person. Grace, of course, was eager for her friend to regain some sense of normalcy in her life and said she would be more than happy to be accountable for her during these intermittent sojourns. However, as it would happen, these weekends with Gladys—once every month or so—which began in September, were to be quite difficult. Gladys, though better than she was when first institutionalized, was still not well.

On one such weekend in late November 1934, Grace took Gladys and Norma Jeane to the Ambassador Hotel for what she hoped would be a lovely lunch in elegant surroundings. The Ambassador, a grand, sprawling hotel on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, was quite the “in” place at this time, its Coconut Grove nightclub a destination point for an evening on the town for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. In fact, because the sixth annual Academy Awards presentation had taken place in its Fiesta Room eight months earlier, Grace was certain that a luncheon at such an auspicious place would be a special treat for all of them. Moreover, Grace was proud of the physical transformation that had taken place in her little charge over the last year, and she wanted Gladys to see it for herself.

Norma Jeane now wore her long blonde hair in dangling curls. Of course, she had those cornflower blue eyes, and now even a touch of red brushed across her pouting lips. Somehow, she seemed much more precocious than the last time Gladys saw her. Actually, some in Grace’s circle found the makeover a tad disconcerting. It was as if Norma Jeane were far more mature than her eight years, perhaps even being forced into adulthood—not that her childhood had been, thus far, one to cherish. However, Grace had a specific image of how she wanted the youngster to appear and comport herself in public, and she’d spent many hours tutoring her in order that she would rise to those standards. For instance, she’d taught her to curtsy, to be polite, to look people in the eyes when speaking to them, and also to speak clearly and enunciate every syllable. It was as if Grace were running a charm school with only one pupil.

According to a later recollection, when Gladys laid eyes on this new version of her daughter, she didn’t seem interested one way or the other. “I think we could have eaten in the coffee shop downstairs and that would have been a lot better than this,” she told Grace, ignoring Norma Jeane from the outset. She seemed angry. In fact, the severity of her expression did not change during the entire meal. “I shouldn’t be in that place,” she kept insisting, speaking of the sanitarium, “and I want out.”

Obedient and very quiet, Norma Jeane just picked at her food while Grace struggled to engage Gladys in conversation.

In truth, Gladys was too self-involved at this point in her sickness to care about Norma Jeane or anyone else. So immersed was she in her mental illness and in her desire to obtain her freedom, it didn’t matter to her that her daughter was sitting before her. This kind of scene would be repeated for many years to come, whenever Norma Jeane would have an occasional weekend with her mother. “I just don’t think she even liked me very much, let alone loved me,” is how the adult Marilyn would recall it. Of course, there were myriad reasons for Gladys’s emotional disconnect from her daughter, so many that it had become impossible for others—like Grace—to even begin to understand the complex machinations of Gladys’s mind.

At one point during the troubling meal, Grace said to Norma Jeane, “Tell your mother what you want to be when you grow up.” Norma Jeane, perhaps hoping to impress her mother with her exciting goal, turned to Gladys with eager brightness and said, “I want to be a movie star.” In response, Gladys just looked at her daughter with eyes cold as steel. Then she went back to her meal without saying a word.