The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Tries to Meet Her “Father”

When Johnny Hyde died, Marilyn felt that she’d lost not only one of her greatest allies, but also the closest thing she had to a father figure. She turned to Natasha Lytess to get through this difficult time. Natasha was supportive, of course, but she believed that Johnny’s death could indirectly have a troubling effect on Marilyn’s career. Natasha had been working with Marilyn on “deepening” her performances. She now saw that she had such great potential and wanted to make certain that she didn’t fall back to the mostly hollow portrayals she had been doing in her earlier films. “I think tragic roles are her forte,” she would later observe. “There is a strangeness about her… an un-real quality.”

Though she wasn’t exactly a fan of Johnny Hyde’s, Natasha couldn’t help but believe that Marilyn’s association with him had had a positive effect on her acting. After her most recent performances, she felt certain that Marilyn was on the brink of a major breakthrough. She had seen a maturation of Marilyn as both a woman and an actress. Natasha thought that Johnny believed in Marilyn so much, it encouraged her to finally believe in herself—and thus she saw the benefits not only in her acting but in her day-to-day life. With Johnny gone, Natasha felt that they needed somehow to find another person to fill that role in Marilyn’s life. Was it possible that her real father might do so? Natasha felt it was worth a try.

In Marilyn Monroe’s life, there was no question in her mind about her paternity. She simply knew that Charles Gifford was her father—just as Gladys had known so many years earlier. Since this was before medical confirmation of paternity was even a viable option, there probably had been no way for Marilyn to know absolutely—yet she said she absolutely knew in her heart. When Natasha approached Marilyn about tracking down her father, saying that they should have a face-to-face encounter with him, Marilyn was agreeable.

Marilyn spent a few days doing an investigation into just what happened to her father after he left Los Angeles. It turned out he didn’t go far. Gifford had moved to Northern California. After working as a contractor responsible for the building of chalets for a private resort, he went into poultry farming. He married again, to a woman who died soon after the wedding. Finally, he established the Red Rock Dairy, a five-acre farm in Hemet, where he remarried. While Marilyn had no problem finding Gifford’s home address, she couldn’t find a current phone number for him—though word had definitely begun to spread through Hemet that she was trying to find one. Apparently she decided that she would take a risk and drive to Hemet, hoping that maybe an element of surprise would work in her favor.

Susan Reimer, who was eight years old at the time, recalled that her family was excited that a celebrity was coming to visit their “Uncle Stan.” When she asked her mother, Dolly, who was coming, the older woman put a finger up to her mouth and said, “Shhh. We’re not supposed to tell a soul. But it’s”—dramatic pause—“Marilyn Monroe.” Reimer recalled, “That’s when I learned about the family’s secret, one that was never discussed openly and only whispered about. Uncle Stan was Marilyn Monroe’s father. I was told to keep my mouth shut about it, and I did for many years.” She says that when she confronted her uncle and asked him directly about his link to Marilyn Monroe, he balked and said that he didn’t want to reveal anything that would hurt his wife.

Charles Stanley Gifford Jr. today says, “People have been trying to connect these dots back to my family for decades. It’s not true. My father would have told me if he was Marilyn Monroe’s father, too. He just would have. The press pestered him and my poor stepmother, Mary, to death because of these stories Marilyn made up. The poor woman had nothing to do with it, and yet never had a moment’s peace in her life because of it.”

Back in Los Angeles, Marilyn, armed only with Gifford’s address, prepared to depart, assuming that Natasha would be joining her on the drive. However, Lytess seemed to think that Marilyn needed to face that powerful moment on her own. Susan Martinson, who was eighteen in 1950 and a student and friend of Lytess’s, recalled, “Natasha told me that Marilyn cornered her and said, ‘Please come with me. I don’t want to drive up there alone. He’s already hung up on me once and I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle it if he rejects me again.’ Natasha tried to talk her way out of it, but Marilyn insisted.”

Marilyn and Natasha drove several hours to Charles Gifford’s home. When they finally arrived, Marilyn reached into the backseat and fished through her purse. There she found a recent magazine that featured her on the cover. She took a deep breath, then exited the car. Did she really believe that this man could be unaware of who she was—that she needed proof that she was “somebody” to convince him she was worthy of a chance to plead her case? Possibly. She rang the doorbell, then waited, the magazine in her hand rolled into a tube.

The door opened.

Marilyn lifted her lowered head to find—a woman. Apparently, it was Mary Gifford, Charles Stanley Gifford’s present wife. Marilyn’s conversation with her was brief. All that came of it was a business card with Gifford’s lawyer’s number on it, and an awful memory of another broken dream. Gifford’s son, Charles Stanley Jr., insists today that “my father would never have given Marilyn a business card.” In a letter to her former student Helena Albert, Natasha was very clear that she and Marilyn definitely had made the trip, though. She wrote that it had been her idea and that “I regret now putting Marilyn through it because I think it did her no good.” She also wrote that during the long drive she and Marilyn discussed “her father issues,” and that Natasha had decided before they even got to Hemet that “we were making a mistake in not bringing a psychiatrist with us. I don’t know what I was thinking!”

In 1962, Charles Stanley Gifford was diagnosed with cancer shortly before Marilyn Monroe’s death. At that time, he supposedly tried to contact Marilyn from a California hospital. According to Monroe’s friend, actor and masseur Ralph Roberts, a nurse telephoned Marilyn and said, “Your father is very ill and may die. His dying wish is to see you.” To that, Marilyn was alleged to have said, “Tell the gentleman to contact my lawyer.” Again, his son doesn’t believe it. “Absolutely not. If you knew my father, you would know how ridiculous that is. It is not true.”

Charles Stanley Gifford would die of cancer in 1965. Before his death, he supposedly confided to his Presbyterian minister, Dr. Donald Liden, that he had recently spoken to Marilyn on the telephone—impossible, of course, since she would have passed away three years earlier. When Dr. Liden questioned Gifford about it, he confessed. “My daughter was Marilyn Monroe,” he said. Dr. Liden recalled, “My jaw dropped. But I didn’t doubt the truth of it. He said that he felt the mother [Gladys] had been unfair. She had cut him off and didn’t allow him to see the child. When he married again, it got difficult. His wife was a fine woman and he didn’t want to hurt her by acknowledging he’d had a child out of wedlock. I detected it was a sorrowful thing for him.”

“I was with my father every day when he was sick,” insists his son, Charles Jr. “There was no deathbed confession to me, I can tell you that much. We were very close. He told me the particulars of where he wanted to be buried, how he felt about his life, his children. If ever there would have been a time for a deathbed confession, it would have been on his deathbed!

“My father and his friend Ray Guthrie lived together at the time he was dating Gladys,” Gifford Jr. continues. “I once called Ray and asked him about this time. He said, ‘Yeah, I remember Gladys. She used to come around and cook breakfast for us and we’d go out and do this and that, just have fun, nothing serious.’ I asked, ‘Well did Dad ever say anything to you about fathering a child by her?’ He just laughed and said, ‘No, but if he had, he sure would have mentioned it.’

“My father’s DNA is on record at Riverside Hospital,” he concludes. “If Marilyn Monroe’s DNA is on record at one of the hospitals she was ever in, I challenge someone to do a test and compare them, and you’ll find that Charles Stanley Gifford is not her father—and I am not her half brother.”