The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Gladys’s Surprise Visit

Though Gladys Baker had been saying for some time that she wanted to visit her daughter Berniece in Florida, Berniece and Marilyn were really not sure she was serious about it. When Marilyn offered to take care of her expenses for such a trip, all was quiet with Gladys.

Then, true to form, Gladys—always one for a surprise appearance or disappearance—showed up in Florida without warning during the first week of September 1952. How she got the money for her trip (and by airline, no less, because Marilyn intended to send her by railway) remained a mystery. She definitely did not get the funds from Marilyn, though, because if she had, Marilyn would have warned Berniece about her impending arrival. Instead, Berniece’s daughter, Mona Rae, picked up the telephone one morning and it was Gladys on the other end telling her she was at the airport—and why wasn’t anyone there to pick her up? When Marilyn found out about it, she was frantic with worry. She couldn’t imagine how Gladys had made the trip. The mere fact that she was capable of such surprise maneuvers was something Marilyn found very troubling. “I don’t know how to keep an eye on her,” she said. “It’s becoming more than I can handle.”

The same could have been said for poor Berniece, because the next few weeks would prove to be very difficult. Gladys wasn’t exactly the ideal houseguest. The apartment in which Berniece and her husband, Paris, and daughter lived was very small, and now there was a fourth occupant. Not surprisingly, Gladys was demanding and difficult, argumentative and disruptive. She wouldn’t help with any household duties and spent her days complaining and making long-distance telephone calls. Berniece did everything she could to make Gladys happy, but nothing worked. Gladys’s emotional problems were complex. She needed to be managed very carefully, and Berniece simply didn’t have the skills necessary to do that. Ultimately, she was at a loss, especially when she got the bill for the first month of telephone calls—long-distance costs were unbelievably exorbitant back then and Paris was very unhappy about the charges. When Berniece asked Gladys about the phone calls, she became defensive and explained that she had simply forgotten to mention them. Confused, Berniece called Marilyn to ask if she thought Gladys was being forgetful or just plain inconsiderate. Marilyn decided it was probably a little bit of both.

From an analytical viewpoint, Marilyn found the unhappy interaction between Gladys and Berniece interesting because for years she had wondered if it was just she who could not get along with Gladys. Maybe she should have tried harder, she often thought. Maybe she hadn’t been as patient as she should have been, or as understanding. However, when she learned of Berniece’s troubles with Gladys, she felt at least somewhat vindicated. From a practical viewpoint, what were they going to do about Gladys now? Marilyn had an idea: What if she paid for Gladys to move into an apartment near Berniece? Since Gladys did seem to like Florida, perhaps she could live there, Marilyn would take care of her expenses, and Berniece could keep an eye on her. The sisters agreed that this was a good idea and they felt certain that their mother would approve of it. However, when Berniece approached Gladys with the idea, she wasn’t happy about it at all. She became very angry because she felt that Berniece and Paris were just trying to get rid of her. Her feelings now hurt, she didn’t want to discuss it any further—and, moreover, it seemed as if she were not going to be ending her stay with Berniece anytime in the foreseeable future.

While Gladys was with her, Berniece took the opportunity to ask her about Marilyn’s father. Gladys came out very bluntly with the information that Edward Mortenson was not Marilyn’s father. Did Marilyn know? Yes, Gladys said, she knew because Grace told her. (Here, she was probably referring to the time Grace visited her in the sanitarium and Gladys told her that Charles Gifford was Marilyn’s father.) Berniece wondered how Marilyn had reacted to the news. Gladys said she had no idea (which was true—she had been in the hospital when Grace gave Marilyn the news). As Berniece pressed on about the subject, Gladys became increasingly agitated. Finally, she snapped at her daughter, “Look, if you want to know all of the details, ask Marilyn.” Berniece dropped the subject.

After almost two months of domestic turmoil, Berniece—feeling terrible about the entire situation—called Grace Goddard on October 30 to ask her advice. Grace sympathized with her. She had known Gladys for many years and she knew how difficult she was. She assured Berniece that Gladys didn’t mean any harm, that she was just sick and there had never been anything anyone could do about it. Grace had been using Christian Science as a tool in the healing of Gladys’s mind, but that didn’t seem to be working at all. Just two days earlier, she had sent Berniece a note telling her that Gladys “did not get a complete healing.” She wrote that she was afraid they were going to have to send her back to Agnews in San Jose, or maybe they should place her in the Rock Haven Sanitarium in La Crescenta, California. ^*

In fact, Grace and Marilyn had recently visited Rock Haven, Grace wrote, and both agreed that it was “not terrible as such places go, about as good as they get, I suppose.” She wrote that Marilyn was so traumatized by the visit, however, she didn’t sleep well that night and “had to take some sleeping pills, which did not make me very happy.” Moreover, she indicated that if it Gladys were to end up at Rock Haven, “at least it will be easier for Norma Jeane and I to visit her, though I’m not sure how many such visits Norma Jeane could make. It’s a very upsetting place for her. However, a parent must be cared for and we are all doing the best we can for Gladys.”

“Let’s please mail Mother a train ticket to come back to Los Angeles,” Marilyn finally suggested. She then telephoned Gladys and said that she wanted her to return to California. Of course, Gladys stood her ground. She wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, she told Marilyn to concentrate on her “moving picture career” and to leave her alone. She said she was tired of being told what to do, that she had her own agenda and was going to live her life exactly as she pleased. Then she slammed down the phone. The next day, Marilyn paid for a train ticket and mailed it to her mother in Florida.