The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Gladys Threatens Grace

In November 1953 Gladys Baker received a ticket, arranged and paid by Marilyn, for transportation from Florida back to Los Angeles. Grace Goddard had followed Marilyn’s direction to book the arrangements, but it was her own decision to have Gladys travel by rail, not air. She may have been attempting to delay her friend’s arrival in California since she would need to have her home prepared for it. Grace also needed to emotionally steel herself and her family for the possibility that Gladys might be bringing with her a trunkload of paranoia and confusion. She had heard from Berniece that Gladys had been having some “episodes.” The long train ride turned out to be a torment for Gladys. As soon as the cab pulled up in front of Grace’s house, she and Doc heard Gladys’s screams. They ran to the front window and saw the poor cabdriver take her bags from the trunk of his vehicle, drop them on the front lawn, get back into his cab, and speed off as quickly as he could. It appeared that he didn’t even wait to be paid! Gladys then marched toward the Goddards’ front door, shouting nonsensically about her awful train trip. “Torture!” she exclaimed. “Grace Goddard, you wanted to torture me, and you succeeded! Now it’s my turn.”

Grace told Doc to get away from the window so that they could pretend they weren’t home. Then she drew the curtains in a flash and ran for the telephone, dialing Marilyn’s number as quickly as she could. Marilyn happened to be home and having a meeting with an accountant named Wesley Miller who worked for Wright, Wright, Green & Wright, the law firm that represented Marilyn at the time. When Marilyn answered, Grace quickly explained what was going on, that Gladys had just pulled up and was frantic. She said that she had never seen her in such bad shape. Then she held the phone up to the front window so that Marilyn could hear her mother’s shouting: “I’ll show you torture, Grace! Open up this door!”

“I recall that Marilyn and Grace stayed on the phone for a time,” said Wesley Miller, “with Grace reporting Gladys’s every move. Marilyn said she hoped her mother would eventually calm down, and I think she did. However, from what I later gathered, when Grace walked toward the front porch, she could clearly hear Gladys speaking, as if in a one-sided conversation. She was mumbling something about being ‘put on a train like a child,’ with all of the other passengers staring at her for the entire trip. ‘Eyes everywhere, for days on end…’ is what Marilyn later told me she was repeating, nonstop.”

The story continued, as per the recollections of the principal players:

After whispering her report of the unfolding events, Grace stopped and listened. “Wait,” she said, “someone else is out there. Hold on.” Grace and Doc each peeked through a curtain and watched as a nearby resident, who had obviously heard the commotion, approached. Gladys greeted him angrily. The neighbor explained that he had grown concerned when he heard all the shouting. At that, Gladys became even more irate, asking if the man “owned” Los Angeles and demanding to know “is this your air I’m breathing, too?” Grace listened as Gladys’s voice trailed off. She then followed the man off the property. Doc ran to the kitchen and out the back door saying he would try to keep on eye on Gladys.

“Meanwhile, Marilyn asked Grace not to call the authorities, saying she would be right over,” recalled Wesley Miller. “ ‘Just don’t let her leave,’ she said of her mother before clicking off. I said, ‘You are not going there alone, Marilyn. I’m coming with you.’ And she said, ‘No. This has to do with me and my mother. I can handle it on my own.’ She then ran out of the house. I sat in her living room thinking, ‘Oh, I should definitely have insisted. I should have insisted…’ ”

Marilyn jumped into her car. After speeding through stoplights and weaving in and out of traffic, she finally reached her destination: a Los Angeles police precinct. She screeched onto a lot that was meant only for official vehicles.

“It’s not every day people came in that way,” explained a retired Los Angeles police officer. “When she got out, I actually drew my gun—but as soon as you saw her you knew who she was.”

Marilyn asked the patrolman to direct her to “whoever the man in charge is,” and despite her illegal and alarming arrival, the awestruck officer brought her inside the building and to a police captain.

“She was crying when she walked in the office,” explained the officer. “She said her mother was sick and that she’d been sent to a mental hospital before, so I knew where this was headed.”

Marilyn further explained that Gladys was easily frightened. She asked if the captain could simply call an ambulance to quietly approach Grace’s home and collect her mother without too much angst. “He felt bad for her, but there were procedures,” the officer recalled of the captain. “He had to send a [patrol] car first… try and talk to her first—and that was me.” The captain also explained to Marilyn that a specific officer was trained to respond to what he called “psych calls,” and then he directed the officer to contact that specialist. “I called Teddy [the ‘specialist’], who was supposed to be going to a kid’s ball game that day, and told him that Marilyn Monroe was sitting across from me,” said the officer. “He said he’d have his uniform on before he hung up the phone.”

While waiting for the responding officer to arrive at the precinct, Marilyn called Grace. Gladys was still in front of the house, she reported, and neighbors had been calling, asking if she was all right. Marilyn explained that there would be two patrol cars arriving, with no sirens. “She just wanted it quiet,” the officer recalls. “I told her she could see for herself that everything would be okay. We’ll follow Teddy and his partner, I told her, and she could see how good he was. He had a talent, that guy.”

In a matter of minutes, two police cars were rolling toward Grace Goddard’s home. In the first was Teddy and his partner, and in the second a police officer and a movie star. “When we turned onto the block we slowed the cars,” the officer explained, “Marilyn just kind of slid down in her seat.” The two vehicles parked one house away from Grace’s, from which vantage point they could see Gladys sitting on the front steps, arms crossed and appearing calm. The officer from the first car—Teddy—then approached her. The captain and Marilyn couldn’t hear what was being said, but it was quickly evident from Gladys’s expression and tone that she was now agitated at the sight of the uniformed patrolman. “I picked up the radio right away and called [for an ambulance], and I told Marilyn it was gonna be quick,” recalled the officer who had been sitting with her.

Marilyn sat quietly watching as the other officer successfully calmed Gladys.

“I got out of my car to give Teddy a quick signal that the ambulance was on the way,” the first policeman remembered, “and by the time I got back, the street was filling up.”

Indeed, neighborhood residents who had witnessed Gladys’s antics of the past hour from behind pulled curtains were now brave enough to get a closer look. As the first officer returned to his vehicle, he saw an odd sight: Marilyn had taken the jacket of an extra police uniform in the car and pulled it up over her head.

When he got back into the car, Marilyn asked urgently, “Did they see me?”

“No, they’re here to watch me,” he said, “they’re rubberneckers.” He then asked Marilyn if she’d like to get out of the vehicle and speak to her mother. She decided against it, saying that Gladys was clearly not herself at that moment, “and what good will it do?”

The two then waited as an ambulance drove up quietly. “Did you ask them not to use their sirens?” Marilyn asked. He said that he had. She then placed her hand on his knee. “You’re a kind man,” she told him. They watched as Gladys Baker—still very upset—was strapped onto a gurney and lifted into the ambulance. As the ambulance slowly passed their car, for just a moment they could hear the shouts of an insane woman coming from inside it. Marilyn winced and pulled the coat still on her head tightly down over her ears.

As the police officer and Marilyn followed the ambulance, not a word was said between them. Finally, Marilyn took the jacket off, studied it carefully, and softly brushed away some locks of hair left on its lining. “I asked her if she was okay,” recalled the policeman, “and she just kind of laughed for a moment.” They watched while the ambulance made a right turn, toward its destination.

As they drove back to the police precinct, the policeman and the actress continued to maintain their silence. Finally, Marilyn sighed deeply. “No one understands,” she said, her voice softening, “some people just can’t help who they turn out to be.”