The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Gladys’s New Home

On February 9, 1953, Marilyn Monroe was scheduled to attend the Photoplay Awards, where she was being honored as “Fastest Rising Star.” A relative recalls that she didn’t want to go: “She didn’t think she could pull it off, be what was expected of her—become Marilyn Monroe—under the circumstances of what else was going on that day.”

Indeed, it was a difficult day.

That very same morning, Gladys was moved to Rock Haven Sanitarium at 2713 Honolulu Avenue in La Crescenta, California. It was a sprawling, Mexican-style complex on three and a half lush acres behind two gigantic iron gates with the metal words “Rock Haven” on top of the impressive entryway. Marvina Williams was eighteen at the time and had just been hired as an aide there. “It was a wonderful place,” she recalled. “Actually it was also called the Screen Actor’s Sanitarium, even though not a lot of movie stars stayed there. The only ones we all knew of were Frances Farmer and Florenz Ziegfeld. We got fan mail for them for years after they were gone. [Note: Actress Billie Burke, who had been married to Ziegfeld and was known for her role as Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz—was also a patient in the 1960s.] When I worked there, we had forty-two guests—we called them guests, by the way. We had forty-two beds, too, so it was full. Just before Gladys came in, someone had died—virtually the day before, actually. Gladys had been on the bottom of a very long waiting list, but when they found out she was Marilyn Monroe’s mother, they moved her to the top—not fair, but the truth.”

Though it was many years ago, Williams has distinct memories about Gladys because, as she put it, “There was something about her—you just felt so badly for her, I guess because you knew she was Marilyn Monroe’s mother. When I heard that she had been out of a sanitarium for seven years, I simply couldn’t believe it. I don’t think she was being properly medicated when she was on her own. On the day she showed up, I remember her saying that she had called her daughters—one, I think, was in Florida [Berniece], and she said the other was Marilyn Monroe. She said she had talked to Marilyn that day and that Marilyn said she was coming to get her. ‘I won’t be here long because Marilyn Monroe is coming for me,’ she kept saying. It seemed so tragic, the way she kept referring to her daughter as ‘Marilyn Monroe.’ I remember that there were some people who didn’t believe it was true that Marilyn was her daughter. Then someone came in with a newspaper article and we passed it around. There was a lot of astonishment about it.”

“Marilyn had, that same morning, agreed to pay for Gladys’s care in the new facility,” recalled accountant Wesley Miller. “However, she didn’t want to see her mother in a mental hospital any more than Gladys wanted to be there, but there was no alternative. It was this second stay—the one that happened in 1953—that really tore at Marilyn.

“She told me that she remembered visiting Gladys at the other institution when she was a young girl, and she never forgot how horrible it had been. She told me that there were patients in the hallways in beds and that the place smelled of urine. She said that everyone was dazed and on drugs, that she heard people screaming and that she just wanted to get her mother out of there. She said that she had nightmares about it all the time, that the memory of her mother in that place haunted her. She didn’t want her to end up back in a place like that, she said. Also, she said that the whole thing brought back memories of her own time in an orphanage, memories she said she had been working to forget.

“Apparently, she and her aunt Grace had earlier visited Rock Haven and thought the conditions were much, much better. She said that there were fresh flowers on all of the tables—very lovely. But, still, the patients were frightening and, she said, so drugged they were ‘walking around like zombies.’ She said that she spoke to one woman who recognized her and told her that she was ‘evil’ for making the kinds of movies she made.

“ ‘I don’t know how to deal with this,’ she told me. ‘I don’t know how to do what I have to do, have my career and all it takes and have Joe and all he takes, and do this, too, with Mother.’ I actually thought, for the first time, that she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It was too much. She was developing a strange nervous twitch and stuttering a lot. The trouble she had with Gladys this time… it really was too much for her to handle. I don’t think Berniece was a lot of help. When I asked Marilyn about that, she said, ‘She’s got a family. I don’t. I never have had one. So, let her live her life. I’m forced to live mine, and my mother is my burden.’ ”

Despite the awful circumstances of the day, Marilyn decided that she couldn’t disappoint all of those who were expecting to see her at the Photoplay Awards. The show had to go on, she decided, even if she would have to force herself through it.

To accept her award that night, Marilyn decided to wear a slinky gold gown with a plunging neckline—of course—that was so formfitting its designer, Travilla, had to actually sew her into it. In fact, he suggested that she not even wear this particular dress because, in his opinion, it wasn’t flattering on her. (Incidentally, Marilyn was very briefly seen in it in a long shot in Gentlemen.)

That very same week, Marilyn had made a deal with Joe that she would not wear gowns that were so revealing if he in turn laid off her where her career was concerned—and also about her relationship with Natasha. He said he would try if she would try, and she agreed. Apparently, she was about to break the deal. In fact, to make the dress even more provocative, she had decided on no bra and no panties. It was as if she were purposely defying Joe—and that’s exactly how he took it when he found out about her plans. He was supposed to attend the show with her, but stormed away and took a plane to San Francisco. “I have enough on my mind,” Marilyn said at the time. “Why this, too? Why do I have to do this with him?”