Marilyn Monroe Read Free Page A

birth to their son Charles Stanley Jr, Gifford took her to the Lomashire Hospital, excused himself immediately and walked out of the building.
    Knowing that Gifford was to play no part in the child’s upbringing, Gladys reluctantly decided to get on with her life. She named the child after the little girl she had looked after whilst in Kentucky and, for the sake of respectability, also gave the surname of her former husband, hence naming her Norma Jeane Mortenson (she added an ‘e’ to Norma Jean and changed Mortensen to Mortenson on the birth certificate). Shortly afterwards she changed her mind and declared that both she and her daughter would be known by the surname of her first husband, Baker.
    Shortly after the little girl’s birth, perhaps feeling mild curiosity or a pang of guilt for the way he had treated her in the past, Gifford asked Gladys if he could see the child. His plea fell on deaf ears, however, and she refused point-blank to let him have anything to do with her. ‘He felt the mother had been unfair,’ remembered Gifford’s minister, Dr Liden. ‘She had cut him off and didn’t allow him to see the child.’
    On leaving hospital, Gladys took Norma Jeane to her apartment at 5454 Wilshire Boulevard, but it was only a matter of days before she made a trip to East Rhode Island Avenue to deposit her child at number 459, the home of the Bolender family.
    Ida and Wayne Bolender lived across the road from Gladys’mother Della, on a two-acre plot of land in Hawthorne; an agricultural area dominated by lots of space, dairies and farms. A postman for many years, Wayne and his wife had applied to become foster-parents just before the Depression and for the next thirty-five years continued happily opening their home to any child who needed their help.
    Contrary to popular belief, Gladys did not immediately abandon her child with the Bolenders; instead, she moved in with the family and left Norma Jeane in their care while she commuted to and from her job in Hollywood. ‘Mrs Baker was with me,’ Ida later told
Cavalier.
‘She stayed in Hollywood when working nights as a negative cutter and stayed with me while working days.’ However, the long journey and the responsibility of single-motherhood soon became too much for Gladys, and she ultimately took the decision to return to her old life.
    Leaving her baby behind, Gladys moved in with her friend and colleague, Grace McKee, and the two shared a space at the Rayfield Apartments at 237 Bimini Place. Going from the quiet seclusion of the Bolender home to this colourful apartment block must have been something of a thrill for Gladys. But in spite of now living the life of a single girl once again, she didn’t give up on her daughter and always paid $25 a month to the Bolenders for her care. She also often stayed at the weekend, involving herself with family life, and later showed up on the 1930s census as a ‘boarder’ in the Bolender home. Norma Jeane ‘was never neglected and always nicely dressed,’ said Mrs Bolender. ‘Her mother paid her board all the time.’
    On 15 August 1926, Della sailed from Hong Kong and arrived in San Francisco on 8 September. On her return to East Rhode Island Avenue, she was introduced to her granddaughter for the first time, though she never developed much of a bond with the child, seeing her as more of a sin than a joy. Sick with malaria and often delusional, she made her feelings quite clear just months later when she was caught trying to smother the child with a pillow. She was immediately banned from theBolender home, but Della still tried to gain access to Norma Jeane, as Ida Bolender later recalled: ‘She did come over one day for no reason I know of. She just broke in the glass of our front door and I believe we called the police.’
    For Della, this sequence of events was the beginning of the end and she soon found herself admitted to the Norwalk Mental Hospital, suffering from manic depressive psychosis. She was