Marilyn Monroe Read Free Page B

never to leave the hospital, and when she passed away, Della Monroe Grainger contributed to the legacy of mental illness that had begun with the death of her husband.
    After the turmoil of recent days, the Bolender family tried their best to continue life in a normal way for their foster-children, Norma Jeane and a baby boy called Lester. Born on 23 August 1926 whilst his parents, Pearl and Carl Flugel, were living in a tent, Lester had come to the Bolender home after the Flugels decided they were too young to care for him. Married for just over a week before the birth of their son, the couple handed the baby to Ida Bolender and returned to their home state of Washington, where they later had four more sons, Milton, Gerald, Robert and William. The couple kept their first son a secret from their family, and it wasn’t until Pearl’s death in 1988 that they discovered a 1927 letter from Mrs Bolender, describing Lester’s life in California. The now elderly Lester travelled to meet his long-lost family but unfortunately, even at this late stage, one of the brothers refused to believe they were related and apparently never accepted Lester as his brother.
    But back in 1926, when both Lester and Norma Jeane were just babies, they were nicknamed ‘the twins’ and raised as brother and sister. ‘They have great times together,’ wrote Mrs Bolender. ‘Lots of people think them twins. I dress them alike at times and they do look cunning . . .’
    Eventually the Bolender family made a decision to officially adopt Lester, and asked Gladys if they could adopt Norma Jeane too. Gladys, having already lost two children, was appalled at the Bolenders’ plans and turned them down flat. However, they were not the only ones interested in the child as, according toseveral reports, Charles Stanley Gifford also had plans to raise her. By this time he was living on his own at 832 N. Alta Vista Boulevard, and had learned that Norma Jeane had been placed in a foster home. He contacted Gladys to tell her he intended to raise the little girl himself, but was sent away with nothing more than a scolding from his ex-lover, who had developed a deep loathing for him since her troubled pregnancy.
    How Gifford thought he could possibly raise the child on his own is a mystery. He was not listed as her father on the birth certificate, and divorce records from his first wife Lilian show that he had been verbally abusive and distant from his other children, calling them derogatory names on many occasions.
    But even if his temper was not an issue, there was no way Gladys was going to let the man she claimed to detest raise her child. Instead, she continued to visit her daughter at the weekends, though as Norma Jeane grew, the stopovers became more and more confusing for the child. One day when she referred to Ida Bolender as ‘Mama’, she was immediately put in her place. ‘The woman with the red hair is your mother,’ explained Ida, though this did not end the confusion. ‘But [Wayne] is my daddy,’ exclaimed Norma Jeane. ‘No,’ replied Ida. After that, the child became afraid to call anyone mummy or daddy, as not even Gladys referred to her as a daughter.
    As for her father, Gladys told Norma Jeane that he had been killed in a car crash either before she was born or when she was a young baby – the story differing according to Gladys’ mood at the time. Her story was cruel but contained a kernel of truth, as in 1929 she was told that the man she had named as Norma Jeane’s father – Martin Edward Mortensen – had been killed in a car crash. Unknown to Gladys, it later transpired that it was a completely different person who had died, and her ex-husband was actually alive and well and living in California. For his part, Mortensen added to the confusion by years later claiming to friends that he was Norma Jeane’s real father, but this is extremely unlikely – and certainly not the belief of Marilyn or her mother.
    At irregular intervals,