Gladys Pearl Baker

Gladys Pearl Monroe was born on May 27, 1902 in Piedras Negras, Coahuila in Mexico. Her mother, Della Mae Monroe (née Hogan), was from Arkansas, and her father, Otis Elmer Monroe, was a painter from Minneapolis, who worked for a railroad near the Mexican border to Texas. The family soon migrated to Los Angeles County, where Della gave birth to a son, Marion Otis Elmer Monroe (1904–1929), and Otis started working for the Pacific Electric Railway Co., before dying in 1909.[1]

In 1917, Gladys married Jasper Newton "Jap" Baker (1886–1951) and gave birth to a son, Robert Kermit "Jackie" (1918–1933), followed by a daughter, Berniece Inez Gladys (b. 1919). After abusive incidents, Gladys filed for divorce from Jasper in 1921,[2] leading him to kidnap the children and raise them in his native Kentucky.[3][4]

Following the divorce, Gladys remarried in 1924, with Norwegian immigrant Martin Edward Mortensen (1897–1981).[5] They divorced a few years later, after Gladys met her superior at RKO Pictures, Charles Stanley Gifford (1898–1965). While working for him as a film negative cutter, she became pregnant and gave birth to her third and final child, Norma Jean, on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles County Hospital.[6] Gifford is often assumed to be her father, though the identity remains uncertain. Gladys registered the surname Mortenson on Norma Jean's birth certificate, using the name of her ex-husband and specifying his address as unknown.[7][8] Norma Jean was baptised with the name Baker, in an act of her grandmother Della to hide the illegitimacy. Della Monroe died shortly thereafter of a heart attack, and Gladys' brother Otis disappeared in October 1929 and was pronounced dead in 1955.[9]

Although Gladys was mentally and financially unprepared for a child, Norma Jean's early childhood was stable and happy.[10] Gladys placed her daughter with evangelical Christian foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender in the rural town of Hawthorne; she also lived there for the first six months, until she was forced to move back to the city due to work.[11] She then began visiting her daughter on weekends.[10] In the summer of 1933, Gladys bought a small house in Hollywood with a loan from the Home Owners' Loan Corporation and moved seven-year-old Norma Jean in with her.[12] They shared the house with lodgers, actors George and Maude Atkinson and their daughter, Nellie.[13] In January 1934, Gladys had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.[14] After several months in a rest home, she was committed to the Metropolitan State Hospital.[15] She spent the rest of her life in and out of hospitals and was rarely in contact with her daughters.[16] Norma Jean became a ward of the state, and her mother's friend, Grace Goddard, took responsibility over her and her mother's affairs.[17]

Gladys was married for a third time in 1943, to the electrician John Stewart Eley. Eley died three years later, due to heart infection. Out of hospital, Gladys worked at an Eagle Rock nursing home[18] and as a housekeeper in Los Angeles. She was sent money regularly by Norma Jean, who became an actress under the stage name Marilyn Monroe (adopting Gladys' maiden name). In an interview with the Los Angeles Daily News, Monroe stated:[9]

"My mother spent many years at the hospital. Through the Los Angeles County, my guardian placed me in several foster families and I spent more than a year at the Los Angeles Orphanage. I haven't known my mother intimately, and since I'm an adult, and able to help her, I have contacted her. Now I help her and I want to keep helping her as long as she needs me."

Gladys was readmitted to a hospital in 1953, and was supported by Monroe with $250 a month. She was looked after by Monroe's business manager, Inez Melson, until Monroe's death in 1962.[19] Gladys was left a trust fund of $100,000 by her daughter, of which she received $5,000 a year.[20] In 1963, she was reported to have walked 15 miles to the Lakeview Terrace Baptist Church. After trying to escape on numerous occasions, she was released from Rockhaven Sanitarium in 1966. Gladys first lived with her daughter Berniece, until moving to the Collins Court Home for aged people, where she stayed until her death on March 11, 1984.

Over the years, Gladys' relationship to her children became a subject of debate and was addressed in many films about Monroe, such as My Week With Marilyn. Gladys was portrayed by Sheree North in Marilyn: The Untold Story, by Phyllis Coates in Goodnight, Sweet Marilyn, by Marla Adams in Marilyn and Me and by Patricia Richardson in Blonde.

In 2015, actress Susan Sarandon portrayed Gladys in The Secret Life Of Marilyn Monroe, which thematised Monroe's family life and the relationship to her mother.[21] Sarandon was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries.[22]