Gladys Pearl Baker

Gladys Pearl Monroe was born on 27 May 1902 in Piedras Negras, Coahuila in Mexico. Her mother, Della Mae Monroe (née Hogan), was from Arkansas, and her father, Otis Elmer Monroe, was an aspiring painter from Minneapolis, who worked for the National Railway. The family soon migrated to Los Angeles County, and Otis started working for the Pacific Electric Railway Co.[1] In 1917, Baker married Jasper Newton "Jap" Baker (1891–1951) and gave birth to a son Robert Kermit "Jackie" (1918–1933), followed by a daughter, Berniece Inez Gladys. After abusive incidents, Baker filed for divorce from Jasper in 1921,[2] leading him to kidnap the children and raise them in his native Kentucky.[3]

In 1924, Baker remarried with Norwegian immigrant Martin Edward Mortensen (1897–1981).[4] They divorced a few years later, after Baker 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 Jeane Baker on June 1, 1926, in the Los Angeles County Hospital.[5] Gifford is often assumed to be her father, though the identity remains uncertain. Baker registered the surname Mortenson on Norma Jean's birth certificate, using the name of her ex-husband and specifying his address as unknown.[6][7] 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. Gladys' brother Otis disappeared in October 1929 and was pronounced dead in 1955.[8]

Baker placed Norma Jean with evangelical Christian foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender in the rural town of Hawthorne. In the summer of 1933, Baker bought a small house in Hollywood with a loan from the Home Owners' Loan Corporation and moved her daughter in with her.[9] They shared the house with lodgers, actors George and Maude Atkinson and their daughter, Nellie.[10] In January 1934, Baker had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.[11] After several months in a rest home, she was committed to the Metropolitan State Hospital.[12] Norma Jean became a ward of the state, and her mother's friend, Grace Goddard, took responsibility over her and her mother's affairs.[13]

Baker was married for a third time in 1949, to the electrician John Stewart Eley. Eley died three years later of a heart infection. Out of hospital, Baker worked at an Eagle Rock nursing home[14] 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 Baker's maiden name). Baker was admitted to Rockhaven Sanitarium 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.[15] Gladys was left a trust fund of $100,000 by her daughter, of which she received $5,000 a year.[16] She made multiple attempts to escape from the sanitarium. In 1963, she was reported to have walked 15 miles to the Lakeview Terrace Baptist Church.[17] After being transferred to Camarillo State Mental Hospital, she was released in 1967 and went on to live with her daughter Berniece, until moving into a retirement home in Gainesville, Florida, where she died on March 11, 1984.[18]

Baker's mental health made headlines in her daughter's career early. In an interview with the Los Angeles Daily News, Monroe stated:[8]

"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."

Over the years, Baker's relationship to her children became a subject of debate and was addressed in many films about Monroe, such as My Week With Marilyn and The Secret Life Of Marilyn Monroe.[19]

• Christelle. "Time-line: Gladys Pearl Monroe". Cursum Perficio. Archived from the original on May 13, 2010. Retrieved August 23, 2021.