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CHAPTER 1
The Waif
Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard winds lavishly through the pulse of broken dreams. On this Saturday night, on one small forgotten street in Brentwood, Rudy, a chauffeur, wrestled with the Herald Examiner's sports section. The radio blasted romantic tunes. Three hours of waiting on the dead-end street, even for Marilyn Monroe, was testing his professionalism. Once again, Rudy warily eyed Marilyn's front door. It was always a wait fraught with disappointment until the moment she appeared. Then the radiant Monroe would satisfy even the most seasoned admirer and employee. The driver could then expect her profuse apologies and promises never to be late again. Rudy was handsomely paid his standard $125 regardless of the waiting time, so he didn't seem to mind that much. Besides, there was always the leftover champagne and caviar she would customarily offer him, adding, "Save it for later." Marilyn was quite cognizant of the need for a clear-headed driver.
Even though it was small and sparsely furnished, Marilyn Monroe was proud of her newly purchased Spanish-style bungalow, something she could finally call her own. Years before, her mother, Gladys Baker, had made gallant efforts but failed to create a comfortable home for her illegitimate daughter. Gladys had been abandoned by Marilyn's father when he had learned of her pregnancy.
Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love With You" was blaring on the radio, John F. Kennedy was the youngest President of the United States, Uta Hagen had just won a Tony Award for her performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Tennessee Williams's Night of the Iguana continued its long run on Broadway; the Beatles' "Love Me Do" was number one in England; and women in America who had taken Thalidomide were delivering deformed babies. The Vatican was talking about an ecumenical movement among all sects of Christianity; Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, the controversial expose on the harmful effects of pesticides; and Lieut. Col. John Glenn's triple orbit of the earth in Friendship 7 was beamed directly into 135 million American homes on television. A gallon of gas cost twenty-one cents and a loaf of bread was twenty-seven cents.
Marilyn Monroe had begun remodeling the cottage-size home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in late February 1962, with Mexican tiles she and her publicist, Pat Newcomb, had purchased a month earlier while on a Mexican holiday. Along with a few pieces of furniture, including a Mexican sofa covered with bright red fabric, a statuette of Carl Sandberg, a portable high-fidelity record player that constantly played Sinatra ballads, and a refrigerator filled with only champagne and caviar that the crooner had sent, Marilyn was eagerly building the only security she had ever known.
The tiny bedroom was furnished only with a single bed and a small night stand. The bed was unmade, blanket askew, and the full-length mink coat, which second husband Joe DiMaggio had given her, was draped over the bed. Marilyn enjoyed the touch of the silky fur; it brought back so many memories.
Marjorie, Marilyn's dresser and the fiancee of makeup man Whitey Snyder, returned from Twentieth Century-Fox's wardrobe department with the gown for the evening. Marjorie and Whitey were always trying to pick up the pieces each time Marilyn fell apart.
Marilyn did not keep much of a wardrobe of her own and borrowed her evening wear from two of Fox's in-house designers, Jean Louis or Bill Travilla. But tonight was unique. Marilyn was pregnant with a married man's child, and the President's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, was the father. Marjorie's immediate dilemma was how to disguise the telltale bulge in the actress's belly. And as usual the actress was late getting ready for this evening's outing; her chauffeur was kept waiting nearly three hours.
Marjorie was concerned about Marilyn's well-being, hating to think Marilyn would experience disappointment, as she had so many times before. All of her pregnancies had turned into devastating abortions or miscarriages; each painful miscarriage bringing back the guilt of a previous abortion. The miscarriages tore at her fragile uterus, and doubts of realizing her womanhood arose. The feeling that she might turn out to be an inadequate mother was similar to what her own mother had felt in desperation. Having to be the breadwinner and the bearer of a child would bring too much physical, emotional, and financial responsibility for Marilyn. And pregnancy reminded her of her own deprived childhood, which began on June 1, 1926.
On that day, a very exhausted Gladys Pearl Monroe Baker Mortensen screamed for help as Dr. O. Casey kindly suggested she push harder in the stark delivery room of the Charity Ward of the Los Angeles General Hospital. At twenty-four years of age, Gladys had already borne two children by her first husband. This one was hers to keep, she thought, as she clutched the restraints that bound her wrists. As the painful contractions intensified, she looked for any sign of her repentant lover, hoping he had changed his mind at the last minute. But the handsome and debonair Stanley Gifford was nowhere to be found.
Unbearable as the pain was, Gladys pushed and prayed as the clock ticked past 9 A.M. Dr. Casey was reassuring as the baby's bald head emerged. "Push harder," he encouraged her. Screams were heard throughout the bare delivery room. "It's a girl," the doctor announced. Gladys decided to name her baby Norma Jeane, after the captivating and successful actress Norma Talmadge. How proud she would be to be the mother of such a famous woman. Little did Gladys know that her favorite silent film star was once married to Joseph Schenck, head of Twentieth Century-Fox, and that during her lean years her grown daughter would have an affair with this same man in his seventies. He would be kind and probably the instigator of her acting contract with Fox.
When Gladys was sent home, she enlisted her mother's neighbors, Ida and Albert Wayne Bolender, who boarded children, to look after the newborn so she could return to her job as head film cutter for Consolidated Film Industries. By keeping her child at a distance, Gladys wouldn't feel so devastated if her baby died or were separated from her, as her first two children had been when, after a bitter dispute, husband Jim Baker had kidnapped them.
Fortunately for Norma Jeane, her mother's friend Grace McKee, a film librarian at CFI, was a warmhearted woman who kept a watchful eye over her. The illegitimate child had a mother who still happened to be legally married, so Norma Jeane's surname was that of her mother's long-gone husband, Martin Mortensen. The baptism for the baby was held at the Angelus Temple in Los Angeles at the request of Gladys's mother Della, who worshipped with its minister, Aimee Semple McPherson. The fiery female healer christened the newborn child Norma Jeane Mortensen. Afterward, the broken family of grandmother and mother, with the child, strolled around Echo Park admiring the picturesque man-made lake lined by palm trees.
Black Thursday hit in October 1929, and Wall Street sustained a loss of $26 million. The Depression officially set in. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre rocked the nation as two of Al Capone's hit men, disguised as policemen, gunned down seven lieutenants of the Bugs Moran gang in an illegal liquor warehouse. Writer Ben Hecht established himself as a playwright with The Front Page on Broadway Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Prohibition and the Depression raged on as Al Capone and Vito Genovese's partnership with Joseph P. Kennedy moved illegal shipments of liquor from Canada and the Bahamas into the United States.
The Bolender household was located in suburban Los Angeles near the Los Angeles International Airport on a street lined with California-style bungalows. The Bolenders believed in the Bible and the belt. Young Norma Jeane's devout foster father attended church twice a week, believed in capital punishment, and yet he still provided some gentle guidance. Her foster brother, Lester, was a delight. They played and fought with each other over the few toys given them. Norma Jeane would defend her right to use the toys like any able-bodied young girl, but was punished by the Bolenders with the strap. She never hesitated to tattle on her foster parents to her mother on Saturdays, Gladys's regular visiting day. Norma Jeane was schooled by the Bolenders on the Bible's teachings of honesty and she remembered them the rest of her life. She liked knowing and telling the truth.
Although the Depression left an indelible scar on American life, Albert Bolender's position as mail carrier was never in jeopardy. His small salary remained constant. Though the house was neglected, not so the appearance of Norma Jeane and Lester. Both were dressed immaculately, and Gladys made sure that her daughter had the most fashionable garments by providing Ida Bolender with the best fabric to create a dazzling wardrobe for this otherwise materially and emotionally impoverished child.
Not until Norma Jeane's seventh year did she finally receive a steady flow of her mother's love, affection, and commitment. When she and her foster brother contracted whooping cough, a serious disease, which at the time could be life-threatening, Gladys took an extended leave of absence to care for her child. No doubt she felt the loss of her older children when confronted with Norma Jeane's grave condition. The love for the girl, the guilt of not being a full-time mother to her, and the fear of possibly losing another child probably agitated her during the weeks of nursing Norma Jeane.
Gladys did everything any doctor or nurse could do for the child and more, attending to Norma's every need, keeping the child's forehead cool with compresses, and scrubbing, cleaning, and cooking — things she hadn't done before. She resolved to provide better for her daughter when she recovered.
Gladys's resolution was made good in 1933 when she purchased a California bungalow-style house situated near the Hollywood Bowl, a convenient location for the industrious, unconventional mother. Piece by piece, she filled it with secondhand furniture, her pride and joy a white-lacquered baby grand that had once belonged to the actor Fredric March. The piano made seven-year-old Norma Jeane happy, too.
The lyrics of Jesus Loves Me, learned at the Bolender residence, were replaced in her new home by dialogue memorized from Jean Harlow's movies Red Dust and Hold Your Man, with leading man Clark Gable. Norma Jeane fantasized about Gable, who resembled her real father. In Hold Your Man, Gable plays a con man who impregnates a stunning, tough-talking girl who falls in love with him and has his baby. Harlow patiently waits for his release from jail. In turn, Norma Jeane waited in vain for her own father to return, living daily with her unrequited love for him. She would spend hours fantasizing that Clark Gable himself was her fast-talking father and that he would return as he had for Jean Harlow. She imagined herself as Harlow, joking all the while, trying to get her man back and loving him no matter what the obstacles might be. Impressed by Harlow's drawing power over her leading men, Norma Jeane began to fashion herself after the platinum-haired siren. Gladys's best friend, Grace McKee, was an ambitious woman who encouraged Norma Jeane's hopes to be a movie star and live a charmed life.
Everyone around Gladys and Norma Jeane was being laid off or having to take cuts in pay, and Gladys became fearful that the newfound security with her daughter would disintegrate. She bought insurance by leasing the house to an English couple, both employed as Hollywood stand-ins, and their twenty-year-old daughter, who worked as an extra. Gladys reserved for herself the back two rooms upstairs in the house and shared the use of the kitchen and bathrooms.
What a liberating experience it was for the strawberry-blond waif to reside in a household that was not laden with religious restrictions. Drinking, smoking, movies, makeup, and dancing were not taboo. But Norma Jeane didn't forget the manners and the religious training learned at the Bolenders'.
Moviegoing, an inexpensive babysitter, was the rage not only in Hollywood but across the nation. Either Gladys or her roommates would send the young innocents off to a local movie house, their new home being within walking distance of Grauman's Chinese Theatre or the Egyptian Theater, where musicals of the day struck Norma's fancy. Her forever favorite, Jean Harlow, was a natural beauty who was not self-conscious about her looks. Norma Jeane grew up still idolizing Harlow's independence and confidence, qualities she wanted for herself.
CHAPTER 2
The Overdose of 1,1,1-Trichloralethane
The stress of juggling a demanding career and being provider and nurturer became almost unbearable for the industrious Gladys. Her own mother was dead and there was virtually no one to help her raise Norma Jeane.
Mrs. Mortensen was accepted in the studio as a woman with an "illegitimate" daughter. Her coworkers liked her and respected her work, but outside the comfort and understanding of Hollywood's liberal mores, it was a different story. Gladys was a social outcast — someone looked upon as a pitiful back-street girl, undeserving of respect.
The working environment for a film editor in the thirties was similar to a toxic waste dump. Open bottles of acetone used to treat the film were everywhere, sending poisonous vapors into the stale, unventilated air. Skin contact with the liquid acetone was even more dangerous. The small picture frames had to be glued with film cement that also produced toxic fumes. In addition, for as long as six months Gladys had to toil through double shifts in order to make frequent studio deadlines and monthly mortgage payments. The combination of long hours of hard labor and continued exposure to hazardous activants took its toll. Excruciating headaches became constant. But because she was so dedicated to both her profession and providing for her daughter, Gladys struggled on year after year, all the while suffering severe inner conflicts. Was the career she loved interfering too much with the care of her child? Could she be a good mother and still become a real success in her field?
Unfortunately, the career Gladys took so seriously was causing her physical, as well as psychological, damage. With the film industry still in its youth, little was known about the possible effects of the potent chemicals used in production. Science now shows unequivocally that the chemicals used at the time caused permanent brain damage. But working conditions then were grossly inadequate. The unions were virtually powerless, and the Depression and economic hardship endured by Americans made workers grateful to hold any job. The stock market had plunged to its lowest; debts and bread lines, starvation, deprivation, and poverty were everywhere. A producer or film company would never show concern for the possibility that the chemicals used in moviemaking could be dangerous to their employees' health.
The workroom at Columbia Studios where Gladys cut film was isolated and cell-like. An area five feet by seven feet was hardly enough space for an editor to inhabit for eight to sixteen hours while attempting to concentrate on film splicing. The lighting was dim and the concrete walls were bare except for strips of film hanging to dry from clips attached to holders high above. Discarded strips of film lay in circles around the cutters' feet. The glare of the lights was reflected on the celluloid as it passed through the viewer. Glue lay beside the cutter with acetone or cleaner close at hand. Although white cotton gloves were worn by the editors, it was not for their protection, but rather to protect the film itself from fingerprints. Accidental spills of acetone were unavoidably frequent, dangerously intensifying exposure, especially after long hours of work. During the winter months the fumes increased in density. The windowless cutting rooms completely lacked ventilation. The film editors' comfort and safety were never considered.
In the midst of the Los Angeles rainy season, drafts and cold damp winds sent chills down Gladys's spine. After several days of steady downpour and working overtime to warm the cutting room, the heater was barely pumping stale recycled air. Dense fumes collected over Gladys's throbbing head, stealing precious oxygen. Between the sordid work conditions, the financial strain of making monthly mortgage payments to avoid losing her home, and the relentless demands of providing for her daughter's needs, Gladys's life was beginning to fall apart. She was obsessed with furnishing her daughter with the same stylish clothes that the Bolenders had provided; except Gladys couldn't make her daughter's clothes but had to buy them in department stores. Gladys also saw to it that Norma Jeane had spending money for movies and food. Money was always a worry. The headaches were getting worse, and depression was setting in. She was afraid she was losing her mind, as she believed had happened to her own mother, Della.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "CRYPT 33"
by .
Copyright © 1993 Adela Gregory and Milo Speriglio.
Excerpted by permission of KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP..
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