J. Taraborrelli - The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

“Thank you for your kind offer,” Grace wrote back to Ida. “But we have already made suitable arrangements for Norma Jeane.”

On September 13, 1935, Grace packed up Norma Jeane’s things in one suitcase and one shopping bag and drove the little girl to her new home.

“I thought I was going to a prison,” Marilyn would remember many years later. “What had I done that they were getting rid of me? I was afraid of everything and afraid to show how scared I was. All I could do was cry.”

Norma Jeane was nine years old when she found herself in the Los Angeles Orphans’ Home. The adult Marilyn Monroe would always paint her time there—roughly a year and a half, from 1935 to mid-1937—as one of the darkest periods of her life. “Do you know what it’s like to be forced into uncertainty?” she once asked. She would also recall that she did not feel like an orphan since her mother was still alive and she also had her Aunt Grace. She didn’t want to go to the orphanage, and she stood on the steps of the building crying out, “But I’m not an orphan. I’m not an orphan.” It was just another cruel twist of fate in a life already filled with this kind of despair.

Magda Bernard’s stepbrother, Tony, was at the Los Angeles Orphans’ Home at the same time as Norma Jeane. She recalls, “My family’s circumstances were such that Tony had to stay at the orphanage until we could take him in, but we went to visit him every week. I clearly remember Norma Jeane as being this pretty blue-eyed girl with a big heart who seemed to just want to be loved. She was a beautiful but somehow sad-seeming child.

“The orphanage wasn’t as bad as you might think it was if you judge it only on what Norma [as an adult] would say about it. Personally, I think they did a pretty good job with the kids. There were about sixty children there, twenty-five of them being girls. There were twelve beds to a room. The age range was from about six to fourteen.

“There were holiday parties, day trips to the beach. The orphanage actually had a beach house, so the kids got to go there quite often and play in the sand and ocean. There were presents for everyone at Christmastime. They had a bit of pocket money for sweets. They went to the circus, had many kinds of day trips like that… the Griffith Park Observatory, for instance. They went to the RKO film lot for tours, got to meet celebrities. During the week, they attended the Vine Street School in their gingham uniforms. On Sundays they would get dressed properly so that they could attend the Vine Street Methodist Church. It actually was quite nice for the kids, I think.

“I know in later years Marilyn complained about all of the chores she had to do at the orphanage. I remember reading that she said she had to wash hundreds of dishes and was stuck doing laundry for hours and hours at a time. She said she had to clean toilets and wash floors. She was exaggerating!”

After Marilyn was famous, an orphanage official named Mrs. In-graham was quoted as saying, “I really don’t know why Miss Monroe tells these awful stories about it. And people print them, whatever she says. This story of Marilyn washing dishes is just silly. She never washed any dishes. She never scrubbed toilets. She dried dishes an hour a week. That’s all. She had to make her own bed and keep her section of the girls’ cottage tidy, and that was all.”

“I used to wake up and sometimes I’d think I was dead,” Marilyn once told her friend Ralph Roberts of this time, “like I had died in my sleep, and I wasn’t part of my body anymore. I couldn’t feel myself and I thought that the world had ended. Everything seemed so far away and like nothing else could bother me.”

Perhaps what’s most interesting about these terrible days in her childhood is the way Marilyn described how she would pass the time. She would fall back into her fantasy world, and now her dreams were about being picked from the lot of other children as something special. “I dreamed of myself becoming so beautiful that people would turn to look at me when I passed,” she would recall. “I dreamed of walking very proudly in beautiful clothes and being admired by everyone—men and women—and overhearing words of praise. I made up the praises and repeated them aloud as if someone else were saying them.” *

Grace v. Ida

G race Goddard felt that she had no choice but to place Norma Jeane Mortensen in an orphanage, but she was still devoted to her. Life just hadn’t worked out the way she had hoped, but she remained determined to one day find a way to bring Norma Jeane back to the Goddard home. Meanwhile, she visited Norma Jeane every week, bringing her presents and new clothing. Often she would take the little girl off the property and to the movies. “She felt terrible about it,” said Bea Thomas. “Every time she went, she’d leave crying. But while she was with her they would talk about movies and Grace used to tell Norma Jeane, ‘One day you’ll be just like Shirley Temple. Just wait and see.’ She still had this idea that Norma Jeane was going to be in films, but she had switched her ideal from Jean Harlow to Shirley Temple.”

An interesting twist occurred in Norma Jeane’s daily activities at the orphanage when Ida and Wayne Bolender began visiting her. It was no surprise that they wanted to see her, given their strong feelings for her. Norma Jeane was overjoyed to see them. She still thought of them as her parents, and if it had been up to her, she no doubt would have very much preferred living with them and her foster siblings rather than with strangers in an orphanage. As it happened, each time Ida came to the orphanage with warm chocolate chip cookies and hand-me-down clothing from one of Norma Jeane’s siblings, the girl would parrot back to her the notion that she was one day going to be the next Shirley Temple. Soon, even Ida began encouraging her in her Shirley Temple fantasies. When Norma Jeane mentioned as much to Grace, she became suspicious. She felt it strange that the religious and often sanctimonious Ida Bolender had suddenly begun endorsing Norma Jeane’s show business aspirations. The more Grace thought about it, according to her relatives, the unhappier she became about it. After all, times were tough. Wayne Bolender was a mailman and government jobs were in jeopardy during the Depression. Did Ida think that she might have an opportunity to one day exploit Norma Jeane for profit? The girl was uncommonly pretty and maybe even talented. Grace speculated that if she was so convinced that it could happen—that the girl could one day become famous—who was to say that Ida didn’t think so as well?

“When Grace would ask Norma Jeane what she and Ida talked about, it was always ‘Shirley Temple, Shirley Temple, Shirley Temple,’ ” said Bea Thomas. “Grace didn’t like it. She disliked Ida already, and for Ida to now take an interest in Norma Jeane’s movie star aspirations was just a little too strange. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Grace herself wanted to exploit her in films, but… well, all I can say is that she didn’t want Ida visiting Norma Jeane, that’s for sure.”

Indeed, on December 5, 1935, Grace wrote a stern letter to the orphanage’s headmistress, Sula Dewey—a kindly older woman who looked like a prototype grandmother—to tell her in no uncertain terms that no one was allowed “to see or talk to little Norma Jeane Baker unless you have my written permission to do so.” (Sometimes Norma Jeane was called Baker; no one was ever consistent with her last name, not even Grace.) Moreover, Grace was very specific in her letter that one person who was definitely barred from visiting the girl was Ida Bolender. She wrote that Norma Jeane was very upset every time Ida came to call. It might have been true. Mrs. Dewey wrote back to Grace and confirmed, “Norma is not the same since Mrs. B. visited with her. She doesn’t look as happy.” In the end, the headmistress concluded, “I’ll do as you have requested.” However, in a follow-up letter, Mrs. Dewey seemed to have a change of heart: “I think that it’s probably not in her best interest to evaluate Norma Jeane’s moods based on her visitors. We have noticed that this is a child who can sometimes be very unhappy for no apparent reason. In thinking about it, maybe it is not best to keep her from Mrs. B. I had a long conversation with Mrs. B yesterday when she telephoned me. I am convinced that she is not the problem. I would like to have a meeting with you to discuss Mr. and Mrs. B’s future visitations.” Grace responded immediately with a very terse note: “Please do as I say. I have good reason for my wishes. Thank you for honoring them.”