J. Taraborrelli - The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

While Gladys did her best to appear as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred during her weekend away—supposedly with her aunt—her sinking mood made that impossible. As had happened so many times in her past, she slipped into the dark place that was by now all too familiar to her. The progress she had made, the many joyful scenarios she had imagined, the hope she once had—all of it was gone. The “new” Gladys Baker was dying a slow death.

The First Norma Jeane

I t’s been written in countless Marilyn Monroe biographies that Gladys Baker’s baby, Norma Jeane, was named after the actress Jean Harlow. However, this can’t be true, since Jean Harlow’s real name was Harlean Carpenter and wasn’t changed until 1928, two years after Gladys gave birth. Other accounts have it that the child was named after another actress, Norma Shearer. Still others insist it was Norma Talmadge. None of this is true. In the 1960s, Gladys explained the derivation to Rose Anne Cooper, a young nurse’s aide at the Rock Haven Sanitarium.

After her failed attempt to regain custody of Jackie and Berniece, Gladys returned to the Cohen household. The Cohens’ three-year-old daughter whom Gladys had been helping to raise for the last year was named… Norma Jeane. It would be with this little girl that Gladys would finally achieve what had been expected of her with her own children. Each and every day of the year she was with her, Gladys made it her priority to see to it that the tot was nourished, entertained—loved. However, after Gladys’s return from Flat Lick without her own children, things began to shift. In the simplest terms, her mind had begun to fail her. She was just twenty-three.

When Gladys’s problem became apparent to the Cohens, they were alarmed, and with good reason. Here’s the story, as passed down in the Cohen family:

One evening after a dinner date, Mr. and Mrs. Cohen found their child alone in the nursery. She was hysterical and the sheets were soiled, suggesting that she’d been left unattended for quite some time. When they finally found Gladys, she was crouched on the floor behind a grand piano, her knees pulled in to her chest. Her eyes were closed as she spoke quietly to herself. She was visibly upset, tears streaming down her cheeks. After a moment, she looked at Mrs. Cohen and said, “Are they gone?”

“Is who gone, Gladys?” replied the missus.

“The men.”

Gladys then explained that she had seen a group of men sneaking about the house for the previous few days, but she didn’t want to worry her employers.

At first the couple were deeply concerned for their own safety. However, as Gladys continued to describe her experiences, they began to have a new concern: their nanny’s sanity.

Gladys told of odd happenings that were beyond reason. She said she went to retrieve something from a cabinet under the kitchen counter and found there was a man lying inside it. Another man had walked into an upstairs bathroom, she said, and when she finally got the nerve to follow him in there, he was nowhere to be found.

The Cohens had a problem on their hands—a problem that needed to be dealt with quickly.

Gladys Baker lasted a few more days—though never alone with the child—before her employers made her termination official. At that time Gladys was weaving in and out of lucidity, appearing at one moment to be just fine, and the next claiming that she heard a voice. Indeed, there were many voices—but the voices were never really there.

Gladys’s dismissal was a civilized procedure, with the Cohens claiming they no longer needed a nanny.

But what about little Norma Jeane? The child had been the only constant for Gladys while she was in Kentucky during this very difficult time, and she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her. For a time, as she later told Rose Anne Cooper, she considered taking Norma Jeane back to Los Angeles with her to start a new life. However, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She had experienced the misery of losing her own children and said she couldn’t inflict that kind of pain on Margaret Cohen.

After packing her things the night before she was to depart the household, Gladys recalled that she sat in her room alone. Her minimal belongings now stuffed into a tattered satchel, she crept down the dark hallway and quietly let herself into the nursery. She sat on Norma Jeane’s bed and stroked the child’s hair. She then kissed her on the forehead before tucking her back in. After gathering the rest of her things in the dark of night, Gladys Baker then disappeared from the Cohen family’s life.

Jim’s Ultimatum

B ut we only have two rooms here,” Jim told Norma Jeane when he was told that Gladys would be staying with them. “Where are we going to put her?”

“Um…”

Jim took a quick look around the house. Something didn’t seem quite right. There were no flowers in the vase on the table, and he knew Norma Jeane loved keeping them there to add color to the small surroundings. There were no magazines on the coffee table, and he knew she liked their guests to have something to thumb through while she fetched coffee for them. In fact, the place looked as if no one was really living there. As he scanned the room, his eye caught a framed photograph of Norma Jeane on the wall, one that he recognized as having been taken by André de Dienes. Of course, this did not make him happy. When he walked over to a closet to hang up his coat, he opened the door to a surprise. There, hanging on a rod, were just a couple of dresses. On the floor, a few pairs of shoes. Obviously, Norma Jeane and Gladys were not living in that house. “What is going on here?” he asked, now very upset.

With Gladys sitting on the bed observing everything, Jim felt that he couldn’t express himself openly, so he and Norma Jeane stepped outside to talk. She explained that she and Gladys had actually been living at Aunt Ana’s. She’d had a series of modeling jobs and couldn’t leave Gladys alone, and so therefore it was more sensible for them to be living with Ana. “I just didn’t think you’d understand, Jimmie,” she concluded. Then she started crying, buckling under the pressure of the moment. Jim had had enough. In fact, he did not understand. She had specifically told him she was going to move back into their own home.

“That’s it,” he told her. “That’s it, Norma Jeane. You have to choose. Me or your career. Your marriage or your career.” And there it was: the ultimatum she had hoped would not be forthcoming, the one he was probably a fool to issue. She didn’t say a word. She just stared at him as he walked away.

Final Confrontation

J im Dougherty was in service in Shanghai at the end of May 1946 when he received the “Dear John” letter. He later said it had come directly from Norma Jeane personally, but actually it was much more impersonal than that: It was written by her lawyer, C. Norma Cornwall, who informed him that she had filed for divorce in Las Vegas. As it happened, Norma Jeane had made up her mind that she wanted the marriage to be ended. She wasn’t sure how to proceed, but she knew of one woman who was always able to think of a solution to any problem: “Aunt” Grace. Of course, Grace had encouraged Norma Jeane into a marriage of convenience, and her plan had worked in that Norma Jeane was spared the misery of another orphanage. Now she was twenty and ready to be free. Grace knew that the quickest way to obtain a divorce was to file in Las Vegas and then live there for the six months it would take for residency to be established and the paperwork to be filed. Conveniently, Grace had an aunt there. So Norma Jeane was off to Las Vegas in early May to begin the process.