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My journey ends here...

BAKER Gladys Pearl born MONROE

Also named Gladys Mortenson then Gladys Eley.

Date of birth : May 27, 1902, Porfirio Diaz, Mexico (previously the city was named Piedras Negras).

Date de décès : March 11, 1984, Gainesville, Florida.

Places of living:

1910 : 2440 Boulder Street, with her mother Della.

1912 : 324 bis South Hill Street, Los Angeles (at her mother's second husband home Lyle Graves).

1916 : 26 Westminster Avenue,Venice (California, south of Santa Monica), with her mother.

1917 : 26 Westminster Avenue, Venice (California, south of Santa Monica), with John Baker.

June 1921 : 46 Rose Avenue, Venice, with her mother.

Summer 1923 : 1211 Hyperion Avenue ()(now Silver Lake, Los Angeles), East Hollywood, with Grace McKee.

1926 : 5454 Wilshire Boulevard.

1927 : à549 East Rhode Island, Hawthorn, with her mother.

1933 : 6021 Afton Place, Hollywood (); 6812 Arbol Street.

1945 : 11348 Nebraska Avenue.

1953 à 1967 : Rockhaven Sanatorium 2713 Honolulu Avenue, Verduga City, Glendale District, California.

End of her life : Collins Court Home for aged people : 4201 S.W 21 Place, Gainesville, Florida.

Story

Her parents were Della Mae (born Hogan) and her father Otis Elmer Monroe.
Birth certificate :

.

Gladys spent her childhood in Mexico where her father worked for the Mexican railways.

Spring 1903 : her parents settled in Los Angeles where her father had found a better paid job at the Pacific Electric Railway.

They lived in a one-room small bungalow, 37th West Street (south zone of downtown).

1905 : birth of her brother Marion.

1906 :

Between 1903 et 1909, they lived in not less than 11 houses or furnished apartments.

In 1908, Otis health broke up in an alarming fasteness. His memory became erratic, his answers often irrelevant.

He suffered of violent headaches and his behaviour became more and more neglected.

Some temper tantrum, which scared Della and the children alternated with tear crisis and he was seized by violent tremors, sometimes followed by attacks.

Summer 1908 : after a rage, Otis became half-paralyzed. Gladys was aged 6.
November 1908 : Otis was admitted at the Southern California State Hospital, in Patton (San Bernardino County). A general paresis was diagnosed, the ultimate level of nervous syphilis (the treatment of this disease would only be discover in 1908).
Contrary to several interpretations, his mental illlness was due to an incidental pathology and not to an hereditary disease.

During the first months, Della visited him at the hospital. Then he lapsed into a complete dementia, even didn't recognize his wife.
Because she had to provide for her children needs, Della had to begin to work.

July 22, 1909, without having left his hospital bed during 9 months, Otis died. He was 43 years old.

Terrified maybe by the dazzling mental decline of her husband, Della told her children that their father had became insane, maybe because of alcohol, maybe because of his chaotic life.

However, the medical file given to her after Otis death, clearly explained that he had died from an organic disease and not from a mental illness. Yet, Della, Gladys and Marion were intimately convinced that their husband and father, who died of an infection which had destroyed his nervous cells, had been killed by insanity.

March 17, 1912 : Della, her mother, married Lyle Graves, switchman in chief at the Pacific Electric, where he had worked with Otis.
The family settled in Graves house, 324 bis South Hill Street in the new business district of Los Angeles.
Soon, Della realized her mistake : Lyle too had a big inclination for drinking.

November 1912 : Della left the marital home with her two children, Galdys and Marion, and lived in a furnished flat.

Christmas 1912 : she returned to Graves, apparently because she hadn't any resources anymore. But, instead the presents Lyle gave to the children, the reconciliation didn't last.

May 1913 : Della definitely left Graves.

January 17, 1914 : the divorce between Della and Graves was pronounced.

End of 1916 : Della rented a room in a private hotel located 26 Westminster Avenue, Venice, south of Santa Monica (California).

The owner of the private hotel was named Jasper Baker and hired her to run his estate while he dealt with a rumpus room on the beach.

Gladys was aged 14; she was brilliant, effusive, coquettish (-); her hair was light brown clear, her voice crystalline and high, easy laughter, and, like Della, was thirst for attention from mature men (not very astonishing for a girl who hadn't know her father a lot).

Gladys fell in love with Jasper, aged 26.

January 1, 1917 : during a party for New Year's Eve, Della met a charming widower, Charles Grainger.
The following days, he visited her almost every evening at Westminster Avenue.
For Della, Grainger life was much more exotic than everything Otis Monroe could have dreamt of.
Grainger worked in the oil industry and lived not far from her, at 1410 Coral Canal Court, in an humble two-room bungalow which faced the many Venice canals. It was a much more charming adress than 26 Westminster, and when she discovered the place, Della succumbed to its spell.
Living together whitout being married was not much allowed at that period than abortion or divorce, but regardless, Charles and Della took a close look to the idea of sharing Coral Canal Court.
Della simply made her called Mrs Grainger and nobody noticed anything.
Several clues led to believe that this idea was Charles's one. His work prospects were more than uncertained and he hoped new contracts abroad.
Moreover, he had to provide for his two sons needs, remained in north California.
He probably hadn't been keen with the idea of being legally in charge of Della and her children care.
Both discreet before this new father and frustrated to see her mother living a situation which irregularity didn't give her any emotional stability, Gladys wasn't happy. She showed it to Grainger by being in an absolute silence and bad temper.
Della began to find her daughter irritating and moreover, the offer of Charles Grainger to live with him was still expected.

May 17, 1917 : Gladys married John Newton Baker (also named Jasper)() :

Della Monroe declared that her daughter was aged 18 (but in fact she was hardly 15) under the pretext that there were no real proofs of her real date of birth.

Della, smiley, attended to the wedding then gave to the young grooms the room located at Westminster Street, and quickly moved in Charles Grainger bungalow.

At the beginning of her wedding, Gladys was a happy young married woman :

November 10, 1917 : birth of Robert Kermit Baker (called Jack).

July 30, 1919 : birth of Berniece Inez Gladys.

Picture of Robert and Berniece as children :

On the birth certificate (), the Bakers wrote down Della Monroe address (1410 Coral Canal Court).

If the fact that Gladys had been pregnant during her wedding which had happened before the legal age would have been discovered, Jasper would have risked a trial for statutory rape.

With Della address mentionned as her own, this meant Della's agreement, or at least that she presented herself as responsible for Gladys and her children.

Her father's death, the emotional fickleness of her mother didn't compel Gladys to stability.

She didn't seem to look for a conformist home.

Quickly tired of motherhood and its demands, she prefered confide her children to her neighbours so she could go to balls and parties on the beach.

On his side, her husband worked during long hours as salesman.

1921 : Jasper and Gladys went to visit Jasper's mother, in Flat Lick, Kentucky. During the trip, young Robert fell from the car and hurt his hip.
During their stay at Flat Lick, Gladys went to hike with Audrey, Jasper's young brother. Although Jasper was a handsome man, he was jealous of his brother. When Gladys came back from the walk, Jasper beat her on her back with a strap. Galdys ran and went to town, where she showed her back to the people in the street, screaming and crying because she was terrified by her husband.
Gladys surpassed her fear and they returned to California, all together.
As soon as she was back, Gladys asked for divorce.
She would have surprised her husband, in the street, with another woman (that what Gladys would tell to Berniece).

June 20, 1921 : Gladys asked the divorce for "extreme cruelty and extreme mental cruelty (...)" :

Jasper Baker replied by accusing Gladys of indecent and lascivious behavior.

1921 or March 1922 : she left the marital home and rented a bungalow at 46 Rose Avenue, Venice, she shared with her mother.

Gladys signed the lease in the name of Della Monroe, where she agreed to sublet two of the rooms, to be paid as manager and to deposit 100$ a month to the owners, Adele Weinhoff and Susie Noel.

End of June 1922 : the last rent-check hadn't been mailed. Then, there was an argument between Gladys and Della, blaming each other to waste the money. Because both of them hadn't any job, the main part of their income was given by Charles Grainger, the other part consisting of a small amount sent by Jasper Baker.

Their short room-mates experience ended in July, after an eviction threat.

Della, with Grainger's permission, went to live in an empty bungalow he owned in Hawthorn (working-class suburb, now the Los Angeles International Airport).

May 11, 1923 : the divorce was pronounced and Gladys obtained the care of her children (

).
One day, Jasper came to pick the children for the week-end; in fact, he brought them in Flat Lick, Kentucky, at his own mother's house, thinking that the children would be better raised. So he settled at his mother's home, where he wanted to begin a more quiet life. Robert was sent to the hospital in Louisville, because he hitched from his injured leg; he was trapped in a cast.
Durant his stay at the hospital, Gladys arrived in Flat Lick, angry and wanting to demand her children. She saw Jasper's sister, Myrtle, to ask her help, so that she could take Berniece and Robert, but this one refused to help her and rushed to Jasper's house to warn him about Gladys purposes.
Jasper and his mother hid Berniece and asked Gladys not to go to Louisville to see Robert. Jasper had warned the doctors not to let Gladys bring the little boy. However, she settled in Louisville and found a job as a housekeeper, waiting for Robert to be better.

While Gladys was in Louisville, John remarried.
Bored of waiting and because she hadn't see her children, lastly Gladys went back to Los Angeles.

She first worked as a negative-cutter at the Consolidated Film Industries, a company located at the corner of Seward and Romaine Street.
Indifferent to the mechanical aspect of her job, Gladys saw the images created to entertain America scrolling.
She worked 6 days a week, in a room full as a beehive, with white gloves to protect the negatives from hand-contact. She cut pieces of films that studio headers had commented, then gave the pieces to those who would stick together the different parts in the order planned for the final negative :

At the Consolidated Film Industries, she became friend with a supervisor, Grace McKee :

End of summer 1923 : Gladys and Grace McKee shared an apartment at 1211 Hyperion Avenue, East Hollywood.

They were authentics "Flappers", those young women of the roaring twenties who, thanks to the right ot vote they'd just obtained, had décided to appropriate themselves the same social and sexual liberties as the men enjoyed.

In their manner, they just imitated the stars they saw every day, at work.

She dated Stanley Gifford, a colleague at Consolidated Film Industries.

1924 : on Grace McKee's advice, Gladys dyed her hair in red :

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1924 : Gladys returned again in Kentucky to see her children, but they had become strangers to her. She went back, leaving them to the permanent care of their father.

Her carelessness maybe inspiring her guiltiness and regret, she would rarely try to get in touch with them.

Robert never saw his mother again (he died aged 16) and she would see Berniece again after several decades.

Summer 1924 : she met Martin Edward Mortenson, a meterman at the Southern Califonria Gas Company.

The circumstances of their meeting are unknown.

He was immediatly attracted by Gladys spell, her mischievous attitude, her sense of humor and her nature without complex.

Moreover, being educated as a good Lutheran, he was very impressed by Gladys interest for religion.

But he couldn't doubt at all nor about the youth of this passion for spiritual things, neither about its short-lived character.

This year, Gladys sometimes attended to the Christian Science Church services. As always, Grace McKee's experiences were shared by Gladys, but none of these two women considered to devote themselves to faith.

For Mortenson, Gladys was the ideal woman. On her side, she thought he was a handsome guy, generous, stable and with a very flattering jealousy. He looked older than his age and wore a discret scar.

So probably unconsciously, he seemed to have for her something of her own father. Anyway, she might have looked around, there wasn't any reason to refuse his marriage proposal and a more safer life.

October 11, 1924 : she married Mortenson :

Unfortunately, Gladys was incapable to confine herself to the faithfulness bounded by the holy matrimony.

As she would tell later to Grace McKee, life with Mortenson was appropriate, safe and boring above all.

May 26, 1925 : she left the marital home and returned to live with Grace McKee.

She also tied again with Gifford.

Edward Mortenson tried several times to get in touch again with her. He waited, full of hopes, but Gladys didn't answer to his many reconciliation attempts, he resolved to request the divorce( )(because "disregarding the solemnity of her marriage vows, wilfully and without cause deserted him").

The divorce was granted to him on August 15, 1928.

End of 1925 : Gladys learned she was pregnant.

Separated from his husband and emmeshed in the divorce formalities, she went back to her mother's home to have some support.

Della reacted badly to her daughter's situation; she ignored her daughter's wails and crying and went to a trip in South-East Asia she had scheduled for a long time, with Charles Grainger, who had been sent there by Shell company for professionnal reasons.

June 1, 1926 : she was admitted at the Los Angeles General Hospital.

At 9.30 AM she gave birth to Norma Jeane; the doctor who made her born was Dr Herman M.Beerman.

Her stay at the hospital was paid with a fundraising done by her work colleagues.

On the birth certificate, she made written Edward Mortenson, baker and with an unknown residence

().

Athough Mortenson had asked for divorce because she had left the marital home, he was still legally married to Gladys and so legally Norma Jeane's father, unless he could refute it.

The other potential father of Norma Jeane could have been Charles Stanley Gifford.
But Gladys never claimed, in private or not,that Gifford was the father of the child. She didn't even ask him the least support, material or emotional, for her as for the child.

On the birth certificate, little Norma Jeane was identified as Gladys Monroe's daughter, living at 5454 Wilshire Boulevard. The certificate was registered at the California Board of Health's Bureau of Vital statistics, and declared that the child's name was Norma Jeane Mortenson.

Gladys, separated from her husband without being divorced, had no idea of the identity of her child's father.
A mother with her reputation of lightness could only waste Norma Jeane's chances to reach some social respectability.
This could just come from another direction. A secure family, with both parents with traditional values.
Some other reasons urged Gladys to foster her child in a respectable family : she couldn't give the laboratory up, she didn't know anybody who could look after Norma Jeane while she was working and her life didn't really match with a baby's demands.
If Gladys didn't ignore her inabilities to change into an affectionate mother, active and efficient, her mother Della Monroe, back from her exotic adventures, was completely convinced.
June 1926 : when Della Monroe discovered that her grand-daughter, two weeks after her birth, she urged Gladys to foster her to a serious and devoted couple, the Bolenders, who lived Hawthorn, in the same street than hers.
As many families of this era, the Bolenders supplemented their income by taking care of a child. To shoulder this responsability, they were paid 25$ a month or by the natural parents either by the State of California.

Gladys visited regularly Norma Jeane, took her out sometimes for a week-end, until 1933 :

During 7 years, they didn't live together.

December , 1926 : Norma Jeane was baptized by Ster Aimee Semple McPherson, at the Hawthorn Foursquare Church ().

1927 :

At the beginning of this year, Della's heart began to fail and she suffered from sereal severe respiratory infections.

She was totally dependant on Gladys who, despite the extra trolley transportto go to her job, had settled at her home (the Consolidated Film Industries had settled far on Santa Monica Boulevard and Gladys needed two changes in trolley).

End of spring : Della was in bad condition; her respiratory problems were worsened by her heart disease evolution, which dropped her in a deep nervous breakdown.

The drugs only allayed her occasionally.

Between the intervals, as many sick people affected by cardio-respiratory problems, she drifted in pleasant reveries, delirium and some moments of total exhilaration. Gladys couldn't keep her from thinking of the whimsical behaviour of her father, during his last years.

July 1927 : Della was convinced that it was the end of her life. The guiltiness and the memories alternated with hallucinations : her parents, Tilford and Jenny Hogan had buried the hatchet, she told Gladys. They would rescue her and bring her back to her home.
Shortly after, she get out of her house and walked toward the Bolenders house to see her grand-daughter.
She beat at the door then angry not to obtain an answer, she broke the window glass with her elbow.

August , 1927 : she was admitted to the Norwalk State Hospital where an acute myocarditis was diagnosed.
She died on August 23 of a heart failure during a insane attack, that Gladys, then Marilyn herself, would consider as an inherited malediction.
As cause of death, her certificate mentioned a myocarditis and also "a manic-depressive psychosis". This last word had been added because Gladys hadn't ceased to repeat to the Norwalk State Hospital doctors that her mother mood had varied in an unexpected way during the last weeks.
Della's severe cardiac disease had been in fact, very badly treated. The doctors had just examined her 3 or 4 times, and she even herself forgot the drugs doses she had to take.
Gladys assertions about her mother mental condition explained that the notion of psychosis had been added when, the day after Della's death, the person in charge signed the death certificate.
Because Della's medical file didn't contain nor any psychological analysis neither neurological report. Actually, it seemed that Della Monroe (she appeared under this name in the medical archives) had died from a cardiac disease which, following the lack of brain oxygenation, caused severe cerebral damages.
As for her husband, Otis Monroe, nothing proves that she had been insane, but for Gladys, the familial insanity myth was being consolidated.
She was deeply depressed by Della's death.
During several days, she didn't go to work. Then she emerged and decided to sell the bungalow.
She took another work and returned to Hollywood. She obtained a job in two studios where she worked during the whole week and on Saturdays (at the Columbia and RKO).

1928 :

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With Olyve Monroe :

August 15, 1928 : the divorce with Edward Mortenson was pronounced.

1929 : Gladys learned by some friends from Ohio, that a man named Martin Edward Mortenson had been killed in a motorcycle crashed-accident.

1933 :

She settled at the Bolenders to take care of Norma Jeane who suffered of whooping cough.

During this year, she removed Norma Jeane from the Bolenders, after she had found her in an extreme distress condition and much disonsolate because one of the neighbours had killed her dog Tippy.

She lived with Norma Jeane at 6021 Afton Place, not far from the Hollywood studios and still worked at the Columbia Pictures.
Although Grace had warned her there might be some staff-decreased, Gladys obtained a 5 000$ loan by the Mortgage Guarantee Company of California; President Roosevelt had decreed a law allowing low-rated home loans.
In fall, she bought a 6 rooms furnished house, including 3 bedrooms, located 6812 Arbol Street, not far from de Hollywood Bowl. She had been seduced by the house and the presence of a Franklin white grand baby piano which could have belonged to the actor Frederic March.
When Gladys lost her job, she didn't have other choice than renting a part of the house; she found some tenants, an English couple who worked as walk-on actors in movies, the Atkinson.

Gladys and Norma Jeane had the 2 bedrooms upstairs and shared with the Atkinson the kitchen and the bathroom.

May 29, 1933 : Gladys learned that her maternal grand-father, Tilford Hogan, had committed suicide by hanging himself. This event and the responsability of a house she couldn't afford and a child she didn't know how to take care of, led Gladys to a depression and the prescribed drugs didn't help her; because her father and her mother were dead in a mental institution, she was convinced that her own mental health was in danger (,).

January 1934 : the Atkinson faced with an hysteria attack; they called an ambulance which brought Gladys by force to the Los Angeles General Hospital.
She left the hospital in February 1934, before being again hospitalized for several months in a Santa Monica asylum. From there, she was transfered again to the Los Angeles General Hospital.
According the versions, or the Atkinson either Grace McKee took care of Norma Jeane; so she didn't see often her mother, at week-ends where Gladys was allowed to go out.
December 1934, Gladys was transfered to the Norwalk State Hospital.

January 15, 1935 : she was declared definitely insane (paranoïd schizophrenia) by the doctors from the Norwalk State Hospital, where her own mother was deadd severla years earlier. The surgeon general report declared : "Her illness is characterised by religious preoccupations and a deep depression and some excitation; this condition seems to be chronic".

March 25, 1935 : Grace McKee became her legal guardian (decision of the Superiori Court of the State of California and for the County of Los Angeles)( ,).

1935 : Inventory ():

- 60$ : money in bank

- 90$ insurance checks received

- one small radio

- 350$ due for the Plymouth

- 200$ due for the baby grand piano.

Grace resold the car to its previous owner, sold the piano for 235$ and made sure to resell the house credit.

September 28, 1936 : Gladys bank account status under Grace McKee responsability :

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1938 : after an attempt to escape from the Norwalk State Hsopital, she was transfered to the Agnew State Asylum (specialized in her type of affection) in San José, near San Francisco; she justified her escape by a serie of phone calls she pretended to have received from Edward Mortenson.

Since that moment, Norma Jeane did'nt see her mother a lot.

Winter 1938 : Gladys wrote a letter to her daughter Berniece. Because she didnt' know where she was living, Gladys had sent the letter at Jasper's parents, Flat Lick; they were deceased and the postman gave the letter to Jasper's brother who was still in Flat Lick, who, on his turn, sent the letter in Pineville where Jasper lived from now on.

In this letter, Gladys told Berniece that she had a half-sister, aged 12, whose name was Norma Jeane. Gladys gave her the Goddard adress where Norma Jeane was living (Grace McKee has married Ervin Goddard in 1935).

The letter was written from the Agnew State Hospital where Gladys was still hospitalized. She begged her to help her to get out of this institution and also gave her the adress of her aunt (Della Monroe's sister), Dora Hogan Graham, who lived in Portland, Oregon.

Bernice wrote to Gladys, telling her that she had reached severla people (including Dora Hogan Graham) and that she was tryin to help her to go out.

February 7, 1940 : statement of Gladys account under the responsability of Grace McKee, since September 1936 :

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1945 : Dora Graham stepped in favor of Galdys with the authorities and to be allowed of going out, Gladys agreed to live for at least one year with her aunt Dora in Portand.

Summer 1945 : Galdys had left the Agnew State Hospital and lived with DOra (the hospital had declared that she wasn't a danger for her or for the others anymore).

Norma Jeane visited her.

Dora wrote to Bernice that Gladys seemed to be focused on a Christian Science book, and that she wanted to take care of sick people without the help of the medicine. She wore white clothes, like a nurse. First she had short-term jobs and close to Dora's home, then she accepted some jobs away. Her job consisted of house cleaning work and non medical cares to crippled patients or in recuperation.

1946

April 1946 : Norma Jeane sent her some money so that she could come back in Los Angeles.

They lived together in 2 small rooms rented by Norma Jeane, below "aunt" Ana Lower's apartment, on Nebraska Avenue.

August : Berniece decided to go to Los Angeles to visit her mother who had left Portland and had setteld with Norma Jeane.She arrived at the Burbank Airport with her daughter Mona Rae; Norma Jeane, Grace McKee, ana Lower and Gladys were there to welcome them.

Gladys became obsessed by the Christian Science; she found out, thanks to Ana Lower "healer practitionner" skills, the possibilities of the spirit on the illness and devoutly studied the many books on this suject. She attended the Church services every Sundays.

Pictures :,,,,

At the end of the summe, Gladys went back to Oregon.

February 1948 : Galdys was back in Los Angeles; she was a cleaning woman and lived at Ana Lower's home.

April 20, 1949 : Gladys married John Stewart Eley, an electrician, native to Boise, Idaho.

But he hadn't warned Gladys that he was already married and hadn't divorced yet from his previous wife who lived in Boise, Idaho.

They lived in Los Angeles.

He died aged 62, on April 23, 1952, from a heart affection.

1951 : Inez Melson, Marilyn new manager, did, on Marilyn's request, regular visites to Gladys, to make sure that she was well while she went from an institution to another.

1952 : Inez Melson persuaded Norma Jeane to nominate her as Gladys legal guardian.

April 23, 1952, Gladys husband died.

Shorty after, Galdys wrote to her daughter :

"Dear Marilyn,

Please, my dear daughter, I wish I had some news from you. I only have worries her, and I'd like to leave as soon as possible. I wish I have my child's love instead of her hate.

Tenderly, your mother".

Gladys visited Berniece in Florida: .

February 9, 1953 : on Grace advice, Gladys entered once again in the hopsital, in a much more comfortable institution, the Rockhaven Sanatorium, Verduga City. Marilyn payed 250$ a month for the charges.

1959 : Marilyn insured definitely her mother financial future time with a trust fund.

Letter from Gladys to Marilyn for Christmas :

1962 : it is reported that she was deeply affected by Marilyn's death and she made several suicide attempts.

Letter of August 22, 1962 to Inez Melson :

1963 : she escaped from the Rockhaven Sanatorium and was found the next day in a church of San Fernando Valley; in her hands a Bible and a Christian Science prayers book.

Pictures:

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