The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe Read online

  She had been in on the joke that night, of course, and had even seemed tickled that her eventual appearance would be teased throughout the four-hour-long event. Indeed, as had often been the case in Marilyn’s life, she knew that the public’s expectations of her revolved around what they thought she lacked, not what she possessed. “Most people didn’t think of talent when they thought of Marilyn,” Dean Martin once observed. “They saw this creature who happened to be blessed with the beauty of a goddess and the brain of a peacock.” However, Marilyn was no dumb blonde; she was much more intelligent than most people realized. For years she had used her intellectual abilities to conceal her most private struggles.

  Once again, every ounce of willpower would be brought to bear this evening in order that the mere mortal could transform herself into the goddess the world had come to know and love. When Marilyn finally took the stage, the theater erupted into thunderous applause. She was charismatic, empowered, and, of course, spectacularly beautiful. Peter Lawford watched her wriggle toward him, her steps restricted to tiny strides due to her sheer gown’s tightly tailored hem. After delivering a final punch line to the running joke of the evening—“Mr. President, the late… Marilyn Monroe”—he reached toward the star’s ample bosom and took from her an ermine fur. There she stood, looking almost naked, wrapped only in her ethereal beauty, shimmering in sequins, beads, and sparkling light.

  Alone now, she waited for the crowd’s reaction to wane before she could start to sing. It didn’t for quite some time. The applause became less apparent, though, as a low-pitched throng of gasps and cheers came forth, mostly from the men in attendance. In fact, there was a full thirty seconds between the moment her outfit was revealed and the time she was able to begin singing. During that time, the audience’s reaction changed from hoots and hollers to audible mumbles and, finally, to smatterings of laughter. She held her hands at her brow in order to shield her eyes from the spotlight, maybe hoping to see more clearly the man of honor—a man she had hoped might one day be more to her than just her commander in chief. Then, after a particularly loud guffaw from a man in one of the first few rows, Marilyn’s shoulders dropped and she sighed audibly. Eventually, deciding not to wait for silence, she started to sing while the masses continued expressing their reaction.

  “Happy birthday… to you,” she cooed, her voice a sexy—and maybe just a tad off-key—whisper. “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday… Mr. Pre-si-dent. Happy birthday to you.” The room continued its rowdy response as she did her best to give her public what it wanted—an unmistakable and very specific memory of Marilyn Monroe. Finishing the first chorus, she motioned for the audience to join in—“Everybody! Happy birthday…” The crowd responded to her invitation by taking up the song and trying to follow her somewhat erratic, arm-waving conducting.

  After she finished her performance, a man approached Marilyn from behind. While the cameras cut to a birthday cake being wheeled in, she was escorted from the stage and away from a moment in which she had wanted to participate: President John F. Kennedy climbing the stairs to the stage to say a few words of appreciation. Marilyn had wanted to simply give him a quick peck and then shuffle back offstage. Yet there were many who felt that she was too unpredictable that night, too erratic. “Yes, there was some anxiety surrounding her appearance,” recalled Diahann Carroll. “I can’t say that I knew why, or what was going on. But I do remember a certain level of… tension. Some people were quite… edgy.”

  Once backstage, Marilyn heard the president express his gratitude for her performance. “Now I can retire from politics,” he said, “after having ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in such a sweet and wholesome way.” A couple of months prior, she had told JFK how her ex-husband, Joe DiMaggio, wanted her to retire from show business to be his wife. Now, hearing his words, a look of astonishment crossed her face. Later, she would ask his sister, Pat Kennedy Lawford, if he had made the statement for her benefit. The reasonable response to her question was most certainly no. However, at that point, Marilyn’s supply of reason had been dwindling for quite some time. She had begun living her life in clearly defined segments of clarity and confusion. For years Marilyn Monroe had been able to use her craft to perpetuate an illusion. Indeed, the star that people saw toward the end of her life was but a shell game—a well-crafted presentation of someone who had disappeared years ago… that is, if she ever really existed.

  PART ONE

  The Beginning

  Norma Jeane’s Foster Mother, Ida

  How to describe Ida Bolender? With dark brown eyes behind large, round spectacles on an elongated and severe face, she looked like the classic schoolmarm. She could have been attractive, had she been interested. However, she didn’t have time to worry about superficialities. Her hairstyle spoke volumes. Cut bluntly just below her ears and unevenly around her head, her hair looked as if she’d taken scissors and chopped away without any forethought. The total effect was a haphazard, inky black coif around her head. Her clothing also said much about her. She wore the same type of dress every day—a short-sleeved frock that hung loosely on her frame like a gunnysack. She called this garment, functional and practical, her “house dress.” Though still a young woman of just thirty-seven, she was such a model of efficiency and diligence she seemed much older—maybe in her fifties. She was always busy, whether with a full schedule of housework or with the day’s errands of devotion to the Hawthorne Community Church in Hawthorne, California, of which she was a parishioner. *

  To some, Ida seemed a somewhat cold and unfeeling woman who, despite being a foster mother, didn’t really take to children. Sometimes she appeared distant and remote, which is why there was some question as to whether she sincerely had the desire to raise children or simply had an interest in the money she received to take care of them—roughly twenty-five dollars a week per child from either the child’s family or the State of California. † It wasn’t a fair characterization. In fact, Ida had opened her home to underprivileged children during the challenging 1920s. This was a time when scores of young people were being put up for adoption, due in part to a floundering economy, and also to the needs of a growing number of young women who felt a calling to enter the workforce. Though she certainly had no interest in business, Ida did want a better life, one her husband’s meager salary as a mailman could not provide. The extra income she received from foster parenting may not have been plentiful, but it was enough for her to feel some worth and also a certain degree of independence. Moreover, as her foster daughter Nancy Jeffrey explains, “One of the reasons Ida may have appeared disconnected was because she was hearing impaired and without the benefit of a hearing aid. She often had to read lips, especially as she got older.” A proud woman, Ida Bolender would just as soon people think she was hearing what they were telling her when she really wasn’t. Thus her seeming aloofness.

  The daughter of devout Baptists, Ida was taught that an abundance of pride was the devil’s work. Therefore, she rarely acknowledged her own achievements, such as good grades in school or being popular with other students. Her parents were strict and uncompromising. Every day was a test from God. Pass or fail (and she usually failed, according to them anyway, especially her mother), it was sure to be a long and difficult exam. Her parents had instilled in her so urgent a sense of responsibility and duty, she’d allowed her youth on a small farm near Buffalo, New York, to pass her by without ever having much fun.

  In 1918, after living a chaste early adulthood, Ida married a quiet, gentle man named Albert Wayne—known primarily by his middle name. He’d also been raised on a farm, this one in Brown County, Ohio. Since he had been brought up with essentially the same beliefs as Ida, he had simple, attainable goals for the future. In fact, the couple had no plans when they married, other than to work hard, pray hard, and try to live what they both viewed as decent lives based on scripture. They moved to California in 1919.

  Besides foster caring, Ida had few passions in life—and, truthfully, being a fost
er mother wasn’t as much a passion for her as it was a duty. However, as a fervent member of her church, she was quite enthusiastic about fund-raising. The church held bake sales and raffles, but its most lucrative venture by far was its widely praised rummage sale. Women would travel great distances to pick through the discarded belongings of the church’s many parishioners while searching for just the right hat, dress, or other clothing at a price that could be considered a “steal.” However, not only would the possessions of churchgoers go up for sale, but other items as well. According to the family’s history, in order to enhance her own sales table, Ida formed a secret alliance with a woman named Anna Raymond, a seamstress in Hollywood who would bring boxes chock-full of items to the Bolender residence on a monthly basis. These pieces were mostly garments that Ida would never think to wear, such as colorful flapper dresses, ornate costume jewelry with enormous imitation stones, or high-heeled shoes that made Ida shudder. It’s a safe assumption that these items were leftovers from various film productions, but just how Miss Raymond happened to come into possession of them is, all these years later, impossible to ascertain.

  Over the years, Ida often spoke to other members of her congregation about certain women in her community she felt were “too boastful.” Inevitably, these were ladies who flaunted their femininity to get what they wanted, conduct Ida viewed as tantamount to a mortal sin. As it would happen, a woman whose behavior fit just that description came into Ida’s life in a place that might seem ironic: the Hawthorne Community Church. Indeed, whenever Ida Bolender stood watch at her rummage-sale table, she looked forward to selling as much of her tacky merchandise as possible to one eager customer in particular—her neighbor across the street, Della Monroe.

  Norma Jeane’s Grandmother, Della

  By 1925 standards, forty-nine-year-old Della Monroe was certainly not a wealthy woman, but she still had a craving for extravagance. Without the ability to purchase particularly lavish items at retail prices, she hunted down bargains wherever she could—even in places where she didn’t feel particularly welcome. Descending the steps into the basement of the Hawthorne Community Church, she had to have heard the judgmental whispers of those who wouldn’t have used the word “elegant” to describe her secondhand fur and costume jewelry.

  In her prime, Della had been a spectacularly attractive woman. Back then, a mane of full, thick brunette tresses had framed an almost constantly smiling face set with stunning blue-green eyes. She was eye-catching and full of life. However, time had not been kind. Her skin, once so porcelain and smooth, had loosened and lost its glow. Now she appeared unkempt, her hair thinning to wiry locks that seemed to lie lifeless atop her head. It hadn’t simply been the expected signs of aging that altered Della, either. She had once been gregarious with a quick wit and exuberant personality. There had always been a dazzling smile under her bright red lipstick. However, over time, the light behind her eyes began to flicker. As she got older, she became remote. It was as if a great distance had come between the world and Della Monroe’s experience of it. Everyone she knew noticed this gradual change in her, but no one knew what to do about it. Actually, it had started with the birth of her children.

  “The way I heard it, she would fall into deep depressions after having the babies,” recalled Louise Adams, whose mother was the secretary to Reverend Charles Lewis, pastor of the Hawthorne Community Church. “My mother said [Della] would cry uncontrollably at the drop of a dime [sic], and she had never been one to cry. Then she would be fine. But a few days later, she would start crying again, for no apparent reason, and she would cry for days, or at least it seemed like it. Then, fine. She wouldn’t eat and got painfully thin. She couldn’t sleep. No one knew what was wrong with her, but there wasn’t much anyone could do back then but just worry about it and hope for the best.”

  It’s possible, of course, that Della Monroe was suffering from postpartum depression. However, with modern obstetrics procedures just starting to be developed in the early 1900s, grave symptoms such as hers were often ignored or just attributed to “baby blues” and not taken seriously. In her case, though, whatever was happening to her as a result of her pregnancies would be a harbinger of things to come. Of course no one knows for sure, but the family’s belief is that Della’s pregnancies triggered a mental illness in her that was never reversed.

  Time, however, could not steal from Della the memories of her untamed youth. She had often welcomed the wandering eyes of the opposite sex, which threatened her peers and made the possibility of having many close girlfriends remote. Therefore, when she sought companionship, it was usually in the company of men. Indeed, earlier in her life, Della would happily share a stiff drink with a fellow, often with no desire at all for any sort of romantic relationship. She was “one of the guys” during many happy hours at the local watering hole, which led to a good number of groggy late-night encounters of the intimate variety, and of course the inevitable tongue-wagging of women familiar with her behavior.

  Now past her prime, Della was living with a man named Charles Grainger at her home on East Rhode Island Street in Hawthorne. She insisted they were man and wife, but no one ever saw a marriage certificate—nor did anyone believe they’d ever been wed. Though her desire for male attention had weakened, Della’s instinct to package herself in what she considered stylish attire remained—thus her visit to church on this day in October 1925, where she would meet her neighbor across the street, thirty-seven-year-old Ida Bolender.

  Obviously, Della’s life had been very different from Ida’s. Whereas Della had always been a free spirit who enjoyed what would most certainly have been considered in the early 1900s a loose morality, Ida’s personality was constricted by a rigid religious code. Had Ida been aware of some of Della’s past experiences, she wouldn’t have allowed herself to even share the same oxygen with her. As it was, the two women formed an unusual bond. In fact, for her wardrobe, Della had come to depend upon the constant stream of garish garments and baubles found only at Ida’s booth at the rummage sale. Over time, Ida would even leave a smattering of the gaudiest of merchandise on display—clothing and other items that no one else would ever think to purchase—knowing full well that even these most offensive pieces would be eagerly snapped up by Della.

  As Della’s style “dealer,” Ida made a decent amount of money for the church—and possibly even a bit for herself. Eventually, she even opened up her home to Della in order that she might purchase items without waiting for the next sale. On one such occasion in October 1925, Della noted how well-behaved two foster children being raised by Ida were, and then mentioned that her own daughter, twenty-five-year-old Gladys Baker, was pregnant with her third child. The pregnancy posed quite a problem, she explained, since Gladys was not married. Gladys had been pursuing a career in Hollywood, Della said, working for Consolidated Studios as a film cutter. In fact, as she went on, Della had actually given her some of the clothing she had purchased from Ida. She wanted to brighten her daughter’s days, she said, because she’d never been the same since giving up the first two children she bore. Both were now being raised by her ex-husband and his new wife. After losing them, Della admitted, Gladys became a heavy drinker.

  As it happened, Della was getting ready to join her husband, Charles, in India, where he’d been transferred by the oil company for which he worked. She was going to leave in December. He didn’t seem anxious to see her, though. In a postcard to her, he wrote that he felt the trip would be “too much” for her and that perhaps she should “stay where you are for an indefinite period of time.” Della’s mind was made up, though. However, she told Ida that she was worried about what might happen to Gladys and the new baby. “I’m not going to be around to see to it that things are okay,” she explained. Ida said, “Well, maybe you should stay behind until you know they are okay.” Della thought it over a moment and decided, “No, I don’t think so.”

  During that conversation, Ida became very concerned not so much about what might happen
to Gladys, but over the future of the child she was carrying. It was clear to Ida that not only were Gladys’s work schedule and social life going to be an issue in raising the new baby, but there was also another undeniable truth, one to do with morality. There was a question about the paternity of Gladys’s pregnancy. Della said that she didn’t quite know who the father of her daughter’s baby was—and any number of men could have been candidates. This unfortunate situation was more than just distasteful to Ida, it was unseemly. In her view, neither Gladys—given what she had heard—nor Della—given what she had seen—was, as she put it, “following the Lord’s path.”

  Ida quizzed Della about just how Gladys planned to raise the child, especially if Della was to be out of the country. Would it be in accordance with God’s plan? Had they considered what school the young one would attend? Was she going to be able to set a good example for him or her? As Ida saw it, it was an untenable situation, so much that she could barely believe they were even discussing it. In her mind, all questions were moot since Gladys wasn’t even married, “and in this situation, she most certainly should not be allowed to keep that child,” she said.

  “And what about you, Della?” Ida asked with a faint smile. “You know, you’re not the most stable woman, either.”

  Della—according to a later recollection—seemed to not be able to connect to what Ida was talking about. On some level, though, she must have known that Ida was referring to her unpredictable mood swings, and especially her insistence of late that she was the subject of some sort of surveillance. “When I leave the house, I know I’m being followed,” she had often told Ida. “As long as they know that I know, I feel I’m fine. However, I never let my guard down. I’m not a stupid woman.” Paranoia had become such a recurring theme in Della’s life that her friends had begun to disregard it, even if they did find it upsetting.