June 3, 2026
393: The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe: Part 1
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WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_00]: What's in a name?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jason Horton, I'm Rebecca Leib, and this is Ghost Town.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In the summer of 1926, Gladys Perlman wrote did not know what her future held, only that it would include a daughter, born on June 1st.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The 24-year-old film cutter was in a complicated situation, estranged from her husband for 10 months, and having an affair with her superior at RKO Pictures.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and without family close by, her two older children in the custody of her first husband back in Kentucky.
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[SPEAKER_01]: but as records show, Monroe made a choice that day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Constructing a new life for her and her daughter, beginning with little Norma Jean Mortensen's birth certificate.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Norma Jean was the name of a client she liked while cleaning houses back in Kentucky, and Mortensen was the family name of her long-estranged husband, imparting a sense of legitimacy and stability.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This document would set the tone for Little Norma Jean's life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: a complicated bouquet of aspirational, arbitrary, personal, and yet highly constructed.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But nobody expected the level of complexity that would manifest when Norma Jean Mortensen transformed into Marilyn Monroe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She would be so much to so many, one of the most successful, most photographed and most revered icons in modern history and emblem of sexuality, a dazzling screen goddess and a tragic
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[SPEAKER_01]: As we record this episode and what would have been Marilyn's hundredth birthday, we remember her beyond the films and the high-profile romances.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We remember the gray areas, the mystery, and the inner workings that made her so compelling.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Today on Ghost Town, 100 years later, the secret life of Marilyn Monroe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe was born at Los Angeles General Hospital in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, about a mile from where I'm recording this episode right now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was a proud Angelina, who stayed in LA most of her life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, she lived in Brentwood, walking distance from the Beverly Hills Hotel and Betty White's estate, which would be a far cry from her downtown LA roots.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Quote, when they said, go home.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I said I am home.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She would later say to life magazine in a 1962 interview.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it's really no surprise Marilyn Monroe was so loyal to her L.A. roots, it was one of the only constants in her life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn's story though really begins in Los Angeles with Marilyn's mother, Gladys Monroe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Gladys was born into a troubled family that would travel frequently, be out of money, and be subject to the whims of her father's alcoholism.
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[SPEAKER_01]: To get out, Gladys married John Newton Baker, a man who owned an apartment building that Gladys' mom managed,
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[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, let me emphasize this, gladis was 14 years old.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Baker was 23 and also abusive.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Gladis lied on the marriage certificate saying that she was 18 years old.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The two eventually had two children together, Robert and Bernice.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1923, Gladys successfully filed for divorce and sole custody of her two children, but Baker actually kidnapped their children and took them back to his home state of Kentucky.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Gladys, the mother of these children, followed, wanting to be close to her own kids.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Soon, Baker remarried, however, and, let's be honest, Gladys was afraid of him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, admitting defeat, she went back to California without her children, moving into a shared silver-like apartment with a friend named Grace Mickey.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Mickey got Gladys a job cutting negatives for films, and together the two started a new chapter, embracing the roaring 20s, becoming flappers who love to party flirt with men, and enjoy the heyday of Hollywood's Golden Era.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Very cinematically, Grace even gave Gladys a makeover, turning her from a quote, plain Jane Brunette, into a sassy, fashionable red head.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In all of my research, Gladys has described as beautiful, witty, engaged in life, loving and emulating film stars like Norma Tellmidge and Jean Harlow.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You can sense perhaps how a woman like Marilyn Monroe could come from a woman like Gladysman Row.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm getting ahead of myself.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1925, McKee got married and so did Gladys, to a man named Martin Edward Mortensen, a 27-year-old meet-or-man for the Southern California Gas Company.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Gladys was initially attracted among other things to Mortensen's innate norm coordinator.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But of course, being Gladys Monroe, she quickly bored of her marriage.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So what, or who attracted her attention instead?
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[SPEAKER_01]: An interesting man, but not in a good way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Charles Gifford was gladisers recently separated boss, a film salesman at Arcale Pictures, a self-proclaimed womanizer with what his biographer's site as a pretty bad addiction to narcotics.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, the two began an affair in 1925.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Gladys and Mortensen, just to emphasize, had been separated for months.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Gladys was actively dating other people, but she had been enamored with Gifford from the get-go.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Nearly 10 months after her separation began, and into dating Gifford and, perhaps, others, Gladys found out she was pregnant.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The Martinson made many attempts to win Gladys back, ultimately the two divorced on August 15th, 1928.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Years later, and after she tried to give it a good college go with Griffith.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But also after the birth of her daughter, Norma Jean.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Before she was even born, Marilyn was controversial, clearly, and the question of Marilyn Monroe's paternity would definitely affect the rest of her life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Was her father boring Edward Mortensen?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Or not boring, very toxic Charles Gifford?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Or a famous movie star that didn't want to be named, which is what Gladys would later say in interviews when talking about the paternity of Marilyn Monroe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, despite what Gladys would say in later interviews, Marilyn Monroe was not the daughter of a famous actor.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Legally, on her birth certificate, she was the daughter of Edward Mortensen, her mother's estranged husband.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But a DNA comparison in 2022 between Monroe's DNA and that of Gifford's descendants, would show her to actually be the biological daughter of Charles Gifford.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Gifford would not want any part of Marilyn Monroe's life until, of course, she became famous, at which point he would often reach out.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn, however, was over it, and would later say it was too late for them to foster any type of relationship.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In any case, after being a fun-loving flapper, Gladis was unprepared to be a mom.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Again, she suffered postpartum depression and moved in with evangelical Christians, Albert and Ida Bolander, in Hawthorne, California, whom she'd connected with by way of her own mother.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Gladys went back to LA for work, and Baby Marilyn Monroe, we were to say, stayed with the bowlenders until the summer of 1933, when Gladys bought a small house in Hollywood and moved the seven year old Monroe in with her.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe would always feel conflicted about her mother's care, or lack thereof.
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[SPEAKER_01]: According to the biography, The Passion and the Paradox by Lois Banner, quote, The problem for Norma Jean was that she saw Gladys in too many negative moods in situations not to be troubled by her.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She often would call her mother, quote,
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[SPEAKER_01]: Personally, I found Marilyn Monroe's mother to be almost as complicated as Marilyn Monroe herself, or at least as far as my research shows.
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[SPEAKER_01]: During these years, these times in Hollywood where she was trying to be a mother, provide for her daughter, get in touch with her existing children, she was dealing with so much on her own, including her own mother's manic depressive psychosis and subsequent death.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her own brother's disappearance and assumed death,
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[SPEAKER_01]: and all of the machinations of Hollywood.
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[SPEAKER_01]: These are all probably subjects for a whole other podcast, but let's just say she had a lot going on.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oddly enough, Gladys Monroe was also a hero, on October 24th, 1929, a fire broke out at the consolidated film industry where she worked, cutting the building and destroying millions of films.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe is credited with saving lives when she escorted women out of the editing studio to safety.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But unfortunately, the mental illness that plagued Marilyn Monroe's
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[SPEAKER_01]: and damaging.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In January 1934, Gladis had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At that point, onward, Gladis spent the rest of her life in and out of hospitals and was rarely in contact with her daughter.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, young adolescent Marilyn Monroe became a ward of the state.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Always a shy girl, Marilyn Monroe developed a stutter and became even more withdrawn, bouncing from family to family and even being placed in a Los Angeles Orphan's home.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, many biographers talk about allegations molestation and sexual abuse, which is heartbreaking to think about, after thinking about what this 11-year-old girl had already endured.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It all kind of makes sense that Marilyn Monroe's childhood experiences led her to acting, as her childhood was all about survival.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She would say in an interview, quote, I didn't like the world around me because it was kind of grim.
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[SPEAKER_01]: When I heard that this was acting, I said, that's what I want to be.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house, and there I'd sit all day and away into the night.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and I loved it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In September 1938, the 12-year-old enrolled in Emerson Junior High School and as a teen in 1941 in Van Nye's High School.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was described as a mediocre student, someone who loved writing was painfully shy and participated in newspaper.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Now I saw a photo of her, her high school photo in the Academy Museum's exhibition about Marilyn Monroe and she looks so young, so wholesome.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She really is at this point like such a piece of Americana in a completely different way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I will post this on our Instagram, but it's really
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1942, the family she was staying with decided to relocate to West Virginia and California Child Protection Laws prevented Monroe from going, faced with returning to an orphanage, the 15-year-old decided to leave high school and marry her neighbor, a factory worker named James Doherty, who was five years her senior.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The marriage took place just after her 16th birthday
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe immediately found herself, quote, dying of boredom with Dordy, but did what she had to do.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Sound familiar?
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[SPEAKER_01]: In April 1944, Dordy was shipped out to the Pacific, of course it was World War II, where he stayed for two years.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Now, Monroe was an adult, legally, living alone, working at a munitions factory in Van Nye's.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Glamorous, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: In late 1944, she met a photographer working in the U.S. Army, could be sent to the factory to shoot some moral boosting pictures of female workers.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was a different time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Though shockingly her pictures were not used in August 1945, Monroe signed a modeling contract with the blue book modeling agency.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The agency deemed Monroe's figure more suitable for pin up than high fashion modeling, and amped up her sex appeal, straightening her naturally curly brown hair, and dying it a platinum blonde.
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[SPEAKER_01]: According to Emily and Snivley, the agency's owner, Monroe quickly became one of its most ambitious and hardworking models.
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[SPEAKER_01]: By early 1946, she had appeared on 33 magazine covers.
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[SPEAKER_01]: From there, Monroe snagged a screen test with 20th Century Fox, and from there, she received a six-month contract.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I did not know this, but 20th Century Fox even selected Marilyn Monroe's iconic name for her.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The first name, Marilyn, because she reminded executives of a Broadway star named Marilyn Miller, and in a strange full circle, they liked Marilyn Monroe's mother's maiden name.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was probably alluring, a literative, maybe a little bit of both.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In September 1946, she divorced Dordy, who had been opposed to her career this whole time, and finally became Marilyn Monroe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The newly crescent, at least by Hollywood standards, 20-year-old Marilyn Monroe, spent her first six months at what was essentially movie star boot camp, learning to sing, act, dance, and be in and around production.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was, quote, my first taste of what real acting in a real drama could be, and I was hooked, she said.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her contract was renewed in February 1947, and she was given her first film roles, bit parts and films called Dangerous Years and Scudaho's Scudahay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In Daniel's Spotuses biography of Marilyn Monroe, he sites her saying that it was quote, my first taste at what real acting in a real drama could be, and I was hooked.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Despite her passion for acting, her acting teachers thought she didn't quite have the
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[SPEAKER_01]: Twenty-year-old Marilyn was too shy, too insecure, and Fox Studios listened to the teachers, deciding not to renew her contract in 1947.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, she returned to modeling while also doing occasional odd jobs at film studios.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1948, Maryland's friend and occasional boyfriend, Fox Executive Joseph P. Shank, persuaded his friend Harry Cohen the head executive of Columbia Pictures to sign Monroe in March of 1948.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At Columbia, Monroe's look was refined to emulate the look of Rita Hayworth's, but her time there was short, and her contract was not renewed after the requisite six-month period.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Researching this with all of these six-month contracts at a little bit of PTSD, having a impermanent, temporary, low-paying position that you don't know if you're going to have in the next year is a lot like how it is today, a bit depressing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, when her contract at Columbia ended, Monroe returned again to modeling, including nude modeling.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was fairly and reportedly comfortable with nudity.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, she famously slept in the nude, dressed only in a spritz of Chanel number five, her favorite perfume.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Shortly after leaving Columbia, she also met and became the protege and mistress of Johnny Hyde, the vice president of the talent agency William Morris.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Through Hyde, she was cast in all about Eve with top-build actress Betty Davis.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Davis later praised Monroe's performance saying, quote, definitely no question I knew she was going to make it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was a very ambitious girl and knew what she wanted and was very serious about it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I thought she had talent.
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[SPEAKER_01]: From there, Marilyn Monroe's Star Rose, critically but also with modern audiences.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In February 1952, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association named Monroe, quote, The Best Young Box Office Personality.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her personal life was also vibrant with Monroe dating A-Listers like Elya Kazan, Yul Brenner, and Peter Lawford.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In early 1952, she began a highly publicized romance and eventual marriage to New York Yankees baseball star Joe Demashio, one of the most famous sports personalities of the era.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and yet, despite all of this glamour, Marilyn Monroe always thought of herself as middle-class, or at least wanting to connect with normal people and normal life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn's personal wardrobe consisted of very basic, no-frills outfits since she believed anything too flashy would make her
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[SPEAKER_01]: The exhibition at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles showcases a lot of her everyday outfits and the outfits that were designed for her by customers and other fashion houses, and there is a stark difference.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her film outfits were glittery, glamorous, and very accentuating of her curves.
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[SPEAKER_01]: her at home outfits were pantsets, baggy blouses, and denim.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She'd often reware outfits because she felt it made sense that it was less wasteful when it made her more accessible to the public.
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[SPEAKER_01]: On top of that, she was an avid reader and lover of art.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Beyond that, her commitment to acting made her perceive herself as a mere student.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Not one of Hollywood's up-and-coming
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[SPEAKER_01]: She also had a fairly famous, but also not as well known as I thought health regimen that British Bogue called, quote, predictably bizarre, including ingesting raw eggs in warm milk in the morning, 10 minutes of exercise every day right next to her bed, and would eat meat and raw carrots for dinner followed by a hot-fudge Sunday.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And for bedtime, naked, of course, but not exactly glamorous.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In an interview reported by British Vogue, she would say, quote, depending on my activities, I sleep between five and ten hours night.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I sleep in an extra-wide single bed, and I use only one heavy-down comforter over me, summer or winter.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I have never been able to wear pajamas or creepy nightgowns.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They disturb my sleep.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Despite her perhaps best efforts, in March of 1952, Marilyn was anything but your average woman and she found herself in a not so average scandal.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe found herself paying a social price for some work she had done years before, that nude modeling I talked about.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Photos and rumors were circulating, and though it was again years earlier, Monroe tried to get a head of it, revealing publicly that she had, in fact, posed for adult photos.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In her public statement, she stressed that she had been very broke at the time and scared for her future.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In the wake of the scandal, Monroe was featured on the cover of Life Magazine as the quote, Talk of Hollywood.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Three of Monroe's films, Clash by Night, don't bother to knock and we're not married were released soon after the scandal to capitalize on public interest.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And Marilyn Monroe's honesty worked along with some well-timed publicity, of course.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The public actually sympathized with Monroe and her film sales and popularity skyrocketed.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Being crowned Hollywood's new sex symbol did have its price, and Monroe soon became frustrated with being type-castened comedies fueled by her vacant sex appeal.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, Monroe also fueled that fire, participating in sexy publicity stunts and hinting to gossip rags, pieces of intimate information, including that she usually wore no underwear.
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[SPEAKER_01]: While her behavior seemed like a paradox, and in some ways it was, it makes sense to me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In these contexts, photos, interviews, publicity, Marilyn Monroe was in control.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was in control of how she was perceived, in control of the information that was disseminated.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In control of herself and her image, and much of the information that surrounded it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: not so on her films, and the perfectionistic Monroe began to struggle on set with this fact.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She became more erratic at work with a reputation that she was late, difficult, insecure and unprepared.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She often depended on her acting coaches to feel confident and know her lines.
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[SPEAKER_01]: According to biographer Donald Spodo, Monroe's problems have been attributed to a combination of perfectionism, low self-esteem, and stage fright.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But it wouldn't be fair if we didn't mention the sexism that was prevalent at the time, both on and off-screen.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Sexism that victimized women on every wrong of the latter.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Biographer Lois Banner said that Marilyn Monroe was bullied by many of her male directors,
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[SPEAKER_01]: While working on some like it hot, much later in 1988, a technician would ask co-star Tony Curtis what it was like to kiss Marilyn Monroe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Curtis responded, quote, it's like kissing Hitler.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In subsequent years, Curtis clarified his statement as being reactive to Monroe's lateness and struggles on set, but still what an asshole, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: in any case to alleviate her anxiety and chronic insomnia.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In the early 1950s, Marilyn began using burbituids and fetemines and alcohol, which of course didn't help.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, in 1953, we get some of her most iconic performances, including the performance diamonds are a girl's best friend from the 1953 satirical music comedy, Gentleman
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[SPEAKER_01]: whose publicity photos defined Marilyn Monroe's image.
22:29.879 --> 22:33.041
[SPEAKER_01]: You know them, the white dress, the New York Subway great.
22:33.822 --> 22:42.687
[SPEAKER_01]: The shoot attracted nearly 2,000 spectators at the time and helped make the 7-year-its become one of the biggest commercial successes of 1955.
22:43.547 --> 22:47.450
[SPEAKER_01]: The publicity stunt of course made Marilyn Monroe even more famous,
22:53.733 --> 22:58.815
[SPEAKER_01]: After the shoot, Marilyn Monroe returned to LA a free and single woman at the top of her game.
22:59.336 --> 23:12.102
[SPEAKER_01]: While the next era of her life would be characterized as tragic and tumultuous, in 1955, she would go on to do something revolutionary, not just for her, but for the film industry as a whole.
23:12.902 --> 23:21.306
[SPEAKER_01]: On the next episode of Ghost Town, we'll talk about the last six years of Marilyn Monroe's life, her death, and her enduring legacy.
00:00.452 --> 00:01.553
[SPEAKER_00]: What's in a name?
00:01.833 --> 00:04.977
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jason Horton, I'm Rebecca Leib, and this is Ghost Town.
00:20.277 --> 00:29.759
[SPEAKER_01]: In the summer of 1926, Gladys Perlman wrote did not know what her future held, only that it would include a daughter, born on June 1st.
00:30.599 --> 00:41.822
[SPEAKER_01]: The 24-year-old film cutter was in a complicated situation, estranged from her husband for 10 months, and having an affair with her superior at RKO Pictures.
00:48.064 --> 00:54.580
[SPEAKER_01]: and without family close by, her two older children in the custody of her first husband back in Kentucky.
00:55.553 --> 00:58.575
[SPEAKER_01]: but as records show, Monroe made a choice that day.
00:59.396 --> 01:05.601
[SPEAKER_01]: Constructing a new life for her and her daughter, beginning with little Norma Jean Mortensen's birth certificate.
01:06.482 --> 01:18.671
[SPEAKER_01]: Norma Jean was the name of a client she liked while cleaning houses back in Kentucky, and Mortensen was the family name of her long-estranged husband, imparting a sense of legitimacy and stability.
01:19.632 --> 01:22.775
[SPEAKER_01]: This document would set the tone for Little Norma Jean's life.
01:23.415 --> 01:30.542
[SPEAKER_01]: a complicated bouquet of aspirational, arbitrary, personal, and yet highly constructed.
01:31.500 --> 01:40.006
[SPEAKER_01]: But nobody expected the level of complexity that would manifest when Norma Jean Mortensen transformed into Marilyn Monroe.
01:40.986 --> 01:53.275
[SPEAKER_01]: She would be so much to so many, one of the most successful, most photographed and most revered icons in modern history and emblem of sexuality, a dazzling screen goddess and a tragic
01:55.976 --> 02:04.658
[SPEAKER_01]: As we record this episode and what would have been Marilyn's hundredth birthday, we remember her beyond the films and the high-profile romances.
02:05.159 --> 02:11.000
[SPEAKER_01]: We remember the gray areas, the mystery, and the inner workings that made her so compelling.
02:11.780 --> 02:17.402
[SPEAKER_01]: Today on Ghost Town, 100 years later, the secret life of Marilyn Monroe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe was born at Los Angeles General Hospital in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, about a mile from where I'm recording this episode right now.
02:28.170 --> 02:32.514
[SPEAKER_01]: She was a proud Angelina, who stayed in LA most of her life.
02:33.315 --> 02:41.943
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, she lived in Brentwood, walking distance from the Beverly Hills Hotel and Betty White's estate, which would be a far cry from her downtown LA roots.
02:42.684 --> 02:44.789
[SPEAKER_01]: Quote, when they said, go home.
02:45.170 --> 02:46.553
[SPEAKER_01]: I said I am home.
02:46.794 --> 02:49.280
[SPEAKER_01]: She would later say to life magazine in a 1962 interview.
02:51.710 --> 02:58.112
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's really no surprise Marilyn Monroe was so loyal to her L.A. roots, it was one of the only constants in her life.
02:58.972 --> 03:04.734
[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn's story though really begins in Los Angeles with Marilyn's mother, Gladys Monroe.
03:05.614 --> 03:12.876
[SPEAKER_01]: Gladys was born into a troubled family that would travel frequently, be out of money, and be subject to the whims of her father's alcoholism.
03:13.657 --> 03:20.299
[SPEAKER_01]: To get out, Gladys married John Newton Baker, a man who owned an apartment building that Gladys' mom managed,
03:21.579 --> 03:26.627
[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, let me emphasize this, gladis was 14 years old.
03:27.468 --> 03:30.793
[SPEAKER_01]: Baker was 23 and also abusive.
03:31.354 --> 03:34.518
[SPEAKER_01]: Gladis lied on the marriage certificate saying that she was 18 years old.
03:36.401 --> 03:41.327
[SPEAKER_01]: The two eventually had two children together, Robert and Bernice.
03:41.448 --> 03:51.260
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1923, Gladys successfully filed for divorce and sole custody of her two children, but Baker actually kidnapped their children and took them back to his home state of Kentucky.
03:52.061 --> 03:56.785
[SPEAKER_01]: Gladys, the mother of these children, followed, wanting to be close to her own kids.
03:57.706 --> 04:02.750
[SPEAKER_01]: Soon, Baker remarried, however, and, let's be honest, Gladys was afraid of him.
04:03.870 --> 04:13.238
[SPEAKER_01]: So, admitting defeat, she went back to California without her children, moving into a shared silver-like apartment with a friend named Grace Mickey.
04:14.225 --> 04:27.829
[SPEAKER_01]: Mickey got Gladys a job cutting negatives for films, and together the two started a new chapter, embracing the roaring 20s, becoming flappers who love to party flirt with men, and enjoy the heyday of Hollywood's Golden Era.
04:28.749 --> 04:38.252
[SPEAKER_01]: Very cinematically, Grace even gave Gladys a makeover, turning her from a quote, plain Jane Brunette, into a sassy, fashionable red head.
04:39.212 --> 04:49.843
[SPEAKER_01]: In all of my research, Gladys has described as beautiful, witty, engaged in life, loving and emulating film stars like Norma Tellmidge and Jean Harlow.
04:50.864 --> 04:56.149
[SPEAKER_01]: You can sense perhaps how a woman like Marilyn Monroe could come from a woman like Gladysman Row.
04:56.890 --> 04:58.452
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm getting ahead of myself.
04:59.073 --> 05:08.805
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1925, McKee got married and so did Gladys, to a man named Martin Edward Mortensen, a 27-year-old meet-or-man for the Southern California Gas Company.
05:09.586 --> 05:14.151
[SPEAKER_01]: Gladys was initially attracted among other things to Mortensen's innate norm coordinator.
05:14.952 --> 05:18.657
[SPEAKER_01]: But of course, being Gladys Monroe, she quickly bored of her marriage.
05:19.598 --> 05:22.561
[SPEAKER_01]: So what, or who attracted her attention instead?
05:23.322 --> 05:26.045
[SPEAKER_01]: An interesting man, but not in a good way.
05:26.786 --> 05:38.478
[SPEAKER_01]: Charles Gifford was gladisers recently separated boss, a film salesman at Arcale Pictures, a self-proclaimed womanizer with what his biographer's site as a pretty bad addiction to narcotics.
05:39.238 --> 05:42.300
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, the two began an affair in 1925.
05:42.960 --> 05:46.562
[SPEAKER_01]: Gladys and Mortensen, just to emphasize, had been separated for months.
05:47.303 --> 05:52.405
[SPEAKER_01]: Gladys was actively dating other people, but she had been enamored with Gifford from the get-go.
05:53.186 --> 06:00.670
[SPEAKER_01]: Nearly 10 months after her separation began, and into dating Gifford and, perhaps, others, Gladys found out she was pregnant.
06:01.787 --> 06:08.091
[SPEAKER_01]: The Martinson made many attempts to win Gladys back, ultimately the two divorced on August 15th, 1928.
06:09.031 --> 06:13.154
[SPEAKER_01]: Years later, and after she tried to give it a good college go with Griffith.
06:14.174 --> 06:17.156
[SPEAKER_01]: But also after the birth of her daughter, Norma Jean.
06:19.303 --> 06:27.211
[SPEAKER_01]: Before she was even born, Marilyn was controversial, clearly, and the question of Marilyn Monroe's paternity would definitely affect the rest of her life.
06:27.912 --> 06:30.014
[SPEAKER_01]: Was her father boring Edward Mortensen?
06:30.735 --> 06:33.678
[SPEAKER_01]: Or not boring, very toxic Charles Gifford?
06:34.379 --> 06:41.346
[SPEAKER_01]: Or a famous movie star that didn't want to be named, which is what Gladys would later say in interviews when talking about the paternity of Marilyn Monroe.
06:42.785 --> 06:48.247
[SPEAKER_01]: So, despite what Gladys would say in later interviews, Marilyn Monroe was not the daughter of a famous actor.
06:48.847 --> 06:53.548
[SPEAKER_01]: Legally, on her birth certificate, she was the daughter of Edward Mortensen, her mother's estranged husband.
06:54.189 --> 07:04.852
[SPEAKER_01]: But a DNA comparison in 2022 between Monroe's DNA and that of Gifford's descendants, would show her to actually be the biological daughter of Charles Gifford.
07:05.953 --> 07:13.679
[SPEAKER_01]: Gifford would not want any part of Marilyn Monroe's life until, of course, she became famous, at which point he would often reach out.
07:14.519 --> 07:20.424
[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn, however, was over it, and would later say it was too late for them to foster any type of relationship.
07:21.945 --> 07:26.749
[SPEAKER_01]: In any case, after being a fun-loving flapper, Gladis was unprepared to be a mom.
07:27.229 --> 07:37.878
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, she suffered postpartum depression and moved in with evangelical Christians, Albert and Ida Bolander, in Hawthorne, California, whom she'd connected with by way of her own mother.
07:38.801 --> 07:51.372
[SPEAKER_01]: Gladys went back to LA for work, and Baby Marilyn Monroe, we were to say, stayed with the bowlenders until the summer of 1933, when Gladys bought a small house in Hollywood and moved the seven year old Monroe in with her.
07:52.743 --> 07:57.846
[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe would always feel conflicted about her mother's care, or lack thereof.
07:58.626 --> 08:09.692
[SPEAKER_01]: According to the biography, The Passion and the Paradox by Lois Banner, quote, The problem for Norma Jean was that she saw Gladys in too many negative moods in situations not to be troubled by her.
08:10.392 --> 08:12.113
[SPEAKER_01]: She often would call her mother, quote,
08:16.871 --> 08:24.414
[SPEAKER_01]: Personally, I found Marilyn Monroe's mother to be almost as complicated as Marilyn Monroe herself, or at least as far as my research shows.
08:25.114 --> 08:39.060
[SPEAKER_01]: During these years, these times in Hollywood where she was trying to be a mother, provide for her daughter, get in touch with her existing children, she was dealing with so much on her own, including her own mother's manic depressive psychosis and subsequent death.
08:39.921 --> 08:42.622
[SPEAKER_01]: Her own brother's disappearance and assumed death,
08:43.562 --> 08:45.807
[SPEAKER_01]: and all of the machinations of Hollywood.
08:46.368 --> 08:52.060
[SPEAKER_01]: These are all probably subjects for a whole other podcast, but let's just say she had a lot going on.
08:53.347 --> 09:06.376
[SPEAKER_01]: Oddly enough, Gladys Monroe was also a hero, on October 24th, 1929, a fire broke out at the consolidated film industry where she worked, cutting the building and destroying millions of films.
09:07.276 --> 09:12.860
[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe is credited with saving lives when she escorted women out of the editing studio to safety.
09:14.341 --> 09:18.244
[SPEAKER_01]: But unfortunately, the mental illness that plagued Marilyn Monroe's
09:20.665 --> 09:21.605
[SPEAKER_01]: and damaging.
09:22.326 --> 09:28.508
[SPEAKER_01]: In January 1934, Gladis had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
09:29.408 --> 09:36.210
[SPEAKER_01]: At that point, onward, Gladis spent the rest of her life in and out of hospitals and was rarely in contact with her daughter.
09:37.371 --> 09:41.532
[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, young adolescent Marilyn Monroe became a ward of the state.
09:43.030 --> 09:53.456
[SPEAKER_01]: Always a shy girl, Marilyn Monroe developed a stutter and became even more withdrawn, bouncing from family to family and even being placed in a Los Angeles Orphan's home.
09:54.616 --> 10:07.003
[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, many biographers talk about allegations molestation and sexual abuse, which is heartbreaking to think about, after thinking about what this 11-year-old girl had already endured.
10:08.134 --> 10:15.797
[SPEAKER_01]: It all kind of makes sense that Marilyn Monroe's childhood experiences led her to acting, as her childhood was all about survival.
10:16.398 --> 10:21.060
[SPEAKER_01]: She would say in an interview, quote, I didn't like the world around me because it was kind of grim.
10:21.520 --> 10:24.661
[SPEAKER_01]: When I heard that this was acting, I said, that's what I want to be.
10:25.222 --> 10:32.325
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house, and there I'd sit all day and away into the night.
10:37.787 --> 10:38.488
[SPEAKER_01]: and I loved it.
10:40.330 --> 10:48.000
[SPEAKER_01]: In September 1938, the 12-year-old enrolled in Emerson Junior High School and as a teen in 1941 in Van Nye's High School.
10:48.620 --> 10:55.865
[SPEAKER_01]: She was described as a mediocre student, someone who loved writing was painfully shy and participated in newspaper.
10:56.805 --> 11:06.951
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I saw a photo of her, her high school photo in the Academy Museum's exhibition about Marilyn Monroe and she looks so young, so wholesome.
11:07.612 --> 11:12.715
[SPEAKER_01]: She really is at this point like such a piece of Americana in a completely different way.
11:13.335 --> 11:15.597
[SPEAKER_01]: I will post this on our Instagram, but it's really
11:18.815 --> 11:39.181
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1942, the family she was staying with decided to relocate to West Virginia and California Child Protection Laws prevented Monroe from going, faced with returning to an orphanage, the 15-year-old decided to leave high school and marry her neighbor, a factory worker named James Doherty, who was five years her senior.
11:39.921 --> 11:42.642
[SPEAKER_01]: The marriage took place just after her 16th birthday
11:46.188 --> 11:52.514
[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe immediately found herself, quote, dying of boredom with Dordy, but did what she had to do.
11:53.214 --> 11:54.215
[SPEAKER_01]: Sound familiar?
11:54.956 --> 12:00.982
[SPEAKER_01]: In April 1944, Dordy was shipped out to the Pacific, of course it was World War II, where he stayed for two years.
12:01.782 --> 12:08.104
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, Monroe was an adult, legally, living alone, working at a munitions factory in Van Nye's.
12:08.524 --> 12:09.364
[SPEAKER_01]: Glamorous, right?
12:09.984 --> 12:18.927
[SPEAKER_01]: In late 1944, she met a photographer working in the U.S. Army, could be sent to the factory to shoot some moral boosting pictures of female workers.
12:19.887 --> 12:21.268
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a different time.
12:22.188 --> 12:30.251
[SPEAKER_01]: Though shockingly her pictures were not used in August 1945, Monroe signed a modeling contract with the blue book modeling agency.
12:31.171 --> 12:42.815
[SPEAKER_01]: The agency deemed Monroe's figure more suitable for pin up than high fashion modeling, and amped up her sex appeal, straightening her naturally curly brown hair, and dying it a platinum blonde.
12:43.795 --> 12:50.758
[SPEAKER_01]: According to Emily and Snivley, the agency's owner, Monroe quickly became one of its most ambitious and hardworking models.
12:51.359 --> 12:55.601
[SPEAKER_01]: By early 1946, she had appeared on 33 magazine covers.
12:56.401 --> 13:04.225
[SPEAKER_01]: From there, Monroe snagged a screen test with 20th Century Fox, and from there, she received a six-month contract.
13:05.185 --> 13:10.368
[SPEAKER_01]: I did not know this, but 20th Century Fox even selected Marilyn Monroe's iconic name for her.
13:11.088 --> 13:21.815
[SPEAKER_01]: The first name, Marilyn, because she reminded executives of a Broadway star named Marilyn Miller, and in a strange full circle, they liked Marilyn Monroe's mother's maiden name.
13:22.475 --> 13:26.758
[SPEAKER_01]: It was probably alluring, a literative, maybe a little bit of both.
13:27.439 --> 13:37.165
[SPEAKER_01]: In September 1946, she divorced Dordy, who had been opposed to her career this whole time, and finally became Marilyn Monroe.
13:41.900 --> 13:55.071
[SPEAKER_01]: The newly crescent, at least by Hollywood standards, 20-year-old Marilyn Monroe, spent her first six months at what was essentially movie star boot camp, learning to sing, act, dance, and be in and around production.
13:55.932 --> 14:01.616
[SPEAKER_01]: It was, quote, my first taste of what real acting in a real drama could be, and I was hooked, she said.
14:02.517 --> 14:11.899
[SPEAKER_01]: Her contract was renewed in February 1947, and she was given her first film roles, bit parts and films called Dangerous Years and Scudaho's Scudahay.
14:12.959 --> 14:23.422
[SPEAKER_01]: In Daniel's Spotuses biography of Marilyn Monroe, he sites her saying that it was quote, my first taste at what real acting in a real drama could be, and I was hooked.
14:24.862 --> 14:29.783
[SPEAKER_01]: Despite her passion for acting, her acting teachers thought she didn't quite have the
14:32.625 --> 14:41.265
[SPEAKER_01]: Twenty-year-old Marilyn was too shy, too insecure, and Fox Studios listened to the teachers, deciding not to renew her contract in 1947.
14:43.970 --> 14:49.111
[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, she returned to modeling while also doing occasional odd jobs at film studios.
14:49.852 --> 15:01.075
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1948, Maryland's friend and occasional boyfriend, Fox Executive Joseph P. Shank, persuaded his friend Harry Cohen the head executive of Columbia Pictures to sign Monroe in March of 1948.
15:02.879 --> 15:14.105
[SPEAKER_01]: At Columbia, Monroe's look was refined to emulate the look of Rita Hayworth's, but her time there was short, and her contract was not renewed after the requisite six-month period.
15:14.585 --> 15:30.193
[SPEAKER_01]: Researching this with all of these six-month contracts at a little bit of PTSD, having a impermanent, temporary, low-paying position that you don't know if you're going to have in the next year is a lot like how it is today, a bit depressing.
15:31.413 --> 15:37.599
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, when her contract at Columbia ended, Monroe returned again to modeling, including nude modeling.
15:38.180 --> 15:41.323
[SPEAKER_01]: She was fairly and reportedly comfortable with nudity.
15:41.703 --> 15:47.829
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, she famously slept in the nude, dressed only in a spritz of Chanel number five, her favorite perfume.
15:48.890 --> 15:57.553
[SPEAKER_01]: Shortly after leaving Columbia, she also met and became the protege and mistress of Johnny Hyde, the vice president of the talent agency William Morris.
15:58.754 --> 16:02.995
[SPEAKER_01]: Through Hyde, she was cast in all about Eve with top-build actress Betty Davis.
16:04.056 --> 16:10.158
[SPEAKER_01]: Davis later praised Monroe's performance saying, quote, definitely no question I knew she was going to make it.
16:10.638 --> 16:15.400
[SPEAKER_01]: She was a very ambitious girl and knew what she wanted and was very serious about it.
16:16.120 --> 16:17.361
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought she had talent.
16:18.081 --> 16:23.063
[SPEAKER_01]: From there, Marilyn Monroe's Star Rose, critically but also with modern audiences.
16:23.763 --> 16:31.767
[SPEAKER_01]: In February 1952, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association named Monroe, quote, The Best Young Box Office Personality.
16:32.567 --> 16:39.435
[SPEAKER_01]: Her personal life was also vibrant with Monroe dating A-Listers like Elya Kazan, Yul Brenner, and Peter Lawford.
16:40.436 --> 16:51.628
[SPEAKER_01]: In early 1952, she began a highly publicized romance and eventual marriage to New York Yankees baseball star Joe Demashio, one of the most famous sports personalities of the era.
16:52.769 --> 17:03.100
[SPEAKER_01]: and yet, despite all of this glamour, Marilyn Monroe always thought of herself as middle-class, or at least wanting to connect with normal people and normal life.
17:03.841 --> 17:10.948
[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn's personal wardrobe consisted of very basic, no-frills outfits since she believed anything too flashy would make her
17:13.651 --> 17:27.004
[SPEAKER_01]: The exhibition at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles showcases a lot of her everyday outfits and the outfits that were designed for her by customers and other fashion houses, and there is a stark difference.
17:27.845 --> 17:34.471
[SPEAKER_01]: Her film outfits were glittery, glamorous, and very accentuating of her curves.
17:35.632 --> 17:40.256
[SPEAKER_01]: her at home outfits were pantsets, baggy blouses, and denim.
17:40.936 --> 17:48.162
[SPEAKER_01]: She'd often reware outfits because she felt it made sense that it was less wasteful when it made her more accessible to the public.
17:49.743 --> 17:52.765
[SPEAKER_01]: On top of that, she was an avid reader and lover of art.
17:53.526 --> 17:58.050
[SPEAKER_01]: Beyond that, her commitment to acting made her perceive herself as a mere student.
17:58.610 --> 18:00.311
[SPEAKER_01]: Not one of Hollywood's up-and-coming
18:02.335 --> 18:23.758
[SPEAKER_01]: She also had a fairly famous, but also not as well known as I thought health regimen that British Bogue called, quote, predictably bizarre, including ingesting raw eggs in warm milk in the morning, 10 minutes of exercise every day right next to her bed, and would eat meat and raw carrots for dinner followed by a hot-fudge Sunday.
18:24.598 --> 18:28.379
[SPEAKER_01]: And for bedtime, naked, of course, but not exactly glamorous.
18:29.039 --> 18:35.841
[SPEAKER_01]: In an interview reported by British Vogue, she would say, quote, depending on my activities, I sleep between five and ten hours night.
18:36.382 --> 18:43.003
[SPEAKER_01]: I sleep in an extra-wide single bed, and I use only one heavy-down comforter over me, summer or winter.
18:43.624 --> 18:46.404
[SPEAKER_01]: I have never been able to wear pajamas or creepy nightgowns.
18:46.884 --> 18:48.165
[SPEAKER_01]: They disturb my sleep.
18:49.305 --> 19:00.172
[SPEAKER_01]: Despite her perhaps best efforts, in March of 1952, Marilyn was anything but your average woman and she found herself in a not so average scandal.
19:00.832 --> 19:07.376
[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe found herself paying a social price for some work she had done years before, that nude modeling I talked about.
19:08.116 --> 19:19.199
[SPEAKER_01]: Photos and rumors were circulating, and though it was again years earlier, Monroe tried to get a head of it, revealing publicly that she had, in fact, posed for adult photos.
19:19.959 --> 19:25.020
[SPEAKER_01]: In her public statement, she stressed that she had been very broke at the time and scared for her future.
19:25.841 --> 19:31.502
[SPEAKER_01]: In the wake of the scandal, Monroe was featured on the cover of Life Magazine as the quote, Talk of Hollywood.
19:32.223 --> 19:41.274
[SPEAKER_01]: Three of Monroe's films, Clash by Night, don't bother to knock and we're not married were released soon after the scandal to capitalize on public interest.
19:42.255 --> 19:47.621
[SPEAKER_01]: And Marilyn Monroe's honesty worked along with some well-timed publicity, of course.
19:48.162 --> 19:53.744
[SPEAKER_01]: The public actually sympathized with Monroe and her film sales and popularity skyrocketed.
19:54.824 --> 20:04.648
[SPEAKER_01]: Being crowned Hollywood's new sex symbol did have its price, and Monroe soon became frustrated with being type-castened comedies fueled by her vacant sex appeal.
20:05.848 --> 20:17.652
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, Monroe also fueled that fire, participating in sexy publicity stunts and hinting to gossip rags, pieces of intimate information, including that she usually wore no underwear.
20:18.291 --> 20:24.515
[SPEAKER_01]: While her behavior seemed like a paradox, and in some ways it was, it makes sense to me.
20:24.976 --> 20:31.740
[SPEAKER_01]: In these contexts, photos, interviews, publicity, Marilyn Monroe was in control.
20:32.181 --> 20:36.824
[SPEAKER_01]: She was in control of how she was perceived, in control of the information that was disseminated.
20:37.504 --> 20:42.348
[SPEAKER_01]: In control of herself and her image, and much of the information that surrounded it.
20:43.148 --> 20:49.196
[SPEAKER_01]: not so on her films, and the perfectionistic Monroe began to struggle on set with this fact.
20:49.776 --> 20:56.464
[SPEAKER_01]: She became more erratic at work with a reputation that she was late, difficult, insecure and unprepared.
20:57.285 --> 21:01.510
[SPEAKER_01]: She often depended on her acting coaches to feel confident and know her lines.
21:02.351 --> 21:10.712
[SPEAKER_01]: According to biographer Donald Spodo, Monroe's problems have been attributed to a combination of perfectionism, low self-esteem, and stage fright.
21:11.633 --> 21:17.734
[SPEAKER_01]: But it wouldn't be fair if we didn't mention the sexism that was prevalent at the time, both on and off-screen.
21:18.334 --> 21:21.114
[SPEAKER_01]: Sexism that victimized women on every wrong of the latter.
21:21.814 --> 21:26.295
[SPEAKER_01]: Biographer Lois Banner said that Marilyn Monroe was bullied by many of her male directors,
21:31.565 --> 21:40.368
[SPEAKER_01]: While working on some like it hot, much later in 1988, a technician would ask co-star Tony Curtis what it was like to kiss Marilyn Monroe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Curtis responded, quote, it's like kissing Hitler.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In subsequent years, Curtis clarified his statement as being reactive to Monroe's lateness and struggles on set, but still what an asshole, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: in any case to alleviate her anxiety and chronic insomnia.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In the early 1950s, Marilyn began using burbituids and fetemines and alcohol, which of course didn't help.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, in 1953, we get some of her most iconic performances, including the performance diamonds are a girl's best friend from the 1953 satirical music comedy, Gentleman
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[SPEAKER_01]: whose publicity photos defined Marilyn Monroe's image.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know them, the white dress, the New York Subway great.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The shoot attracted nearly 2,000 spectators at the time and helped make the 7-year-its become one of the biggest commercial successes of 1955.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The publicity stunt of course made Marilyn Monroe even more famous,
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[SPEAKER_01]: After the shoot, Marilyn Monroe returned to LA a free and single woman at the top of her game.
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[SPEAKER_01]: While the next era of her life would be characterized as tragic and tumultuous, in 1955, she would go on to do something revolutionary, not just for her, but for the film industry as a whole.
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[SPEAKER_01]: On the next episode of Ghost Town, we'll talk about the last six years of Marilyn Monroe's life, her death, and her enduring legacy.
