![]() Gladys refused, as she did not want to lose her daughter, so Norma Jeane was institutionalized at an orphanage and, eventually, a series of foster homes. After Gladys was committed, Norma Jeane eventually came to be in the care of a family who wanted to adopt the child and move to New Orleans. It’s actually because of Gladys, and not the Bolenders who are depicted onscreen as not wanting to get involved, that Marilyn ended up in an orphanage. However, unlike in the movie Blonde, Gladys did not die there, completely incapable of even recognizing her daughter. Sadly, like her mother, Gladys struggled with depression and mental disorders, and was eventually committed to the same hospital where her mother died. Her mother uses the photograph to brainwash Norma Jeane into believing that one day daddy will return and save them from their life of squalor. In Blonde, the image of Norma Jeane’s father is presented as something like the Rosebud sled in Citizen Kane. Did Marilyn Monroe’s Mother Keep a Framed Picture of the Missing Father on the Wall? The Bolenders called a police car, and Della was dragged away screaming.ĭella Monroe was committed to the Norwalk State Hospital you see in Blonde where she died 18 days later of a seizure. She paced up and down their porch and banged the door so hard she broke a pane and cut her hand. It was Della, demanding Norma Jeane come back. One morning when as a young girl Norma Jeane was visiting her neighbors across the street, the real-life Bolenders, they began hearing banging on the door. Marilyn’s third husband Arthur Miller later confirmed to biographer Fred Lawrence Guiles that Marilyn shared this story with him.Īt the time, Marilyn would’ve been less than two years old when this occurred, but perhaps the trauma left a striking memory, as did what came later. Marilyn later told a journalist that her first memory was of a smothering sensation when Della placed a pillow (or something similar) over her face while the child was sleeping. ![]() ![]() Like her daughter and (probably) her granddaughter, Della struggled with bouts of mental illness and depression. Blonde as both a novel and film conflates Gladys with her own mother, Norma Jeane’s grandmother Della Monroe. It’s the stuff of a horror movie-it also is a disservice to the real Gladys because Marilyn never claimed her mother tried to drown her. Norma Jeane barely escapes her nude mother by running to her neighbors across the hall, Albert Wayne and Ida Bolender. Eventually, on the night of a Hollywood fire, Gladys has a breakdown and tries to drown her daughter in the bath. ![]() This is dramatized to viscerally horrifying effect in Blonde when as a child Norma Jeane is repeatedly beaten by and terrified of her single mother Gladys Pearl Baker (Julianne Nicholson). The real Norma Jeane Mortenson, born in 1926, came from a long lineage of mental illness. Immaculately crafted and deliberately opaque, the film provides a meditative and seemingly biographical portrait of Monroe’s life, with de Armas playing Monroe as both a fragile, wounded creature and an often hysterical, oversexed pawn who ran away from her natural desire to build a family.ĭid Marilyn Monroe’s Mother Try to Drown Her in a Bathtub? That line is about to be blurred much further with the release of Andrew Dominik’s movie adaptation of Oates’ novel. However, those who’ve only read Oates’ novel might come away with a very different perception of Norma Jeane Mortenson, the woman who would become Marilyn Monroe, than what the historical record suggests. These details have lingered on the page where the clarity of Oates’ vision, and the persuasiveness of her prose, made Blonde a seminal work that was instantly recognized as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. This also means that much of the work is fictionalized-which is a polite way to say made up. Oates saw Monroe as an emblem of 20th century America, a pivotal intersection of the nation’s values and fantasies about sex, power, and the role of women during a moment of cultural ascendence. ![]() When Joyce Carol Oates began writing Blonde, the 2000 novel on which the new Ana de Armas movie is based, she admitted she was less concerned with the facts of Marilyn Monroe’s life than the idea of the quintessential movie star. This article contains lots of Blonde spoilers. ![]()
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