Читать книгу Life and death of Marilyn Monroe. Biography, personal life and death… - James Smith - Страница 4

Childhood and First Marriage: 1926—1944

When I was five years old, I think that then I wanted to become an actress. I loved to play. I did not like the world around me, because it was a bit grim, but I loved to play at home. Just like you could make your own borders… when I heard that it was an acting game, I said that I want to be… some of my foster families used it to send me to the cinema to get me out of the the house in which I sat all day and all night. The world on the screen is so big, I was a small child, all alone, so I fell in love with the cinema. – Marilyn Monroe in an interview with Life magazine.

Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jean Mortenson) was born around 9:30 am on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles and was the third child of the filmmaker RKO Pictures Gladys Pearl Baker (nanno, Monroe, May 27, 1902 – March 11, 1984). When Gladys was fifteen years old, she married John Newton Baker, who was nine years older than her, the couple had two children: Robert (1917—1933) and Vernis (born 1919). Gladys filed for divorce in 1921 and Baker took the children to his place in Kentucky. Monroe learned about the existence of the eldest sister only at the age of 12. In 1924, Gladys married Martin Edward Mortensen, but before they became pregnant Norma Jin, they parted, and in 1928 finally divorced. The identity of the girl’s father remained unknown – in the birth certificate, the father is Mortensen (although his name there is written as Mortenson), and when Gladys baptized her daughter, she wrote it down under the name Baker.

The first years of life Norma Gin were pretty happy, although Gladys could not pay enough attention to her work, so soon after giving birth she gave her daughter to a temporary family of guardians Albert and Ida Bolender in the village of Hawthorne, where other foster children also grew up. Bolanders brought them up according to the principles of evangelical Christianity. At first Gladys lived with the Bollanders, but not a close way to work and long shifts eventually forced Gladys to return to Los Angeles in early 1927. With her daughter, she then saw only on weekends, often taking her to the movies and on an excursion to Los Angeles. Although the Bolanders wanted to adopt Monroe, but by the summer of 1933 Gladys found herself quite financially stable, so she took her daughter and bought a small house in Hollywood. In this house, along with them, the acting family of George and Mod Atkinsons lodged with their daughter Nellie. A few months later, in January 1934, Gladys began to show signs of a mental disorder, she was soon diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. After spending several months in a rest home, she was placed in the capital’s state hospital, where she spent the rest of her life and rarely contacted her daughter.

After that, Norma Jin was in the care of the state and she was taken to her friend Gladys – Grace McKee, who issued temporary custody over her. When the girl was 9 years old (1935), Grace married Erwin Goddard, and Norma Jin was superfluous in the new guardian family. Then she was placed in an orphanage in Los Angeles, where she was several times wanted to adopt, but Gladys refused to sign the relevant documents. In 1936, the management of the orphanage convinced Grace that Norma Jin would grow much better in the family and then she formalized her formal guardianship, but she could not take her from the orphanage until June 1937. But soon because of sexual harassment from her husband Grace, the girl moved to her cousin Aunt Olivia in Compton.

But even there she did not live long (one of Olivia’s sons also molested the girl) and in early 1938 Grace sent Norma Gin to her aunt Anne Atchinson Lower, who lived in Van Nuys, where she was enrolled in Emerson High School. Later, Monroe called the period of her life with Lower one of the few when she really felt at ease. At school, she was a pretty mediocre student, but she showed a good talent in writing and wrote a lot for the school newspaper. But Anna had health problems, and in 1942 Norma Jin had to return to Grace. After Emerson’s graduation, she began attending high school in Van Nuys. While studying in high school Norma Jeane met an adult guy James Daugherty, and between them began a romance. In 1942, Erwin Goddard received a service transfer to West Virginia, because of which the 16-year-old Norma Jin faced a problem: according to the laws of California, Goddards could not take her out of state, because of which the girl had to return to the orphanage again.