Read Marilyn Monroe Online

Authors: Michelle Morgan

Marilyn Monroe (6 page)

BOOK: Marilyn Monroe
10.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

When Norma Jeane was old enough, she was given the opportunity of working in the laundry or the kitchen to earn money, and it is here that a large part of the controversy creeps in regarding her memories of the home and her role within it. Marilyn would later complain to interviewers that she often had to wash and dry hundreds of dishes, but Bill Fredenhall remembers it a little differently: ‘Marilyn was talking about the job of kitchen help. We were paid, and this was obviously the type of chore that needed doing daily. We had lots of help and we made lunches too . . . I recall the fun of spreading butter, and peanut butter on a huge layout of sliced bread, and then slapping on a leaf of lettuce and putting it into a bag together with apples and oranges.’

So what about Marilyn’s tales of hundreds of dishes and chores? ‘I am sure her comments about the dishes were coloured by her biographers,’ says Bill. ‘Part of the poor, unhappy child routine. I would guess there were fewer than twenty staff, including matrons, cooks, hospital and laundry staff, but we were loved, protected, trained and cared for.’

One of the people responsible for caring for the children was Mrs Sula Dewey, whom Grace had written to about Norma Jeane. Out of all Marilyn’s recollections of the orphanage,
perhaps the only happy one was that of Mrs Dewey allowing her to apply a little make-up to her cheeks and being able to pat her little dog. She was kind and caring, but could also give out discipline when it was called for.

There have been many tales of the unhappy life lived by the children at the home, but very few of these are true. One of the more outlandish stories is that of birthday celebrations: it is said that on a child’s birthday, a large cake would be wheeled out so that the children could sing ‘Happy Birthday’. However, this was no ordinary sponge; it was made of wood with only a tiny space inside for one piece of real cake. The ‘orphan’ would eat the real slice, and the wooden cake would be wheeled back into the cupboard until the next birthday came along. However, this is untrue. ‘A wooden cake? I doubt it,’ says Bill Fredenhall. ‘I never saw it. It sure sounds like one of those “tales”. I don’t remember any birthday celebrations. But almost for sure Mrs Dewey would take the opportunity to give one a few pieces of candy, at least.’

While Bill can’t recall any specific birthday parties at the home, there was at least one party each year, given by Lorena Ann Taplin, whose father, Judge Taplin, had spent eight years of his childhood there. On 19 April 1936, Lorena travelled to the orphanage and celebrated with the children, sharing a frosted birthday cake and ice cream, and treating them all to a film screening. The celebrations were intended for all the children, and almost certainly included Norma Jeane.

For the most part, Norma Jeane kept herself out of trouble at the orphanage and tried to settle in as best she could; her grades were good, she was quiet and well-behaved, and participated in all activities, but there were times she found herself getting into trouble, just like any other ten-year-old child. When asked about her escapades years later, Marilyn admitted that after some encouragement by the ‘tough’ children, she agreed to escape from the orphanage by jumping over the hedge. Of course, the escape did not go to plan, and before they knew it, the disgraced youngsters were hauled back into the building.

Chapter 3
‘Norma Jeane, Human Bean’

Much has been said about how long Norma Jeane actually lived at the Los Angeles Orphans Home, with most authors agreeing that her stay was around two years, beginning in 1935 and ending in 1937. However, court records show that the last payment made by Grace Goddard to the orphanage was on 21 June 1936, and she had certainly removed Norma Jeane from the home by October 1936, since this is when she started to be paid for her care.

Norma Jeane moved into the Goddard home at 3107 Barbara Court, and after the time spent in the orphanage she revelled in her new family. Grace loved having the child around and, as they were both fans of Jean Harlow, she began to mould Norma Jeane into her idol. Along with her sister, Enid Knebelkamp, Grace encouraged her young charge to consider acting as a future profession, as later recalled by Enid’s friend, Catherine Larson: ‘Aunt Enid and Aunt Grace always knew Marilyn would make it in Hollywood; they had a sort of quiet certainty about it because they thought she was such a beautiful girl.’

Spurred on by dreams of stardom, Grace would take Norma Jeane to Columbia Studios, where she was working in the film library, and show her off to her co-workers. One of them, Leila Fields, later told biographer Maurice Zolotow that Grace adored Norma Jeane and took her everywhere with her, convincing the child that she would one day be a famous movie star. Fields gave Grace all the credit for Norma Jeane’s success and concluded that ‘Grace had an obsession about her.’

Another colleague, Olin Gleason Murphy, later recalled: ‘Miss McKee would have someone bring a little girl to the lab an hour or so before noontime closing. We workers were introduced to her, and every introduction was the same over and over . . . “Baby I want you to meet Olin. Olin this is Norma Jean, isn’t she pretty? Norma Jean shake hands with the nice man, fine, now turn around and show the big bow on the back of your dress.”’ This routine would repeat over and over again, with Grace having the child tell everyone that when she grew up she was going to be a movie star. Murphy described it as ‘brainwashing’ that continued for the entire time Norma Jeane was with Grace.

The Goddard house on Barbara Court wasn’t exactly a dream home, but at least it wasn’t the orphanage. Grace bred cocker spaniels and Norma Jeane spent much of her time playing with the animals. Life was once again beginning to settle down into some kind of normality, but money was extremely tight for the Goddard family, and on more than one occasion both Grace and Norma Jeane found themselves waiting in a long line for stale bread. As Doc’s daughter Bebe later remembered, ‘Daddy was not a very dependable type of character when it came to breadwinning.’

Added to the financial worries were various other stressful events during 1937. In January, Gladys caused concern by escaping from guards whilst being taken from Norwalk State Hospital to Portland, Oregon. The incident was kept secret from Norma Jeane, but did make the pages of the
Los Angeles Times
on 21 January.

Then later in the year came two pieces of sad news. Firstly, Norma Jeane was devastated when her idol, Jean Harlow, died suddenly at the tender age of twenty-six. Then in September 1937, there was tragic news for Grace from Las Vegas.

Her uncle Kirby Willett was about to retire from his Union Pacific railroad job and move with his wife Minnie to a farm near San Diego. He had worked for many years on the railroad and moving from Las Vegas to the quiet countryside of
California was something to which both he and Minnie were looking forward. Unfortunately, during a trip to California on 16 September, Kirby was involved in an automobile accident and killed instantly. Grace and Doc had married at the Willett home in Las Vegas, and when news of Uncle Kirby’s death reached Grace she was both shocked and devastated.

The news only contributed to the other problems being experienced by the Goddard family at that time and it wasn’t long before Grace took the decision to move both herself and Norma Jeane out of the family home. They moved in with Grace’s sister, Enid Knebelkamp, and Norma Jeane became friends with her young daughter, Diane, who later shared her memories with her own daughter, Jo: ‘Norma Jeane was very sweet and always nice to my Mom. My Mom said that she was also very smart and the family didn’t like that she was portrayed as being a dumb blonde.’

Over the years it has been said that Grace removed the child from her Barbara Court home because Doc Goddard had made a fumbled pass at Norma Jeane when he was drunk. This seems highly unlikely, especially since she returned to the home several years later and kept in touch until Grace Goddard passed away. Almost sixty years later, his daughter Eleanor ‘Bebe’ Goddard talked to the ‘All About Marilyn’ fan club about the stories: ‘The fact is that my father never touched Marilyn. He was a real lady’s man in that he loved women and they loved him, but that was only a big show and I never encountered a more faithful man than my father was to his wives.’

However, in spite of that, there were certainly problems between Doc and Grace, and for the next few months both she and Norma Jeane shuttled back and forth between the Knebelkamp home and that of Grace’s Aunt Ana Lower. Doc meanwhile rented a room from Mrs Cora A. French at 920 Hyperion Avenue and listed himself quite ambitiously as a director on official records. Eventually, however, the couple reunited and moved into a home at 6707 Odessa Avenue. This was a positive step for them, but not so for Norma Jeane, who
was moved from the Knebelkamp/Lower homes and placed in that of her aunt, Olive Monroe.

Olive Monroe was born Olive Brunings (aka Olyve Brunnings) and married Gladys Baker’s brother, Marion Otis Monroe, in San Diego on 20 September 1924. Together they had three children, Jack, Ida Mae and Olive Elizabeth. On 20 November 1929, just over nine months after the birth of their third child, Marion told his wife he was leaving on routine business, but would be back by 6.30 p.m. in time for dinner. He never returned and all attempts to find him failed. Whether Olive believed he had deserted her, or something more sinister had befallen him, is unclear, but eventually she was forced to declare herself destitute and petitioned to have Marion declared dead, in order that she could receive aid from the state.

Although she kept in touch with Gladys, and even travelled with Grace to visit her in the institution, one has to wonder if Olive was entirely convinced when Grace approached her about looking after Norma Jeane. By 1937, Olive was living with her mother, Christian Science practitioner Ida Martin, along with her three children. Being in a negative financial position, perhaps she was consoled with the idea of the $30 per month that she would be paid for caring for Norma Jeane; it would certainly enable her to loosen the purse strings a little. And so it was that Norma Jeane found herself delivered to the home of the Martin/Monroe family on Oxnard Avenue (now Oxnard Street), in December 1937.

From the start it was a tricky situation, with a house full of women and a boisterous twelve-year-old boy, all vying for space and attention. As well as that, Ida’s seventy-eight-year-old mother Olive Henderson was also living with the family at the time, which added more stress and reduced the breathing space. The woman was fairly temperamental and Norma Jeane’s memories of her consisted of scary tales of the ‘old days’ and being unfairly accused of tearing one of the other girl’s dresses.

As with many of her childhood memories, Marilyn’s stories of the Monroe/Martin family were not altogether positive, and she later lamented always being the last in line for the bath, when the water had already turned putrid and cold. She also had vivid memories of Christmas with the family: ‘All the children got presents under the tree. I got a 10-cent manicure set and at that period in my life, believe me I didn’t have the least interest in my cuticles.’

But it would seem that it definitely wasn’t all hardship. Norma Jeane became friends with her cousin Ida Mae, who later remembered that the two of them would get into all kinds of mischief: once, they planned to run away to San Francisco where it was rumoured Marion Monroe had been spotted; and another time they tried to make wine (complete with grape stomping in bare feet), only to discover that all they’d achieved was an intense stench under the front porch. Norma Jeane also felt comfortable enough in Ida Mae’s company to confide that she had been molested before she entered the orphanage, and had bathed for days afterwards.

During the time living with her aunt and cousins, Norma Jeane attended the Lankershim School on Bakman Avenue. It was here that she really started to live an imaginary life and dreamed the day away, before taking a long walk home, engrossed in her pretend world: ‘I remember a vacant lot that I used to cross on my way home from the Bakman Avenue school in North Hollywood,’ she said. ‘It was just a dirty old lot overgrown with weeds, but from the moment I stepped on to it, it became a magic and private place where I could be all of the people I had been thinking about all day in the classroom.’

On 3 March 1938, while Norma Jeane was still living with the Monroe/Martins, Los Angeles was hit by a catastrophic natural disaster, when a great flood struck. The floodwater came from the mountains, swirled around the city and its suburbs in the middle of the night and began to recede shortly after dawn, but the damage created had been astronomical. Newspapers estimated $25,000,000 worth of damage, homes were without
power and thousands of people found themselves fleeing for their lives from the swollen rivers.

The Martin/Monroe family was, like thousands of others, affected by the floods and had to relocate from their Oxnard Avenue home. Court records state that Ida Martin was paid for Norma Jeane’s expenses until August 1938, but when foster sister Bebe Goddard was interviewed by the ‘All About Marilyn’ club, she claimed that Norma Jeane moved out of the Martin home after the flood, and was placed temporarily into the home of Grace’s brother, Bryan Atchinson, his wife, Lottie, and their daughter, Geraldine. ‘Uncle Bryan’ lived at 1826 East Palmer Avenue but it is probable that while Norma Jeane lived there, the Monroe/Martin family continued to receive payments so they could pick up the pieces after the disaster.

When Norma Jeane moved in with the Atchinson family, she once again changed schools; this time to Vine Street School, which she had attended during her time at the orphanage. But she had hardly had time to settle at all, when in September 1938 Grace moved the child into the permanent care of the woman who was to become the biggest influence of her entire life: Ana Lower.

Edith Ana Lower (known to everyone as Ana) was Grace’s paternal aunt and was fifty-eight years old when Norma Jeane came to live with her. She had been married for a time to a gentleman by the name of Edmund H. ‘Will’ Lower and together they had bought various rental properties, earning them a modest income. By 1938 Ana was divorced, but still earning money from some of the properties, and supplemented her income by working as a Christian Science practitioner. She lived in a two-storey duplex at 11348 Nebraska Avenue, where she occupied the upstairs apartment, while renting out both the unit below and the house next door, and in the mornings she could be seen on the sidewalk, sweeping up the fruit that had fallen from the abundance of fig trees located outside her property. ‘She was nice looking; sort of a grandmother type,’ remembered friend
Bill Pursel. ‘Very alert and kept a nice clean house with no junk lying around.’

BOOK: Marilyn Monroe
10.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Winds of Fortune by Radclyffe
The Chase by Erin McCarthy
Soldiers of Ice by Cook, David
Brothers & Sisters by Charlotte Wood
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
The White Dominican by Gustav Meyrink