![]()
![]()
Norma Jeane's Birth CertificateNorma Jeane Mortenson was born to Gladys Pearl Mortenson
on June 1st 1926, at 9:30 am in the Charity Ward of Los Angeles General Hospital"The dark star I was born under was going to get darker and darker."
~ Mother & Daughter ~
Gladys Monroe Baker and Norma Jeane age 2 at Santa Monica beach
![]()
![]()
![]()
MM on her Mother
"When I was a small child, my fondest memories were being around my mother and her friends.
It made me feel like we were one big happy family.""I wasn´t really an orphan. An orphan doesn´t have any parents."
"Been thinking of my mother a lot lately. I was a mistake. My mother didn't want to have me. I guess she never wanted me. I probably got in her way. I know I must have disgraced her. A divorced woman has enough problems in getting a man, I guess, but one with an illegitimate baby... I wish, I still wish, she had wanted me."
"To me, she was just that red-haired woman."
![]()
C. Stanley Gifford, the man Marilyn always believed was her father
![]()
"All I really wanted from him was to let me call him father."
"He didn't want the world to know I was his love child, his mistake."
"Oh, how I wished I had a Dad."
"I posed with Alan Ladd for a photo today. It is true he is conscious of his height. When he stood tall in his perfectly tied bow-tie we were almost eye-to-eye so I slouched a little and gave him the advantage of being an inch or two taller than me. He couldn't get over that my mother was a Hollywood film cutter and that my real name was Norma Jeane Mortenson. I never mentioned to him that I was really a bastard child who should have been named Norma Jeane Gifford! Old Charles Stanley would never acknowledge me as his daughter let alone marry my mother!"
![]()
Norma Jeane with her foster brother Lester, and the Bolenders,
whom she spent the first 7 years of her life with. Norma Jeane is holding her much beloved dog Tippy.
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
~While living with the Bolenders, Norma Jeane made her first public stage appearance as one of fifty black-clad youngsters, part of a religious ceremony for Easter 1932 held at the Hollywood Bowl~
"We all had on white tunics under the black robes and at a given signal we were supposed to throw off the robes, changing the cross from black to white. But I got so interested in looking at the people, the orchestra, the hills and the stars in the sky that I forgot to watch the conductor for the signal. And there I was ~ the only black mark on a white cross. The family I was living with never forgave me."
All the images are thumbnailed, click on image for the full size.