Norma Jeane's Birth Certificate

Norma 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

           

Gladys & Norma Jeane 1933

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.