Jack Kennedy was particularly sensitive regarding his mother’s long absences from home. He confided to a friend that he used to cry each time Rose packed her bags for one of her extended trips abroad, and he protested, “Gee, you’re a great mother to go away and leave your children alone.” He later angrily exclaimed to one of his school chums, “My mother was either at some Paris fashion house, or else on her knees in some church. She was never there when we really needed her…. My mother never really held me and hugged me. Never! Never!”
Rose Kennedy’s retreat from her husband and her family was resented perhaps more by Jack than the other children, and he was to tell his friend Mary Gimbel, “My mother is a nothing!” He grew up with a hostile attitude toward marriage and family. Women were viewed as no more than sex objects. His experience of family life involved “institutionalized living—children in a cell block.”
Though the childhoods of Jack Kennedy and Norma Jeane were quite different, the sense of parental isolation and emotional denial was to a certain extent a shared experience.
“In the orphanage I began to stutter,” Marilyn recalled. “My mother and the idea of being an orphan—maybe that’s the reason. Anyway, I stuttered. Later on in my teens at Van Nuys High School, they elected me secretary of the English class, and every time I had to read the minutes I’d say, ‘Minutes of the last m-m-m-meeting.’ It was terrible. That went on for years, I guess, until I was fifteen.”
She attributed the cause of her speech disorder to “my mother and the idea of being an orphan—maybe that’s the reason.” However, the chronology of events indicates that the stuttering was related to the molestation incident.
The stammering problem never went away entirely. In 1960 Marilyn Monroe stated, “Sometimes it even happens to me today if I’m very nervous or excited. Once when I had a small part in a movie, in a scene where I was supposed to go up the stairs, I forgot what was happening and the assistant director came and yelled at me, and I was so confused that when I got into the scene I stuttered. Then the director himself came over to me and said, ‘You don’t stutter.’ And I said ‘Tha-Tha-That’s what you th-thi…think!’ It was painful, and it still is if I speak very fast or have to make a speech…terrible.”
The children from the orphanage attended the Vine Street Elementary School several blocks away and walked there in a group. Norma Jeane found it difficult to make friends at Vine Street because the children from the orphanage were considered homeless. “They’re from the place for homeless hooligans,” it was whispered, and the orphans were never invited to visit and play at the homes of the more fortunate students. In her unhappiness at the orphanage, Norma Jeane made plans for escape. She tried to run away with another girl from the dormitory, but they got only as far as the front lawn before being discovered.
On a homeless child’s birthday, the orphanage followed a prescribed ritual. A large, elaborate birthday cake would be wheeled into the dining hall on a tea cart while all the orphans dutifully sang “Happy Birthday” to the celebrant. The birthday child would then blow out the candles. However, the jubilation would often be as wooden as the cake, which had plaster frosting and was carved out of pine. The wooden cake had a triangular divot allowing for one slice of genuine cake, which was ceremoniously served to the orphaned celebrant. Much to the salivary disappointment of the novices, the wooden cake would then be wheeled into a closet where it remained until the next birthday festivities.
Whenever Grace Goddard visited the orphanage, Norma Jeane complained bitterly about her confinement in the hope that “Aunt Grace” would come to her rescue. In the months that followed, her guardian became Norma Jeane’s “saving Grace.” Grace would often take her away from the orphanage on the weekends for visits to the small Hollywood home she shared with “Doc.”
On these special outings Grace permitted Norma Jeane to try her lipstick, and Grace would put her straight light-brown hair in curlers. Sometimes she’d be taken to a beauty parlor on Hollywood Boulevard to have her hair done. Guardianship records indicate that Grace bought dresses and shoes for Norma Jeane with the meager proceeds from the sale of Gladys’s few possessions.
In time Norma Jeane was told the truth regarding her mother’s mental illness and that Gladys was confined in Norwalk. Gladys was allowed to leave the asylum and lunch with Norma Jeane and Grace, but on these rare occasions Gladys remained withdrawn and uncommunicative, scarcely acknowledging her daughter’s presence.
“Grace loved and adored Norma Jeane,” a friend and coworker at the studios, Leila Fields, recalled, “If it weren’t for Grace there would be no Marilyn Monroe. She raved about Norma Jeane like she was her own. Grace said Norma Jeane was going to be a movie star. She had this feeling—a conviction. ‘Don’t worry, Norma Jeane, you’re going to be a beautiful girl when you get big—an important woman, a movie star!’”
Grace Goddard’s compassion for Norma Jeane was entangled with her own frustrations. She had come to Hollywood to be a movie star like Mary Pickford, but ended up being an itinerant assembler of the movie stars’ celluloid images. Unable to have children of her own, Grace became a foster “stage mother” and focused the transference of her frustrations on Norma Jeane. In photos taken by Grace during this period, Norma Jeane is seen in Mary Pickford curls and makeup—a lost dream from an earlier generation. By the 1930s, Mary Pickford, the innocent child with the beautiful curls and the petulant pout, was fading into puffy oblivion. She had been supplanted by the overt sexuality of the vamps and the “it” girls. The shimmering platinum-blond sensuality of Jean Harlow in Hell’s Angels, Public Enemy, and Red Dust had electrified audiences and catapulted Harlow into instant stardom. Harlow soon became Grace’s new idol. She dyed her own hair blond and began divining a young Harlow in Norma Jeane. “There’s no reason why you can’t grow up to be just like her,” Grace would say.
Marilyn recalled, “Time after time Grace touched a spot on my nose and said, ‘You’re perfect except for this little bump, sweetheart, but with the right hair and a better nose one day you’ll be perfect—like Jean Harlow. And so Jean Harlow became my idol, too.”
On the weekends Grace frequently took Norma Jeane to lunch and a movie show at the Grauman’s Chinese, where Norma Jeane remembered “trying to fit my feet into the footprints—but my school shoes were too big for the stars’ slim high-heeled ones.” In 1935 she saw China Seas with Clark Gable and Harlow. Gable reminded her of the man with the mustache and the jaunty smile in the photo of Stan Gifford her mother had kept on the wall. When Gladys had been taken away, Gifford’s photo was packed in a trunk by Grace, and it would be many years before Norma Jeane would see it once again. But in her dreams Gable became “the man I thought was my father.”
It was during her confinement at the Orphans’ Home that a sleep disorder had its onset. The affliction was to haunt her the rest of her life. Marilyn Monroe suffered from “night terrors.” While insomnia is characterized by a restless wakefulness that prevents sleep, night terrors are characterized by the victim’s sudden arousal from deep sleep by the “fight or flight” syndrome—the rush of adrenaline that accompanies panic and fear. In extreme cases the victim wakes in a cold sweat—screaming, trembling, and in mortal terror.
At the orphanage Norma Jeane would suddenly wake up at night screaming and shivering in the darkness. Anxieties and a sense of isolation may have been momentarily forgotten in merciful play, sports, and the duties of the day, but when she lay sleeping in the dark of the dormitory, her heart would race, her pulse quicken, her mind and body surge with adrenaline as the suppressed memory of her mad mother, her “heritage,” and the sudden severance of relationships engulfed her. Orphans often vanished from their beds after dark, when the “night people” came and took them away before dawn.
Norma Jeane’s world brightened when Grace McKee appeared one weekend and held out the hope of rescue. She indicated that one day she might be able to provide a home for her. Doc Goddard had three children from a previous
marriage, and Grace was faced with her own practical considerations. However, the directress of the orphanage felt that Norma Jeane needed to be placed in a family situation, and it was arranged for Norma Jeane to be temporarily placed in a foster home until a more permanent arrangement could be made.
“Suddenly, I wasn’t in the orphanage anymore,” Marilyn remembered.
I was placed with a family who were given five dollars a week for keeping me. I was placed with nine different families before I was able to quit being a legal orphan. I remember one where I stayed for just three or four weeks. I remember them because the woman delivered furniture polish made by her husband. Every morning we’d load up the backseat of her car with the bottles and she’d take me along. We’d bump along the roads and the car smelled like polish, and I’d get so carsick. I can still hear the awful sound of the car starting and her yelling, “Norma Jeane! Get in the car! Let’s go!”
After that I only lived in the orphanage off and on. The families with whom I lived had one thing in common—a need for five dollars. I was also an asset to have in the house. I was strong and healthy and able to do almost as much work as a grown-up. And I had learned not to bother anyone by talking or crying. I learned also that the best way to keep out of trouble was by never complaining or asking for anything. Most of the families had children of their own, and I knew they always came first. They wore the colored dresses and owned whatever toys there were. My own costume never varied. It consisted of a faded blue skirt and white waist. I had two of each, but since they were exactly alike everyone thought I wore the same outfit all the time.
Every second week the Home sent a woman inspector out to see how its orphans were getting along in the world. She never asked me any questions, but would pick up my foot and look at the bottom of my shoes. If my shoe bottoms weren’t worn through, I was reported in a thriving condition. I never minded coming “last” in these families except on Saturday nights when everybody took a bath. Water cost money, and changing the water in the tub was an unheard of extravagance. The whole family used the same tub of water. And I was always the last one in. One family with whom I lived was so poor that I was often scolded for flushing the toilet at night. “That uses up five gallons of water,” my new “uncle” would say, “and five gallons each time can run into money.”
I was always very quiet, at least in front of the adults. They used to call me “the mouse.” I didn’t say very much except to other children, and I had a lot of imagination. The other kids liked to play with me because I could think of things. I’d say, “Now we’re going to play murder…or divorce,” and they’d say, “How do you think of things like that?” No matter how careful I was, there were always troubles. Some of my troubles were my own fault. I did hit someone occasionally, I’d pull her hair, and knock her down…and I was often accused of stealing things—a necklace, a comb, a ring, or a nickel. I never stole anything. When the troubles came I had only one way to meet them—by staying silent. Aunt Grace would ask me when she came to visit how things were. I would tell her always they were fine because I didn’t like to see her eyes turn unhappy. In a way they were not troubles at all because I was used to them. When I look back on those days I remember, in fact, that they were full of all sorts of fun and excitement. I played games in the sun and ran races. I also had daydreams, not only about my father’s photograph but about many other things. I daydreamed chiefly about beauty. I dreamed of myself becoming so beautiful that people would turn to look at me when I passed. And I dreamed of colors—scarlet, gold, green and white. I dreamed of myself walking proudly in beautiful clothes and being admired by everyone and overhearing words of praise.
19
Norma Jeane, the Human Bean
Side by side with the exigencies of life, love is the great educator.
—Sigmund Freud
When Norma Jeane had her “troubles” she was often sent back to the orphanage until Grace Goddard could find another foster family to take care of her. Many of the families were among those who had been lured to the golden dream of Southern California in the roaring twenties, only to find themselves stuck in their stucco crackerboxes in the desperate thirties. While the foster families had a common need for five dollars, they also had in common a family relationship to Grace Goddard. The five dollars a week that Grace’s relatives received from the state for looking after Norma Jeane went a long way in the midst of the Depression: in 1936 gasoline was nine cents a gallon, hamburger was eight cents a pound, movies were fifteen cents, oranges were a dime for three dozen. As the court-appointed guardian, Grace received $325 a year, comparable in purchasing power to approximately $3,500 in the mid-1990s—enough to buy groceries rather than wait in line at Helms Bakery for stale bread.
That Norma Jeane was farmed out by Grace Goddard to numerous foster homes, but never stayed for any period of time with Doc and Grace, may be attributed to Grace’s practicality. While Grace was quick to do a kindness, she drew the line at any inconvenience to her private life. Her coworker Leila Fields stated, “Grace was fun, outgoing and generous, but ultimately Grace never did anything unless it was right for Grace.” However, shortly after Norma Jeane’s eleventh birthday, she moved into the Goddards’ small house on Barbara Court in Hollywood’s Cahuenga Pass. On June 12, 1937, Norma Jeane left the orphanage for the last time.
After twenty-one months of being shuttled from orphanage to foster home and back, Norma Jeane believed she had finally found a permanent home with the Goddards. The house on Barbara Court was not far from Hollywood Boulevard, where Grace would take her to the beauty shop, C. C. Brown’s Ice Cream Parlor, and the movie palaces.
“Grace could have no children of her own, and so she lavished her affection on Norma Jeane, whom she considered to be as much or more hers than Gladys’s,” Doc’s daughter Bebe Goddard observed. “Grace was very perceptive. From this very early time she had the idea that Norma Jeane was going to be a movie star, and she did everything in her power to bring it about.”
According to Grace Goddard’s friend Olin Stanley, Grace would bring Norma Jeane to the studios and show her off. She’d be wearing a pretty dress and shiny Mary Jane shoes, and have her hair done up in curls. Grace would fuss over her and exclaim, “Olin, isn’t she pretty? Norma Jeane, turn around and show the nice man the big bow on the back of your dress. Now walk down that way and turn around…Good! Now walk back here again. Tell Olin what you’re going to be when you’re all grown up. Say, ‘a movie star,’ baby! Tell him you’re going to be a movie star!”
Norma Jeane loved the attention: “Grace was always wonderful to me,” Marilyn Monroe commented in later years. “Without her, who knows where I would have landed?”
But the idyll at the Goddards’ Barbara Court home came to a sudden end. In November 1937, scarcely five months after her arrival, Norma Jeane was again uprooted and sent to the house of Ida Martin and “Aunt Olive” Monroe in nearby Lankershim.
Marilyn Monroe stated in 1960 that the move took place because “Doc and Aunt Grace were very poor, so they couldn’t care for me.” But the truth was that Doc drank too much. By 1937 both Doc and Grace were well on their way to becoming confirmed alcoholics, and according to Norma Jeane’s first husband, James Dougherty, Doc got roaring drunk one night, causing a scene that convinced Grace to send Norma Jeane away.
“At first I was waking up in the mornings at the Goddards’ and thinking I was still at the orphanage, then, before I could get used to them, I was with another ‘Aunt’ and ‘Uncle,’ waking up and thinking I was still at the Goddards’…. It was all very confusing,” Marilyn recalled.
Aunt Olive and Ida Martin’s home in Lankershim was on Oxnard Street, not far from Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Olive Monroe was a true aunt, having been married to Gladys’s younger brother, Marion Monroe. Shortly before the birth of the couple’s third child, Marion walked out of the house for a newspaper and never returned. Left destitute, the family moved in with Olive’s mother, Ida Martin, at the house in
Lankershim.
While it was gratifying to meet relations, Norma Jeane found her new home a difficult experience. “I don’t think Ida Martin was a very nice person, as I remember,” Bebe Goddard confided. “And Olive kind of gave Norma Jeane a bad time because she wasn’t too fond of Marion’s family after his disappearance.”
Norma Jeane shared a bed with Ida Mae, who was ten years old. They also shared lively imaginations. Ida Mae recalled years later, “Norma Jeane and I were just kids. We did things kids do. I remember the time we decided to make wine. We had a big tub in the back yard. We gathered grapes and piled them into the tub and tromped them with our bare dirty feet. When my mother called we hid the tub under the back porch and forgot about it. For weeks the house and yard reeked of rotten grapes and nobody knew why except Norma Jeane and I, and we were afraid to tell my mother. Once we decided to run away from home. We were going up to San Francisco to look for my father, who was Norma Jeane’s uncle, because someone said they had seen him there, but we never really went, of course. But I’ll never forget Norma Jeane. She stayed with us until the San Fernando Valley flood.”
The flood, which caused the Los Angeles River to overflow and flood Lankershim, occurred in March 1938, and Norma Jeane was again uprooted—this time by an act of God. It proved to be the beginning of more fortunate circumstances.
“I had a real happy time while I was growing up when I went to live with a woman I called ‘Aunt Ana,’” Marilyn remembered. “She was Grace McKee’s [Goddard’s] aunt. She was a lot older. She was sixty, I guess, or somewhere around there, but she always talked about when she was a girl of twenty. There was a real contact between us because she understood me somehow. She knew what it was like to be young…. And I loved her dearly. I used to do the dishes in the evening and I’d always be singing and whistling, and she’d say, ‘I never heard a child sing so much!’ So I did it during that time. Aunt Ana…I adored her.”
The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe Page 15
