The Truth About Marilyn Monroe's Parents

During her lifetime, Marilyn Monroe was widely beloved across the world as one of the biggest — and most bankable — names in Hollywood. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s — up until her tragic and untimely death at the age of 36 in 1962 — she truly became one of the most famous women in the world, and a dominant cultural icon of the modern age. No doubt her influence has outlasted her. In 1999, she was even named by the American Film Institute as the sixth greatest female star of the 20th century. 

However, although her rich and highly scrutinized personal (and love) life has been of great interest to her many fans (her famous marriages — and divorces — to baseball legend Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller were among the most well-documented of Hollywood's Golden Age), many fans may not know the true story behind her parents. Indeed, the full truth was not even revealed until 60 years after her death. 

In 1926, per Biography, Gladys Pearl Baker gave birth to Norma Jeane Mortenson — the girl who would later become Marilyn Monroe — while she was married to her second husband, Martin Edward Mortensen. However, she would give her up to foster care only two weeks later. Baker, who was plagued by mental health issues, was simply not prepared to raise a child — financially or emotionally — leaving Norma Jeane to grow up in numerous foster homes and orphanages. 

However, Baker still maintained contact with her daughter, frequently visiting and even having her over for sleepovers. Nonetheless, Baker's mental health eventually got the best of her, and she began spending time in mental institutions largely due to her paranoid schizophrenia. This began in 1934, when Monroe was around 10. 

As an adult, Monroe recalled that she had been ashamed of her mother and background. "I used to tell lies," she wrote in her posthumous memoir, "My Story," "chiefly about my mother and father. I'd say she was dead ... because I was ashamed to have the world know [she] was in a mental institution." However, Monroe still cared for her mother as she grew successful. For one, she had her business manager look after her until Monroe's death in 1962, and also had a trust set up for her in her will which would last until her own death in 1984 at the age of 81. 

The official identity of Marilyn Monroe's father would remain uncertain for years, though — as noted by Biography – her mother insisted for years that it was Charles Stanley Gifford, a coworker with whom she had an extramarital affair in 1925. In 2022, 60 years after Monroe's death, DNA testing confirmed that her biological father was indeed Gifford. 

Gifford had little involvement in Monroe's life, though Monroe certainly wanted otherwise. As revealed in the 2022 Netflix documentary, "The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe," her close friend and dress manufacturer Henry Rosenfeld said that "she wanted to know her father so badly." He also revealed that she had always had a fantasy whereby she would "put on her black wig, pick up her father in a bar, have him make love to her. Then she'd say: 'How does it feel now to have a daughter that you've made love to?'"

Only once that we know of did Monroe actually get to meet him. While she knew of his identity via her mother her whole life, she only made the effort to meet him in person in the 1950s, after she was already famous. However, per the Daily Mail, she was rejected. A friend of Monroe's recalled him telling her, "Listen, Marilyn, I'm married, I have children. I don't want you to start any trouble for me," leaving her devastated. Gifford died in 1965 at the age of 66, three years after his daughter.