Marilyn’s Family Secrets in ‘Paris Match’

Marilyn is featured in the latest issue of Paris Match, with a 12-page article investigating her father’s true identity – a topic also explored in the upcoming documentary, Marilyn, Her Final Secret. Inside are rare photos of Charles Stanley Gifford and his family. The French news weekly has a long history with Marilyn, and the Willy Rizzo photo used as in an inset on the latest cover was first seen 60 years ago, in a cover story reporting on her death.

Thanks to Alain at MM Fan Club Belgium

The article is previewed at Europe 1 …

“The magazine reveals the identity of the biological father of the star Marilyn Monroe, née Norma Jeane … Sixty years after the death of this icon, François Pomès, a French producer and director, conducted a very long investigation which enabled him to solve this enigma. And it was to Paris Match that he wanted to entrust this exclusive information.

‘François Pomès contacted us a little over a week ago, and we met him,’ explains Aurélie Raya, the Paris Match journalist who collected and verified the producer’s comments. ‘He found peroxidized blond hair that was the right one. He then looked for DNA to compare this hair with,’ says the journalist. ‘In the biographies of Marilyn Monroe, several names of potential biological fathers appear. In particular, the most probable, Charles Stanley Gifford. He was one of the lovers of Gladys, Marilyn’s mother, in the 1920s. François Pomès found the Gifford heirs, who agreed to donate DNA.’

After the verification of this long investigation which confirms that Charles Stanley Gifford was the biological father of Marilyn Monroe, Aurélie Raya looked into the life of this man. ‘He was a pretty handsome guy, born in 1898, into a middle-class Californian family. He was a foreman in the company where Gladys worked,’ explains the journalist. ‘He lived on a kind of ranch. He had a lot of mistresses, he was a real seducer who died quite young, in 1965. He had two “official” children, including a daughter who died when she was 10 or 12 years old. He never wanted to meet Marilyn.’

Following this discovery, the Paris Match team went to the United States to meet Francine Gifford, the one who has just discovered that she is the niece of Marilyn Monroe.”

And some more details on the Marca website…

“‘In the 1950s, when she was already famous, Marilyn went to see my grandfather in Hemet, California, but he refused to see her,” Francine Gifford Deir has said. ‘It would have been so easy to say, Honey, I’m sorry, I’d like to tell you I’m your father, but you’re wrong.'”