The filmmaker and historian David Stenn – best-known for his biographies of Clara Bow and Jean Harlow – has created a short documentary for TCM’s Untold Hollywood series, about the origins of Marilyn’s birth name.
For many years, it was believed that she was named after silent movie actress Norma Talmadge, then married to Marilyn’s future mentor, Joe Schenck. Some authors even claimed Jean Harlow as a second inspiration, but in 1926 she was still unknown.
In 1916, Marilyn’s mother Gladys Monroe, then fifteen years old, became pregnant for the first time, by Jasper Newton Baker, a man twelve years her senior. On their marriage certificate, Gladys falsely claimed to be eighteen.
Their marriage was not a happy one, with Baker said to have been physically abusive. He also berated Gladys as immature and an unfit mother. In 1921, she left him.
After their divorce was finalised in 1922, Baker abducted their two children, Robert and Berniece, and took them from Los Angeles to his mother’s home in Kentucky.
A desperate Gladys soon followed, taking up residence in Louisville, where Robert was being treated in hospital for his ongoing hip problems. At the same time, a local couple, Harry and Lena Cohen, fired their maid for holding a party in their home while they were away.
Gladys gained temporary employment as housekeeper to the Cohens. Their home at 2331 Alta Avenue still stands today. She also took care of their young daughters, Dorothy and Norma Jean, of whom she was particularly fond.
Sadly, Gladys was unable to regain custody of her own children, and returned to Los Angeles. In 1924, she married Martin E. Mortensen, an engineer. They parted a few months later, and in 1925 she began dating Stanley Gifford, her supervisor at Consolidated Film Industries.
She became pregnant by Gifford, but he refused to leave his wife and the relationship ended. When her daughter was born on June 1, 1926, she named her after Norma Jean Cohen. Still waiting on her second divorce, she named Mortensen as the father to conceal her child’s illegitimacy.
The birth certificate shown in the video appears to have been digitally altered, as Gladys gave her youngest daughter’s name the variant spelling of Norma Jeane. She also thereafter used Baker as the girl’s last name, so that if reunited, all three of her children would share the same surname.
But in 1933, Gladys learned that her son Robert had died from tuberculosis. A few months later she suffered a complete mental breakdown, remaining under psychiatric care for decades to come. And while Norma Jeane Baker became one of Hollywood’s greatest stars, Norma Jean Cohen went on to lead a long and happy life.
After Marilyn’s death in 1962, an indignant Gladys told her eldest daughter, Berniece Baker Miracle, that she had never wanted her famous half-sister to act; and that she was not named after any actress, but Norma Jean Cohen from Louisville, Kentucky.
Gladys died in 1984, and ten years later, Berniece and her own daughter, Mona Rae Miracle, wrote a dual memoir, My Sister Marilyn. Michelle Morgan was the first biographer to take up Norma Jean Cohen’s story, in Marilyn Monroe: Private and Undisclosed (2012.)
With Naming Norma Jean, David Stenn adds important context and documentation, proving once more that Marilyn’s real story is more compelling than any myth conjured by Hollywood’s publicity machine.
UPDATE:
David Stenn talks about Norma Jeane and more in the latest episode of the All Things Marilyn podcast, now in its third season.
The Marilyn Report 