Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe's birth certificate names the father as Martin Edward Mortenson (of Norwegian ancestry), with his residence stated as "unknown". The name Mortenson is listed as her surname on the birth certificate, although Gladys immediately had it changed to Baker, the surname of her first husband and which she still used. Gladys Baker had married a Martin E. Mortenson in 1924, but they had separated before Gladys' pregnancy.^[Several of Monroe's biographers suggest that Gladys Baker used his name to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy.^[ Mortenson died at the age of 85, and Monroe's birth certificate, together with her parents' marriage and divorce documents, were discovered. The documents showed that Mortenson filed for divorce from Gladys on March 5, 1927, and it was finalized on October 15, 1928

Throughout her life, Marilyn Monroe denied that Mortenson was her father. She said that, when she was a child, she had been shown a photograph of a man that Gladys identified as her father, Charles Stanley Gifford. She remembered that he had a thin mustache and somewhat resembled Clark Gable, and that she had amused herself by pretending that Gable was her father.^[

Gladys was mentally unstable and financially unable to care for the young Norma Jeane, so she placed her with foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender of Hawthorne, California, where she lived until she was seven.

 

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