Marilyn Monroe: Meet her Mexican mother and her tragic story

Did you know that much of Marilyn Monroe‘s sex appeal is due to her Latin roots? Well, we’ll tell you all about the complex relationship between the sexiest woman in the world and her Mexican mother.

Who was Marilyn Monroe’s mother and what is her story?

For those who do not know Gladys Pearl Baker, who was the mother of Norma Jeane Mortenson (Marilyn Monroe’s real name), we reveal that she was originally from Piedras Negras, Coahuila, and was born on May 27, 1902. According to official biographers of the actress known as the sexy bomb, her life was full of suffering and pain because Gladys was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

As far as we know, Marilyn had a very hard childhood, full of deficiencies (affective and economic), since she was away from her mother and had to be put up for adoption in temporary homes. Unfortunately, Gladys’ mental torments deeply affected her daughter, who always blamed herself for being born.

“I WAS A MISTAKE. MY MOTHER DIDN’T WANT TO HAVE ME AND I GOT IN HER WAY, I MUST HAVE BEEN A DISGRACE TO HER. I WISH SHE HAD LOVED ME”, MARILYN REPEATED, ACCORDING TO HER BIOGRAPHERS.

The sad story of Gladys Pearl Baker and Marilyn Monroe

The actress’s mother had a rather complicated love story, first, she was married to Jack Baker, who abandoned her, taking her two children, while her second husband, Martin Edward Mortenson, disappeared after a few months of marriage and without knowing he was Marilyn‘s father. Gladys Pearl Baker, who was then working as a film negative cutter at Consolidated Film Industries, decided to leave Norma Jeane in the care of a religious family, as she did not feel capable of taking care of her.

During the first years of her life and until she was 7 years old, the little girl lived in a humble house with Albert and Ida Bolender, unfortunately, she had to be separated from the family she knew and before she was ten years old she had already lived in more than a dozen orphanages or foster homes. Thus, from the first years of her life, the woman who revolutionized the world of cinema had serious self-esteem problems, emotional instability, and stress because her mother was an intermittent person in her life.

In a manuscript that remained hidden and was discovered 12 years after Monroe died and was discovered in a drawer by her friend Milton Green, it was revealed how the actress truly felt about her relationship with her mother.

“The people I thought were my parents had children of their own. They weren’t petty, they were just poor. They didn’t have much to offer anyone, not even their children, and there was nothing left for me.”

“I was seven years old, but I had to work at home. She washed dishes, scrubbed floors, and ran errands. My mother showed up the next day. She was a very pretty woman who never smiled.”

“I had seen her often, but I didn’t know exactly who she was. When I said ‘Hi, Mom’, she looked at me. She had never kissed me, she had never held me in her arms and she had hardly spoken to me”.

“At that time I didn’t know anything about her, but years later I found out quite a few things. When I think of her now, my heart aches twice as much as it did when I was a little girl. It hurts for both of us”, reads the text that was found in 1974, and that was used in the book “ My Story Memories of Marilyn Monroe”.

The sad end of the relationship between Marilyn Monroe and her mother

Despite the fact that the mother-daughter relationship started off on the wrong foot, Gladys Pearl Baker was a key player in her daughter’s life and it could be said that she helped her find her destiny, since during her adolescence they both lived together near Hollywood. Boulevard, a place that inspired the actress to dream big: “I could spend all day and part of the night alone in the front row looking at the giant screen. I loved it,” Monroe said.

But despite the fact that living with her mother was a dream of hers, the young woman had a complicated life full of wild parties and alcohol. Unfortunately for both mother and daughter, the dream ended when one day Marilyn returned home and her mother was not there since she had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where she remained until her death in 1984.