Foster Parents
Unable to persuade her mother Della to take Norma Jeane, Gladys placed her with foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender of Hawthorne, California, where she lived until she was seven years old. In her autobiography My Story, Monroe states she thought Albert was a woman.
One day, Gladys announced that she had purchased a house. A few months after they had moved in, Gladys suffered a nervous breakdown. In My Story, Monroe recalls her mother "screaming and laughing" as she was forcibly removed to the State Hospital in Norwalk. According to Monroe, Gladys' brother, Marion, committed suicide via hanging upon his release from an asylum, and Della's father did the same in a fit of depression.
Norma Jeane was declared a ward of state, and Gladys' best friend, Grace McKee (later Goddard) became her guardian. After McKee married in 1935, Norma Jeane was sent to the Los Angeles Orphans Home (later renamed Hollygrove), and then to a succession of foster homes, as her mother could not look after her.
The Goddards were about to move to the east coast and could not take her. Grace approached the mother of James Dougherty about the possibility of her son marrying the girl. They married weeks after she turned 16, so that Norma Jeane would not have to return to an orphanage or foster care.
Read more about this topic: Early Life Of Marilyn Monroe
Famous quotes containing the words foster and/or parents:
“Our capacity to retaliate must be, and is, massive in order to deter all forms of aggression.”
—John Foster Dulles (1888–1959)
“Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore,
And that’s what parents were created for.”
—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)