Full credit goes to “A Passion For Marilyn” and Fraser Penney for these beautiful words:


Remembering Marilyn’s mother Gladys Pearl Monroe, aka Baker, Mortensen & Eley, who died of heart failure on March 11th 1984 in Gainesville, Florida.
During her rise to stardom, Marilyn professed that her mother was dead. But it was discovered that Gladys was still alive when a reporter did some snooping in 1952. Marilyn went onto explain that her mother was an “invalid,” and that she had “never had the opportunity to get to know her,” that she “lied because I didn’t want to put my vulnerable mother in the glaring public spotlight.”
The story went away and in 1960 Marilyn again said to a reporter that her mother had since passed away.
After Marilyn died, Gladys became increasingly disturbed. She attempted suicide by stabbing herself with hairpins.
In 1963, she escaped from Rockhaven Sanitarium but was discovered a day later and taken back and she remained there for another three years. This story made headlines across the world with France’s Paris Match weekly news magazine declaring “The big lie of Marilyn, her mother lives.”
A few years later she moved to Florida to be with her daughter Bernice, who became her guardian in 1967.
By 1970, she was considered well enough to move into a retirement home, not far from Bernice, where she was able to establish her first independent residence since 1935.
Before Marilyn died, she provided a $100,000 trust fund for her mother. $5,000 was to be drawn annually for her maintenance at Rockhaven. Due to legalities and an alleged lack of funds, Gladys did not receive a payment from the Marilyn Monroe estate until December 1976.
Gladys once said “I am not interested in material things. I’m interested only in God.”

Born: 27 May 1902, Piedras Negras, Mexico
Died: 11 March 1984, Gainesville, Florida, United States
RIP Gladys ????