By the time 1954 rolled around, Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star in the world. She couldn’t move without being mobbed by fans, and she was a regular cover girl on magazines everywhere. But before the beloved blonde bombshell won over the world, she spent most of her early years longing to be loved.
Before there was Marilyn, there was Norma Jeane Mortenson (her birth name, though she was baptised Norma Jeane Baker). Born in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926 to Gladys Baker, Monroe arrived into the world in an absence of intimacy. Her mother, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, never knew who Monroe’s father was. But Gladys, who was traumatised by the bipolar disorder of her own mother – Monroe’s earliest memory was of her grandmother trying to smother her – did know that she could not take care of her child.
Shunted between foster homes and, at one stage, an orphanage, Monroe spent her childhood under the care of 12
