How did Marilyn Monroe’s mom die: Her tragic death detailed

Marilyn Monroe’s mother, Gladys Baker, was a largely absent figure in her life. As a toddler, Baker placed Monroe into the foster home of Ida and Wayne Bolender. Monroe had a stable life growing up under the strict but compassionate Ida. 

After moving in with her mother, all sense of stability disappeared. Gladys’ paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis led to her institutionalization and affected her relationships with people. Monroe spent the rest of her childhood in foster homes and orphanages.

Marilyn married at 16 to avoid placement in another foster home or orphanage. Monroe died in August 1962, weeks after arguing with her mom about medication. 

Marilyn Monroe’s mother passed away due to heart failure in March 1984

In 1952, Gladys was admitted to the Rock Haven Sanitarium after a manic episode. Despite Marilyn providing money for her care, Gladys hated life at the institution. She made several escape attempts and pleaded with Marilyn to facilitate her release. 

Monroe and Gladys spoke for the last time in the summer of 1962. Marilyn visited Gladys in an attempt to persuade her to take her medication. Gladys refused, saying prayers, not medicine, would heal her. 

As Gladys stood up to leave, Monroe slipped a flask into her purse. “You’re such a good girl,” Norma Jeane, the smiling Gladys said. In early August 1962, Monroe passed away due to acute barbiturate poisoning. 

Reports claim Gladys didn’t appear overtly affected by Monroe’s death. After her release from Rock Haven in 1967, Gladys moved in with her daughter Berniece. She was later moved into a retirement home in Gainesville, Florida. 

In 1977, Gladys belatedly received money from a $100,000 trust fund left to her by Marilyn. Monroe’s mother passed away in March 1984, aged 81, due to heart failure. 

Marilyn had falsely claimed that her mother was dead

In September 1956, Gladys abruptly announced that she wanted to live in Oregon with her aunt. However, she didn’t go to Oregon – Gladys married John Stewart Eley, a married man with a family in Idaho. 

Marilyn’s biological parents had no interest in her, so she spread a false narrative that they were dead. The sob story contributed to her rising fame. In May 1952, an investigation exposed Marilyn’s lies, revealing that Gladys was alive and working at a nursing home in Eagle Rock. 

Gladys may have passed away earlier had her suicide attempt succeeded. In February 1961, doctors committed Monroe to the Payne Whitney Clinic in New York after she admitted to contemplating suicide. 

Upon hearing the news, Gladys retreated to her room, where staff found her unconscious and with her left wrist slit. 

Spread the love