THE identity of Marilyn Monroe’s father remained a mystery for decades.
But the truth behind the world’s most famous film star’s paternity has finally come to light – so who is her dad?
Who was Marilyn Monroe’s father Charles Stanley Gifford?
Charles Stanley Gifford was born in 1898 in Newport, Rhode Island.
He became a shift foreman at a Hollywood film-developing company, where he reportedly met Marilyn‘s mum Gladys.
The pair had an affair in 1925 and the film cutter fell pregnant at age 26, before giving birth to Marilyn, born Norma Jeane Baker, on June 1, 1926.
Charles is said to have disappeared around this time and never contacted his love child.
Gladys reportedly never reached out to Marilyn‘s father, nor did she ask for money from him to support them.
But the film star, who spent the majority of her childhood in foster care and orphanages, repeatedly tried to contact her absent father over the years to no avail.
What happened to Marilyn Monroe’s father Charles Stanley Gifford?
After leaving Gladys holding the baby, Charles went on to become a producer and director.
He remarried in 1919 and fathered two other children with his wife, before the pair later divorced.
During this time, Marilyn tirelessly tried to forge a relationship with who she vehemently believed was her dad.
But Charles, who then ran a Californian dairy farm, continuously batted away her claims and denied the film icon’s claims until the day he died.
Pals of the late actress and her first husband, James Dougherty, told how Charles would cruelly deny his daughter’s existence.
Dougherty said: “She got on the phone and she looked up his number and she called him.
“He wouldn’t recognise her, he said ‘No, I don’t know who you are. See my attorney’.”
He explained that his former wife did not “want anything from him” and that the conversation had left her “real sad”.
According to Charles Casillo’s book, Marilyn Monroe: The Private Life of a Public Icon, she once tracked Charles down to confront him.
But he allegedly brushed Marilyn off, telling her: “I’m married, and I have a family. I don’t have anything to say to you. Call my lawyer.”
Natasha Lytess, an acting coach and pal, said of the meeting: “It did her no good. It broke her heart.”
The Daily Mail reported that Marilyn‘s friend Sidney Skolsky said she had visited Charles for the second time in 1950.
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When Marilyn returned to the car where Skolsky was waiting, she called her father a “son of a bitch.”
Marilyn attempted to contact Gifford several more times in person and by phone but each time he told her to leave him alone.
Charles died in 1865 while living near Hemet, California.
Sixty years on from Marilyn’s death, a damning documentary has finally gotten to the bottom of the identity of her father.
Marilyn, Her Final Secret – released in June 2022 – saw experts analyse forensic evidence to definitively prove Charles’ paternity.
A team used a lock of Marilyn’s legendary hair, which was still kept at the coroner’s office after her death, to prove that he was her father.
However, finding DNA from her hair proved difficult because Monroe, who was a natural brunette, had bleached her hair so often that it had removed the majority of her DNA.
Forensic scientists were eventually able to extract enough DNA to test it against a cheek swab from one of Charles’ great-grandchildren.
Although he had long since passed away, the forensic team located Gifford’s 75-year-old granddaughter, Francine Gifford Deir.
Who was Marilyn Monroe’s mother Gladys Pearl Baker and what happened to her?
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Gladys Pearl Baker was born in Mexico in 1902 after her parents moved to Piedras Negras in the 1890s, Latin Heat reports.
She was thrust into an outdoorsy lifestyle of farming after settling in the area which borders Eagle Pass, Texas.
In her 20s, Gladys bagged a job as a film cutter at RKO Pictures, where she had a relationship with her boss, Charles Stanley Gifford.
Despite raising Marilyn alone, the film star said her mum had shown her a photo of a man in a golden frame and would say, “This is your father.”
It is unclear how much the blonde bombshell knew about her dad, as Gladys never openly revealed his identity.
Gladys went on to marry three times and listed her second husband, Martin Edward Mortensen, as Monroe’s father on her birth certificate.
The couple divorced in 1928 after only four years of marriage, and Gladys solely raised Marilyn until she was seven years old.
But the mum’s mental health began to deteriorate and she was later placed in a psychiatric hospital.
Gladys was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and remained in the institution until 1984 when she died.
Marilyn was left to bounce between foster homes and an orphanage throughout her younger years.
The star herself was diagnosed with bipolar later on in life and was admitted to the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in New York.