What happened to Marilyn Monroe's dad? Blonde story explained

One theme that the film keeps referring back to is Norma Jeane's relationship with her father – or rather her lack of a relationship with her father – and you might be wondering how far this aspect of the movie is based on reality.

Read on for everything you need to know.

What happened to Marilyn Monroe's dad?

In the film, Monroe is initially raised by her mother Gladys – who is depicted as a deeply unstable woman who at one point even tries to drown her daughter in the bathtub.

There is no evidence that this bathtub incident actually happened, however in real life, Monroe did have a troubled childhood. After Gladys was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, she lived in a variety of orphanages and foster homes without any real parental figure.

The film version of Monroe reacts to her lack of a father figure in a number of ways – from referring to several of her lovers as 'Daddy' to her repeated attempts to track her dad down.

In one scene, she is told that there is a surprise waiting for her in her hotel room and she is convinced that she's about to be reunited with her long-lost father, while towards the end of the film she is left distraught when she discovers letters she thinks have been sent by him were actually from her old friend Cass Chaplin.

In reality, it is certainly true that Monroe's father was absent from her life – and even if the specifics of some of the aforementioned incidents in the film don't match up to reality, it also appears that she did indeed spend a long time trying to find him.

Even the actual identity of her father has not always been certain. Officially, her dad was listed as Martin Edward Mortensen – the man to whom Gladys was previously married – but it seems that he was not actually her real father and had in fact separated from Gladys long before Norma Jeane was born.

For a long time, it has been widely believed that her real father was Charles Stanley Gifford, a man who had worked alongside Gladys at Consolidated Film Industries, where he was a shift foreman.

And indeed in 2022, the documentary Marilyn, Her Final Secret involved DNA research that claimed to prove that this was the case – with director Francois Pomès telling Variety that the evidence was "irrefutable".

According to Monroe's first husband James Dougherty, she had first attempted to track down Gifford shortly following their marriage, but was prevented from meeting him.

In the documentary Marilyn Monroe: The Mortal Goddess, Dougherty says: "Charles Stanley Gifford was her father, he eventually became a producer and director."

He added that: "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.'"

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Blonde was released in select cinemas on Friday 23rd September and is available to stream on Netflix from Wednesday 28th September. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight.

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