Le lettere dell’uomo che si dichiara padre di Norma Jeane

Le lettere dell’uomo che si dichiara padre di Norma Jeane are two personal letters from a man who identifies himself as Norma Jeane Baker’s father. They bring the possibility of a living father into her story not through a meeting, but through paper: a typewritten confession, a birthday card with a red rose embossed on its cover, and promises of a reunion that remain prospective in the passages surrounding them. The letters offer Norma Jeane an explanation for her absence from his life, but the evidence presented is his own account, not independent confirmation of his identity or history.

The first letter: an identity claimed

A week before the premiere of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Dee-Dee gives Norma Jeane a letter and warns that it appears personal. Norma Jeane recognizes whose it may be from its typewritten appearance, takes it, and reads. The timing makes the letter arrive at a moment when her public identity as Marilyn Monroe is especially visible; the writer anticipates that fame might make his approach suspect, and insists that he is not seeking to benefit from her success.

The letter opens with an admission that writing has been difficult and that the sender does not quite know why he is making contact after so many years. It then makes its defining claim plainly: he says he is Norma Jeane’s father. He describes himself as retired and satisfied with his former work and family life, while acknowledging that his wife is ill and does not know he has written. The confession therefore presents itself as a private act that could cause pain within his existing family as well as alter Norma Jeane’s understanding of her own.

The writer offers to explain the details of their connection if they meet in person. He also supplies an account of the separation: he alleges that Norma Jeane’s mother drove him out of her life and made Norma Jeane believe that he had driven the mother away. That is a consequential accusation, but the letter does not substantiate it. Its account of the past is inseparable from its attempt to secure a future meeting, so the claim functions both as an explanation and as a plea to be heard.

He imagines that father and daughter might celebrate their long-denied love together on an occasion special to her. The letter ends as an appeal for forgiveness and a hoped-for personal encounter. Its envelope has no return address, although the postmark is Los Angeles. That small material detail places the message in the city without identifying the sender’s residence; the intimacy of the address is matched by uncertainty about who, exactly, has sent it.

The birthday letter: affection and admonition

A later letter arrives in a Hallmark envelope embossed with a red rose and marked for a birthday. Before opening it, Norma Jeane holds it for a long time in her trembling hand. Inside is a single typewritten sheet dated June 10, 1955. The sender addresses her as his dear daughter, says that he has been ill but that she remains in his thoughts, and notes that she is now twenty-nine and an adult. The birthday greeting turns the abstract relationship asserted in the first letter into a direct claim on a particular day in her life.

This second letter expands the father’s self-presentation. He refers to rumors that Marilyn Monroe has been investigated for associations with communists, warns her against trouble in her past, and describes Hollywood as a place with more shadows than light. He then condemns her defense of free speech and voices virulently antisemitic and racist views about the Rosenbergs, Charlie Chaplin, and Paul Robeson. His message is not simply an affectionate greeting: it attempts to instruct his adult daughter politically and to discredit people and positions with which he associates her.

The letter also revises the image of the mother supplied in the earlier appeal. The sender says that his own recent illness has led him to think of Norma Jeane’s mother less as an evil person than as a sick woman whom he should forgive. The softened judgment does not resolve the earlier accusation that the mother caused their separation; instead, it shows the father recasting that history through the emotional and moral language of forgiveness. He again promises to visit soon and invokes a long journey by sea, casting a meeting as urgent before that journey begins.

A letter carried to Gladys

The first letter does not remain only a private exchange between Norma Jeane and its unknown sender. She carries it in her handbag when she visits Gladys Mortensen at Lakewood and tells her mother that she has a surprise to read aloud, asking not to be interrupted. Gladys makes a sarcastic remark about Norma Jeane having children and needing Marilyn’s help to nurse them; Norma Jeane laughs, or tries to. Against that strained exchange, the father’s letter becomes something she brings to her mother for a response, not merely a document she reads alone.

After Norma Jeane reads it in a calm, clear, neutral voice, Gladys says nothing. Norma Jeane kisses her on the cheek and tells her she loves her. Gladys continues not to speak or look at her; as Norma Jeane leaves, she sees her mother turned away, staring at a brightly colored Sacred Heart of Jesus. The scene establishes no explanation for Gladys’s silence and does not confirm the writer’s story. Instead, the letter enters a mother-daughter relationship already marked by distance, and the silence that follows leaves the claim unanswered.

What the letters establish—and leave open

Across the two documents, the writer moves between confession, defense, instruction, and anticipation. He claims paternity, says he has been absent for many years, offers a version of why the separation occurred, describes his wife’s illness and his own, and repeatedly proposes an in-person meeting. The birthday card adds political judgment and a stated willingness to forgive Norma Jeane’s mother. These details make the letters substantial records of what he wants his daughter to believe about him, even when they cannot verify that account.

Their physical forms sharpen that tension. The first arrives in an unreturned envelope bearing only a Los Angeles postmark; the later message comes on birthday stationery, is dated, and is held trembling before it is opened. Both are typed, yet their contents seek the closeness of family speech: daughter, father, mother, forgiveness, and a meeting still to come. The letters can make the absent father imaginable and give Norma Jeane a story to carry to Gladys, but they do not themselves produce recognition, reconciliation, or a documented reunion. Their decisive effect lies in making an intimate possibility present while leaving its truth unresolved.