Norma Jeane takes Gladys out of Norwalk Hospital

Norma Jeane Baker takes Gladys Mortensen out of Norwalk State Hospital in an effort to give her mother a few hours beyond the institution’s walls. The outing offers tenderness and ordinary pleasures, but it cannot overcome their estrangement: Gladys barely recognizes her daughter, refuses to identify Norma Jeane’s father, and remains emotionally difficult to reach. The encounter also becomes material for Norma Jeane’s acting, as she recognizes Gladys’s restless hands in the role of Nell.

Background and Preparation

Norma Jeane’s visit comes after years of separation. Gladys has been hospitalized for a decade, has undergone several courses of electroshock treatment, and receives an intensive medication regimen to prevent depressive and manic episodes. The hospital has described her as near the highest level of recovery possible in her case; its records say she has not tried to harm herself or others for years. Norma Jeane has asked whether seeing her daughter might cause problems, and the psychiatrist’s reply leaves the concern pointedly unresolved: would a visit cause problems for her or for her mother?

Now earning money as a model for the Preene Agency and as a new actress at The Studio, Norma Jeane travels to Norwalk in a borrowed Buick convertible. She feels guilty because her previous visit was at Easter and it is now late September. She has sent Gladys a letter with a twenty-five-dollar check, but has not told her about the good news of her role in La tua bocca brucia. Norma Jeane has learned to distrust success, fearing that what has been given to her might suddenly be taken away. She brings gifts as usual: a small book of poems by Louise Bogan and a wicker basket of plums and pears. She suspects Gladys may not read the poems or trust the fresh fruit, but the gifts give the visit a familiar shape. She also intends to leave money.

The Outing

Norma Jeane is immediately aware of the attention her arrival draws. Gladys is sunk into a broken sofa in a dim, unpleasant room, dressed in a shapeless gray cotton garment and with uncombed, greasy hair. Norma Jeane had hoped they would go to lunch in town, as they had on an earlier occasion, and feels disappointment and anger when Gladys seems not to recognize her. When Norma Jeane greets her as her mother, Gladys asks whether they know one another and complains about her smell. The odor is not a sign that Norma Jeane is unclean: Gladys dislikes the chemical smell of her daughter’s hair dye, which is mingled with expensive Chanel perfume given to her by V. Norma Jeane blushes, smiles, and apologizes.

The gifts make a brief, awkward ritual. Norma Jeane sits beside Gladys, offers the poetry and fruit, and presents them as though the objects could give her hands something useful to do. Gladys grunts her thanks. When Norma Jeane asks her to name the father she has long tried to trace, Gladys gives no explanation and simply refuses. Norma Jeane then combs her mother’s hair, straightens her collar, and places a sheer black scarf around her neck. With the necessary permissions obtained, she leads Gladys out of the hospital. Staff members watch and smile; the receptionist compliments Gladys on how nice she looks, though Gladys does not seem to hear.

At a Norwalk beauty salon, Gladys lets a hairdresser wash, brush, and set her hair without showing much interest. Norma Jeane then takes her to a tea room, where the two women are the only female customers among a handful of diners. The other patrons stare at the glamorous blonde beside the frail middle-aged woman who might be—and must be—her mother. The salon and the scarf make Gladys appear almost ordinary outside the hospital, while their conspicuous difference makes the outing itself a public display. Norma Jeane orders for them and helps Gladys pour the tea. She imagines the two of them driving away together, with no destination, along the coast and as far as San Francisco, Portland, or Alaska. She has often asked Gladys to spend a quiet weekend with her in Hollywood; the invitation expresses a hope for a private mother-daughter life that the scene does not show them achieving.

Care, Conflict, and Performance

Over tea, Norma Jeane urges Gladys to leave the hospital more often. She tells her that everyone gets nervous, mentions that The Studio has a doctor who gives actors prescriptions for their nerves, and says she does not take such medicines because they are worse than the nerves themselves. She hears her own voice as bright and childish, the voice she has cultivated for Nell. Her effort to reassure Gladys slips into a more painful accusation: she wonders aloud whether her mother wants to recover, or whether the hospital has become a hiding place. Gladys’s face tightens; the hand holding the cup trembles, spilling tea onto the scarf.

The scene makes the boundary between acting and family life unstable without erasing it. Norma Jeane speaks through Nell’s voice and imagines the two of them as conspirators planning an escape, but she knows Nell is a role, not a person her mother has ever known. Gladys’s disorientation and Norma Jeane’s performance seem to approach one another in the visit, yet the actress’s awareness of the role also gives her a way to distinguish it from herself. The outing cannot make Gladys answer her daughter’s questions or accept her invitation. It can, however, make visible how much of Norma Jeane’s care is expressed through gestures: dressing her mother, arranging the meal, and imagining a road they might travel together.

The most revealing detail is not Gladys’s apparent indifference but her hands. Norma Jeane notices that they are inflamed. At the hospital entrance, they had been clenched in her lap or buried in her skirt; now her fingers rub ceaselessly against one another, her bitten and broken nails bloodied and raw. Even when Gladys seems not to attend to what is said, her hands register agitation. Norma Jeane reads them as evidence of an inner distress that her mother’s blank manner conceals.

Return and Aftermath

Norma Jeane returns Gladys to the chronic-care wing at Norwalk State Hospital. Before leaving, she dries her tears, kisses her mother goodbye, and gently takes back the black scarf, wrapping it around her own smooth neck. Her apology and declaration of love end the outing without resolving its pain: Gladys has been taken beyond the hospital, but she must be left there again.

The visit also leaves a trace in Norma Jeane’s work. She later recognizes Gladys’s restless hands in Nell’s movements in La tua bocca brucia, alongside her mother’s magnetic gaze. The account stresses that Norma Jeane had not planned to use Gladys, and suggests that the borrowing may have happened unconsciously: the mother’s bodily gestures have passed into the daughter’s performance. Thus the outing becomes more than a brief escape from hospital routine. It joins acts of care to the labor of acting, while preserving the difference between Gladys’s lived distress and the role through which Norma Jeane can make some part of it visible.