Charles Stanley Gifford had a brief affair with Marilyn Monroe’s mother, but later declined to establish a relationship with his daughter, even after she became a movie star — despite her many efforts to reach out.
Find a GraveCharles Stanley Gifford was confirmed to be Marilyn Monroe’s biological father in 2022.
As much as she tried to hide it from the public, Marilyn Monroe, the iconic bombshell of the 1950s, had a tumultuous life before her rise to stardom. And one part of that was the absence of a father figure. But Monroe long suspected that her father was a man named Charles Stanley Gifford.
On her birth certificate, Monroe’s mother Gladys Pearl Baker wrote that Monroe’s father was her then-husband Martin Edward Mortensen. However, Baker later told her daughter that she suspected that her actual father was a different man — Gifford. Monroe even tried to reach out to Gifford on multiple occasions, but he refused to develop a relationship with her.
Despite his reluctance, a 2022 DNA test proved what Baker had long suspected — Charles Stanley Gifford was indeed Marilyn Monroe’s father.
So who was he?
Who Was Charles Stanley Gifford?
Charles Stanley Gifford was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1898. As a boy, he made his way to California, and established a career in the film industry.
Public DomainCharles Stanley Gifford met Marilyn Monroe’s mother, Gladys Pearl Baker, while working at RKO Studios.
Gifford also got married. In 1919, he wed Lillian Priester and the couple had two children together. However, the marriage was unhappy. According to the Daily Mail, Lillian filed for divorce a few years later, claiming that Gifford “shamelessly boasted of his conquests with other women.”
Before the divorce was final, Gifford, then a supervisor at RKO Studios, crossed paths with Gladys Pearl Baker, who Newsweek reports worked at the company as a film cutter. The two soon began an affair.
But when Baker got pregnant, Gifford left her. And since Baker was still technically married to another man, Martin Edward Mortensen, his name, not Gifford’s was added to the birth certificate of her baby, Norma Jeane Mortensen, who was born on June 1, 1926.
Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesGladys Pearl Baker’s then-husband was listed as Marilyn Monroe’s father on her birth certificate.
Though Gifford purportedly lived in the same apartment building as Baker and her infant daughter, he was not involved in their lives. He remarried, and left the film business to operate a dairy. Gifford died in 1965.
But before he passed away, Charles Stanley Gifford seemingly knew that there was a strong possibility that he was Marilyn Monroe’s father.
Marilyn Monroe’s Many Attempts To Establish A Relationship With Her Father
Marilyn Monroe had an unstable life from the beginning. When she was just two weeks old — by then, she had been renamed Norma Jeane Baker — she was sent to live with a foster family. Monroe’s mother had become mentally unstable (she would later be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia) and could not care for her baby daughter. Monroe had a chaotic childhood as a result, bouncing between foster families, orphanages, and other homes.
Silver Screen Collection/Contributor/Getty ImagesMarilyn Monroe spent much of her childhood hopping between foster homes due to her mother’s unstable mental health.
Monroe, meanwhile, longed to know more about her father. Though her mother erroneously claimed that he had been an actor, she also showed Monroe a picture of him and told Monroe his name: Charles Stanley Gifford. And when Monroe was an adult, she tried to reach out to him.
In the 1996 documentary “Marilyn Monroe: The Mortal Goddess,” Monroe’s first husband, James Dougherty, claimed that Monroe knew about Gifford and even tried to reach out to him before she became a star.
“She got on the phone and she looked up his number and she called him,” Dougherty said in the documentary. “He wouldn’t recognize her. He said, ‘No, I don’t know who you are. See my attorney.’”
According to Dougherty, the interaction left Monroe “real sad.”
Wikimedia CommonsMarilyn Monroe long suspected that Charles Stanley Gifford was her father, but he refused to develop a relationship with her.
But it wasn’t the last time that Monroe tried to reach out. According to the Daily Mail, Monroe tried to reach out to Charles Stanley Gifford at least twice in 1950. By that point, she was famous. But he still turned her away. On both occasions, Gifford told her more or less the same thing: “Listen, Marilyn, I’m married, I have children. I don’t want you to start any trouble for me.”
According to one of Monroe’s friends, who overheard one of their conversations, these attempts “did her no good…It broke her heart.”
Curiously, despite his resistance to Monroe’s overtures, Gifford did send her a get well card at some point (the card is undated). According to People, the premade card read: “This cheery little get-well note comes specially [sic] to say that lots of thoughts and wishes, too, are with you every day.”
Julien’s AuctionsThis note, found among Marilyn Monroe’s personal belongings after she died, suggested that the actress and her father did correspond on occasion.
Gifford added Monroe’s name to the card, though he spelled it wrong (“Marylyn”) as well as a postscript, “A little prayer too. Stanley Gifford, Red Rock Dairy Farm, Hemet, Calif.”
But Marilyn Monroe sadly had many demons, including her lack of a father. On Aug. 5, 1962, she was found dead in her Los Angeles home. She had overdosed on barbiturates at the age of 36.
Gifford died three years later. But he wasn’t definitively identified as Marilyn Monroe’s father until much later.
The Identification Of Charles Stanley Gifford As Marilyn Monroe’s Biological Father
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesMarilyn Monroe tragically passed without being able to develop a deep connection with her father, Charles Stanley Gifford.
Though Charles Stanley Gifford was rumored to be Marilyn Monroe’s father, the truth didn’t come out until June 2022. Then, the results of a DNA test were released in a French documentary called “Marilyn, Her Final Secret.”
As shown in the documentary, a team of scientists tested a lock of Monroe’s hair, which was held at the coroner’s officer after her death. Monroe’s naturally brunette hair had been severely bleached, removing most of her DNA, but the scientists were able to extract enough to check it against DNA from Gifford’s great-granddaughter.
The test came back as a match. Charles Stanley Gifford was indeed Marilyn Monroe’s father. But he never filled that role for her, despite her many attempts to develop a relationship with him.
“Most people can admire their fathers,” Monroe told her third husband, the playwright Arthur Miller. “But I never had one.”
After reading about Charles Stanley Gifford, Marilyn Monroe’s biological father, discover the tragic backstories of Hollywood’s most famous child actors. Then, learn nine famous deaths that rocked old Hollywood.