Stars was a beauty, she lived a long happy life: what was the fate of Bernice, the mysterious sister of Marilyn Monroe

Norma Jean Baker – this name was given at baptism to the one who was called the “goddess of the 20th century”. Baker is not Norma Jean’s father’s last name, but her mother Gladys’ first husband. Later, the Mortensen surname appeared in Norma Jean’s papers, carried by Gladys’ second husband, Edward. However, he never saw the girl, and as confirmed in 2022, he was not her parent – it turned out to be a man named Charles Gifford.

By the time the future Marilyn Monroe was born, Gladys had the experience of marriage. She divorced her husband John Baker with a huge scandal. He attributed all the difficulties to the difficult nature of his wife, but the woman apparently could not cope with the first manifestations of mental disorders.

Robert and Bernice were born to this marriage. The little girl was only 4 years old (born in 1919) when her mother left her children with their father and went to California in search of a new beautiful life by the ocean. It is true that everything turned out completely differently than it was drawn in dreams. Meeting a man who did not want to marry or stay with her left Gladys in 1926 with the newborn Norma Jean in her arms and without a livelihood. These troubles caused aggravation: the mother was in psychiatric clinics, the girl traveled to foster families …

Norma Jean didn’t even know she had a brother and a sister. In her obituary, Gladys stated that the youngest daughter was her third child, but noted “the only survivor”.

The girl was 12 years old when she learned about her mother’s first family. By that time, her older brother Robert was really gone: he died in hospital at the age of 15. The reason was an extremely weakened state of health – Robert was constantly injuring himself and getting into trouble, in addition, he suffered from severe pain due to a crippled leg. He damaged him by falling out of the car when his parents were arguing and did not even notice that the boy was not in the cab …

Bernice told Norma Jean all this in letters. The older sister contacted the younger one first. Bernice was now quite grown up—married to Paris Miracles, the son of a university teacher, and leading a wonderful, prosperous life as a suburban housewife. She was 19 when her father handed her a letter from Gladys: the woman said she had a youngest daughter and gave her current address in case the older children wanted to meet Norma Jean. The woman did not know about Robert’s death. She wrote to her ex-husband in the desperate hope that he would help her get out of a psychiatric clinic.

Bernice was in complete shock: she did not remember her mother and knew nothing about her, she was raised by her stepmother. But later she admitted that she did not feel pain and resentment – only great inspiration and happiness. She believed that she could make up for lost time with her mother and sister.

Her mother’s letters were hopeless: Gladys was completely taken over by paranoid schizophrenia. She sent Bernice endless plans for her release from the clinic, described in great detail. Some have even implicated the President and Congress…

But with Norma Jean, the older sister easily found a common language. The girls shared literally all the daily details with each other, exchanged photos. However, their first meeting did not take place until 1944 due to the fact that both the Miracles and the aspiring actress were constantly on the move. Norma Jean came to her sister’s family in Detroit and met her niece Mona Ray, with whom she remained close until her death in August 1962.

In 1946, the girls had a chance to feel like a real family: Gladys Baker was released from the hospital. Bernice took over all the worries about her, they were visited by Norma Jean, who had already become a famous model and actively went to auditions.

Her relationship with her mother was strained, and in the end they had a complete quarrel: Gladys was unhappy that her youngest daughter would become an actress and considered such ambitions to be complete nonsense, Norma Jean had accumulated a whole heap of resentment against her mother since early childhood. No peace efforts helped Bernice.

Disagreements with her mother did not affect Norma Jean’s attitude towards her older sister. They continued to communicate as natives, keeping in touch through correspondence and seeing each other systematically. The growing popularity of Marilyn Monroe did not contribute to frequent communication, but the connection did not break. In 1961, Norma Jean asked Bernice to come to Brentwood to help her after a complicated gallbladder operation. It was the last meeting of Gladys’ daughters.

Bernice died in 2014 at the age of 95. She lived in seclusion and did not go on talk shows with stories about her legendary relative: what she could share actually became public only in 2004, when she wrote the book “My Sister Marilyn” with her daughter Mona Ray.

Bernice Miracle collected personal photos, postcards and other memories of Norma Jean under her cover, in which she appears not at all as a blonde beast, but as a warm and loving woman who was looking for roots and supported everyone in her short life.

Photo: Legion media, Getty images, social networks