At this time, Gladys and Grace were living in a very small apartment in Hollywood. Norma Jeane had
been there before. Occasionally, Gladys would pick her up at the Bolenders’ and bring her to her home
for an awkward visit or sleepover. Marilyn would later say that she spent most of this time with her
mother “in the closet of her bedroom hiding among her clothes. She seldom spoke to me except to say,
‘Don’t make so much noise, Norma.’ She would say this even when I was lying in bed at night and
turning the pages of a book. Even the sound of a page turning made her nervous.”
Now, suddenly, mother and daughter were expected to forge a happy relationship. It wouldn’t be easy.
After all, they didn’t even really know each other. Once Norma Jeane began living with her, Gladys
became convinced that the girl was unhappy. “She spent seven years living on a spacious farm, and
now this?” she asked Grace. “I’m sure she’s miserable here.” In fact, Gladys was not wrong. Norma
Jeane missed her Aunt Ida terribly, as well as her foster siblings. She was just a little girl who had been
uprooted from the only life she’d known, the only people she’d ever loved. It must have seemed so
unfair. She certainly couldn’t hide her emotions about it, even if they did upset her mother. “Are we
going to visit Aunt Ida soon?” she kept asking. However, Gladys and Grace had made the decision that
it would be best if they not allow Norma Jeane to spend any more time at the Bolenders’. They felt it
would just make her adjustment to her new life all the more difficult.
“Meanwhile, Gladys’s depression was deepening during this time and she seemed more confused than
ever,” said Esther Thompson, whose mother, Ruth, worked with Grace at Consolidated. The two were
very close friends. “She said she needed more time to make some changes. She wanted to be more
settled and possibly even be living in a house when she finally had her daughter in her care. Then
Grace, who believed that anything was possible, encouraged her that such a thing could happen if they
just put their heads together.”
It’s interesting that Grace McKee felt so certain she and Gladys would be able to buy a home, given
that the economy in America was in such desperate shape in 1933. Almost fifteen million Americans
were unemployed. Of these, about two million were wandering aimlessly about the country in search of
work. Hundreds of thousands of people were homeless, living in tents or abandoned ramshackle
dwellings. Banks in thirty-eight states were forced to close as anxious investors began withdrawing all
of their deposits. It’s almost impossible to imagine the country in such turmoil, but indeed the Great
Depression was a devastating time in our history. From the beginning, America’s new president, fiftyone-
year-old Franklin Delano Roosevelt, tried to restore popular confidence. “The only thing we have
to fear,” he said in his inaugural address in March 1933, “is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning,
unjustified terror.” One thing was certain about Grace McKee, and that was that she was fearless. Her
confidence that she would find a way inspired Gladys to believe that maybe their future would be a
bright one, despite what was going on all around them.
Therefore, it was the two women’s decision to give Norma Jeane to yet another foster family—the
Atkinsons—but just temporarily. George and Maud Atkinson, both English, were in the periphery of
show business as bit players in films. George had also worked as a stand-in for George Arliss, the
distinguished British actor and the first Brit to win an Academy Award as Best Actor. He and Maud had
a young daughter named Nellie who was around Norma’s age. It was decided that Norma Jeane could
be happy with them while Gladys and Grace strategized their next move.