Gladys Monroe Baker, mother to Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson), was in and out of psychiatric institutions all of her life. It’s been documented that she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, an incurable disease that performs a violent dance with the mind, releasing it to lucidity for brief moments, then, without warning, spinning it back into hellish delusion. As a result of her mother’s inability to maintain sanity, Marilyn spent most of her childhood in orphanages, followed by a series of foster homes. During one of Gladys’s rare healthy periods, she and little Norma Jeane lived together for a few months in a small white house near the Hollywood Bowl. The most prized possession in their modest abode was a baby grand piano. When her mother’s illness reared its ugly head again, dragging her back into darkness and into another institution, the few furnishings and the piano were sold off.
After Norma Jeane’s transformation into Marilyn Monroe The Movie Star, she spoke very little of her childhood, her mentally ill mother, or her unknown father. And though Marilyn had made herself into a radiant icon, I imagine there was a piece of her still searching for an uninterrupted childhood, longing for her mother to be whole. I see how the piano must’ve become a symbol of a time when she and her mother were together in relative peace and harmony. Pianos are elegant, mystical, and comforting—from them simple tunes and majestic compositions can spring forth and fill a dismal living room, a dank bar, a concert hall, or even a shack with joy and glory.
Marilyn went on a mission to find her mother’s piano. As the story goes, while still a struggling model and actress, she found and purchased the piano at an auction and kept it in storage until she was able to move it into a home of her own. It accompanied her to all her residences. One of its final homes was the lavish Manhattan apartment Marilyn shared with her third and last husband, renowned playwright Arthur Miller, where she custom-coated the instrument in a thick, shiny white lacquer to match the apartment’s glamorous, angelic décor—“a world of white,” as her half sister, Berniece Miracle, called it. “My happiest hours as a little girl were around that piano,” Marilyn said. I imagine when your childhood was fraught with insecurity and fear like Marilyn’s and like mine, the romance of those lost happy hours is extremely valuable. I understood why she searched for, bought, stored, and cared for the piano—so much so that I rescued it at auction at Christie’s in 1999. It is a treasure and my most expensive piece of art. And now, Marilyn Monroe’s white baby grand piano is the centerpiece, the pièce de résistance, of my own glamorous Manhattan penthouse. Marilyn was my first vision of a superstar that I could relate to, on an almost spiritual level.
We did without a lot of things when I was young, but what my mother couldn’t live without was a piano. We always had a piano, and I had many happy and formative hours around it with my mother. My mother would go through songs and scales with me, and of course I would hear her practicing her dramatic operatic scales. It was at the piano where I would sit and make up little tunes of my own.
My mother never had much money, but one of her greatest contributions to my development was exposing me to all kinds of people, especially musicians. She made a few dollars here and there by giving voice lessons at our house. Her practicing was a constant, but what I treasured most were the jam sessions. Accomplished musicians would come and hang out and play music at my mother’s bohemian spot “by the bay,” and I would jam with them. Live music was the best thing about living with my mother. I was surrounded by the love of music, but even more importantly, by the love of musicianship—the love of the craft, the love of the process. When I was a little girl, my mother introduced me to the world of sitting in with musicians: improvising, vibing, and singing.
I particularly remember her singing from a Carly Simon songbook, she would play from it all the time. If I asked her to play a song for me to sing, she’d happily oblige. She never pushed me to sing or practice, but she encouraged me. She knew early on I had her advanced ear for music. When I was five she arranged for me to have piano lessons for a short time. But rather than read the music, I would play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” by ear. “Don’t use your ear, don’t use your ear!” my teacher would implore. But I didn’t know how not to use my ear. Because music was a gift of freedom in my world of scarcity, the one place I felt unrestrained, I resisted the repetition and discipline required to learn how to read music and play the piano. Hearing and mimicking came so easily to me. This is one of several times I wish my mother had pushed me and made me sit and stick with it.
My mother and her guitarist friend would also sing standards from the 1940s (of course that’s the era I loved, not only for the glamour but because the melodies were so strong). She particularly loved Billie Holiday and would often sing her songs. I remember hearing my mother sing “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” I learned it and we would sing it together, and I would instinctively scat, which I loved. It felt like my little-girl version of catching the Holy Spirit.
I learned several jazz standards from my mom and her musician pals, and some of them took note of my ear and natural abilities. At about twelve years old I would sit with her and Clint,
