The Truth About Marilyn Monroe's Siblings

There is little doubt that Marilyn Monroe is one of the biggest cultural icons of the modern era. While her numerous performances on-screen have become ingrained in popular culture, her dynamic personal life has also become of great interest in the years since her rise to fame. Indeed, even 60 years after her death, a full-length biopic starring Ana de Armas, made to honor the late star, has been the subject of much hype and great anticipation. 

However, although the world knew her as a star, Marilyn Monroe began life as Norma Jeane Mortenson long before she became instantly recognizable across the globe. And despite all the fanfare surrounding Monroe's personal life, most notably her ill-fated marriages to baseball legend Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, many may not know the truth behind her long-lost half-siblings. Given her troubling and difficult upbringing, even Monroe herself never learned the full truth about them. 

Berniece Baker Miracle, born Berniece Inez Gladys Baker in 1919, was the second-born child (after her brother Jackie) of Gladys Pearl Baker, and her first husband, Jasper Newton Baker. However, Jasper was severely abusive, which led to Gladys divorcing him in 1921 after four years of marriage. In a stunning move, Jasper decided to kidnap the children and raise them in his native Kentucky. It was five years after the divorce, while she was married to her second husband, that Gladys had Norma Jeane Mortenson — soon to become Marilyn Monroe. 

It was when Bernice was around 19 that Gladys would tell her of the existence of her sister, Norma Jeane, seven years her junior. The sisters quickly began corresponding while Bernice still lived in Kentucky. It wasn't until 1944, when 18-year-old Norma Jeane finally traveled to meet her for the first time. In her memoir, centered largely around her half-sister, titled "My Sister Marilyn: A Memoir of Marilyn Monroe," Bernice wrote, "There was no chance of missing her. None of the passengers looked anything like [her]: tall, so pretty and fresh, and wearing what she had described, a cobalt wool suit and a hat with a heart shape dip in the brim." 

They remained in contact, on and off, until Monroe's death in 1962. However, much unlike her sister, Bernice largely avoided the spotlight throughout her life. In 2022, it was reported that Bernice died in 2014 at the age of 94. 

Marilyn Monroe had one maternal half-brother — also by her mother's first husband, Jasper Newton Baker — named Robert Kermitt "Jackie" Baker, who was born in 1918. However, he died of tuberculosis at the age of 15 in 1933; Monroe — who had never met him — was 7 years old at the time. Like his full sister, he was kidnapped by his father in 1921, and was raised in Jasper's native Kentucky. 

Given that Monroe was the product of an extramarital affair, and had almost no contact with her biological father, it stands to reason that she never met her two paternal half-siblings. Charles Stanley Gifford, her biological father, had two children with his first wife Lillian Priester; and, like Jackie and Bernice, they are both older than the movie star.

Their first child was a daughter, Doris Elizabeth, who was born in 1920 and died of unknown causes in 1933 at the age of 12 (when Monroe was 6). Their second child was Charles Stanley Gifford Jr., who was born in 1922 and eventually became a successful sales manager in the oil industry before his death in 2015. His children and grandchildren have been unafraid to openly discuss Monroe's life; in fact, it was one of them who supplied the DNA swab which confirmed that Gifford was Monroe's biological father in 2022.