Marilyn Monroe's grandfather was 43 years old when he died of syphilis of the brain. Before he died he'd seemed insane, but it was the disease making him mad.

Her grandmother, Della Monroe, was 51 years old when she died, in a mental hospital. Was she really mentally ill, or had her husband infected her with syphilis? There's no answer to that question, but it's a good question, worth pondering.

Marilyn Monroe's mother, Gladys Monroe, married and had two children, a boy and a girl. She and her husband lived in southern California, and that's where they were when they separated and divorced.

Gladys kept the children and went on with her life. Just about five feet tall, she was a petite, thin, very attractive woman. With auburn hair and striking blue eyes, she found it easy to attract men, which she proceeded to do.

A good time for Gladys was in the bars, and she gained a reputation for being promiscuous.

Before too long, her ex-husband accused her of being a bad mother because of her bar-hopping.

 Then, without warning, one day he took their two young children and went back to his hometown in Kentucky. Gladys was devastated but had nowhere to turn for help. It was the early 1920's.

Back in Kentucky, the boy, Marilyn Monroe's brother, died young. The girl, Marilyn's sister, whose name was Berniece, grew up never knowing whether her mother was dead or alive.

Meanwhile, Marilyn's mother drowned her sorrows in the bars and with a procession of men.

Then she discovered she was pregnant.

Gladys' mother, Della, didn't think Gladys could care for the expected child by herself, but there was no man wanting to marry her.

Della also believed Gladys was not mentally fit to raise a child.

You have to wonder if Gladys really was mentally ill or whether her father's madness from his syphilis set the family up for believing they were mentally weak. Certainly, Gladys was making poor choices, but that's not unusual. Certainly, she'd been depressed at the loss of her children, having them kidnapped the way they were, whisked so far away she couldn't even see them.

It all sounds so tragic for Gladys. In fact, it sounds like real life, not like a novel, in the way that truth is stranger than fiction. It seems so much depends on Marilyn's grandfather having syphilis of the brain and leading his family into a downward spiral of believing themselves mentally ill.

Historically, in those days before penicillin and other wonder drugs, there was no cure for syphilis and men did pass it on to their wives, resulting in two diseased parents who, because of their illness, could not have been the best of parents.

Of course it would have had an effect on Gladys. She was raised by and learned from two parents suffering from a disease which eventually drove them so mad they were institutionalized.

In such a family, how would Gladys have learned to deal with the everyday world?

If your parents are both mentally unstable, does that become the norm for you?

By the time Marilyn was born in 1926, her grandmother had arranged for a neighboring family to raise her.

Named Norma Jeane, the baby girl stayed with her mother for two weeks after birth and then was handed to the neighbors to raise. Gladys worked in Hollywood and paid the neighbors for Norma/Marilyn's keep for seven years, until she took her daughter away and placed her with other people.

From the time she was seven until she got married, Marilyn was moved here and there to live with various people, even spending time in an orphanage. It was to avoid going into an orphanage again that Marilyn married her first husband.

Gladys was in a mental institution, maybe mentally ill, maybe as an escape because she couldn't cope, when she wrote a letter to Kentucky, to her daughter Berniece. At that time, Marilyn didn't even know she had a sister. Nor had Berniece known her mother was alive.

Marilyn was married by the time she learned she had a sister, and she was 18 by the time she met her. Berniece was 25 years old and living in Detroit when Marilyn took a train across the country and the sisters met for a long visit.

The sisters had more visits over the years, and many phone calls and letters sent back and forth. Berniece ended up settling in Florida with her family, and Marilyn went on to become a star.

When Marilyn died, her sister flew to California and helped plan her funeral.

Marilyn's mother lived for twenty-two more years after Marilyn's death, dying in a mental institution.