OFFICIAL FAMILY WEBSITE: MarilynMonroeFamily.com

Currently the paternity of Marilyn Monroe is unavailable. The legal father of Marilyn Monroe was Edward Martin Mortenson aka Martin Edward Mortenson. However, Stanley Gifford is also assumed to be the biological father of Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson, but baptized Norma Jeane Baker.

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Norma Jeane Baker Mortensen, aka "Marilyn Monroe" was shown a photo of a man, resembling Clark Gable, who she was told was her father. That man was Stanley Gifford.

The identity of her biological father is unknown.

Nevertheless, since Stanley Gifford carries a coveted family history background, being a descendant of pilgrims John Alden & Priscilla Mullins, it is popular to claim him to be Marilyn's father, in order to claim her as a distant cousin.

One source perpetuating this popular myth is the Mayflower history site: http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/Genealogy/famousdescendants.php

According to a post on wikipedia:

Monroe's birth certificate names the father as Edward Mortensen, with his residence stated as "unknown,"  Gladys Monroe had married a Martin E. Mortensen in 1924, but they had separated before Gladys' pregnancy. Several of Monroe's biographers suggest that Gladys Monroe used his name to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy. Mortenson filed for divorce from Gladys on March 5, 1927 and the case was finalized on October 15, 1928. When Mortensen died, at the age of 85, Monroe's birth certificate together with her parents' marriage and divorce documents were discovered that proved that she was born legitimate. 

Throughout her life, Marilyn Monroe denied that Mortensen was her father. She said that when she was a child, she had been shown a photograph of a man that Gladys Monroe identified as her father. She remembered that he had a thin moustache and somewhat resembled Clark Gable, and that she had amused herself by pretending that Gable was her father, but never determined her father's true identity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe

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Marilyn Monroe's mother was employed by a motion picture company and was a film cutter. She met and is purported to have had an affair with a person also employed by the film company, Charles Stanley Gifford. From this affair the child to be known as Marilyn Monroe was probably conceived. Both Miss Monroe and her mother claimed that the father was Charles Stanley Gifford. Because Mr. Gifford was a Mayflower descendant, Miss Monroe, as a descendant of John Alden and his wife Priscilla Mullins, passengers aboard the Mayflower could legitimately claim to be a Mayflower descendant.

-------------------- Marilyn Monroe's career as an actress spanned 16 years. She made 30 films (her last never completed), 24 in the first 8 years of her career. Due to her mother being a single parent, baby Norma Jeane was placed in the home of Della Hogan's neighbor, Albert and Ida Bolender, with Gladys having lived there with Norma Jeane for the first two months of her life, before returning to work from maternity leave. It was here Marilyn lived the first 7 years of her life. "They were terribly strict," she claimed. "They didn't mean any harm...it was their religion. They brought me up harshly."

In 1933, Norma Jeane lived briefly with her mother. Gladys begin to show signs of mental depression, after the death of her mother in 1927, the suicide of her grandfather in 1933, and her own financial difficulties of owning a home, and managing finances as a single parent in the middle of the Great Depression, and in 1934 was admitted to a rest home in Santa Monica.

Grace McKee, a close friend of her mother took over the care of Norma Jeane. "Grace loved and adored her", recalled one of her co-workers. Grace, telling her..."Don't worry, Norma Jeane. You're going to be a beautiful girl when you get big...an important woman, a movie star." Grace was captivated by Jean Harlow, a superstar of the twenties, and Marilyn would later say..."and so Jean Harlow was my idol."

Grace was to marry in 1935 and due to financial difficulties, Norma Jeane was placed in an orphanage from September 1935 to June 1937. Grace frequently visited her, taking her to the movies, buying clothes and teaching her how to apply makeup at her young age. Norma Jeane was to later live with several of Grace's relatives.

"The world around me then was kind of grim. I had to learn to pretend in order to...I don't know...block the grimness. The whole world seemed sort of closed to me...(I felt) on the outside of everything, and all I could do was to dream up any kind of pretend-game."

In September 1941 Norma Jeane was again living with Grace when she met Jim Dougherty, 5 years her senior. Grace encouraged the relationship and on learning that she and her husband would be moving to the East Coast, set in motion plans for Norma Jeane to marry Dougherty on June 19, 1942.

"Grace McKee arranged the marriage for me, I never had a choice. There's not much to say about it. They couldn't support me, and they had to work out something. And so I got married."

Dougherty joined the Merchant Marines in 1943 and in 1944 was sent overseas. Norma Jeane, while working in a factory inspecting parachutes in 1944, was photographed by the Army as a promotion to show women on the assembly line contributing to the war effort. One of the photographers, David Conover, asked to take further pictures of her. By spring of 1945, she was quickly becoming known as a "photographers dream" and had appeared on 33 covers of national magazines.

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Some of Marilyn's Lovers

(Taken from the book, "Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe," by Anthony Summers, photo section between pages 240 and 241).*

• Jim Dougherty, her first husband. She was seventeen, and her eyes were already wandering to othe men. The idea of having a child "stood my hair on end," Marilyn was to say. Dougherty says the opposite was true. Abortions would follow, then fruitless efforts to bear children.
• Arthur Miller, playwright, who met Marilyn in 1950, six years before they were married. The man who lasted longest. Their marriage survived more than four years.
• Johnny Hyde, lover and agent, a little man with a mighty influence. Dying of heart disease, set Marilyn firmly on the road to fame.
• Fred Karger, the voice coach, to whom Marilyn gave her heart in 1948. He did not want to marry her.
• Joe DiMaggio, 1954 marriage. The honeymoon was hardly over before she was talking of one day marrying Arthur Miller. Their marriage lasted nine months.
• Marlon Brando, a brief affair, 1955

(Questionable).

• Yves Montand, the French lover. The 1960 affair coincided with the collapse of the Miller marriage but did not cause it.
  • some in above category originally listed were removed, due to factual inaccuracies in this book.

More links

• Photos of Marilyn at Goodreads