Blonde, Netflix's Marilyn Monroe film starring Ana de Armas as the legendary movie star, has left fans with a lot of questions about the late actress' life.
The highly anticipated film, based on a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, was finally released on the streaming platform on Wednesday after several delays.
Blonde, both the novel and the movie, contains fictionalized versions of events from Monroe's life, with the film's director, Andrew Dominik, even describing it as "all fiction."
This has left fans curious, however, as to which elements of the film, if any, are based in truth.
One particular aspect that has roused viewers' interest is the identity of Monroe's father, and it was publicly confirmed only this year, six decades after her death in 1962.
The character of her father is mentioned in Blonde, but is the portrayal accurate?
Newsweek has everything you need to know about the mystery surrounding Monroe's father.
Who Was Marilyn Monroe's Father?
In Blonde, it is suggested that Marilyn Monroe's father is an actor, and not her mother's husband, Martin Mortensen, as stated on her birth certificate.
This storyline in the movie is partly true as Monroe's father was not Mortensen. However, he was not an actor.
Although the film never says the name of the mystery man with whom Monroe's mother had an affair, earlier in 2022 it was confirmed that the Some Like It Hot star's biological father was Charles Stanley Gifford.
Monroe's paternity was confirmed by DNA testing and was revealed in a French documentary called Marilyn, Her Final Secret, released in June 2022.
In the documentary, DNA researchers take a strand of Monroe's hair, and saliva and cheek swabs from both Gifford's granddaughter, Francine Gifford, and his great-granddaughter, Lisa, to confirm the star's father.
The documentary says that Charles Stanley Gifford was born in 1898 and died in 1965 at the age of 66. He worked as a motion-picture salesman, not an actor, which is how he met Monroe's mother, Gladys. She worked as a film-cutter at RKO Pictures, and the pair embarked on an affair together.
Prior to the confirmation in Marilyn, Her Final Secret, there had been rumors that Gifford was her father.
In another documentary, Marilyn Monroe: The Mortal Goddess, dating from 1996, Monroe's former husband, police officer James Dougherty, says that his ex-wife knew about Gifford and had tried to make contact with him before she got famous.
"She got on the phone and she looked up his number and she called him," Dougherty said in the film. "He wouldn't recognize her. He said, 'No, I don't know who you are. See my attorney.'"
Dougherty said that the interaction with Gifford left the actress "real sad."
Blonde says Monroe was never able to authenticate the identity of her father. However, in her own autobiography My Story, which was released a decade after her death at the age of 36, Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson, confirms that she did, in fact, know who her biological father was.
Blonde is available to stream on Netflix now.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Laura Donaldson is a Newsweek Film and TV Reporter (SEO), based in Edinburgh, U.K. Her focus is on reality TV. ... Read more
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