This week, Czech television aired another exciting documentary in which investigative journalists search for the ancestors of famous people. While in Božena Němcová’s case DNA analysis has not yet succeeded in discovering who her real parents were, their American colleagues have been more fortunate. With the help of the most modern scientific methods, they have revealed the identity of the father of one of the greatest icons of the twentieth century, the actress Marilyn Monroe.
At the same time, they bet on the hypothesis that the real father of the actress could be Charles Stanley Gifford. They then approached living members of her family to see if they would be willing to participate in a daring experiment that could reveal the truth. Although Marilyn’s mother had Gladys Mortenson listed on her birth certificate as husband Edward Mortenson and her baby was named Norma Jeanne Mortenson, Gladys had no idea who the baby’s real father was. It could have been any of her lovers.
The truth suppressed
However, it had already been speculated that it could be Charles Gifford. Marilyn then tried to track him down and even discovered the farm where she lived with her family. However, she refused to meet her, which hurt this very sensitive being deeply. Interestingly, the living descendants of Charles Gifford also heard in their youth that their grandfather could be the potential father of the famous actress, but their parents forbade them to tell about it. “So we kept silent because they told us it wasn’t true, that it was something that sold magazines well and they told us: your grandfather would never leave his son”. his granddaughter Francine told the filmmakers. Today he thinks that grandfather Charles did not want to expose his family to the attention of the media and decided to take his secret to the grave. While she also had no interest in harming the family’s reputation, she admitted that she would like to know the truth.
MM’s last secret
So he willingly provided DNA samples along with Gifford’s great-granddaughter Lisa and waited months to find out if they matched DNA obtained from two different strands of Marilyn Monroe’s hair. The analysis was carried out by top scientists in a laboratory in Toulouse, France, who, however, until the last moment had no idea which samples they were examining. By the way, the first one was kept by the actress’s hairdresser, the second one was cut off as a keepsake by the man who was cleaning her body before her funeral. After an extremely difficult analysis, complicated by the fact that the rare samples contained minute amounts of DNA, they were shown to match unequivocally those donated by Francine and Lisa. When they finally found out to their surprise, they could hardly hide their excitement: “It’s amazing. It gives me goosebumps” Francine confessed in the documentary “Marilyn Monroe’s Last Secret”. But for now, she has no idea what this sensational information could change in her life.
Source : Czech television
