Marilyn Monroe enjoying the summer with her stepchildren, Jane and Robert “Bobby” Miller, in 1957. That summer, she told a reporter, “we have a little house on the beach, it’s just big enough for us and the children.”
She first met them days before she and Arthur wed in June 1956. Bobby, 7, was open to her while Jane, 11, hung back. She had difficulty accepting the divorce and their relationship, but it wasn’t long before Marilyn befriended both kids. She never wanted to replace their mother, she just wanted to be their friend, and have them accept her on their own terms.
Her relationship to them meant everything to her and she certainly had a mother’s love for them. She worried about the burden her fame had on them, she told Richard Meryman, “Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: don’t hide these things for me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out and I’ll answer all of your questions.”
She looked forward to every visit and planned fun activities for them all to do, took an active interest in their lives, and told them stories from her childhood wanting “them to know of life other than their own.” While the kids were away at camp, Marilyn sent fun letters, often writing from the point of view as their dog, Hugo. In other letters, she told them a little about her film shoots, fun things she had planned for them, asked Bobby what birthday gifts Janie would like, how their friends were, and more. During her interview with Cosmopolitan magazine, published in March 1959, she said that one of her hobbies was collecting her step-children’s letters.
After the divorce, she continued to be as close to them as she could be, and took pride in helping to raise them. She wrote letters, sent gifts, and offered visits — both in New York and for them to come out to California. After her death, photographs of all of her stepchildren, including Joe DiMaggio Jr., were found amongst her belongings.
In 1960, she told a reporter, “I can’t explain it but I think I love them more than anyone. Their lives are very precious to me.”
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