BLONDE Movie: Did Marilyn Monroe have a threesome with Charlie Chaplin Jr. and Edward Robinson Jr.?

The Netflix movie Blonde and its 1999 source material novel of the same name by Joyce Carole Oates take a number of liberties with the facts of Marilyn Monroe’s life. One of the biggest exaggerations involves Charlie “Cass” Chaplin Jr. and Edward Robinson Jr. Did Marilyn’s polyamorous relationship with them really happen? Did she really get an abortion?

This film tackles Marilyn Monroe’s life and many of the difficult situations she was in with a clumsy recklessness. Instead of humanizing her experience, she still seems objectified and one-dimensional as an attractive archetype of a troubled woman with “daddy issues.” On top of it all, quite a bit of what we see on screen in this movie isn’t based on historical evidence.

For example, Charlie Chaplin Jr.’s role in Marilyn’s life in the film is quite significant. The kernel of truth that this relationship is based on is the fact that the two of them dated at some point, which he confirmed in his autobiography. She also briefly dated Edward Robinson Jr. at some point.

The rest of the narrative surrounding these two in Marilyn’s life is fabricated. She did not date them at the same time or have a threesome with them. There is also no evidence that Marilyn ever had an abortion.

Later in the film, the pair blackmailed Marilyn with nude photos at the height of her career when she was married to Joe DiMaggio. This is also a fictionalization.

At the end of the movie, we get even more outlandish storytelling about Charlie Chaplin Jr. He dies of alcoholism in the film despite having outlived Marilyn Monroe by six years in real life. His real cause of death at age 42 was a pulmonary embolism.

We find out in the film that the fictionalized Charlie was sending Marilyn letters pretending to be her father over the years, which again didn’t happen. The movie weaves this strange fiction into most of the narrative and uses it as the reason why Marilyn spiraled out of control at the end of her life and overdosed.

The end of Marilyn’s life is still a mystery, and there are debates raging about whether or not she died at her own hand, or from murder.

If she did end her own life, it had nothing to do with being harassed by someone pretending to be her father. She struggled with severe mental health issues and intense pressure from fame and her brushes with highly powerful people.

Marilyn experienced a great deal of trauma and spent most of her childhood in foster care. She did know who her real father was, Charles Stanley Gifford, and was rejected by him when she attempted to contact him before she achieved fame.

Just this past year, 2022, DNA evidence has proved that Charles Stanely Gifford, was indeed Marilyn’s father. Her mother Glady met him when she worked at Consolidated Studios. They had a brief affair, but he rejected and ignored her after she got pregnant with Marilyn/Norma Jean.

Because of his rejection of her, Marilyn’s mother listed her ex-husband, Martin Edward Mortensen, on Marilyn’s birth certificate as her fatehr, which added to the public confusion about who Marilyn’s dad was.

Marilyn Monroe’s was a complex life shaped by trauma but also by resilience and tenacity. Her story deserves a more powerful, fact-based retelling than this current film.