I now live in my work and in a few relationships with the few people I can really count on. Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experienced, but that’s not where I live.
—Marilyn Monroe
In July 1962, U.S. surveillance satellites photographed newly constructed Cuban long-range ballistic missile installations. Within fifteen weeks the Cuban missile crisis would bring the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust. At this perilous time in history, J. Edgar Hoover received another confidential memorandum from the FBI office in Mexico City headed “MARILYN MONROE—SECURITY MATTER—C [Communist].”
Dated July 13, 1962—just three weeks prior to Marilyn’s death—the document, which was withheld from the FBI’s Monroe file, survived in highly censored form in the FBI files of both Peter Lawford and Frederick Vanderbilt Field.
Under the Freedom of Information appeals process, FOI attorney James Lesar was told by the FBI that the source of the censored information in the Monroe memorandum was an informant. The FBI had been requested by another intelligence agency (CIA) not to reveal the informant’s name. However, the FBI disclosed to Lesar that the source was someone who knew both Field and Monroe and had recently been in private conversation with both of them.
Only Eunice Murray, José Bolaños, Churchill Murray, and Ralph Greenson fell into that category. The likely informant was Bolaños. Field had claimed that Bolaños was “a man of left-wing pretensions, deeply distrusted by the real left,” when he warned Marilyn not to have anything to do with him.
In March 1962, Bolaños had followed Marilyn back to the United States from Mexico and was her escort at the Golden Globe Awards. When Anthony Summers interviewed Bolaños in 1983, Bolaños stated that he had visited Marilyn in New York in April 1962, and that he last saw her in Los Angeles in early July.
Bolaños is further confirmed as the source by the FBI’s disclosure that the details in the confidential memorandum were “heard directly from Marilyn by the informant.” Marilyn is quoted as saying that she “attended a luncheon at Peter Lawford’s residence with one of the Kennedy brothers.” Significant questions were discussed, including political matters. One of the “significant questions” had been “the morality of atomic testing.” The FBI indicated that the luncheon at Lawford’s home occurred in early July, which was when Bolaños last saw Marilyn.
At this critical juncture of the cold war, the relationship of the Kennedy brothers with Marilyn Monroe became a grave national security matter. American intelligence agencies had become acutely aware of the connection between Monroe and suspected Soviet agent Frederick Vanderbilt Field. The CIA document signed by counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton (see “Appendix”) establishes that electronic surveillance had, indeed, been placed on Marilyn’s home. At the same time, Field’s FBI file indicates that he was under intense surveillance in June and July. Alarms again reverberated down the FBI corridors when agents learned that Field had left Mexico City, crossed the border, and was driving to New York. He arrived on July 10 and was staying as a guest in Marilyn Monroe’s apartment at 444 East Fifty-Seventh Street, where he remained for several weeks.
When Bobby Kennedy returned to Washington after viewing the secret hydrogen bomb test, J. Edgar Hoover was waiting with another bomb to explode.
On Tuesday, July 17, Marilyn dialed the attorney general’s private number but was unable to speak with him. Monroe’s telephone records of July 17 indicate that she tried several times to reach Kennedy through the Justice Department switchboard but was not put through to the attorney general. Following his meeting with Hoover, Bobby Kennedy suddenly cut off communication with Marilyn. Like Jack Kennedy, he offered no explanation.
Jeanne Carmen observed, “All of a sudden she couldn’t get through to Bobby. She had no idea what happened, why she couldn’t get through. She was extremely angry.”
“Damn it! He owes me an explanation!” Marilyn said to Robert Slatzer. “I want to know what happened, and I want Bobby to tell me himself!”
During July, telephone records indicated that Marilyn tried to reach Kennedy at the Justice Department from her Brentwood home on eight occasions. Marilyn had also tried to reach him at his Hickory Hill home. “Bobby was furious with Marilyn for taking this liberty,” related Patricia Seaton Lawford.
From early July until August 4, the doctors’ bills show that Marilyn saw Dr. Greenson on twenty-seven of thirty-five days, and her internist, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, on thirteen. On a number of these visits, the records show that Marilyn received injections. The records may reveal not only her own problems, but those of her doctors as well. Her loss of the Kennedy relationship had been, in a sense, their loss too. At the same time they had considerable concern as to why Marilyn had been suddenly shunned. Perhaps they realized it had been discovered that she was a security problem.
The doctors and the Kennedys had a burgeoning common cause—to keep Marilyn quiet. Greenson could keep a daily update on her state of mind and intentions, and both Greenson and Engelberg could see to it that she was sedated when she was overwhelmed by anger. Engelberg’s ex-wife, Esther Maltz, recently made the comment, “Hy kept Marilyn sedated for Dr. Greenson.” And, of course, there was Mrs. Murray, who could keep an eye on Marilyn from within the house and report danger signs.
Robert Slatzer recalled that shortly before he left for Columbus, Ohio, in late July, Marilyn called him from a Brentwood pay phone. She had become convinced her phones were tapped. Marilyn wanted to see him, and it was later that day they drove up the coast to the beach at Point Dume. Slatzer said Marilyn alternated between tears and anger as she spoke about the Kennedys and their refusal to speak to her.
“She was angry and hurt—totally outraged—that they had both cut her off overnight,” Slatzer recalled. “Only two months ago she had been singing happy birthday to the president and was the celebrated guest at the party that followed. That association meant a great deal to her. Suddenly it was over and she felt she had been used, mistreated, and then totally rejected.”
While Marilyn and Slatzer were discussing her problems, she pulled out of her large carryall handbag some papers wrapped with a rubber band. They were handwritten notes from Bobby Kennedy—some of them on Justice Department stationery. She also showed Slatzer her red diary and allowed him to browse through it. Inside, he saw notes pertaining to conversations with the Kennedys regarding the Bay of Pigs, Castro, the Mafia, and Jimmy Hoffa. When Slatzer asked Marilyn why she had made the notes, she said, “Because Bobby liked to talk about political things. He got mad at me one day because he said I didn’t remember anything he told me.”
Slatzer questioned what she was going to do if Jack or Bobby Kennedy continued not speaking with her, and Marilyn angrily responded, “I might just hold a press conference. I’ve certainly got a lot to say!”
Marilyn Monroe was in a position to bring down the presidency. She was cognizant of Jack Kennedy’s marital infidelities and other private matters. She had his notes and letters and was privy to Kennedy’s involvement with Sam Giancana. That the Kennedy brothers had discussed national security matters with the film star added to an astonishing array of indiscretions. The Profumo affair, which eventually brought down the British government, was to surface in the following year.
A number of people have questioned just how serious Marilyn may have been about calling a press conference. Marilyn was notable for not speaking ill of anybody. She once said to Sidney Skolsky, “I’ve never been in a public fight or feud. I have the most wonderful memory for forgetting things.” But Jeanne Carmen observed that Marilyn was extremely angry and determined. She believed Marilyn would have told all had she lived. But as long as her career remained hostage to Judge Rosenman and the Kennedy faction on the Fox board, Marilyn had no choice but to remain silent. As the crucial date of the boardroom battle for control neared, Marilyn’s million-dollar contract still remained unsigned on Micky Rudin’s desk.
It was a hot and humid day in New York City on Wednesday, July 25, when the 20th Century-Fox board gathered for the decisive conflict. With Judge Samuel Rosenman presiding, Darryl F. Zanuck and Spyros Skouras sat opposite their adversaries as Milton Gould launched a vicious verbal assault on Zanuck. Characterized as “a womanizer, a drunk, a prolifigate gambler, and a producer of flops,” Zanuck remained calm as his detractors attempted to demean his reputation.
“The bile just poured out of them,” Zanuck said later. “It was filthy stuff—mostly about my private life.”
When the torrent of invective concluded, Rosenman turned to Zanuck and said, “And now perhaps Mr. Zanuck would tell us what he would do for the company if he did become president.”
Lighting up a cigar, Zanuck stood and said, “I have nothing to say. If you want me, fine. If not, get somebody else!” He then continued on with a four-hour tirade about the mismanagement of the studio, and the giant financial losses that had accrued in his absence. At the conclusion he was elected president by a vote of eight to three. The three voting against him were Rosenman, Gould, and Loeb. They promptly resigned, and Spyros Skouras, the former president, replaced Rosenman as chairman of the board.
With Zanuck’s victory, Marilyn had won. Something’s Got to Give would resume filming as soon as schedules could be arranged. Marilyn Monroe would be the star under the new million-dollar contract she was now ready to sign. She was no longer hostage to the Kennedys. The “dumb blonde” had outmaneuvered “the General.”