DESPITE A BIRTHDAY TO REMEMBER, and despite the $1 million Marilyn Monroe had helped raise for the Democratic Party that night at Madison Square Garden, John F. Kennedy was done with the actress. Her erratic behavior—her letters, phone calls, and love poems, as well as her call to Jackie—no longer amused him. Too many people, including the Secret Service and FBI, knew of the affair by this time, and while the press in those days didn’t peer into the closets (or private lives) of politicians, there were those that did. The Kennedy clan’s list of perceived enemies—Fidel Castro, the Mafia, and Jimmy Hoffa, president of the largest union in America, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to name a few—was long and getting longer. The president was only too pleased to assign Bobby Kennedy the unpleasant (some might say pleasant) task of getting Marilyn off his back.
Bobby’s arrival on the scene came at a precarious point in Marilyn’s career. After Fox fired her from Something’s Got to Give, she suffered what Dr. Ralph Greenson described as a “deeply paranoid and depressive reaction.” She placed some of the blame for her misfortune on George Cukor, stipulating that Cukor, an outspoken and admitted homosexual, had been jealous of her affair with Yves Montand during their joint appearance in Let’s Make Love. Cukor, she claimed, had himself lusted after Montand despite the fact that the actor left little doubt as to his sexuality.
Against Dr. Greenson’s advice, MM turned to Bobby Kennedy for help, asking the attorney general to intervene on her behalf with Fox. RFK discussed the situation with Pierre Salinger and urged him to do what he could. “I didn’t know anyone at the studio,” said Salinger, “so I contacted Peter Lawford for advice. Peter loved Marilyn. He said she was having trouble and was more dependent than ever on barbiturates and probably ought to be placed in a detoxification unit if she hoped to get back to work. She was doing with RFK what she’d previously done with the president, besieging him with letters and phone calls, which in fact she’d been doing since first meeting him at Peter’s house. Jackie’s problem had now become Ethel’s. In any case, Peter gave me a list of names at Fox. I placed several calls. I have no idea how useful I might’ve been, but within days negotiations began between Mickey Rudin and Fox about resuming work on the film.”
Jeanne Carmen, an actress Monroe first met at the Actors Studio in New York and with whom she established a close friendship after both moved to Los Angeles, happened to see a good deal of Marilyn in 1962. “We were sleeping pill buddies,” recalled Carmen. “I wasn’t a big drinker, but Marilyn thought nothing of mixing booze and pills, and that’s where she got into trouble. We once did cocaine together and wound up bouncing off the walls. Neither of us liked it. We were both chronic insomniacs, and all we wanted to do was fall asleep. We took mostly Seconal and Nembutal, both very potent sleeping pills. They helped me a bit, but they did next to nothing for Marilyn. It amazed me how little her psychiatrist, Dr. Greenson, seemed to help her. Somewhere along the line he decided she was a waif in need of a family, so for a while he had her sleeping over and helping out in the kitchen by peeling potatoes and washing dishes, the same chores she’d performed as a child in the orphanage. During the period I knew Marilyn, she suffered from drastic mood swings. I’m no shrink, but to my mind she was bipolar, a manic-depressive. She saw Greenson practically every day, but I can’t say I saw any improvement in her condition. If anything, her condition deteriorated, particularly near the end. I don’t believe Greenson had the faintest notion what to do with her other than medicate her to death.”
Indeed, the idea seemed to be never to deny Marilyn when she wanted a prescription, because the only thing that would happen is she would procure medication elsewhere and not inform her primary physicians, in this instance Dr. Greenson and Dr. Engelberg. So whenever she asked for a drug, she usually got it. Daniel Greenson, Dr. Greenson’s son, noted that treating a celebrity of Marilyn Monroe’s magnitude was a complex and often thankless proposition. “She called the shots,” he said. “Because she feared not being able to fall asleep, she began medicating herself. If she had a ten-day supply of barbiturates, her tendency was to take them all in a day or two. There wasn’t much anyone could do about it. If my father had refused to renew a given prescription, she would’ve simply turned to somebody else.”
The problem was that Marilyn turned to both Greenson and Engelberg for prescriptions. Engelberg discussed the procedure he and Greenson followed in attempting to coordinate efforts: “I usually communicated with Dr. Greenson as to her sleeping medication, but I didn’t go over it with him if, say, I wanted to give her antibiotics for an infection. Nor would I tell him every time I gave her an injection of liver or vitamins. I also used to inject her with Heparin, a blood thinner which at the time was touted as a ‘youth drug’ and which helped stave off strokes and heart attacks. There were other exceptions. During the shooting of Something’s Got to Give, she developed sinus problems and the flu, which I treated without conferring with Dr. Greenson. Near the end of Marilyn’s life, there seemed to be a misunderstanding of sorts, and it appears Dr. Greenson and I were simultaneously prescribing sleeping medication for her. I didn’t know Dr. Greenson was supplying her with barbiturates at this juncture. Had I known, I obviously wouldn’t have given her the same drug. Judging from the volume and variety of drugs in her house at the time of her death, I realized just how little control Dr. Greenson and I had over her. It appears that during her trip to Mexico, where you can procure every and any medication over the counter, she’d picked up a stash of sedatives and barbiturates. After her death, the police confiscated some fifteen bottles of pills from her house.”
Another subject that went unspoken between the two physicians was that in early June, two months before her death, Marilyn Monroe began an affair with Hyman Engelberg, adding the doctor’s name to a roster of lovers that included John and Bobby Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, and Joe DiMaggio. Marilyn’s liaison with her internist served to further complicate a life that long before had begun to spiral out of control. Dr. Eric Goldberg, a Santa Barbara physician and Engelberg’s closest friend, was evidently the only person with whom the internist talked about the affair.
“I’d known Hy for years,” said Goldberg. “We used to play tennis together every weekend. I had three sons, and so did he. He treated any number of celebrity patients, among them Rita Hayworth, Burt Lancaster, and Danny Kaye. At the time of his affair with Marilyn, which, by the way, has remained secret until now, Hy was separated from his wife. They eventually divorced, and he remarried. But in mid-1962 he was living alone in a three-bedroom house just off Sunset. I once met Marilyn at his house. On the surface, she seemed to possess everything you would want in a woman, except that she was hooked on prescription drugs. Hy wasn’t in love with her, nor was she with him, which I suppose is why the relationship worked. He introduced her to his youngest son, an undergraduate at Columbia University, and one morning they all had breakfast together, which Marilyn prepared. During June and July, Hy saw her almost every day, mostly for medical reasons. He told me she used to complain about pain in her chest, so he began giving her shots of morphine. It occurred to me she might be sleeping with Hy in order to get whatever drugs she wanted, but then again there were any number of physicians in and around Los Angeles who would have been more than glad to prescribe medications for her. After she died, Hy worried that she’d mentioned their affair to friends and that he could lose his medical license. Aside from the affair, there were questions as to the injections and medications he’d given her. What’s most bizarre, I suppose, is that she never mentioned the affair to Ralph Greenson. I can’t help but wonder what other secrets she kept from her psychiatrist.”
Asked to elaborate on his affair with Marilyn, Dr. Engelberg would say only, “It happened. We were both very lonely. Let’s just leave it at that.”
• • •
With negotiations still underway over a new contract for Something’s Got to Give, the actress continued to publicize the figure known to the world as “Marilyn Monroe,” a persona entirely invented, designed, created, and controlled by the former Norma Jeane Baker. During the last week of June, she participated in a three-day shoot with photographer George Barris for Cosmopolitan. While in her company, Barris noticed that Marilyn would lapse into an occasional depression, then bounce back to her former, more jovial self. In a serious frame of mind, she told Barrris she wanted to have children but didn’t feel she could raise a child properly so long as she remained alone.
She did two photo sessions with Bert Stern for Vogue. Stern had set up a makeshift studio at the Bel Air Hotel, supplying Marilyn with a case of Dom Pérignon and several bottles of vodka. After several hours of conventional shots, Marilyn asked Stern if he wanted to shoot her in the nude. She disrobed and donned a see-through bed jacket. Babs Simpson, Vogue’s photo editor, took one look at Monroe and said, “Oh, no! I don’t like that.” And Marilyn countered, “Well, I do.”
As she assumed a suggestive pose, Marilyn said, “How’s this for thirty-six?” Stern didn’t know if she was referring to her breasts or her age.
“I liked her . . . and I was also very attracted to her—like most guys,” admitted Stern. “She was very natural in a way that’s hard to explain. And she had a quality—like she was willing to be yours. She gave you the feeling it was okay to jump in a car and drive off with her.”
Pat Newcomb had arranged and attended the Cosmopolitan and Vogue photo feature shoots. In her typically overgenerous manner, Marilyn rewarded Newcomb with an array of offerings: a new car, a black mink coat, and the emerald earrings Frank Sinatra had once given her. Newcomb had also set up an interview for Marilyn with Life, to be conducted by Richard Meryman.
“We did it in two parts,” said Meryman. “We met at her Brentwood house on July 4 and then again about ten days later. Marilyn asked to have the questions in advance. Although she’d prepared for the interview, her answers seemed spontaneous. I sensed she gave the interview to rearrange an image of herself she didn’t like. She spoke from the heart. She was real. She was bright and businesslike. At one point during our July 4 interview, the telephone rang. Pat Newcomb, who was present the entire time, answered the phone. It was Joe DiMaggio. ‘Tell him to call back,’ said Marilyn.
“During our second interview, she seemed weary, less relaxed, more on edge. Her mood had changed a good deal from our first meeting. Where before she’d been energetic and positive, she now seemed sad and ill at ease. She complained about being alone in the world. One of her themes throughout our two sessions was the fickle nature of fame—she had it today, but would it be there for her tomorrow? Or as she put it, ‘Fame may go by and—So long I’ve had you, Fame.’ ”
Richard Meryman’s Q and A with Marilyn turned out to be the last interview she ever gave. It appeared in the August 3, 1962, issue of Life. She died the following day.
• • •
During the first week of July, Joe DiMaggio Jr., on leave from Camp Pendleton, his Marine base in San Diego, spent the afternoon with Marilyn at home in Brentwood. He told her his mother and her companion, Ralph Peck, had opened a supper club, Charcoal Charlie’s, outside Palm Springs. She sang, and he accompanied her on the piano. Joey couldn’t bring himself to visit the place. He went on to discuss Pam, his girlfriend, and said he was thinking of marrying her. Marilyn told him that sometimes getting married merely made matters more complicated.
“I wondered when she said that,” remarked Joey, “if she had herself and my father in mind. I mentioned that I found him a bit more relaxed now that he was no longer working for Monette. I asked Marilyn if she knew he’d put together a number of scrapbooks devoted to her, containing articles and photographs, including one scrapbook dealing solely with their wedding. I also told her I’d discovered he kept garbage bags and pillowcases full of cash in San Francisco home. ‘He’s been doing that for years,’ said Marilyn. ‘He doesn’t trust banks. He distrusts them almost as much as he distrusts Twentieth Century–Fox.’ ”
Marilyn showed Joey a Western Union telegram his father had sent her on her thirty-sixth birthday, which read: “Happy Birthday—Hope today and future years bring you sunny skies and all your heart desires. As ever, Joe.” Marilyn liked the telegram because it was simple yet eloquent.
Before leaving, Joey asked how Marilyn’s negotiations were going with Fox. “Those bastards!” she said. “I’ve made millions for them over the years, and this is how they thank me—by letting me go. They’re lucky I’m even willing to negotiate with them.”
Marilyn reminded Joey of an angry young child. “I told her I was sure in the end it would all work out,” he said. “She walked me out of the house and gave me her usual warm hug. I’d driven to Brentwood from Camp Pendleton in the car Marilyn gave me. She followed me to the car and gave me another hug. ‘Call me later to let me know you arrived safely,’ she whispered. She turned, and I watched her walk back into the house. I didn’t realize it at the time, of course, but I never saw Marilyn again. She died about a month later.”
• • •
Jeanne Carmen met Joe DiMaggio only once or twice but recalled thinking that while he may not have made a good husband for Marilyn, no one cared more for her. He was always, both before and after their divorce, her most devoted friend. “When they first met,” said Carmen, “Marilyn had yet to prove herself as an actress, whereas Joe’s baseball-playing days were behind him. I’m convinced that had she lived, they would’ve at some point remarried. And it would probably have been a much more successful union the second time around.”
Carmen noted that over the last two months of her life, Marilyn seemed despondent at times but never to the point where she became reclusive or showed any signs of giving up. “She remained active,” said Marilyn’s friend. “She talked a lot about prospective film projects. She was thinking of doing a musical with the songs of Jule Styne and had planned to see Styne in New York in mid-August to discuss the project. She also wanted to play Lady Macbeth in a movie version of Shakespeare’s play. And she was still floating the idea of playing Jean Harlow in a bio flick, an idea she’d been kicking around for some time. She and Sidney Skolsky drove to Indio, past Palm Springs, to meet Jean Harlow’s mother. Mama Jean said Marilyn was ‘just like my baby.’ The comment pleased Marilyn no end. I think she considered herself a reincarnation of Jean Harlow, destined to depart at an early age. I’ll never forget the night Whitey Snyder came to her house for dinner, and she said to him, ‘Promise me that if something happens to me, nobody must touch my face but you. Promise me you’ll do my makeup, so I’ll look my best when I leave.’ ”
Beyond the prospect of a new film venture, Marilyn engaged in activities such as yoga and tai chi (meditation) lessons, which she took at home with a private instructor while listening to the music of Bach and Vivaldi. She ate dinner, often alone, at La Scala. She took walks with Maf along the beach at Santa Monica or in Barrington Park, where she invariably paused to watch children romp in a playground. She went to Renna’s place—called Madame Renna’s—in Beverly Hills for facial massages with Dr. G. W. Campbell. Ralph Roberts would appear at her house every evening to give her a body massage. She would leave the kitchen door unlocked so he wouldn’t have to deal with Eunice Murray. Apparently Eunice caught him sneaking into the house one night and reported him to Dr. Greenson, who berated Marilyn: “I thought we agreed you weren’t going to see Ralph Roberts any more—how can I help you if you don’t listen to me?” For once Marilyn told Greenson off. Whether he liked it or not, there were several men in her life she wasn’t willing to discard, and one of them was Ralph Roberts. ‘The other two that immediately come to mind,’ she told him, ‘are Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio.’ ”
According to Jeanne Carmen, Marilyn seemed most depressed following her sessions with Dr. Greenson. “I’d occasionally pick her up at his home after a session,” she said, “and her beautiful blue-gray eyes would invariably be filled with tears. And it wasn’t because she’d experienced some great psychiatric catharsis or awakening. Yet when Greenson went away on a European vacation with his wife, Marilyn couldn’t deal with it. She and Greenson had worked out some weird ploy whereby one of the pieces in a chess set she’d bought in Mexico earlier that year supposedly came to represent her psychiatrist, and in his absence she carried the chess piece around with her wherever she went; appropriately enough, it was the white knight. She also had a copy of the children’s book The Little Engine That Could, which Greenson’s daughter had given her to instill confidence. Unfortunately, she couldn’t cope without her shrink. So they reached him in Switzerland and asked him to return. Because he left while she was still involved with Something’s Got to Give, Marilyn blamed him for many of her troubles on and off the set; he, in turn, held her responsible for making him cut short his vacation.”
Lotte Goslar spent early July in New York, where she’d gone to speak to publishers about the possibility of penning a book on acting. “Marilyn had offered me the use of her East Fifty-Seventh Street apartment,” she recalled, “but I decided to stay at the Chelsea Hotel instead. While there, I received a letter from Marilyn in which she said Joe DiMaggio had sent her a surprise package. Inside the package were two items: a new nightgown and a pair of his pajamas. ‘I think he’s trying to tell me something,’ Marilyn wrote. Enclosed with the letter was a poem she’d just written. Her friend Norman Rosten, whom I’d met through Marilyn, told me that poetry was her way of saying difficult things to herself. A theme that ran through her body of poems had to do with Marilyn becoming one with nature. . . . And now, in death, she’d returned to nature, become one with the universe.”
Soon after his son saw her, Joe DiMaggio arrived in Brentwood to spend a few days with Marilyn. During his visit, they shared simple dinners at home and only once went out to eat. After dinner Marilyn would brew tea for Joe, and they would watch a bit of television. They rented bikes and rode on San Vicente Boulevard in the direction of the ocean. They went shopping together. He accompanied her, as he had in former days, to Saks Fifth Avenue and Jax, both in Beverly Hills, to buy clothes. She purchased cashmere sweaters, a half dozen blouses, two evening dresses, and a pair of stilettos. That night she modeled the stilettos, sans apparel, just for Joe in the privacy of her bedroom.
Joe escorted Ralph Greenson and Marilyn when she went to see Dr. Michael Gurdin, a well-known plastic surgeon, to explore the possibility of some minor facial work. DiMaggio then took her to attorney Mickey Rudin’s office to discuss a revision of the will she’d executed the year before in New York with Aaron Frosch. The actress had left a sizable portion of her estate to Lee and Paula Strasberg, and while she didn’t want to excise them from the document, she did want to reduce and reapportion their present bequest. Rudin suggested they table the discussion until early August. (“Let’s face it, Marilyn, it’s not as if you’re going to drop dead tomorrow,” he said.) The attorney later admitted that Ralph Greenson, his brother-in-law, had indiscreetly suggested to him that Monroe was “gradually losing touch with reality.” Rudin wondered whether a new last testament would stand up if it were challenged in probate court. He made no mention of his reservations to either Monroe or DiMaggio. Instead, he told them he thought his negotiations with Fox, on Marilyn’s behalf, were going better than expected. He felt they were planning to reshoot Something’s Got to Give and that Fox would almost certainly offer Marilyn an increase in salary.
Although Joe DiMaggio had ended his employment with Monette, he’d promised to make several appearances for the company at the end of July. Before leaving Marilyn, and with few expectations, he once again “popped the question,” asking her to marry him. To his utter surprise and immense delight, he heard her say “Yes.”
When he reached New York, Joe told George Solotaire that Marilyn had told him she was tired of Hollywood, tired of the studio creeps, tired of Ralph Greenson, tired of Eunice Murray, and, yes, maybe it was time to start over again. She was finally ready to make a change. After all, what was more important in life than happiness? Her career and her life to date—full as they were with mistake after mistake—had afforded her little in the way of joy. And when she thought about it, she realized that all the years of therapy and psychoanalysis had done virtually nothing for her. Thanks to her own devices, she knew now who was important to her and who wasn’t, who cared about her and who didn’t. And Joe cared. She’d always known that but hadn’t always wanted to admit it. But now, finally, once and for all, she realized that Joe was her man. More than anything she wanted to be with him, grow old with him, have children with him, and be his wife. Together they would make right everything that had previously gone wrong. Joe would accomplish what nobody else could: he would help her conquer her addictions; he would steer her career, or what remained of it, in the right direction, and he would protect and cloister her from all the negative forces that threatened to do her in. In short, he would make her whole, make her complete.
• • •
The complexity inherent in Marilyn’s private life, the chaos within a mind that struggled for clarity, remained unresolved despite her stated intention to remarry Joe DiMaggio. For reasons she herself probably couldn’t fathom or explain, she was still sleeping with her personal physician. She and Frank Sinatra were even now occasional lovers. From time to time, there were others, including a Los Angeles cab driver in whose taxi she found herself one afternoon and whom she invited home for lunch because “he looked hungry.” Furthermore, he resembled a young Clark Gable, which was apparently enough of an endorsement to land him a spot in Monroe’s bed.
And then there was Bobby Kennedy, who’d taken it upon himself to divert the actress’s attention away from his brother the president and onto himself. Instead of cutting off Marilyn, Bobby only drew her deeper into his family’s orbit. Smitten by her, and perhaps feeling sorry for her, he encouraged her to communicate with him. She did, often chatting with Angie Novello, his private secretary, when the attorney general wasn’t available. But when she succeeded in reaching him, they would sometimes talk for hours. It didn’t seem to disturb Bobby in the slightest that the movie star’s phone had been bugged and that transcripts of their conversations were being turned over to any number of interested parties, including J. Edgar Hoover.
“To John Kennedy, Marilyn was just another fuck,” contended Jeanne Carmen. “I doubt he ever really cared for or about her. Bobby had a reputation as a cutthroat politician—a real rattlesnake, when it came down to it—but in my opinion he seemed much more sensitive and compassionate than JFK. For whatever combination of reasons, Bobby truly fell for Marilyn. I’m not saying he was in love with her, but in his own fashion he was enamored of her. As for Marilyn, whereas she’d previously fantasized about marrying JFK and becoming First Lady, she now fantasized about marrying Bobby and eventually becoming First Lady, a fantasy RFK encouraged by telling MM, in a moment of passion or perhaps weakness that he would love to be married to her. It was common knowledge that Bobby was being groomed to take over after his brother’s second term in office. And after Bobby, there was Teddy. These were the Kennedys, and that was the game plan.”
Jeanne Carmen wasn’t alone in feeling that Robert Kennedy had come to inhabit Marilyn’s fantasies during her last summer. A journalist friend of hers, W. J. Weatherby of the British newspaper the Manchester Guardian, remembered her telling him that she might get married again—no, not to Joe DiMaggio; rather, someone in politics, a Washington insider. He’d asked her to marry him. She couldn’t divulge the person’s name, but he was important and powerful.
Meanwhile, late in July, with Joe DiMaggio safely ensconced at Monette Company headquarters in Virginia, Bobby Kennedy flew to Los Angeles to attend a party at Peter and Pat Lawford’s beach house. Marilyn had last seen him there on June 27, when the Lawfords gave a luncheon to celebrate RFK’s book The Enemy Within, which had just been made into a motion picture. On that occasion, Bobby had brought along his wife but nevertheless managed to spend several hours alone with Marilyn that evening. This time he came alone, without Ethel. Chuck Pick, a parking lot attendant by day and a bartender by night, worked the bar that evening at the Lawford residence. “The minute I arrived,” said Pick, “a Secret Service agent took me aside and issued a curious warning: ‘You have eyes, but you can’t see; you have ears, but you can’t hear; and you have a mouth, but you can’t speak. You may see things here tonight, but you have to remember to keep your trap shut.’ Other than the usual array of celebrities that one would expect to find at such a gathering, nothing seemed particularly unusual—that is, until around ten at night when Marilyn Monroe showed up. She was two hours late.
“Marilyn had a few drinks and socialized with everyone for an hour or so, at which point she and Robert Kennedy walked out the door together, hand in hand, and vanished into the night. When they left, so did the Secret Service agent who’d spoken to me earlier in the evening. I found out they went back to Monroe’s house in Brentwood—Bobby and Marilyn in a Cadillac convertible owned by Bill Simon, chief of the Los Angeles FBI office; RFK’s Secret Service escort in a separate car directly behind theirs.”
Bobby and Marilyn spent the night together. The following morning, Jeanne Carmen joined them for a hot breakfast of oatmeal and cheese omelets prepared by Eunice Murray. “I figured Mrs. Murray would report back to Dr. Greenson about Bobby, and all hell would break loose,” said Carmen. “Then again, I don’t think Marilyn cared any longer what the sinister Dr. Greenson thought. As demonstrated by Marilyn’s reaction when he told her not to see Ralph Roberts, it seemed pretty evident he’d lost his hold over her. She saw him at this time primarily as an enabler, a supplier of drugs. Dr. Hyman Engelberg filled a similar role.
“Years after Marilyn’s death, I heard a rumor that she and Engelberg might have been romantically involved, which didn’t surprise me. She saw a great deal of him that summer. He gave her a series of what Marilyn claimed were multivitamin injections, though, frankly, I never bought that explanation. I believe he was giving her liquid Nembutal and Amytal intermingled with other substances. He reminded me of President Kennedy’s physician, Dr. Max Jacobson—Dr. Feelgood—who traveled everywhere with Kennedy and saw him regularly in the White House. Jacobson injected JFK with meta-amphetamines and porcupine piss, or something along that order. Engelberg had become Marilyn’s Dr. Feelgood. Dr. Lee Siegel, Fox’s Dr. Feelgood, supplemented Engelberg’s injections by giving Marilyn shots of his own.”
After breakfast, as Jeanne Carmen remembered it, an argument broke out between Bobby and Marilyn, when he came across a journal she’d been keeping, which contained notes on conversations she’d had with JFK and him. “It wasn’t the so-called little red diary that supposedly disappeared after Marilyn’s death,” said Carmen. “In fact, there was no little red diary. I’d been to Marilyn’s house dozens and dozens of times and never saw anything that even remotely resembled a little red diary. In 1963, with the press all abuzz about this supposed diary of Marilyn’s, I asked Ralph Roberts if he’d ever come across such an item. Nobody was closer to Monroe than Roberts. He assured me he’d seen lots of journals and notebooks in her possession but never a little red diary. And no single notebook was devoted only to the Kennedys. Her notebooks were filled with notations of all sorts: poems, aphorisms, fragmented thoughts, bits of conversation, lists of all kinds. Bobby saw one or two paragraphs on his brother and assumed the worst. He grabbed the notebook and threw it on the floor. ‘Get rid of this!’ he shouted. I assume this was the moment Bobby started to realize just how dangerous the relationship might really be for him and his career.”
Despite Bobby’s sudden awareness that he was susceptible to the possibility of a scandal were he to be discovered in a compromising relationship with Marilyn (or anyone else, for that matter), he seemed determined to continue the affair, even to the extent that he was willing to falsify his logbook schedule in order to spend time with the movie star. His schedule for July 19, for example, has him back in Washington (and then Hyannis Port), whereas he actually spent the afternoon driving around Malibu with Marilyn and Jeanne Carmen.
“We put Marilyn in a black wig and baseball cap,” said Carmen. “She had a fake goatee that belonged to one of her actor friends, so we put it on Bobby and gave him a baseball cap as well. I don’t know how, but he somehow got rid of his Secret Service detail, after which we clambered into the Cadillac and drove to a nude beach, past Pepperdine [University]. Once there, we walked by the water. We kept our clothes on. Nobody recognized RFK or Marilyn. Later we drove back to Marilyn’s house. I left, and the two of them spent a few more hours together before Bobby returned to Peter and Pat Lawford’s place.”
One of the oddities of the RFK-MM fling was that while neither the press nor the public at large seemed aware of it, the Secret Service, the Mafia, Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters, the FBI and even the CIA knew practically everything. The FBI reports of that period were rampant with references to Marilyn’s involvement with both Kennedys. At least some of the information on the two affairs was developed by way of multiple taps on Monroe’s phone. Several of the involved agencies also seem to have bugged Marilyn’s Brentwood home as well as Peter Lawford’s. The FBI reportedly used a surveillance operations expert Bernie Spindel to do its dirty work, aided by a former private investigator named Fred Otash. As a precaution against anyone breaking into her house to plant a hidden mic, Marilyn kept changing the locks on her doors. Other than Eunice Murray, the only person with keys to the residence was Joe DiMaggio. One might wonder what would have become of Robert Kennedy had DiMaggio paid a surprise visit and found the attorney general in bed with the actress.
One of the more explicit FBI reports to wind up in J. Edgar Hoover’s hands was filed in October 1964, more than two years after Monroe’s death. The report, pertaining to an undated party that took place at Peter Lawford’s house, read as follows: “During the period of time that Robert Kennedy was having his sex affair with Marilyn Monroe, on one occasion a sex party was conducted at which several other persons were present. A tape recording was secretly made and is in the possession of a Los Angeles private detective agency. A certified copy of the recording has been made. All voices on the tape, including Kennedy’s and Monroe’s, are identifiable.”
Others who were well aware of Bobby’s fling with Monroe included select members of President Kennedy’s White House staff. Historian Arthur Schlesinger, a speechwriter for JFK, later wrote what has come to be regarded as Robert F. Kennedy’s definitive biography. When asked why the biography failed to mention RFK’s affair with Monroe, Schlesinger pointed out that as a loyal friend to the family, he didn’t wish to cause more anguish than they’d already endured. “That’s not to say that it didn’t happen,” Schlesinger added. “It did happen. Bobby was human. He enjoyed a stiff drink now and then, and he liked attractive women. He indulged that side of his personality primarily when he traveled—and in his position as attorney general, he had to travel a good deal.”
• • •
The evening of July 21, Joe DiMaggio drove Marilyn home from Cedars of Lebanon after yet another surgical procedure, performed by Dr. Leon Krohn, to alleviate some of the symptoms linked to her chronic endometriosis. Following the procedure, DiMaggio asked the physician if Marilyn could still have children. “It’s possible,” responded Krohn, “but not probable.”
For better or worse, children or no children, Joe was determined to do whatever it took to convince Marilyn to commit to a mutually convenient wedding date. Before returning to the East Coast to complete his obligation to Monette, he once again broached the subject of marriage. Less enthusiastic than she’d been in their previous discussion but probably not eager to argue with Joe, Marilyn suggested he pick the time and place. He told Marilyn he wanted to marry her at Los Angeles city hall on August 8. He ordered food and champagne for a small reception to be held at Marilyn’s house following the ceremony. Through his New York travel agent, he reserved two round-trip, first-class airplane tickets from Los Angeles to Rome. Besides Rome, they would honeymoon in Venice, Florence, and Sicily. Joe had always wanted to take Marilyn to Italy and show her the region of his parents’ birth—and now he finally could.
That, at any rate, might have been one ending to the saga. There were other possibilities as well. But the ending that finally did evolve may well have been inevitable and most probably had been set in motion long before Marilyn first met Joe DiMaggio in mid-March 1952. The seeds of her slowly developing self-destruction had originated in a traumatic and loveless childhood marked most profoundly by a schizophrenic mother, an endless stream of indifferent foster families, a prisonlike orphanage, and the uncertainty associated with a pattern of continuing and constant abandonment on the part of nearly everyone she’d ever known and cared about. Her heightened sense of abandonment would once again come back to haunt her. Following her latest rendezvous with Bobby Kennedy, it became clear to the actress that something was terribly wrong.
That summer, Pierre Salinger saw the attorney general at the Kennedy compound in Massachusetts. “After a family dinner,” said Salinger, “Bobby invited me into his study for coffee, cognac, and an illegally obtained Cuban cigar. He knew I was familiar with the entire Marilyn Monroe mess, starting with Jack, and he wanted my advice. He’d recently seen her and discovered a notebook in her house with some scribblings in it on the Kennedys. And in addition, she was calling him all the time, at all hours of the day and night. He’d thought it over, and he realized he’d perhaps made a mistake, gone too far. Originally, he’d wanted to help her because of Jack, but now he wanted to bow out—gracefully, if possible.”
Salinger recommended that for starters Bobby would do well to change his private telephone number.
“I’ve already done that,” said RFK.
“Well, then, why not just call her up, and tell her the truth?”
“Why don’t you call her for me?” said Kennedy.
“If you’re not going to call her yourself,” said Salinger, “then your best bet has to be Peter Lawford. He and Marilyn are great pals. He’s known her for years. He’ll know what to say.”
It therefore fell on Peter Lawford, as it so often did, to clean up the mess left behind by one or another of the Kennedy brothers. “Pat invited Marilyn over for dinner,” Lawford recalled. “We plied her with booze to make it easier on everyone. We blamed the breakup on Ethel. We told Marilyn she knew about the affair, which she probably did, and that she’d threatened to divorce Bobby. ‘But then that’s perfect,’ Marilyn interjected. ‘Bobby promised he’d divorce Ethel and marry me. So it works out perfectly.’ I pointed out that Bobby was first and foremost a politician. After Jack, the presidential torch would be passed to Bobby, and a divorce would be the kiss of death. He’d never win the election. Marilyn blew up. ‘He asked me to marry him and have his children,’ she persisted. ‘If he and Jack think they can pass me around like a football and then jilt me, they’re sadly mistaken. I’m not one of those broads they bring into the White House for their daily swimming pool orgies.’ The more she drank, the angrier she became. ‘The Kennedys use you, and when they’re done, they dispose of you like so much rubbish. Your former buddy Francis Sinatra warned me about them, but I didn’t listen. He was right. And if the Kennedys think I’m going away, they’re wrong.’ ”
Because Marilyn had put away so much alcohol, Peter thought it would be better for her to spend the night. He and Pat helped her into the guest bedroom. Peter woke up very early the next morning and found their guest in one of Pat’s robes perched on the balcony staring into the pool below. “Are you all right?” Lawford asked her. She was crying. He led her into the house and prepared breakfast, and then he and Pat consoled her for hours. She was, as Lawford noted, “completely down on herself, talked about how ugly she felt, how worthless, how used and abused.” Then she reiterated what she’d said the night before. She wasn’t going away. She wasn’t going to surrender. And then she said something that alarmed Peter.
Marilyn had decided to hold a press conference. She would tell the nation all about Jack and Bobby Kennedy—their extramarital affairs, their empty promises, and the way they used people and then discarded them. She had reams of documentation to support her charges, from correspondence to tape recordings. Jean Kennedy Smith had written to her, acknowledging the affair with her brother Bobby. She had all sorts of notes and letters on the same subject from Peter’s wife. And then she had tapes of herself with the attorney general that would prove more than a little embarrassing, were they to be played. When Peter warned her that such a scandal could possibly bring down the government and hurt the country, Marilyn told him it could only help the country to know what its leaders were up to in their spare time.
“They’re not going to fuck with me!” she vowed.
• • •
Back in Brentwood, Marilyn’s emotional tirade ran the gamut from hysterical weeping to uncontrollable rage. Like a child suffering a tantrum, she threw breakable objects against a wall—mirrors, plates, drinking glasses, anything she could lay her hands on. She spent hours spewing venom on the recording device she used for her free-association tapes for Dr. Greenson. Unable to sleep, she contacted Dr. Margaret Hohenberg, her former psychiatrist, currently residing in Haifa, Israel. They’d spoken several times earlier in the summer. In addition to the Kennedys, Marilyn complained to Hohenberg about Dr. Greenson. He’d tried to control her, cut her off from everyone she knew. He was a possessive, tyrannical figure, who could succeed as a therapist only in a place like Hollywood. She’d barely finished talking to Dr. Hohenberg when the phone rang. It was Milton Greene, whom she hadn’t heard from in years. “I heard you’re going through some difficult times,” he said. “Do you want me to come out there?” “Yeah,” responded Marilyn. “I can only stay a few days,” said Greene, “because I have a photo assignment in Paris.” It was all arranged, but then Marilyn called him back. “Never mind, I’m okay for the moment,” she said. “You go to Paris and then fly to LA. We’ll be able to spend more time together.” She concluded the conversation by telling her former business partner that she planned on moving back to New York. “I’m sick of Hollywood, and Hollywood’s sick of me,” she said.
Surprisingly, Monroe now turned to Mickey Song, the hairstylist who’d been present at Madison Square Garden the evening of President Kennedy’s birthday gala. “I felt happy to hear from Marilyn, although I wasn’t quite sure what she wanted,” said Song. “She asked me over for a drink, and I thought maybe she wanted me to become her full-time hairstylist. Jazz musician Hank Jones happened to be visiting me, so I asked Marilyn if he could come as well. She didn’t mind. She knew him because he’d accompanied her on the piano when she sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to JFK. So we drove to her house and found her in a state of despair.”
Monroe wanted to talk about the Kennedys. As a member of their West Coast entourage, Song presumably knew where most of the bodies were buried. Marilyn asked for the names of other Hollywood actresses with whom the Kennedy brothers had been romantically linked.
“I told her I was privy to the same rumors as everybody else,” said Song. “She didn’t believe me, because she asked why I went out of my way to protect the Kennedys. Didn’t I feel used by them? They used everyone, she said, and I was no exception. I told her I didn’t feel used. On the contrary, they’d afforded me opportunities I wouldn’t otherwise have had, such as a trip to the White House to cut the president’s hair before a state dinner when his regular barber was out of town. I had the impression that Marilyn felt emotionally abused by Jack and Bobby and was trying to dig up dirt on them. She interrogated me for an hour or so, then turned to Hank Jones and began interrogating him. After a while, he said to her, ‘I don’t know what the Kennedys did to you, but you ought to let it go. Life’s too short.’ ”
Neither Song nor Jones realized that Marilyn had secretly taped their conversation. “I learned that she’d hired a private investigator to install a hidden recording device in both her bedroom and living room. She’d amassed an entire inventory of tapes containing conversations with nearly everyone, including Bobby Kennedy. It’s illegal to do that in California. After she died, Peter Lawford got hold of the tapes and presumably destroyed them.”
Peter Lawford had been placed in an unwelcome and untenable position of middleman between Marilyn and the Kennedys. Related to the Kennedy clan by marriage, he also considered himself one of Monroe’s closest and most stalwart friends. Nevertheless, concerned about her threat to hold a press conference in which she planned to divulge details of her love affairs with the president and the attorney general, Lawford felt he had no choice but to call Bobby Kennedy and discuss the matter with him. “I didn’t know if my own phone was bugged,” said Lawford, “so I called from a public phone booth. Bobby was alarmed by what I told him. He finally realized the potential danger he and his brother faced having become involved with an exceedingly famous but thoroughly unstable woman. He advised me to phone her shrink, who would surely be able to quiet her down. So I called Dr. Greenson.
“Marilyn had already informed him as to her curt dismissal by RFK. She’d placed numerous phone calls to him at the Justice Department, none of which he’d returned. The problem was that she’d constructed an entire romantic fantasy in her mind, which initially involved the president; after Bobby entered the picture, she made him the focus of her fantasy. In her disoriented state, she had difficulty discerning the difference between fantasy and reality. What worried Greenson was that in the past, Marilyn often made suicide threats and would fake a suicide attempt in order to gain sympathy. The one person Greenson felt could truly help Marilyn was Joe DiMaggio, but because the situation centered on Marilyn’s imagined desire to marry Bobby Kennedy, he couldn’t bring himself to involve DiMaggio.”
An event that ordinarily would have elevated Marilyn’s mood took place in July 1962. An exuberant Mickey Rudin contacted her with what he considered wonderful news: Peter Levathes had revived Monroe’s contract with Fox, offering to double her previous salary and agreeing to restart shooting on Something’s Got to Give. Rudin subsequently told Ralph Greenson about the offer, and Greenson relayed the information to Peter Lawford.
“I went to Marilyn’s house to congratulate her in person,” said Lawford. “She looked pretty grim. All she could talk about were the Kennedys. So I told her I was going to Cal-Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe for the weekend. I invited her along thinking some peace and quiet and a change in scenery might cheer her up. ‘We’ll celebrate your new contract,’ I said. She brightened a bit. ‘Thanks, Peter,’ she replied. ‘You’re a good man, and there aren’t many like you.’ ”