“A simple, decent-hearted kid whom Hollywood brought down, legs parted.”
—Director Elia Kazan
“More and more, Marilyn was involving herself with some of the most dangerous men on the planet, power figures who played rough and would stop at nothing. What did a blonde sex goddess mean to them? Some of them regarded her as no more than a whore, an easy lay for them to pick up and discard.
—Shelley Winters
“Marilyn’s death is of historical interest. There is no statute of limitations on murder.”
—L.A. District Attorney Ira Reiner in 1985
“They murdered Marilyn. The amazing thing is why after all these years they didn’t find a reason to murder me, too.”
—Frank Sinatra
“The title of the movie we were going to make said it all: Something’s Got to Give.”
—George Cukor
“It is doubtful that either Kennedy saw past the beauty and the intel igence to the truly shattered nature of her personality— one which, as her psychiatrist later admitted, would have made her a candidate for an institution had her name not been Marilyn Monroe.”
—Anthony Summers
“Clues that pointed to foul play vanished. Once cleaned up, the death scene indicated suicide. All of Monroe’s bed linen and personal laundry had already been washed and put careful y back in cupboards. By sealing the crime scene, Fox was merely adhering to the tradition of studio policy, san-itizing real-life Hollywood murder scenes.”
—Patte B. Barham, veteran Hollywood reporter
“Marilyn was slapped around. On the tapes, you could actually hear her being slapped, even hear her body fall to the floor. One of the men said, ‘What do we do with her body now?’”
—“Tom,” a “Deep Throat” wiretapper inside Bernard Spindel’s operation
“Marilyn’s death was to apear to be an accidental suicide, exploiting her false reputation for reckless overdosing. Marilyn Monroe would commit suicide according to their schedule. Maf, her small poodle, was her only bodyguard that night, and he was barking ferociously.”
—Detective Milos Speriglio
“There are those who see Marilyn Monroe’s death as the seed of assassinations to follow— those of her boy friends Jack and Bobby Kennedy.”
—Norman Mailer, to poet Norman Rosten
“My feeling was that she (Eunice Murray) had been told what to say. It had all been rehearsed beforehand. And why was she washing Marilyn’s sheets at that ungodly hour of the morning?”
—Sergeant Robert Byron of the LAPD
“I’m often asked to comment on Marilyn Monroe, and the autopsy I performed on her. Words fail me, so I quote from the Latin poet, Petrarch: ‘It’s folly to shrink in fear, if this is dying. For death looked lovely in her lovely face.’”
—Dr. Thomas T. oguchi, Marilyn’s coroner
“You might cal it a convenient death. She died just before the shit was about to hit the fan.”
—J. Edgar Hoover to Guy Hotell