January 1961 started in a very positive fashion, with Marilyn announcing that she was to bring W. Somerset Maugham’s Rain to television for NBC. ‘I’m going to play Sadie Thompson,’ she told reporter Margaret Parton; ‘I’m really excited about doing the part because [the character] was a girl who knew how to be gay, even when she was sad. And that’s important – you know?’
Even Somerset Maugham was delighted with her plans and made no secret of letting her know: ‘I am so glad to hear that you are going to play Sadie . . . I am sure you will be splendid,’ he wrote in January 1961.
Negotiations began in earnest and newspapers were buzzing with the news that Marilyn could be turning her hand to television. On 6 January, executive producer Ann Marlowe told newspapers: ‘I started to work on the idea of ‘Rain’ and Marilyn Monroe a year ago. Although her agents never had been able to get her to do television, I talked to her about it and she said she was interested but would have to wait until she finished a picture and came back to New York. When she returned from the coast, we started working on it and now the lawyers are drawing up contracts.’
Marilyn’s press rep got in on the act with a statement declaring, ‘It is not firm yet but the deal is pretty sure,’ while newspapers reported that Marilyn herself was determined to include Lee Strasberg in the production and was considering giving her fee to the Actors Studio.
But it wasn’t all work. During January 1961, Marilyn and Joe DiMaggio began seeing each other on a regular basis, and although they wished to keep their renewed friendship secret, it took only days for the press to start reporting reconciliation. The rumours became so persistent that on 11 January John Springer confirmed that they had been seeing each other again, but played down any romance. Marilyn herself later denied any romance to columnist Louella Parsons: ‘Believe me, no matter what the gossip columns say, there is no spark rekindled between Joe and me.’ For once Joe was happy to be just friends, and even admitted that he didn’t blame Marilyn for divorcing him in 1954: ‘I’d have divorced me too,’ he said.
Divorce was on Marilyn’s mind too, and on 20 January, she travelled with Pat Newcomb to Juarez, Mexico, in order to obtain a divorce from Miller. Choosing the day of John F. Kennedy’s presidential inauguration so as to avoid publicity, Marilyn cited ‘incompatibility of character’ at a special night session with Judge Miguel Gomez and her attorney Arturo Sosa Aguilar, before quietly returning to New York. ‘The plane was delayed and I got upset,’ she told reporters; ‘I don’t feel like being bothered with publicity right now, but I would love to have a plate of tacos and enchiladas.’
Back in New York, the weather was getting Marilyn down considerably. ‘New York was terrible last winter with so much rain and snow. It was depressing,’ she told Hedda Hopper in July 1961. But regardless of her depression, she continued her studies at the Actors Studio and one day was surprised to see W.J. Weatherby, a reporter she had met on the set of The Misfits. Being a fan of Miller, he wasn’t particularly impressed by Marilyn at first, but after seeing her again at the studio, he asked her to have a drink with him at a little bar on the corner of 8th Avenue. She agreed and, over the next few weeks, they met around four times to discuss all manner of subjects, including books, civil rights, actors and personal issues. They even touched upon politics when Marilyn declared that John F. Kennedy spoke a lot of sense, and that she admired his family’s zest for life.
But despite the interesting conversation, Weatherby noticed sadness in the actress, and was disturbed on one occasion to see that her hair needed washing and she had a faint body odour. There were times, too, when she would not respond when he spoke to her, something she attributed to the pills that made her feel ‘dopey sometimes’. She was certainly in a retrospective mood, confessing that she had put Miller through a lot, and even discussing her feelings when Gable had died, admitting that she had not attended the funeral because she was frightened of breaking down.
Marilyn also told Weatherby that although she had felt guilty when Gable died, she had now accepted he had a bad heart and it wasn’t her fault. However, she then read in a newspaper that Kay Gable had implied Clark’s death was her fault. There was not a grain of truth in the story, but it was enough to unlock the deep-rooted blame she felt, and sent her once more into a deep depression.
In just two months, Marilyn had reportedly visited psychiatrist Marianne Kris a staggering forty-seven times. None of the sessions was surely as disturbing as one held towards the beginning of February, when she confessed that after hearing Kay Gable’s quote, she opened her living room window as far as she could, and seriously thought about throwing herself out. The only thing that stopped her was the realization that a lady whom she knew was at that moment walking past the building.
Kris was obviously alarmed to hear this latest development, and that, coupled with her continuing drug problem, was enough to persuade the doctor that Marilyn needed complete hospital rest. On 6 February the actress telephoned Joe DiMaggio, then on the 7th, just as her lawyers were negotiating for her to have complete control over the Rain production, she checked into the Payne Whitney hospital as Mrs Faye Miller for what was described as, ‘study and treatment of an illness of undisclosed origin’. Unfortunately, and unknown to Marilyn, Payne Whitney was an establishment for disturbed patients, and this became quite apparent within hours of her admittance there.
Quite alarmingly, on her arrival at the hospital, Marilyn claimed a psychiatrist conducted a physical examination which included a breast inspection. This was something to which Marilyn quite rightly took great exception. Once that was completed, she was taken to her room: a depressing cell-like space complete with cement blocks, bars on the windows and the markings of former patients. Everything was under lock and key, including the bathroom, closets and electric lights, while the main door into the room came complete with a window through which she could be ‘observed’. There was no way of buzzing for assistance.
In a letter dated 1–2 March 1961, Marilyn told Dr Greenson that she had been encouraged to ‘mingle’ with other patients, and take up such occupational therapies as sewing, knitting and playing checkers. As a person continually reminded of the mental illness that plagued her family, Marilyn was appalled to be placed in such an establishment, and made no hesitation in saying so. ‘Why aren’t you happy in here?’ they asked, to which she replied, ‘I’d have to be nuts if I liked it in here.’
Deciding to telephone the Strasbergs for help, she stood in line with other patients waiting to use the phone, only to find herself forbidden to make any calls on the orders of a security man. Dismayed, she returned to her room and began thinking of the part she played in Don’t Bother to Knock, in which she had to threaten to hurt herself with a razor blade. This inspired her to do to her own version of this story, and before she knew it, Marilyn was banging on the door with a chair: ‘It took a lot of banging to get even a small piece of glass,’ she later wrote to Dr Greenson, but once she had achieved it, she sat with glass in hand, waiting for the doctors to appear.
Threatening to harm herself, the arrival of the doctors did nothing to calm Marilyn’s nerves, and quite disturbingly, the four medical staff picked her up by all fours and carried her, face down and sobbing, to the seventh floor – the ward for extremely disturbed patients.
Told she was a ‘very, very sick girl’, Marilyn was forced to stay at the hospital for four nights, during which time she was able to write a letter to Lee Strasberg, begging for help. Unfortunately, the Strasberg family had no power to secure her release, but thankfully for Marilyn, Joe DiMaggio did. He arrived at the hospital and threatened to take it apart ‘brick by brick’ if they did not release her into his care. Later Marilyn took great pride in telling friends of DiMaggio’s rescue, and consulted her lawyer Aaron Frosch in order to draw up a document that ensured DiMaggio, Frosch and Reis would all have to be notified before she could ever be locked up again. Before she left the hospital she turned to the doctors who had ‘cared’ for her: ‘You should all have your heads examined,’ she told them, before leaving in the care of DiMaggio.
She was driven back to her apartment to confront Dr Kris, ‘like a hurricane unleashed’, according to friend, Ralph Roberts. Kris was shocked, frightened and deeply apologetic, but the damage was done. Marilyn never forgave her psychiatrist and in future turned to Californian therapist Dr Greenson for support.
Still emotionally disturbed and exhausted, Marilyn was persuaded to enter Columbia-Presbyterian hospital on 11 February, where she was admitted for ‘a rest and checkup’, according to a hospital spokesman. Her publicist, John Springer, elaborated by telling reporters, ‘She is here for a complete physical check-up. She’s had a hell of a year. She had been exhausted, really beat down.’ Trying to quash rumours of her treatment at Payne Whitney, he added, ‘More than anything else, this was just meant for her to go in and have a chance to rest and recuperate a little. It has been blown up all out of proportion.’
Meanwhile, NBC executives were becoming increasingly alarmed with the situation, declaring to her representatives that they wanted ‘concrete evidence’ that she could physically perform in Rain. This request left her lawyer in the unenviable and impossible task of trying to compile a detailed report of her condition, including whether or not she would be capable of showing up on set at all. On 15 February, a letter was sent from NBC to Marilyn’s reps at MCA, declaring that ‘in view of Miss Monroe’s recent illness, it is perfectly clear that we do not have an agreement with respect to [her] services’.
But while negotiations were going on behind the scenes, Marilyn was still in hospital, where Joe DiMaggio was a frequent visitor: ‘She went to the hospital for what amounted to exhaustion and nothing more,’ he told reporters. ‘The girl has been working very hard with pictures she has done, and Clark Gable’s death did not help matters.’
Journalist and author Peter Evans, who had met Marilyn several times during the making of The Prince and the Showgirl, was also staying at the same hospital, suffering from dehydration. As he later recalled: ‘All outside calls to her room had been blocked by the switchboard on the orders of Joe DiMaggio, but I discovered it was possible to dial her room directly from my room. I got the number of her room from a friendly nurse, and tried my luck. Marilyn Monroe answered in her unmistakable voice. “Oh,” she said when I told her who I was and how I got through to her. But she didn’t seem to mind. She sounded frail, but was absolutely friendly.’
She told him, ‘They won’t let me listen to the radio. The news is always so disturbing. Tell me, what’s happening in the outside world?’
Evans told Marilyn that he had met Arthur Miller several days before, and she asked how he was. She was concerned with his living arrangements, observing that she’d been told he wasn’t comfortable living in a hotel. Evans told her that Arthur was thinking of moving out, though felt the Connecticut house was too large just for him. ‘He said he didn’t like being alone,’ Evans remarked.
‘Oh my God,’ Marilyn replied. ‘He should get another wife.’
Later in the conversation Evans told Marilyn that Arthur was bemoaning the loss of a button on his overcoat. ‘I must get somebody to sew a button on this coat. It’s been off for weeks,’ he had said.
According to Evans there was then a silence on the line before Marilyn eventually spoke. ‘That is so poignant,’ she said. ‘That is beautiful. It says so much about the end of a marriage. I want to cry. I will write a poem about that missing button.’
‘I wondered whether she ever wrote that poem,’ Peter Evans later recalled.
On Tuesday, 7 March, having been out of hospital for just two days, Marilyn attended the funeral of her former mother-in-law, Augusta Miller, who had suffered a fatal heart attack the day before. Arriving unexpectedly, Marilyn put her own problems to one side and comforted Arthur and Isidore Miller, before leaving quietly to return to her apartment. Then on 10 March she attended a fundraiser for the Actors Studio and appeared to be feeling much better.
However, just days later, publicist Rupert Allan sent some newspaper clippings to John Springer, which implied that once again Kay Gable was blaming Marilyn for Clark’s death. The story was once again untrue, but knowing Marilyn’s fragile state of mind, Allan instructed Springer not to bring the clippings to her attention. On 17 March, Springer forwarded the comments to lawyer Aaron Frosch, where Marilyn accidentally saw them, sending her into a furious rage. She immediately wrote a note to May Reis, demanding she get Frosch on the telephone so that she could discuss the issue with him, and expressing her anger at Allan for trying to keep ‘this kind of thing away from me’.
‘I must know my own business, so I can protect myself. Keeping things from me is no protection,’ she told May Reis.
By this time, a production schedule for Rain had been compiled, and Marilyn had been due to start pre-production on 13 March, with one week of shooting beginning 27 March. However, because of her illness, NBC took any definite dates off the table. In order to take her mind off this, Joe DiMaggio asked Marilyn if she would like to travel to Florida with him instead. She agreed, and checked into the Tides Hotel at St Petersburg Beach. On her arrival, Marilyn declared, ‘I came down here for some rest, some sun and to visit Joe,’ though it was also an opportunity to regain her strength and recover from the trauma of the past months.
Always a fan of ‘the man or woman on the street’, whilst staying in St Petersburg Marilyn began a friendship with Lynn Pupello, a teenage reporter who in 1961 won an award for best writer for the American Newspaper Association. ‘I sat near her [on the beach] and struck up a conversation as if she wasn’t famous,’ she remembered. ‘At first she was shy but my enthusiasm won her over.’
For Marilyn, talking to the young woman was a welcome diversion, though Joe DiMaggio at times seemed to resent her presence, as remembered by Pupello: ‘I wasn’t nervous being with Marilyn. She had a loving nature and ability to put you at ease. Joe DiMaggio was aloof with me; he said “Hello” but wanted to be alone with her, quietly talking. She smiled occasionally but told me she would not reconcile with him because of his bad temper during the night of the skirt-blowing scene in New York City.’
According to Pupello, during their long conversations Marilyn admitted to having met John F. Kennedy: ‘She said she had been in South Florida before, visiting the President. She lit up speaking of him and said, “he has always been very kind to me.”’ Marilyn had shown an interest in Kennedy during her conversations with W.J. Weatherby, but had not mentioned a meeting, so her comment is an interesting one. She did not make any suggestion to Pupello or Weatherby (at that particular time) that she thought of him in a romantic way, but made no secret of the fact that she was a huge supporter of Kennedy both as a person and a politician.
Almost immediately on her return to New York, rumours began to circulate that Frank Sinatra had been in Florida at the same time as Marilyn, and that she was in love with him. This is intriguing since on 2 March 1961, whilst staying at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, she wrote a letter to Dr Greenson, admitting to a ‘fling on a wing’ affair with an unnamed man, possibly Sinatra. Marilyn described the lover as being very unselfish in bed, but also admitted that she knew Greenson would not approve of him.
Marilyn had encountered Sinatra several times over the years, and actress Annabelle Stanford remembers her as being a little less than enamoured with him during a trip to Palm Springs in the late 1940s. ‘A group of us were doing a photo shoot with Bernard of Hollywood, and afterwards we were all having dinner. Frank Sinatra was there and having something of an argument with a male friend. I remember Marilyn looking over, shaking her head and throwing her arms in the air. She was not happy and when the argument continued she left.’
As a result of a possible romance with Sinatra, any plans DiMaggio may have had to reconcile with Marilyn were put on hold. He was not at all happy that his old friend was being seen around with his ex-wife, but he continued to see Marilyn on a social basis and even attended a baseball game with her at Yankee Stadium on 11 April.
Ten days before that, on 1 April, Kay Gable wrote a letter to Marilyn, asking when she planned to go to Los Angeles to meet her baby son, John Clark. She told her that she still missed her husband each day but planned to spend the summer at their ranch, where she hoped Marilyn and Joe would visit. The letter was friendly and informal; and as a result any thoughts Marilyn may have had that Kay blamed her for Gable’s death were finally dispelled.
In need of a break, Marilyn travelled to Los Angeles in April where she enjoyed going on dates and lying on her private patio at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She even took time to speak with Hedda Hopper about the Rain project, explaining, ‘I’ve been looking forward to doing ‘Rain’ on TV for a long time. We expect to have Fredric March and Florence Eldredge playing the Rev Davidson and his wife.’ However, it didn’t all go to plan. Firstly, Marilyn began to learn that the stalled negotiations for Rain were forcing co-stars to pull out of the project, and then she was admitted to hospital for a minor gynaecological operation on 24 May. Marilyn later told her half-sister, Berniece, that during her time in the facility her father, Stanley Gifford, arrived to visit her. They sat for some time talking, though she felt the meeting lacked the affection she had always craved and found the whole episode extremely hard to process.
If this meeting took place, Gifford never publicly talked about it, not even to his son, Charles Stanley Gifford Jr, who always had a very hard time believing that Gifford Sr could be the father of Marilyn Monroe. During a 2001 conversation between Gifford Jr and Mary Sims, president of the ‘Immortal Marilyn’ fan club, Mary expressed how proud he must be that his father was believed to be Marilyn Monroe’s father too. ‘Proud of what?’ Gifford Jr asked, ‘That he walked out on Norma Jeane and never acknowledged her or admitted he was her father?’
‘I got the distinct feeling that his concern was the perception that his father didn’t do right by Norma Jeane, and the disgrace that comes down on the family name because of it,’ remembered Sims. ‘I said he wouldn’t be the first man to have done that in history; he agreed, and then we both said at the same time “That’s life.”’
Declaring to Earl Wilson, ‘I like my freedom; I like to play the field,’ Marilyn lost weight, cut her hair short and bought a wardrobe full of new clothes. ‘I’m very glad to be free again; this is the happiest I’ve been in a long time,’ she told Hedda Hopper. She also upped her social life, too: meeting poet and idol, Carl Sandburg; travelling to Palm Springs (where she spent time with Sinatra); then dashing to Las Vegas to see him perform with Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr at the Sands Hotel.
Marilyn became something of a mascot for the ‘Rat Pack’, as Sinatra’s posse were labelled. She spent time with Dean Martin and his wife in Newport Harbor; discussed making a film with Sinatra; and surprised herself by quite happily settling into life in Los Angeles. ‘I’ve never had such a good time ever – in Hollywood,’ she confided to Louella Parsons. ‘For the first time in many years I am completely free to do exactly as I please. And this new freedom has made me happier. I want to look for a home to buy here; I think I’ll settle in Beverly Hills.’
This was backed up by make-up artist ‘Whitey’ Snyder, who commented, ‘Since her divorce from Arthur Miller she’s been in her best condition for a long time. She’s happy! I’m amazed at how well she is.’
In June 1961, Marilyn was thrilled to visit Kay Gable and meet her son, John Clark. Talking into the night with Kay, she later described the meeting as ‘Wonderful . . . kind of sad too,’ and declared John Clark as ‘My real love; he’s the big man in my life, even if he is a little young for me.’ Shortly after she was honoured to attend the baby’s christening, where she gleefully posed for the cameras and later mingled with guests at the Gable family home.
Marilyn seemed perfectly happy with her life in Los Angeles, but she was still desperate to get the Rain project off the ground. Letters had been going back and forth between parties for the past six months, and finally on 13 June a tentative production schedule was again drawn up, with Marilyn due on set from 27 July to 19 August. She returned to New York and once there held various meetings with her lawyer Aaron Frosch and NBC. She also met writer Rod Serling at her East 57th Street apartment, where they spoke about the script until the early hours. The meeting went well but Serling was furious to discover later that Marilyn was privately rehearsing a 1923 version of the play, and not the one he had written himself.
As a result of a meeting with Lee Strasberg on 21 June, Marilyn decided that he should get more control of the project and on 26 June told NBC of her plan. It was rejected immediately. However, on 27 June it was decided that Marilyn would only sign for Rain if she could have Richard Burton as a co-star and George Hill as director. Once again NBC refused and wrote to Marilyn to inform her of its decision to cancel the project completely.
Marilyn was disappointed but executive producer Ann Marlowe was even more so. She immediately wired the actress, declaring: ‘I would like to again offer you ‘Rain’ for television . . . Lee Strasberg told me you were a superb Sadie Thompson.’ The telegram didn’t work, however, as Marilyn replied saying she would only consider the project if Lee Strasberg was hired as the director, a request that nobody wanted to fulfil.
On 28 June the entire correspondence was filed away, with Marilyn’s representatives noting that unless something new was to occur, ‘this is the kiss-off’. A statement was prepared which said that Marilyn had been advised not to take part in the programme and later that day she was rushed to Polyclinic hospital suffering from what her spokesman described as ‘a mild intestinal disorder’. However, it was quickly determined that there was much more to her pain than that, and a two-hour operation was performed on the evening of 29 June to remove the entire gall bladder.
The operation was a success, though Marilyn was in some considerable discomfort, especially after her departure from the hospital: ‘Right after I had my gall bladder operation the crowds in the street pushed at me so hard that it opened up the incision again,’ she said. She required a great deal of convalescence on her return to 57th Street, but Joe DiMaggio was on hand and Marilyn’s sister, Berniece, travelled from Florida to look after her, sleeping in what was once Arthur Miller’s study, helping around the house and walking Marilyn’s new dog, Maf, a present from Frank Sinatra. But something was troubling Marilyn, and Berniece became worried not only about her intake of prescription pills, but also by the problems she continually seemed to encounter.
There were worries about money; anxiety over the will she had signed in January (but apparently disapproved of); concern for her career; and stress over the letters of complaint she was receiving from her mother, Gladys, who continued to live at Rockhaven Sanitarium.
Perhaps with her mind on family connections and relationships, Marilyn invited her friend from Florida, Lynn Pupello, to stay with her during the summer. To the young woman Marilyn told something she would never forget: ‘She said that if she could pick out someone to be her daughter that it would be me; she liked the fact that I was a professional writer on an important newspaper; someone interested in and knowledgeable about archaeology, art history, architecture, film, theatre, literature and fine arts. She talked to me for hours about how depressed she was about her divorce [but also] talked about moving back to LA, so she gave me some of her nightgowns and jewellery, which she said I should wear whenever the time came later in life to marry.’
Other erstwhile close relationships came to the fore when, together with Ralph Roberts and Berniece Miracle, Marilyn travelled to Roxbury in order to sort out some personal items which had been overlooked during the separation and divorce. Marilyn seemed in good spirits, introducing her new dog Maf to her old love Hugo. She smiled continually as if the whole meeting had been well rehearsed. She was even cordial to Miller, and while he asked about her health and poured her a cup of tea, she took delight in showing him her gall-bladder scar, as if to prove the point that she really had been ill all those years.
But in spite of her outward confidence, being in the house she had shared with Miller all those years was a painful experience and, at the end of the meeting, she appeared to stall her departure. Getting into the car, she sat back in her seat and waved silently goodbye not only to Miller but to the place she had once thought would make her happy. She had dreamed of raising children there, of living a quiet life in the country, but it was not to be; and as she was driven past the trees and flowers she had once helped to grow, she knew she would never return to Roxbury again. It was time to move on.
By the time Marilyn had fully recovered from the gallbladder operation, it was time for Berniece to return to Florida and Marilyn’s thoughts returned once again to work. She refused Twentieth Century Fox’s requests for her to do Loss of Roses (which later became The Stripper with Joanne Woodward) but they did insist she star in Something’s Got to Give, a George Cukor-directed film, which was a remake of the 1940 movie, My Favourite Wife. This, along with a desire to see therapist Ralph Greenson, prompted a return to Los Angeles in September where she settled into 882 North Doheny Drive, the apartment she had lived in before her marriage to DiMaggio in 1954.
On 22 September Marilyn returned briefly to New York, only to encounter problems during take-off, which forced the plane to return to Los Angeles. The episode disturbed her and, as soon as she touched down, she sent a telegram to Joe DiMaggio, informing him that she would be leaving again at 5 p.m., and confiding that when the plane was in trouble, the two things she thought about was, ‘you, and changing my will,’ before adding, ‘Love you, I think, more than ever.’
On 5 October, Patricia Newcomb sent an internal memo to her own boss, the publicist Arthur P. Jacobs, informing him of Marilyn’s new Los Angeles address, and urging that all mail should be addressed to Marge Stengel (a woman who had acted briefly as Marilyn’s assistant). To Jacobs she urged that Marilyn’s name not be put on any envelopes, and that even the street must remain secret; Marilyn was back in Los Angeles, but this time her main concern was most certainly her privacy.
But one person who did know her address was friend Ralph Roberts, whom Marilyn asked to drive cross-country to join her in California, in order to give her massages and act as something of an unofficial chauffeur. Together they enjoyed eating steaks on the barbecue, and talking quietly into the night, until it all came to a sudden halt when Marilyn told him something quite disturbing: Dr Greenson was urging her to drop old friends and, as a result, Roberts found himself travelling back to New York.
This has also been confirmed by Whitey Snyder, who told the ‘All About Marilyn’ club: ‘Marilyn mentioned several times that Greenson often suggested there were many of her so-called friends that were only using her and she should only trust him. She laughed and said that she often trusted her so-called friends more than him. I am sure Dr Greenson did everything to keep Marilyn under his thumb.’
Much has been made of Greenson’s treatment of Marilyn during her last few months, and the relationship is still shrouded in mystery today. Marilyn became Greenson’s most famous client but his family now refuse to talk about her. We may never know the full extent of his control over her life, but what we do know is he did something very few doctors have done before or since – welcomed her into his home and into the bosom of his family.
The children of former therapist Marianne Kris were not involved with Marilyn in any way, but Greenson’s children, Joan and Daniel, became friends with their father’s patient, walking with her and sharing friendly chit-chat. It was a strange way of doing things, but he was hopeful of a successful outcome, confiding to friends that she was showing some improvement though admitting to Anna Freud that he had improvised in her treatment, often wondering where he was going yet knowing he had nowhere else to turn.
Dr Greenson discovered that Marilyn took a variety of pills including: Demerol – a narcotic analgesic; the barbiturate Phenobarbital HMC; and Amytal. She also had a unique knack of being able to get large doses of drugs from a variety of different doctors, never informing them of each other, or of other pills and prescriptions. He was concerned, especially about her use of Demerol, which was believed to be dangerous if used on a regular basis.
To Freud he described Marilyn as a sick, borderline paranoid addict and expressed how hard it was to treat someone who had such severe problems but who was also incredibly famous yet totally alone. To this end he hired a housekeeper for Marilyn: a middle-aged woman called Eunice Murray, whom he had known since he purchased her former home in Santa Monica.
Eunice seems to have been a jack of all trades, turning her hand to many different skills: dressmaking, cooking, landscaping, interior design, bookbinding and even psychology. She had worked with several psychiatrists and their patients, helping in their homes to give support of whatever nature was required. Greenson believed Murray to be an ideal choice as companion for Marilyn and so it was that in November 1961, she began work at Doheny Drive, chauffeuring Marilyn around town, helping with the groceries and performing simple housekeeping errands such as washing and cleaning. ‘I was everything Marilyn needed,’ Murray later said, as she recalled the vast number of tasks she undertook for the actress.
But even though Murray believed herself a trustworthy companion, this thought was not reciprocated by Marilyn’s friends, with many of them wondering why she was there and what were her real motives. ‘My impression of Eunice Murray was that she couldn’t be trusted and that every move Marilyn made was reported immediately to Dr Greenson,’ commented Whitey Snyder to the ‘All About Marilyn’ club. ‘She was extremely quiet, secretive, and always hovering around Marilyn.’ He also wondered if Dr Greenson’s treatment was at all beneficial: ‘As the months went by it was obvious his influence was becoming stronger and stronger,’ he said. Furthermore, he felt that the frequency of visits and his twenty-four hour availability to her was ‘unprofessional and greedy’.
During this time Marilyn was still extremely busy, getting ready for her next Fox production, contributing to articles for Paris Match, Tempo and Redbook, and giving interviews to Vernon Scott, Joe Hyams and Henry Gris. But one project was to leave a lasting impression, when photographer Douglas Kirkland was assigned to do a portrait of Marilyn for the twenty-fifth anniversary special edition of Look magazine.
Arriving at the small Doheny Drive apartment, his first impressions were positive: ‘She was amazingly pleasant and playful like a sister and not at all intimidating as I had imagined her to be,’ remembered Kirkland. ‘She sat beside me, laughed easily and made small talk, putting me at ease. I was young and did not know how to ask her to pose for the sexy images I hoped to get, but she simplified it all by suggesting she should get into bed with nothing on but white silk. We discussed the details and Marilyn said she wanted Frank Sinatra music and chilled Dom Perignon.’
On the day of the photo shoot, she arrived very late and when she stepped into the room Kirkland was amazed to discover that she was now Marilyn Monroe, the superstar. He remembered: ‘It was an extraordinary photo session. She was wonderful; luminous as she floated under that semi-transparent silk sheet. She arrived with her hair and make-up already done and an assistant carrying various changes of clothes although they were not really needed. She told everyone in the room, “I’d like to be alone with this boy. I find it usually works better that way.” There was sexual tension in the air and it reflected in the resulting photos.’
However, the next afternoon, when Kirkland took the transparencies to Marilyn’s department, there was a distinct difference in her demeanour: ‘She seemed depressed. She was wearing dark glasses and might have been crying, but she eventually brightened up and decided she loved the pictures.’
Another photographer who had the opportunity of working with Marilyn in late 1961 was Eric Skipsey, who took photos of her with Maf, her small puppy. He remembered: ‘Marilyn was a friend of mine but I only had one occasion to do a portrait sitting which was a success. It was a bit complicated in that the publicist was three-quarters of an hour late in arriving, during which time we talked and joked and even had a small taste of champagne to pass the time away. When the female publicist finally arrived she turned to me and said, “You have ten minutes Mr Skipsey,” and Marilyn immediately said, “You have as long as you wish Eric, they are my pictures, not hers.” We worked together for another hour and in fact Marilyn said I could have more time if I wished. This attitude was typical of her: she did not behave like a superstar; she was a nice and considerate person.’
By December 1961 Marilyn’s therapy with Greenson was having its ups and downs, though she was committed to it, despite the pain it was causing. One aspect of the treatment – that of Greenson’s desire to get Marilyn working and studying once again – inspired her to write to Lee Strasberg on 19 December. In the letter, she informed her coach that through the absence of his lessons, she felt as though only half of her was functioning. She had big plans for the future and was desperate for Strasberg to move to California to work as part of a new independent production unit she was hoping to form; so determined was she that she even wrote to Marlon Brando asking for his opinion on how best to get Lee to Los Angeles, declaring that ‘time is of the essence’.
She once told reporters that, ‘I seem to be a whole superstructure without any foundation,’ and as 1961 rolled into 1962, she said that she was now ‘working on the foundation’. At her side once again was Joe DiMaggio, shopping with her for Christmas presents on Olvera Street, buying her a little Christmas tree for her apartment, and even attending a seasonal dinner with the Greenson family and their friends. But the event wasn’t altogether successful, when the men at the house gathered around DiMaggio and bombarded him with baseball questions. Marilyn laughed when it was commented that the men were paying no attention to her at all but, in reality, she did not find it particularly funny.
In January 1962 Marilyn’s relationship with the Strasbergs started to cool slightly when she discovered that a television project was being planned about the Actors Studio and that Lee initially did not want her to know about it, changing his mind only at the last moment. She then received a letter from Paula, asking her to sign a statement so that work could begin, which left her ‘confused by the entire situation’. Writing to Lee in mid-January, Marilyn demanded to know what her part would be in the television programme; what the idea and purpose was behind the project; and made it clear that there was no way she could possibly become involved when there were so many unanswered questions.
Another difficult friendship was the one she had with Frank Sinatra, which went off the boil one day when Marilyn started telling him about her childhood. ‘Oh not that again,’ he exclaimed. Marilyn was not pleased by his rebuttal of her woes, and shortly afterwards she surprised friends by refusing to give him copies of photos from a recent boat trip. ‘I’ve already given him enough,’ she told them.
Marilyn was a warm-hearted person to people she liked, but she could also be something of a ‘monster’, as she admitted to reporter W. J. Weatherby in 1961. One person who saw this side of her was Michael Selsman, who worked with her through the Arthur P. Jacobs agency. ‘She was Pat Newcomb’s client,’ said Selsman, ‘but Pat was frequently busy with some of her other clients, so I was detailed to cover certain PR functions for her. It was always difficult to work with Marilyn – sometimes unpleasant. I had other “difficult” clients but they were also kind and generous, which Marilyn was not. She made it hard for me (and others around her) to do our jobs – just because she could. It’s tempting to say she was a spoiled brat, but it went deeper than that. She could be mean, spiteful, threatening and duplicitous; to the point I dreaded having to see her.’
On one occasion in January 1962, Selsman and his wife Carol Lynley travelled to the Doheny Drive apartment for a meeting with Marilyn: ‘Carol was nine months pregnant, due any moment now. I couldn’t and didn’t want to leave her at home by herself, so I took her along to Monroe’s apartment, where Marilyn was to look at negatives from a photo shoot she had just done with the hot new photographer, twentyone-year-old Doug Kirkland, for Look magazine. I knocked on her door, as Carol stood shivering beside me. Marilyn opened the door and looked at Carol, whom she knew, since they had adjacent dressing rooms at the studio, and said, “You come in,” motioning to me, “but she can wait in your car.” This was unexpected and I was momentarily stunned. Carol and I exchanged glances, and I assured her I’d be out in fifteen minutes. I was frankly scared. Monroe was one of our biggest clients and I did not want to confront her, or lose my job.
‘Every other actor I worked with would use a red grease pencil to put an X through the negatives they didn’t like, but not Monroe. She took scissors and cut out every one she did not like, then cut those into tiny splinters and threw them in the wastebasket. This laborious process took three hours, during which I repeatedly got up to leave. Marilyn kept ordering me to sit down. To be young is to be stupid, someone said, and if I were ever in a situation like that again, I might be out of a job, but I might have still had a wife. It was my first evidentiary of Marilyn Monroe’s capacity for cruelty.’
Despite suffering from flu, Marilyn continued with her own projects, among them getting out of her contract with MCA; and hiring a new lawyer, in the shape of Milton ‘Mickey’ Rudin – Greenson’s brother-in-law. On a creative level she attended a meeting with Alan Levy from Redbook on 25 January and then another with Richard Meryman, who wished to do an interview for Life magazine. According to memos from the Arthur P. Jacob’s agency, Marilyn reacted very well to Meryman, though less so with a reporter who was also in attendance and apparently a little drunk. Constantly interrupting both Marilyn and Meryman, the reporter spoke to the actress as if she were ‘underprivileged’ and became absolutely hysterical when told that all photos not approved by Marilyn would be destroyed. ‘How can you dare such a thing?’ she demanded, to which a surprised Marilyn replied, ‘You’re giving me a fishy-eyed stare but I love you anyway.’
On a personal level, Marilyn decided she wanted her own home, becoming tired of living in hotels and rented apartments. She ideally wanted something near to the coast and with a Mexican style close to that of the Greenson home, which she idolized. Eunice Murray was pleased to help and over the course of several weeks took Marilyn to various locations, looking for the ideal home. Unfortunately, the happy search was marred slightly when she was literally thrown out of one house by the female owner who resented the presence of the movie star in her home. This was not a happy incident by any means, and according to friends it disturbed Marilyn greatly.
However, not long after there was cause for celebration when Murray found the ideal property in the shape of 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, a small house in Brentwood, located at the end of a tiny side street. The bungalow had thick walls, heavy beams and bars on the front windows, which afforded Marilyn a sense of security, along with a tile at the front door which read ‘Cursum Perficio’ – meaning ‘I’ve finished my journey’. At the back of the house there was a terrace, a kidney-shaped swimming pool and large garden that cascaded down the hillside, giving out to a magnificent view of the streets below; Marilyn loved it.
After asking Joe DiMaggio to look over the house for her, it was decided that the kitchen would be remodelled completely and other rooms would be decorated in both Mexican fixtures and fittings. She had her lawyer, Milton Rudin, draw up the papers and, despite feeling saddened by the fact that she was buying a home on her own, she signed and began making plans for the future. ‘The house was important for Marilyn,’ recounted Eunice Murray, ‘her doctor thought it would take the place of a baby or husband.’
Marilyn herself expressed her love for the house by exclaiming, ‘It’s the first house I’ve ever owned and I bought it because it reminded me so much of the orphanages I was brought up in as a child.’ This was a strange comment based on her previous statements about orphanage life, but showed a positive shift with regards to the way she viewed her childhood memories.
A variety of people were hired to help restore the Fifth Helena Drive home, including handyman Norman Jeffries and his brother Keith. There was also the Twentieth Century Fox electrician, James A. Gough, whose son Jim went with him to the home one Saturday afternoon. He remembered: ‘Marilyn and Mrs Murray were delighted as they had just discovered the original fireplace with Mexican tiles, under a layer of plaster, and they were happily cleaning the tiles when we arrived. Marilyn showed us around the home and the garden and I was surprised to discover that the house wasn’t grand. It was a simple, 1930s Spanish renaissance style and Marilyn had found that she loved gardening, although she had never had the opportunity to do it before.’
In early February 1962 Marilyn went briefly to New York and then on 17 February travelled to Miami in order to visit her former father-in-law, Isidore Miller. He had been staying at the Sea Isle Hotel for some time, but feeling lonely had been delighted when Marilyn told him of her plans to visit him. On 19 February, after a poignant few days with ‘Dad’, Marilyn flew to Mexico along with Pat Newcomb and several other members of staff. There she met up with Eunice Murray, who had travelled down the week before, scouting out places of interest and visiting with her brother-in-law, Churchill Murray.
Despite the fact that the trip was officially to buy furniture for her home, it captured the attention of the FBI, who had been keeping a discreet, watchful eye on Marilyn since the mid-1950s after she expressed a desire to visit Russia, and then began dating Arthur Miller. From Mexico an unnamed informant sent little snippets of information to Washington, DC, declaring that Marilyn had been associating closely with certain members of the American Communist Group in Mexico (ACGM) and that a mutual infatuation had developed between Marilyn and a gentleman called Frederick Vanderbilt Field. Field had served nine months in prison for refusing to name his communist friends, before finally moving to Mexico in 1953. (Although his name is blanked out on most of the FBI documents, there remains one instance where his name has been mistakenly left in, making it almost certain that Fields is the man to whom the reports referred.)
According to the documents, Marilyn spent a great deal of time with the married Field. Whether or not there was any real romance between Field and Marilyn, they certainly spent some time together, such as on 21 February when he was said to have visited her in Suite 1110 of the Hotel Continental Hilton and on 24 February when she travelled with him to a native market in Toluca.
Whoever the informant was for this and other information remains unclear, but it was most definitely somebody who was able to gain access both to Marilyn and her entourage – particularly Eunice Murray (who is falsely identified as Eunice Churchill in the FBI files). The informant seems to have spoken with Murray, quoting her as saying that Marilyn was greatly disturbed by Miller’s recent marriage to Inge Morath, a photographer he met on The Misfits set, and that she felt like a ‘negated sex symbol’.
If the informant is to be believed, the friendship with Field caused ‘considerable dismay’ both among members of the ACGM and Marilyn’s entourage, particularly Eunice Murray, who felt that Marilyn was becoming increasingly dependent on him and was very vulnerable at the present time due to her rejection by Arthur Miller, Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra.
The exact nature of their relationship will probably never be known, but Field was married at the time and his wife Nieves was certainly in attendance during the Mexico trip and later travelled with her husband to New York, staying in Marilyn’s apartment for three weeks while she was in Los Angeles. So unless the relationship was carried out in full view of Field’s wife and with her approval, it would seem most likely that there was a mutual attraction, rather than a full-blown affair. As well as that, on 25 February Marilyn cancelled a date with a furious Field just five minutes before he was due to collect her, which is hardly the behaviour of a lovestruck woman.
One person who was touted as boyfriend material was José Bolaños, a Mexican fan/scriptwriter who lived with his parents, brothers and a daughter by a previous marriage. How they met remains something of a mystery, but Bolaños showed Marilyn around local nightspots and at the end of the visit gave her every photo he could find of them together. ‘She was the most funny person I have ever met,’ he later told reporter Glenn Thomas Carter. ‘She had one quality that really delighted me – the ability to demolish verbally anyone who proved to be obnoxious to her.’
Apart from an official date at the Golden Globe awards in Los Angeles, the ‘romance’ between Bolaños and Marilyn does not seem to have been very serious. However, he did agree to help her with something much more important than a relationship – the possible adoption of a child.
According to an intriguing article published in Motion Picture magazine, reporter Glenn Thomas Carter accompanied Marilyn during a night out in Acapulco, where she came face to face with an eight-year-old boy who was entertaining customers. The article did not name the child but, according to Carter, Marilyn became intrigued by the youngster and bombarded him with questions about his background. His parents were dead, she discovered, and he had run away from his uncle and then worked on a construction site, where he was allowed to sleep in a hammock on the scaffolding. He no longer worked on the site but his life had not improved, since he was now living in a shack with foster-parents who had taught him how to dance and pickpocket tourists.
Marilyn was dumbfounded and when she broke down in tears, the young boy joined her, crying and asking if he might be able to live with her in California. Impulsively Marilyn said yes, and the next day went to visit his foster-parents, informing them that her friend Jose Bolaños would arrange all the details of the adoption for her.
Shortly afterwards, Marilyn visited a Mexican orphanage where she was given the opportunity of adopting a baby, but turned it down, instead donating $10,000 to further their cause. Then at a farewell party, Marilyn told other guests of her intentions to adopt a Mexican child, and later, her stand-in Evelyn Moriarty recalled, ‘It was around this time that I first heard talk of Marilyn trying to adopt a child. I heard that her trip to Mexico was for more than buying furniture.’