by Lois Banner
On February 1, 1962, Marilyn again met Bobby Kennedy at a dinner party at the Lawfords’, which was held to honor him and his wife, Ethel, as they set off on a goodwill tour of the Far East. Marilyn asked Bobby a lot of intelligent questions about government policies concerning civil rights, relations with Cuba, and the atom bomb. Danny Greenson, Ralph Greenson’s son and a radical student at Berkeley, had helped her construct them. She wrote them down on a piece of paper she put in her purse, and Kennedy was amused when he discovered her strategy. Kim Novak and Natalie Wood were also at the party, but Bobby was interested in Marilyn. Some Marilyn biographers contend that this was her first meeting with him, on the basis of letters she wrote that week to Isadore Miller and Bobby Miller about him, but I’m not so certain. Marilyn kept her relationships with the Kennedys secret, even from close friends.
Two weeks after the party, Marilyn went to Mexico with Eunice Murray and Pat Newcomb to purchase furniture for her Brentwood house. An adventurous Marilyn was evident during these weeks and so was a tormented Marilyn. The latter persona took an upper hand after Arthur married Inge Morath on February 17. According to FBI reports, the marriage made Marilyn feel like “a negated sex symbol.” She spent several nights with dark-haired, handsome José Bolaños, variously described as a gigolo, a rising director of Mexican films, or an FBI plant. She also spent time with Frederick Vanderbilt Field and his wife, Nieves. Field was a scion of the Vanderbilt family whom the state department tried in court and sent to prison because he had lied about his communist involvement. He spent nine months in prison before moving to Mexico City, to join a group of expatriates. They were pariahs in the United States because of convictions for communism. Mutual friends in Roxbury had recommended Field and Monroe to each other, and they clicked immediately.
Marilyn and he had long talks about politics in the evenings after they shopped for furniture during the day. Marilyn spoke about her strong support for civil rights and black equality, as well as her admiration for the revolution in China. If we add these sentiments to her praise for Fidel Castro in her letter to Lester Markel the previous year, it’s clear that she had moved considerably to the left, far beyond the position she had espoused when married to Arthur Miller. J. Edgar Hoover, who had her under FBI surveillance for years, began to see a plot in her involvement with Field.52
FBI reports suggest that she may have had an affair with Field, although his wife was with them most of the time and Bolaños went to Hollywood at the same time she returned there. Just before she left Mexico City, she visited the National Institute for the Protection of Children and gave the director a check for one thousand dollars. She then tore up the check and made out another one for ten thousand dollars. She may have discussed adopting a child with the director. Once again, as often before, Marilyn combined professional and personal business with a charitable act, as though she were exonerating herself for any wrongs she had committed.
On March 5 she was awarded the Golden Globe as the 1961 Female World Film Favorite, at a ceremony at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. She was either drunk or drugged out at the event, since her acceptance speech was incoherent. She took José Bolaños with her to the ceremony, but he went back to Mexico the next day. Joe DiMaggio’s biographer contends that DiMaggio went to Hollywood and forced Bolaños to leave. Two days later Joe helped Marilyn move into her house in Brentwood. Then, on March 24, two weeks later, she had another meeting with Jack Kennedy, this time at Bing Crosby’s ranch in Palm Springs. She called Ralph Roberts in the middle of the night, asking him about issues concerning the spine, and she put Kennedy, who had a bad back, on the phone to consult with him.53
When in Hollywood in March and April, Marilyn met with Nunnally Johnson on the script he was writing for Something’s Got to Give, the remake of My Favorite Wife, which she had agreed to do to fulfill her contractual obligations to Twentieth Century–Fox. As a result of those conversations Johnson revised the negative estimation of Marilyn he had formed in their earlier association on How to Marry a Millionaire and on How to Be Very, Very Popular, the film based on her that he’d written and that she’d refused to do. He no longer experienced her as “under water”; he now found her smart, funny, and highly intuitive. They agreed about the film. He described an evening they spent together drinking champagne as one of the “most enchanting three hours I’d ever spent.” Marilyn had charmed him with her effervescence and intelligence.54
But there was a major problem with making the movie, and Marilyn should have realized it. Fox assigned George Cukor, her nemesis on Let’s Make Love, to direct it. Cukor hadn’t wanted to do Something’s Got to Give, but he owed the studio a film. Perhaps Marilyn thought he wouldn’t try to change the Nunnally Johnson script, which she liked. But her contract didn’t include script approval; thus she couldn’t protest to Fox executives if Cukor changed Johnson’s script. Predictably, Cukor brought in a writer, Walter Bernstein, and had him make extensive revisions to the script. Even during filming, new pages of script were sent to Marilyn in the evening for her to memorize by the next day. It was The Misfits all over again.
To make matters worse, the studio itself was in disarray. Zanuck was gone; Buddy Adler had died; and Peter Levathes, whom Spyros Skouras brought in as head of production, was an advertising executive with little experience in running a film studio. According to veteran writer and filmmaker David Brown, Levathes was not used to “the demands and temperaments of talent.” He had migraine headaches and fits of rage.55 Profits were steadily dropping and Cleopatra, being filmed in Rome with Elizabeth Taylor, was going millions over budget. The back lot had already been sold off, and Something’s Got to Give was the only film in production on the lot. Fox executives had gotten themselves into the position of pampering Taylor, even though she was even more difficult than Marilyn. In their panicked eyes, the future of the studio rested on Marilyn showing up at work. But ever since she became a star, she hadn’t been good at that.
Levathes fired the experienced David Brown as producer on Something’s Got to Give and brought in Henry Weinstein, a theatrical producer who had worked on only one previous film. Weinstein and Greenson had long been friends, and Greenson recommended him for the job through his brother-in-law Milton (Mickey) Rudin, who was now acting as Marilyn’s agent. But Weinstein was a gentle man—not the tough sort of producer who easily stood up to the studio executives. Getting Marilyn to the set on time was the primary consideration for studio executives, and Greenson promised that he and Weinstein could do it. Another web of connections had been drawn around her, consisting of Greenson, Weinstein, and Rudin—with Sinatra, Pat Newcomb, and the Kennedys in the background.
Cukor wanted to undermine her in the film out of spite over her behavior on Let’s Make Love. She was not going to control him this time, he decided. On April 23, as the film began production, Marilyn came down with a severe case of viral sinusitis and a high fever from a bug she had caught in Mexico. Doctors estimated that it might take several months for her to get over it if she took heavy doses of antibiotics and went on bed rest. They recommended that the start of filming be postponed. But studio executives refused to believe that she was really ill, despite the diagnosis of Lee Siegel, the official Fox doctor. Thus they placed reports in the newspapers that she was faking illness, and began filming. Siegel recommended that they begin filming at eleven or noon each day, so that Marilyn could sleep in, but they refused even to do that. They set the call to begin filming at seven and expected Marilyn to be on set. In order to make the seven o’clock deadline, Marilyn had to get up at five.
Marilyn did her best to arrive on time; she wanted to fulfill her commitment to Fox and to please Greenson. Biographers have claimed that Lee Siegel gave her “hot shots” of meta-amphetamines mixed with vitamins, but those allegations are debatable. He gave her shots of vitamin B12, a common practice then to provide energy, especially since she was often anemic. Marilyn could easily have gone to another doctor for such shots.56
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p; Meanwhile, Greenson was planning to take a vacation in Europe. His wife had suffered a mild stroke in February; he wanted to see his in-laws in Austria; and he was scheduled to give a paper at an international conference in Israel. He was exhausted by Marilyn, and he needed a rest. There had been periods in February and March when she had improved, and he thought she could manage six weeks without him. One evening she held up a white knight from a chess set she had purchased in Mexico and examined it in the light. It reminded her that she had Greenson to protect her, and she carried it with her as an amulet when she sang at Jack Kennedy’s birthday celebration and Democratic fund-raiser at Madison Square Garden on May 19.57
Despite Marilyn’s illness, which resulted in her being absent from filming for the first two weeks of Something’s Got to Give—from April 23 to May 11—Greenson flew to Europe on May 10. He left instructions that if she had a crisis she was to contact Milton Wexler, a psychiatrist and close friend. She seemed to rally after he left—like a dutiful daughter following her father’s wishes. She was on the set from May 14 to May 16. Then on May 17 she flew to New York to sing for the Kennedy celebration. This performance would turn into a major tragedy for her.
The performers at the birthday celebration included Maria Callas, Harry Belafonte, Jimmy Durante, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, and Diahann Carroll, with Milton Berle as master of ceremonies. Marilyn thought studio executives had given her permission to attend it, but they disputed that assumption and were furious when they found her carrying out what they considered to be a childish rebellion. They didn’t understand how she could be well enough to attend the celebration, when she had missed filming for two weeks.
Whether or not she had permission to go to the celebration, Marilyn prepared carefully for it. Designer Jean Louis made her a special dress. She’d promised the event planners that she would dress discreetly, but she didn’t. The dress was made of a transparent nude fabric, with rhinestones sewn in strategic patterns over her breasts and genitals. It wasn’t entirely original: Jean Louis had designed such dresses for Marlene Dietrich to wear in her nightclub shows; and Marilyn had worn similar dresses in Some Like It Hot, when she performed at the hotel nightclub with the all-woman band.
The dress was deceptive. Under regular light it appeared to cover her. A member of the Women’s Committee of the Democratic Party visited Marilyn backstage to check it out in terms of its respectability and was relieved to find that the dress covered her body. In the dressing room it seemed even modest. Under stage lights, however, the nude fabric melted away, making it seem that the flashing rhinestones were her only cover.58
Peter Lawford, drawing on his Rat Pack persona, introduced Marilyn at the celebration with a joke in bad taste, referring numerous times to her lateness, which was familiar to anyone who followed the movies. The joke was amplified since she didn’t appear on stage after the first times he used it. Finally, after one last reference to “the late Marilyn Monroe,” she came on stage, trotting to the microphone like a geisha girl because her dress was so tight. She wore a white mink wrap over her dress. Once again, as so often in the past at parties and premieres, she acted provocatively, throwing her wrap to Peter Lawford and slithering to the microphone. She flicked it, peered over the crowd, and then sang a slow and sensual unaccompanied version of “Happy Birthday to You,” seemingly lost in her own eroticism, as she slowly drew her hands across her body, from her hips to her breast. She then sang another slow song to the melody of “Thanks for the Memory,” with words specially written for the occasion, which thanked Jack Kennedy for what he had done as president. Then, in a sudden switch of tone, she led the audience in a rousing version of “Happy Birthday to You,” with her arms pumping up and down. Now she seemed near manic in mood.
Why did she do it? The performance was tasteless, and Jack Kennedy broke with her because of it. Dorothy Kilgallen wrote in her column the next day that Marilyn had seemed to be making love to the president in front of four million viewers (the celebration was televised). Some writers maintain that she did it to show off to Arthur Miller, since his father, Isidore Miller, went with her to the event. Marilyn’s intended target may have been Inge Morath, Arthur’s new wife, who was dark and intense, a European intellectual with little sensuality. The week before, Arthur and Inge had been at a state dinner for André Malraux at the White House, seated next to Jackie Kennedy.
Jackie also may have inspired Marilyn’s birthday party persona. In February, three months before the birthday celebration, Jackie had appeared in a televised tour of the White House, which she had redecorated. The contrasts between the well-groomed Jackie of the White House tour and the sensual Marilyn of the birthday celebration are striking. Jackie, dressed in a respectable linen sheath during the tour, has become in Marilyn a shimmering parody of respectability. Marilyn had Jackie’s hairdresser, Kenneth Battelle, style her hair that morning. He did her hair in a bouffant style, with a flip on the left side. In the White House tour, Jackie’s hair is arranged exactly the same way. Jackie’s little-girl voice resembles Marilyn’s, even sharing some of the same inflections. Jackie doesn’t look entirely self-confident in the White House tour; there is fear in her eyes. It seems that at the birthday celebration Marilyn intended to send up Jackie, and to showcase her own superior desirability to men. On the other hand, as Patricia Kennedy Lawford thought, Marilyn may have intended the performance as a joke, a caricature of “Marilyn Monroe.” Suspecting what might happen, Jackie didn’t attend the birthday celebration.59
Afterward, there was a party for the performers and major Democratic donors at the apartment of Mathilde and Arthur Krim, the head of United Artists. Secret Service agents, it is said, confiscated the negatives of all photos of Marilyn with the Kennedy brothers. One of the few remaining photos of them together shows a number of people in rapt attention as Diahann Carroll sings. Marilyn appears in the photo, as do Isidore Miller, Peter Lawford, Jack Kennedy, Maria Callas, Pat Kennedy Lawford, and Ethel Kennedy. Marilyn is still wearing the dress from her performance, which casts doubt on the allegation that her dress, into which she had presumably been sewn, had been cut off her after the performance to swath her in cold towels to break her high fever. In fact, if you look closely, there is a zipper on the back of the dress.
Marilyn took Isidore Miller home to Brooklyn in her limousine after the Krim party, which lasted until two in the morning, and Ralph Roberts gave her a massage in her apartment on Fifty-seventh Street at four A.M. Thus it seems unlikely that she spent time at the Carlyle Hotel with Jack Kennedy after the birthday party, as has been alleged.60
Arthur Schlesinger, special assistant to Jack Kennedy, and Adlai Stevenson, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, were both at the Krim party. Both were attracted to Marilyn. Schlesinger was “enchanted by her manner and her wit, at once so masked, so ingenuous and so penetrating.” “Bobby and I,” he said, “engaged in mock competition for her; she was most agreeable to him and pleasant to me.” Stevenson recalled getting to Marilyn “only after breaking through the strong defenses established by Robert Kennedy, who was dodging around her like a moth around the flame.” Even Eunice Murray stated that at the after party it was difficult to tell which Kennedy she preferred.61
Larry Newman, a member of the Secret Service detail assigned to the Kennedys, told me that Bobby and Marilyn argued backstage before her appearance. Then, he said, they went into a dressing room and closed the door, remaining there for fifteen minutes. When they left the room, both were arranging their clothing. Newman believed that sex had occurred. I heard Mickey Song, who claimed to be the hairdresser for the Kennedys, tell the same story as Newman’s on numerous occasions at Marilyn Remembered meetings. Song said Bobby brought him backstage to comb out Marilyn’s hair. If that is the case, then by the spring of 1962 Marilyn was involved with both Kennedys. That was a heady position for a working-class girl, raised in foster homes and an orphanage. Whether she could hold that position while struggling with her studio, her demons, her drug
addiction, and her various illnesses remained an issue as she returned to Hollywood and her regular life.62
Chapter 13
Defiance and Death
In May 1962 Marilyn visited an art gallery in Beverly Hills along with Norman Rosten, who was in Hollywood writing a screenplay. She bought an oil painting by the French artist Poucette and a sculpture by Auguste Rodin. The oil painting is called Le Taureau (The Bull). It is small, only ten inches by fourteen inches. Shades of bright red cover the canvas. Dark forms at its top rise out of a red mist, while a black bull dominates the bottom left corner. Anger seems the motif of the painting, with the bull blocking the way to an enchanted city or a group of macabre figures—both are suggested by the forms in the mist. The sculpture was a bronze original of Rodin’s Embrace. Norman called the sculpture of a man and woman embracing lyrical, although menacing: “The man’s posture was fierce, predatory, almost vicious; the woman innocent, responding, human.” After buying the objects, Marilyn’s mood shifted from cheerful to sullen. She insisted on stopping at Ralph Greenson’s house to show him the sculpture. When they got there, she was belligerent. “What does it mean? Is he screwing her, or is it a fake?”1
Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, John and Robert Kennedy—some of the most famous men of her day—were her lovers. But what did she mean to them? Norman thought her questions about the sculpture concerned the dangers of love. “The tenderness of love, the brutality. If it existed, what was it, how to feel, recognize, be protected against it?” By the spring of 1962, if not before, despite her free-love inclinations, Marilyn felt bruised by men, felt she was sometimes nothing more than “a piece of meat” to them. She expressed her anger against men to Milton Ebbins, Peter Lawford’s manager. Ebbins said to her, “Marilyn, everyone loves you.” She replied, “The only guys that love me are the guys who jerk off in the balcony.”2