By now Marilyn was openly dating Frank Sinatra, which conflicted both of them because Sinatra had been such a close friend of DiMaggio’s. Marilyn still cared for Joe, but she was definitely in the market for a new lover. She and Sinatra dined together, she was his guest in Palm Springs, they attended a swank party for Billy Wilder at Romanoff’s, and she visited him at his recording studio.
Considering that Monroe and Sinatra were two of the most charismatic entertainers of their time, it was only natural that they would eventually become romantically involved. Even Sinatra’s daughter Nancy felt that an attraction was inevitable: “I met Marilyn only once, very briefly, at Lee Strasberg’s house,” Nancy recalled. “I remember she was glowing, no make-up, wore a babushka and had a definite aura. Three people had that aura: Elvis, Marilyn, and my father. I’ve met a lot of celebrities in my lifetime, and these were the only three who glowed.”
The relationship brought her to the center of an exciting circle of friends, which included the now infamous “Rat Pack.” These were the hard-drinking, chain-smoking, tough-talking celebrity A-listers who flaunted their fame and wealth and were out for a swinging good time. Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin and his wife, Jeanne, and Peter and Pat Lawford were the core of the group. Pat Lawford, in the coming months, would become one of Marilyn’s closest friends.
These luminaries expected Marilyn to be witty, gorgeous, and fun. Everyone knew she had this beguiling side to her personality, and she enjoyed presenting it. When she was “on” and sparkling, there was no one like her—the aura, the magic.
* * *
She had indulged her demons in New York. Now she would deal with her dark side, mostly in sessions with Greenson. She alternated jet-setting with her celebrity friends and spending days at a time consulting with her psychiatrist—who disapproved of most of her friends and, in an attempt to help her, began involving himself in her life.
When she was in Los Angeles she would see Dr. Greenson regularly—almost daily—and he was working in conjunction with Dr. Hyman Engelberg, who would confer with Greenson and then write the prescriptions the two doctors agreed on.
“We knew that she was manic-depressive, which is now called bipolar personality,” Engelberg said in a rare interview many years after her death. “I think the term manic-depressive is better. It’s more descriptive. And that always meant that there were emotional problems and she could have big swings in her moods.”
Unfortunately, by this time Marilyn’s psychological problems were so deep that she could only muster the joyful, happy girl for brief periods. To bolster her courage and try to maintain a lighthearted demeanor, she almost always drank champagne and popped pills throughout social events, usually ending up wasted. She would then discuss these events with Greenson.
In her private sessions with Greenson, she would do a reversal regarding how she felt about her Hollywood friends. Marilyn knew a great many people, but on the inside she felt she hardly knew anyone at all. Or at least they didn’t know her. Sometimes she would say that they were all out to use her and that she was being manipulated. She would become “paranoid,” a word that came up often when friends and colleagues described Marilyn.
Depression as a genuine mental illness was not talked about socially in the early 1960s. Even in the psychiatric world they didn’t have the knowledge of bipolar disorder that has come to light in the decades following Marilyn’s death. The antidepressants that might have stabilized her moods certainly were not as advanced or available to that generation. For the most part the best her doctors felt they could do for Marilyn was prescribe tranquilizers to calm her manic periods and sleeping pills in an attempt to help her find the ever-elusive sleep.
Marilyn took stabs at overcoming her depressive episodes, but usually she self-medicated with alcohol—the thing that was most readily available to her. Many of her friends didn’t understand the melancholy periods when it was difficult for her to leave the cocoonlike safety of her bedroom. Oh, they knew of her tortured past—everybody did. But they couldn’t understand why she couldn’t get over her childhood, get over everything she’d been through, get tough—be happy. Dean Martin was always very gentle and kind with Marilyn, but behind her back he would say things like, “We all had it rough at one time or another. Why can’t she get over it?”
Milt Ebbins once asked Marilyn why she was depressed. “You’re the goddamn biggest star in the business,” he said.”You’re a legend. You’re beautiful. You have everything.” Instead of viewing herself as a woman the world fell in love with, Marilyn replied, “Listen, the only people who love me are the guys who jerk off in the balcony.”
She continued to socialize, with varying degrees of success. Whether at an informal party at Peter Lawford’s beach house, or a glitzy nightclub, she could appear in turns elegant and clever or sloppy and vague. She attempted to compartmentalize the social part of her life, the therapy part, and the professional part—aiming to be what was expected in each situation. That’s why so many have different ideas of who Marilyn was.
* * *
Physically Marilyn still was not feeling well, and on May 26 she was admitted to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital for a gynecological procedure that was intended to ease the excruciating pain of her endometriosis.
She bounced back from that surgery quickly and was feeling well enough to be Frank Sinatra’s guest at his June 7 opening at the Sands Hotel.* It was a special performance in celebration of Dean Martin’s forty-fifth birthday.
At the concert Marilyn sat ringside with Elizabeth Taylor and her then-husband Eddie Fisher. Taylor and Monroe were undoubtedly the biggest female stars in the world. Contrasting sex symbols, the epitomes of dark versus blond beauty. But that night it was Elizabeth who receded.
“All eyes were on Marilyn,” Eddie Fisher recalled. “She swayed back and forth to the music and pounded her hands on the stage, her breasts falling out of her low-cut dress. She was so beautiful—and so drunk.”*
At the Vegas party after the performance, the actress Ruta Lee vividly recalled Marilyn walking in on Sinatra’s arm: “She had a glow around her. A built-in klieg light that followed her everywhere. As beautiful as Elizabeth Taylor was, Marilyn stole the show.” But when Sinatra noticed that Marilyn had drunk too much, he immediately had her escorted back to their room. Not understanding the fear and insecurity that caused her to drink, he disapproved of her when she was intoxicated.
Sinatra especially adored Marilyn when she was beautifully turned out and sparkling. But he also knew her deep-rooted problems. Her inherent hurt and loneliness often made it difficult for Marilyn to function without alcohol and pills to subdue her demons. At times she overdid it and became wasted, a mess. This side of Marilyn’s personality frightened Sinatra.
Once, at a party, when she suddenly became morose and began talking about some childhood trauma, Sinatra called out, “Oh no! Not that again, Norma Jeane!” Marilyn was crushed, but she understood what he meant: Men liked her best when she was happy and gay.
Rupert Allan observed, “I always thought of Frank and Marilyn as star-crossed lovers. In a different time and place, they would have been together. He loved her a lot. However, by 1961, she was in so much turmoil, I think he was annoyed with her a lot of the time. He just thought she should have worked harder to pull herself together, so, yes, sometimes she pissed him off.”
Marilyn deeply touched something in Frank—in a way no other woman could. He responded to her damsel-in-distress quality by fiercely wanting to protect her. Gloria Romanoff was always impressed by the great concern he showed for her. She observed that this was very different from his relationships with other women.
As an example of Sinatra’s devotion to Marilyn, Milt Ebbins recalled the time when Sinatra missed a luncheon at the White House because he couldn’t find her. A special Italian menu had been prepared at the request of President Kennedy, but Sinatra canceled, claiming that he “had the flu.” Months later Ebbins discovered through Sinatra’s secretar
y, Gloria Lovell, that Marilyn had been staying at Sinatra’s house and “just walked out without a word.” Sinatra didn’t know where she was. He became frantic when he couldn’t find her and opted to stay in Los Angeles to look for her. “I’m telling you, he was hung up on this girl,” Ebbins stated.
* * *
As for Marilyn, she loved Sinatra. His confidence and power made her feel safe. No one, no Hollywood big shot, would dare mess around with her, try to take advantage, or push her around with Sinatra in her corner. She, however, realized that at this point in his life he was a womanizer.
Soon the movie magazine headlines were asking: “Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra: Is it a fling? Or is it a thing?” It was actually something in between.
It seemed that for the time being they settled on an open romance—they both dated other people and waited to see where it might lead. But Marilyn counted on Sinatra’s devotion and protection for the remainder of her life.
TWENTY-FOUR
AGE THREE FIVE
But age stalked Marilyn like a demon. She had always managed life’s complexities because, as long as she was young and beautiful, she could bewitch a savior to lift her up. She worried terribly about what would happen when she lost that.
On June 1 Marilyn celebrated her thirty-fifth birthday. Her telegram to Dr. Greenson on the same day, although also trying hard to project optimism, has a dark element: “In this world of people I’m glad there is you. I have a feeling of hope though today I’m three five.*
As for her career, Fox still hadn’t offered Marilyn anything she felt was worth doing. Her next picture was already being called “a comeback.” Desperate to get Marilyn back to work, Fox offered her a screenplay then titled Celebration! based on another flop play, A Loss of Roses, by William Inge. It is a dreary drama about an aging loser—a failed dancer named Lila—and her relationship with a younger man. This was not the sort of story Marilyn was in the market for.
With no interesting film projects coming from her studio, Marilyn turned her attention back to Rain, the television spectacular still on the table at NBC. She felt that with her star power she’d be able to exercise much more control in a television production. In 1961 it was a rare occurrence for a motion picture star to appear in a television drama, and for months Rain, starring Marilyn Monroe, was touted as a major upcoming event. The Hollywood studio system despised Marilyn. The television industry felt damn lucky to have her and was willing to bend over backward to please her.
* * *
Deteriorating health kept getting in the way of Marilyn’s plans. On June 28, back in New York, she was rushed to Polyclinic Hospital with what was first described as “a mild intestinal disorder.” It was discovered that her condition was much more serious: Her entire gall bladder was inflamed and had to be removed in a two-hour operation. The diseased gall bladder had been the cause of much of the physical pain she had been in for many of the previous months.
When she woke up, it was with Joe DiMaggio at her side. The operation left a five-inch angry-looking scar on the right side of her lower abdomen—which she hadn’t seen yet but was aware of because of the size of the bandage and the amount of pain she was in. Marilyn needed coddling. Once again her career was put on hold while she concentrated on her health. She wanted a family around her. Weak and fearful, she asked her half sister, Berniece Miracle, to fly in from Florida and stay with her at the apartment while she recuperated: “I need you to be with me,” Marilyn pleaded.
In actuality the two women weren’t close. They were in each other’s presence only a handful of times during their lives. But this visit wasn’t about nostalgia, curiosity, or sentimentality.
The day Marilyn was released from the hospital, reporters and fans waiting outside jostled her, tearing her scar open. Even though Marilyn was used to assertive crowds by now, this time she was really shaken. “That was a little rough because I just had a gall bladder operation and my side opened up,” Marilyn recalled. “The crowds pushed and there went my side! So when I got home … they sent a young doctor with me, and they had to put clamps and tapes and I don’t know what else. But that didn’t help it any.”
In her vulnerable condition, Marilyn appreciated Berniece coming, but it was obvious that these two women, who shared a mother, had little in common. Still, they tried to connect. Berniece remarked on Marilyn’s tastefully decorated apartment. Marilyn complimented her half sister for her white teeth. They tried on each other’s clothes and experimented with makeup. They had breakfast and dinner together—often joined by DiMaggio and his friend George Solitaire.
But even as she convalesced, getting back to her career was never far from Marilyn’s mind. Berniece noticed that, upon rising in the mornings, the first thing Marilyn did was take the newspaper into her bedroom so she could go over the entertainment section. With “getting on with it” a top priority, Marilyn decided to move back to Los Angeles on a more permanent basis.
* * *
The two main reasons for Marilyn’s return to Hollywood that August were to revive her career and to return to therapy with Dr. Ralph Greenson. She hoped Greenson could help her to lift the mask of “Marilyn Monroe” and live simply as Marilyn.
Once again in need of a savior to believe in, she referred to Greenson as “My Jesus.” It’s frightening that at this stage in her life Marilyn was still looking to another person to ease the pain of her troubled past, her restlessness, her mounting dissatisfactions. Almost immediately she began to see Greenson on a daily basis.
Marilyn began looking for a place of her own and discovered that the modest apartment on Doheny, where she had lived briefly in 1954, was available again. It seemed like a good omen. Marilyn moved back into her old digs and started “fixing it up.”
Now Marilyn asked Ralph Roberts, her close friend and masseur, to move to Los Angeles with her. “Rafe,” as she called him, was devoted to Marilyn, and she cherished their friendship—referring to him as “the Brother.” Indeed, people in Marilyn’s circle noted that at times they seemed as close as brother and sister. His expert massages helped her relax as much as any of her tranquilizing medications. If all else failed, Roberts would say, she’d “fall asleep when I was massaging her feet.” But more than anything he was a trusted friend who seemed to want nothing more from Marilyn than to be part of her life, to help her. Within weeks Roberts had his own apartment, nearby on (the ironically named) Norma Place.
Living in the same complex as Marilyn was Sinatra’s secretary, Gloria Lovell. Marilyn became good friends with Lovell, a good-natured, heavy-drinking woman. It was said that Sinatra also rented an apartment in the Doheny complex, so it was a place where Marilyn felt especially safe.*
Marilyn always felt more comfortable in small spaces, but the Doheny apartment was downright gloomy. Determined to make the space work, she attempted to transform it into a sanctuary of sleep. It seems she wanted to cocoon herself in a womb-tomb. (When she took her sedatives she told Greenson they made her feel “womb-y” and “tomb-y.”) She was extremely sensitive to ambient noise and light—they exacerbated her insomnia. Taking over the living room to use as a bedroom, she blanketed the sliding glass doors—which opened to the outside—with very heavy blackout drapes. “She didn’t want a crack of light coming in,” Roberts explained. “But,” he would often say, “I could massage her in the dark because her body gave off light.”
In an effort to further re-create her womb-tomb experience, Marilyn liked to keep her room very warm. She would sometimes use an electric blanket while Roberts massaged her to sleep, afraid that the sweat dripping from him while he massaged her in the hot room might set off a shock from the electricity in the blanket.
Her entire life revolved around sleep, and how to find new ways to do so.
Thinking that the sound of gently flowing water would help lull her into slumber, Marilyn also had a fountain built just outside the glass doors that led out of the room. She loved the sound of trickling water, like a running stream. Unf
ortunately, when it was finished it was a big, cement thing, and the trickle was a loud, booming gush. “This fountain has cost a fortune, and all I wanted was a little trickle,” Marilyn complained. “And they can’t get it right … they gave me a roar.”
* * *
Without much going on in her life beyond therapy, Marilyn spent more time brooding behind the darkened drapes of her Doheny apartment. In an attempt to keep up a social life, however, she began making frequent visits to the home of Peter Lawford and his wife, the president’s sister, Pat Kennedy Lawford.
The Lawford house was a beautiful 6,416-square-foot Mediterranean-style home on the beach in Santa Monica. Originally built by MGM’s Louis B. Mayer, the place had five bedrooms, thirteen bathrooms, wood-beamed ceilings, wrought-iron balconies, and a huge outdoor swimming pool. When Jack was a senator, and after he became president, he would often visit his sister and brother-in-law at the beach house, which became known as a sort of quintessential Hollywood party house—sometimes quite decadent—that entertained some of the biggest players in show business. Kennedy spent so much of his time at the house that it was dubbed “the Western White House.”
At social gatherings there might be anything from a casual game of volleyball on the beach and a barbecue to a formal sit-down dinner. The house was also infamous—it was said that there were sex parties there and that Jack would use it to rendezvous with various actresses. Dean Martin’s wife, Jeanne, who was part of that crowd, said that she saw Peter and Pat Lawford in the roles of pimps for John Kennedy.
Marilyn was pulled into this crowd by a combination of her mental illness, drugs, pressure from friends, and loneliness. The 1960s were becoming more sexually liberated—and Hollywood was on the cusp of that liberation. We know that Marilyn was apprehensive about getting involved because she talked to her doctor about it. Greenson disapproved of her becoming entangled with this crowd; he felt himself falling into the role of a parent of an unruly adolescent.
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