Now that she was basically single (Marilyn’s romance with Sinatra continued to be on-again, off-again) and living in Los Angeles, President Kennedy put out the word that he wanted an introduction. He told Senator George Smathers, who had been best man at Kennedy’s wedding, that he had to meet her.
It was easy for Marilyn to merge into this social set. She knew Peter Lawford from her starlet years, when they dated briefly. Sinatra was a big part of the scene, and Pat Newcomb was very friendly with the Lawfords. Both she and Judy Garland (a former client) would attend the poker parties at the Lawford home.
Marilyn liked Pat Lawford, and Pat adored her. Marilyn was in awe of Pat’s pedigree, her wealth, her extended family, her education, the power of the Kennedy name. Like so many others, Pat was seduced by Marilyn’s glamour, her famous wit, her irresistible childlike quality. Some of her friends said that Pat became “infatuated” with Marilyn,
The two women indeed became very close friends. Marilyn’s housekeeper, Mrs. Eunice Murray, said that Pat Kennedy was Marilyn’s “best friend,” and that she would always take a call from Pat no matter what she was doing. Ralph Roberts said that Marilyn liked Pat much more than she ever liked Peter.
Lawford became a part of the Kennedy family when he married Pat in 1954, shortly after John F. Kennedy became a senator. He was part of the clan during Kennedy’s fantastic rise from senator to president, with his brother Bobby being named attorney general. Bobby Kennedy was also a frequent guest at the Lawfords’.
Pat Newcomb remarked that she knew the Kennedys long before she started working for Marilyn. “They were friends of mine,” she liked to say. Interestingly, Pat Newcomb and Peter Lawford—both of whom were attached to Marilyn—seemed very intent on setting her up with the president. After she first broke up with Arthur Miller, Ralph Roberts noted that Kennedy started pursing Marilyn. Mostly he would try to get in touch with her through Pat Newcomb or Peter Lawford.
Often people introduced their friends to Marilyn as a gift. That’s how legendary, how fascinating, she was. By now the same could be said of John F. Kennedy. There was something very modern, very sixties about it—but also something mythical. The handsome Kennedy—who looked like a Hollywood playboy, took drugs, loved beautiful women, and became the most powerful person in the world by the age of forty-three—matched up with Monroe, the goddess, the sex symbol, of the generation. Wouldn’t it be exciting if these two dynamos got together? A meeting was set up at a party at the Lawford house.
There is no documented evidence of when Marilyn first met Jack Kennedy at the Lawfords’. They most likely met at a dinner party there on Sunday, November 19.
At first John F. Kennedy was “smitten” with Marilyn. Senator Smathers stated that Kennedy later introduced him to Marilyn at a Washington party. Smathers also claimed that Marilyn sometimes went sailing with Kennedy on the presidential yacht on the Potomac River. He added that she never stayed at the White House (as has been rumored) but at a nearby hotel. “She always handled herself like a lady, as far as I’m concerned,” Smathers said.
Marilyn also met Bobby Kennedy casually at the Lawfords’. Pat Lawford had been gushing to Marilyn: “You’ve got to meet him, Marilyn. You’ll never know anyone like my brother.” Milt Ebbins remembers seeing Marilyn at an informal buffet dinner there—but he didn’t notice any interaction between the two. In coming months they became friendlier.
Bobby Kennedy’s press aide, Edwin Guthman—a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist—recalled meeting Marilyn at a Lawford party in October 1961, after the attorney general gave a speech in Oregon. Guthman remembered being at the party with “a lot of the Lawfords’ friends—including Marilyn Monroe. By around midnight she was very drunk.” It is likely that Marilyn had once again felt insecure in a big social gathering, and had overdone the champagne on top of pills.
Bobby told Marilyn: “You can’t get home by yourself. I’ll drive you.” He then asked his press aide to come along. Guthman thought the reason was obvious: He didn’t want to be seen … going off in a car at night alone with Marilyn Monroe.
“We drove her home,” Guthman recalled later. “We put her to bed, and we left. It was a two-person job. She wasn’t ‘passed out’ but she was pretty close.” Guthman and Bobby left feeling that Marilyn was very sweet and very sad.
* * *
Marilyn remained very much a romantic, still hoping to meet that one special man she had been searching for all her life. But she played the field a lot in her final season—in retrospect somewhat desperately.
A blow to her ego came when Marilyn learned that Sinatra had become engaged to the beautiful dancer Juliet Prowse. The two did date, but on January 17 the gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen wrote that the engagement was “a marvelous publicity stunt” Sinatra pulled to help raise Prowse’s name recognition.
Now, however, Marilyn was acquainted with both Jack and Bobby Kennedy—men as dynamic—and even more revered—than Frank Sinatra. No one saw anything overt or untoward between Marilyn and either of the Kennedy brothers at this point, but by that fall the first rumors of a romance between Marilyn and the president were just beginning in their inner circles.
What was unusual for her—and troubling to others—was that some of her affairs overlapped. In spite of her flurry of activity and attempts at socializing, Greenson noted: “She was terribly, terribly lonely. As a consequence she became involved with people who only hurt her and who evoked in her this feeling of mistreatment which had paranoid undertones to it.”
TWENTY-FIVE
DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONS
“I took over a patient that Marianne Kris had been treating for several years, and she has turned out to be a very sick borderline paranoid addict, as well as an actress,” Greenson wrote to his psychoanalyst friend Anna Freud (Sigmund’s daughter). “You can imagine how terribly difficult it is to treat someone with such severe problems and who is also a great celebrity and completely alone in the world. Psychoanalysis is out of the question and I improvise, often wondering where I am going, and yet have nowhere else to turn. If I succeed, I will have learned something, but it takes a tremendous amount of time and also emotion.”
Greenson had dealt with famous people before, but in Marilyn he found an entirely different kind of personality. Perplexed by the paradoxes of her extreme fame and loneliness, her beauty and lack of self-worth, and her undeniable power offset by her feelings of helplessness, he had apprehensions about what exactly was the best way to treat her. First of all—explaining that it was to protect her privacy—he conducted sessions with her at his home rather than at the office.
Although he was a Freudian, he decided not to treat Marilyn “on the couch,” which was Freud and his followers’ favored method of dealing with patients. In therapy Freud would have his patients lie on the couch and free-associate, talking about whatever came into their heads.
Greenson felt that Marilyn’s mind was too muddled for free association. She could go off on tangents, into the past, into dreams, or ruminate on fantasies that would lead nowhere. He felt it was best to sit face-to-face with her, keep her in the moment, keep her focus on the here and now—that way he could better keep her functioning on a day-to-day basis.
As a Freudian analyst, Greenson also firmly believed that socializing with patients was absolutely wrong. But somewhere along the line, sitting across from her, sharing her intimacies, hearing her stories, remembering her in her movies, observing her at her worst, he got lost in Marilyn Monroe: The myth and the patient began to merge.
In a highly controversial decision—one that brought him much criticism through the years—the doctor took Marilyn into the fold of his personal life, involving the movie star with his family and friends. “There was something very lovable about this girl,” he wrote, “and we all cared about her and she could be delightful.”
There is evidence that—like the many men before him—he fell under Marilyn’s charismatic spell while keeping up the front that he was p
rofessionally in control of this unusual doctor-patient relationship. Greenson started the socializing by inviting Marilyn—along with friends—to his house on evenings to hear him play the violin with a group of chamber musicians. Greenson had crossed a line by introducing a patient to his circle of friends.
He was uneasy about it, but while improvising the therapy, he was trying out new ways to help her overcome her paranoia, depressions, and feelings of isolation.
Marilyn also felt that there was something not quite right about these social invitations. She told Ralph Roberts she didn’t even like chamber music. But she had so much faith in the doctor, was so much in his thrall, that she decided to attend these gatherings—and gradually become a part of his world outside the therapy sessions. In the coming months her relationship with Greenson and his family would become much closer—and much more dangerous.
* * *
Lee Strasberg had begun the eradication of her ego by convincing Marilyn that her great stardom was nothing, really. Only he could make her an actress. Indeed, she took his opinions to heart—and put a lot of her worth as an actress in his hands and the hands of his wife. But she was still powerful and young enough to exercise her own willfulness.
Greenson got her when she feared that her beauty and power were fading. When he wrote to Dr. Kris disapprovingly about Marilyn’s affair with Sinatra (or other sexual relationships), he compared her to a child disobeying a parent. Clearly that feeling of a lost child is what she brought out in people. Previously, however, enough of the canny adult remained within Marilyn for her to function. Now she was weakening emotionally, and the only thing she had to secure her—her career—seemed to be slipping away.
Her desperation was so palpable that it acted on Greenson almost as an aphrodisiac. That thing she brought out in everyone—I have to save her!—was now far more seductive than her reputation as a sex symbol. Indeed, if all Greenson had wanted was to have her physically, she might have survived, because she knew how to deal with men who wanted that. It’s probable that Greenson was not malevolent but vastly unwise—and, like Strasberg and Miller, essentially condescending toward “this poor thing.”
Once the social door was open, Greenson became more and more preoccupied with his beautiful but deeply troubled patient. And, in an attempt to save her, he took control of her. Dr. Richard Litman, who had been a student of Greenson’s and later investigated her death, told the Monroe biographer Lois Banner, “He was ‘in love’ with her. Not sexual love. But love. It sometimes can happen with a patient whom you become especially attached to.”
* * *
According to Ralph Roberts, Greenson persuaded Marilyn to push away people she was close to if he felt she was becoming too dependent on them. “He wanted her to drop all her old friends—he felt that we were all bad influences—and put herself in his hands,” Roberts observed. But because of their close bond, their brother-sister relationship, Roberts never dreamed that Marilyn could be persuaded to shut him out.
One morning on the phone she confronted her friend: “Dr. Greenson thinks you should go back to New York,” she said hesitantly. Greenson had told Marilyn, “Two Ralphs are too many in your life.” Marilyn had been dumbfounded. She was very attached to Roberts. “But you’re a ‘Ralph’ and he’s a ‘Rafe,’” Marilyn sobbed to Greenson. But the doctor insisted Roberts had to go. “I wish she had picked the right Ralph,” Pat Newcomb said years later.
Marilyn made her choice. She told Roberts that she promised Greenson that she would ask Rafe to go back East. Alarmingly Greenson had advised Marilyn to employ another old friend of his family to take Roberts’s place as her driver and also to act as a housekeeper. Fifty-nine-year-old Eunice Murray, or Mrs. Murray as everyone came to know her (even Marilyn addressed her as Mrs. Murray), would take a more and more significant role in Marilyn’s life—even though Marilyn never warmed to her.
Crushed, Roberts left for New York City that very night. The following day he called Gloria Lovell to let her know that he had arrived in Manhattan. She told him that since he left “it’s been horrible.” She said that she could hear Marilyn screaming all night long. She simply couldn’t bear the loss. “What will Marilyn do?” Gloria cried. “Whatever will she do?”
* * *
“I realized after the fact that I was trying to create a foster family for her, my own, but a good foster family who would not throw her out like all the others had,” Greenson said. “In addition I was her therapist, the good father who would not disappoint her and would bring her insights, and if not insights just kindness.”
Through the years Greenson’s family members have attempted to explain how Marilyn first started to become a part of the Greenson family. As much as she respected Greenson, she didn’t at first change her habit of being late for their appointments—which were scheduled as his last for the day, usually at 5:00 p.m. After she showed up late for a number of appointments, Greenson reprimanded Marilyn: “If you come late this means, consciously or unconsciously, you don’t respect or trust me.”
His words hit her hard. To demonstrate that she was dedicated to her therapy, she started arriving at his house early—so early that Greenson wasn’t even back from his office. She’d pull up in front of the Greenson house in a large black limousine, ring the bell, and Greenson’s wife, Hildi, would answer, telling the famous movie star that the doctor wasn’t in yet and asking if she’d like to come in or wait outside.
“Outside,” Marilyn would respond uneasily.
Greenson suggested that perhaps his twenty-one-year-old daughter, Joan, could go out and say hello and walk with Marilyn so she wouldn’t be so alone. Soon Joan and Marilyn were walking back and forth across a nearby reservoir.
Eventually Marilyn was staying for dinner at his house after sessions, socializing with his family. Later Greenson’s family would become somewhat defensive about Marilyn staying for dinner. Mrs. Greenson explained that it was a natural progression, since Marilyn was Greenson’s last appointment: Discovering she had no plans for the evening, he would invite her to eat with them.
Greenson was concerned that her solitude might put her in danger of getting involved with somebody or something that could be harmful to her. For instance, he discovered that once Marilyn invited a taxi driver into her home to have supper with her. Because Greenson felt she was so desperately lonely, he wanted to be certain she wouldn’t get into trouble. So very often she would eat with his family. Afterward they would all sit around and talk or listen to records, and then someone would drive her home.
Eventually Marilyn made sure they were well stocked with her favorite champagne, Dom Pérignon. She enjoyed a glass or two on certain evenings as they talked or listened to music. Joan Greenson remembers her banging merrily on the countertop, slightly tipsy, proclaiming: “I am an atheist Jew!”
Marilyn became close to Greenson’s wife, Hildi; their son, Daniel; and particularly their daughter, Joan, who was twenty-one at the time. Joan would describe it as a big-sister, little-sister relationship. Marilyn taught Joan how to dance, how to apply makeup, and gave her dating advice. Joan was studying art, and they would spread out her latest drawings for Marilyn to critique.
* * *
But some who were close to Marilyn at the time, like Whitey Snyder, Susan Strasberg, and Pat Newcomb, didn’t think her sessions with Greenson were doing Marilyn any good. Ralph Roberts said that the more he found out about Greenson, the more he felt he was the one who should be analyzed, not Marilyn. Although his family contended that Greenson encouraged Marilyn to have friendships, her inner circle felt that Greenson was using his influence over Marilyn to build a protective fortress around her—keeping her old friends out while bringing in his friends and family—and they resented it.
Dr. Greenson’s treatment of Marilyn was wrong, bringing her into his family was a mistake because she, of course, was a grown woman—and a powerful one. Yet he opened the floodgates, and Marilyn came pouring in. Although she was as dependent on him a
s a problematic adolescent, her age, fame, and power allowed her to act out rebellions. All he could do was stand back, let her take over more of his life, and send her the bill.
* * *
Meanwhile Fox still wanted Marilyn back at work.* In fact they needed her back. At this point the almighty 20th Century-Fox was almost bankrupt. Darryl F. Zanuck, who cofounded Fox in 1935, had left the studio to become an independent film producer in Europe. Fox president Spyros P. Skouras took over the decision making regarding new productions, but he didn’t really understand the art of filmmaking the way Zanuck had.
Still, it seems unlikely that the best thing that Fox had to offer Marilyn in 1961 was a screenplay they were calling Something’s Got to Give. The script, based on the 1940 farce My Favorite Wife, starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, revolves around a woman who—after being stranded on a tropical island for five years—is rescued and returns home to find that she has been declared legally dead and that her husband has remarried on that very day. Even by 1961 standards, the script was dated, and Marilyn was not optimistic about it.
Fox executives were in no mood to accede to Marilyn’s demands. They were in desperate need of a blockbuster, and Marilyn was one of the few stars they had under contract who they felt could deliver one. At this point the studio had invested almost all of its money in the epic Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor, which by now was way over budget.
Marilyn was shrewd enough to realize that her next film needed to be something that lived up to—and revitalized—her legend: sharp, sexy, and daring. From the start it was clear to Marilyn that Something’s Got to Give was not, and never could be, such a vehicle.
Adding insult to injury, Fox had originally intended the movie to be made with Jayne Mansfield, a buxom blond actress the studio had brought in to replace Marilyn when she was being “difficult.” Fox’s idea was to have Mansfield team up with Joan Collins,* who would play the new wife. But by 1961 Jayne Mansfield’s box-office appeal had waned—she was not a “new” Monroe, and Fox lost interest in producing the movie with her. Joan Collins says that she was never even notified about the project—Fox was already revamping it with a totally new cast in mind.
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