Marilyn Monroe

by Charles Casillo

  * * *

  Sometime that week Marilyn learned that Bobby Kennedy was going to San Francisco to give a speech to the American Bar Association that Monday. She hoped to see him, and called Pat Lawford and found out that he would be at the St. Francis Hotel with his wife, Ethel. Marilyn focused on trying to get Bobby to make a detour to see her. She started by leaving messages at the hotel, and attempting to persuade Peter and Pat to get him to come to the beach house for another visit. She was desperate to try again.

  * * *

  “Men grow cold/As girls grow old/and we all lose our charms in the end,” Marilyn sang nine years earlier—in one of her most glorious moments on the screen. Now that the truths of the lyrics from “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” were becoming perilously close to reality, she found herself astonished—terrified. Thirty-six hit Marilyn like a punch to the gut, winding her, filling her with fear. The thought of reaching the age of being slightly past her prime had been tormenting her for years.

  Two days before Marilyn died, Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty encountered an agitated Marilyn, preoccupied with her age, at a small party at the Lawford beach house. “Thirty-six, thirty-six. It’s all over,” Wood heard Marilyn mumble obsessively.

  “Her beauty, charming wit, and joy of life seemed paradoxical to the tense loneliness which she faced in her life, and was to me, clearly apparent,” Wood remarked.

  In 1982 Beatty told Anthony Summers that he had seen Marilyn “the night before she died.” Most likely it was Thursday night (two nights before), since Marilyn had dinner with Pat Newcomb on the evening before she died. In 2016 Beatty was more forthcoming with Vanity Fair, revealing that he had been invited to Peter Lawford’s for a night of tacos and poker. Marilyn was there. “I hadn’t seen anything that beautiful,” he recalled. Marilyn’s dress was so clingy—probably one of her Puccis—it was clear she wore nothing underneath. They went for a walk on the beach, which he described as “more soulful than romantic.”

  Yet according to Ralph Roberts—whom Marilyn told about their meeting—Beatty made his intentions known. Marilyn responded, “Warren, you are ‘two five,’ and I am ‘three six.’” Beatty felt it was difficult for Marilyn even to say her age to him, not wanting to bring the two numbers together. Later she sat next to him at the piano while he played, and they talked a little more.

  Leslie Caron, a longtime lover of Beatty’s, remembered him expanding on his encounter with Marilyn. “He had been very moved by her, and the night haunted him.” After a while at the piano Marilyn turned to Beatty and again softly brought up her age. “You know I’m three six and I’m frightened,” she said.

  Beatty was taken aback by Marilyn’s abrupt declaration, her stark honesty, the naked pain in her voice. He related to her fear. Beatty was just becoming well known in Hollywood as a notorious lady-killer, but he also had a tenderhearted nature that especially responded to women in distress. “Warren was a very sensitive man. Like Marilyn he was shy and uncomfortable in social situations,” Caron said. “But because of his exceptional looks and natural sex appeal, he learned how to project the consummate playboy image in public. He approached that role as if it were an acting job and eventually he became expert at it.”

  Marilyn, who was very much the same, seemed to pick up on the vulnerabilities masked by Beatty’s facade and felt compelled to confide to him things she had been trying to keep concealed from the public. She was “alone and lost,” she told him. She confessed that she was having trouble sleeping at night and difficulty waking up in the day. She confided that as time went on, she was getting less and less sleep and becoming more and more disorganized. She had tried many different things in an attempt to get her life on track, without much success. “I don’t know what to do about it anymore,” she said.

  “It affected Warren so much,” Caron recalled. “Marilyn felt comfortable pouring out her psychological secrets to Warren because she recognized a kindred spirit. He can get anything out of you because he’s so warm and compassionate—in France we have a saying, ‘He can get the worms out of your eyes.’ Actually, he was very much like Marilyn. He related to her. Warren was so shaken up by what Marilyn said because he saw her future for himself. Warren was very beautiful, but he was afraid of losing it one day. He was frightened too. He was a frightened child, like her. This is what was happening to him psychologically. But Marilyn, that night, was feeling it intensely.”

  Caron remembered thinking, “That poor woman. She was only thirty-six and already afraid of getting old. But that’s what this business does to you when you’re known primarily for your beauty and sex appeal.”

  * * *

  On Friday afternoon, August 3, 1962, Marilyn filled two prescriptions at a pharmacy on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. One was for Phenergan, a drug used to treat allergies, and the other for Nembutal. Greenson and Engelberg had been weaning Marilyn off of Nembutal for weeks, substituting the milder drug chloral hydrate. Marilyn would take that with a glass of milk before bed. But Marilyn fibbed, telling Engelberg that Greenson said it was okay for him to write her a prescription for Nembutal. It was twenty-four of these pills, from this prescription of twenty-five, that would be the main cause of her death.

  That evening Pat Newcomb had dinner with Marilyn in a Santa Monica French restaurant, whose name she can’t remember. When talking to Donald Spoto she said, “Afterwards we came back to the house. We just sat around—”

  Then Newcomb indicated the journalist’s tape recorder, stating, “I want to shut this off.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ANGER AND DESPAIR

  On Saturday, August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe woke up angry. She’d been angry the night before—and for much of the previous week. And she remained angry well into the evening, when—because of medication and resignation—anger turned into despair.

  “The day she died?” Pat Newcomb recalled decades later when the tape recorder was turned back on. “She was furious.”

  Mrs. Murray arrived Saturday morning to find the house quiet. Marilyn and Pat Newcomb were still in their bedrooms. Marilyn, however, was already awake. Behind her closed bedroom door she was involved in a series of phone calls that were adding to her rage—although in the hours remaining to her she would not fully discuss with whom these phone calls were or what they were about.

  At 9:00 a.m., Marilyn emerged from her bedroom—wearing her favorite white terry robe. She drank a glass of grapefruit juice and informed Mrs. Murray that Pat Newcomb had spent the night and was still sleeping in the guest bedroom. She explained that Newcomb had not been feeling well and was going to spend the day “baking” by the pool. Other than that, Mrs. Murray found Marilyn quiet, contemplative.

  Marilyn had no definite schedule for the day. She had tentative plans of going to Peter Lawford’s house for dinner in the evening. Pat Lawford was visiting back East, but Peter was having a few people over for a casual supper. Some say that Robert Kennedy had planned to make a quick trip from San Francisco to attend the party, specifically to talk to Marilyn. By now he knew Marilyn wanted a face-to-face meeting. But that morning nothing was definite.

  It has been reported that Newcomb was so sick with bronchitis that she considered checking herself into the hospital that weekend, but instead—at Marilyn’s urging—she spent the night at her house in order to get a good night’s sleep and, during the day, use the sun lamp by the pool.

  Newcomb was ill, but the real reason that she wanted to check herself into a hospital was not because of the severity of her bronchitis. She wanted to sequester herself in a hospital room to escape Marilyn’s fury. All that week, Newcomb said, Marilyn had been “a pain in the ass.” Marilyn was acting so disagreeable that Newcomb felt it was necessary to take a break from her. “Sometimes you just have it up to here,” she explained. “I was trying to get away. That’s why I wanted to go to the hospital. I had my doctor book me a room for the weekend.”

  Pat Newcomb finally woke up Saturday around noon. Mrs. Murray se
nsed conflict between the two friends. At one point she heard them bickering. Still Newcomb didn’t leave. What were the two women fighting about? “I don’t know what she was really upset about,” Newcomb said. “But everything about her was angry that day.” Newcomb always maintained she didn’t know what was upsetting Marilyn deep down. But Marilyn’s anger was relentless. She held on to what was making her angry in a way that only Marilyn Monroe could.

  Legend has come down through the years that Marilyn’s foul mood toward Pat was because she had been able to sleep for twelve hours straight while Marilyn slept very little. That’s probably partially true. However, there was something else going on that Pat Newcomb has been silent about for decades. Many years later Milt Ebbins evasively said that Newcomb was party to many secret things regarding Marilyn in her last months.

  The reason for Marilyn’s fury the last week of her life is that she had come to believe that Pat Newcomb had become romantically involved with Bobby Kennedy—an involvement that would have overlapped with the time frame in which Marilyn had been seeing him. After Marilyn came to believe that she and her friend had shared a man, she was beside herself.*

  We can only imagine Marilyn’s rage and confusion. Bobby’s desire for her, his love for her, is what was going to make the thirty-six-year-old love goddess feel relevant. Pat Newcomb was an attractive, sexy, intelligent woman who was four years younger than her. But she wasn’t Marilyn Monroe. If Bobby did have an intimate entanglement with Marilyn’s assistant/press agent while Marilyn was relying on his affection, she must have felt worthless. When you’re fragile, empty, and lonely—as Marilyn was that summer—any slight or rejection becomes amplified. It can feel fatal. The end.

  * * *

  It was Newcomb, along with Peter Lawford, who had gotten Marilyn involved with the Kennedys in the first place. Now Marilyn felt betrayed by someone she considered a trustworthy friend. She had been demanding explanations and details about the affair from Newcomb all week. Newcomb did admit that she saw Bobby Kennedy shortly before Marilyn died. She could not remember the exact evening but revealed: “I had dinner with him, but it was just before that night.”

  And as Joan Greenson observed, Marilyn could be very vehement on subjects. For Marilyn anything that had shades of gray was very difficult. Everything was black or white. Friend or foe. God forbid you did something that got on her bad side. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to get back into her good graces.

  Dean Martin’s wife, Jeanne, has said that “Pat was deeply in love with Bobby. It took her many years to get over it.” There was something deeper to their relationship than friendship. It certainly would have been better for all concerned if Marilyn didn’t hear of it. But she suspected. And now she demanded explanations. She grappled with the notion of Pat Newcomb possibly being involved with Bobby—at once so loyal but at the same time seemingly desperate to take “possession” of her. Was an involvement with Bobby, in some way, a maneuver for Newcomb to be more enmeshed with Marilyn? Marilyn thought so, feeling a “sibling rivalry” kind of relationship had developed between them in the two years they had been closely associated with each other.

  Mrs. Murray, who had young daughters, said that Marilyn and Newcomb’s quibbling often reminded her of teenage girls. If we are to believe Rupert Allan’s account, we know that Newcomb, in her fascination with Marilyn, had allegedly tried to pass herself off as Marilyn to a man six years earlier, when she briefly worked as her press agent on Bus Stop. When Marilyn discovered the deception, she was so upset that she had Newcomb fired.

  Marilyn had accepted her back, and now it seemed to her that history was repeating itself, only this time there were strange twists and deeper emotional complications. But now Marilyn was in a much more delicate frame of mind. She was also very close with Newcomb, and if she was not in love with Bobby, she was at the very least deeply infatuated. Marilyn felt betrayed by both of them.

  * * *

  Newcomb spent the night with the irate, disagreeable Marilyn because she realized Marilyn was feeling deceived and used—two emotions that were traumatizing to her. That day Newcomb decided to stay and try to work things out with Marilyn. In return Marilyn attempted to control her simmering sexual jealousy. But most of the morning she was having violent mood swings. One moment she appeared calm, and the next she would erupt in hostility.

  The two friends spent much of the morning avoiding each other—neither knowing how to start the confrontation again—or how to end the animosity. Newcomb sat by the pool under the heat lamp while Marilyn attempted to get on with life: talking on the phone, signing for furniture that was delivered that afternoon, and working in the garden. At one point Mrs. Murray fixed Pat an herb omelet for lunch. Marilyn did not join her—she had no appetite. She would eat nothing all day, something that Mrs. Murray said by now wasn’t unusual.

  Early in the day Marilyn talked to Ralph Roberts. She wanted to know if he could have a record made from the master tape of the unpublished album of their friend, the singer-actress Janice Mars. Marilyn was still hoping to get a deal for Mars, so that the record could be released commercially. She had spoken to someone at Sinatra’s office, and she wanted to give him a copy the following week. It also seems that Marilyn was having second thoughts about going to the Lawfords’ place that evening for dinner. She talked with Roberts about grilling some steaks in the backyard for supper. They planned on touching base later in the day.

  Sometime that day Isidore Miller called Marilyn. Mrs. Murray told him that “Marilyn is dressing.” But she never called her former father-in-law back—which was highly unusual for her. Later he would say, “I’m so sorry I was not out there to be with her. She must have been very lonely and afraid.”

  * * *

  There are two versions of Bobby Kennedy’s whereabouts on Saturday, August 4. There are reasonable witnesses on both sides of the story, and wildly conflicting accounts. One version has him staying with friends in Gilroy, California, which is sixty miles south of San Francisco, for the entire day with Ethel and several of their children. The other version has him flying to Los Angeles for at least part of the day—to see Marilyn.

  Whether Bobby Kennedy was in Los Angeles for part of that Saturday has been a subject of speculation for decades. Officially Bobby was staying in Gilroy that entire weekend. As Marilyn had learned the previous week, he was scheduled to give a speech to the American Bar Association in San Francisco on Monday. At first he was booked into the St. Francis Hotel for the weekend. When Marilyn discovered he was staying there she began to call the hotel switchboard, leaving messages for Bobby. He did not return these messages.

  Since the attorney general was traveling with his wife and some of his children—and didn’t want to take the chance of Marilyn showing up unexpectedly—it was decided that he would instead stay with a family friend, the respected attorney John Bates, and his wife, at their ranch in Gilroy.

  Over and over again through the years, John Bates claimed that Bobby was with him for the entire weekend and was rarely out of his sight. That Saturday, he said, they went horseback riding, played touch football, and went swimming. After a “full active day” they had an early dinner, and then the Kennedy family retired for the evening. He has photographic proof of Bobby Kennedy and his family during the day. There are also photographs of the Kennedys attending mass that Sunday morning at 8:00 a.m.

  Bolstering Bates’s assertion that Bobby did not go to Los Angeles at all on Saturday, Pat Newcomb told Donald Spoto: “I have pretty good reasons to think he was not down here that night.” The “pretty good reasons” Newcomb has for her beliefs could have been given to her by Bobby himself when she had dinner with him several nights earlier.

  * * *

  The other version of Bobby Kennedy’s whereabouts that day has him in Los Angeles. According to some, he took a private helicopter to see Marilyn. He stayed part of the time at the Beverly Hills Hotel. There are witnesses who say Bobby left his family behind with his host
and flew down to Los Angeles to confront Marilyn—to try to soothe her, reassure her.

  Chief of Police William Parker told several people that Bobby Kennedy was in Los Angeles the Saturday that Marilyn died. He relayed this information to Mayor Sam Yorty and homicide detective Dan Stewart, among others on the L.A. police force.

  Another witness to Bobby being in Los Angeles was Ward Wood, Peter Lawford’s next-door neighbor in Santa Monica. Wood stated: “The car drove up, the people got out, and they went from the car to the house. I said, ‘Oh, there’s Bobby Kennedy.’” Having a view of the front of Lawford’s house from his window, Wood was used to seeing the Kennedys coming and going. When interviewed, he was asked if he was sure it was Bobby. “Oh, I know it was Bobby Kennedy,” he replied.

  After many years of telling conflicting stories, late in life Mrs. Murray stated that Bobby Kennedy did indeed come to Marilyn’s house that Saturday afternoon—and that she witnessed it. But listening to audiotapes of Mrs. Murray’s interviews from the 1980s through the 1990s, or seeing her in documentaries, she often becomes forgetful and vague and then suddenly becomes sharp and clear: The most consistent thing about Mrs. Murray’s interviews is her inconsistencies.

  * * *

  The reason for Bobby to come to Los Angeles would be to see Marilyn and, most likely, break off their relationship in person. Senator Smathers, a close friend of John F. Kennedy, said: “I heard about her seeing Bobby, and Jack told Bobby to break it off.” Greenson said that Marilyn did expect to see Bobby that Saturday evening at Peter Lawford’s, but was disappointed to learn that he wouldn’t be there after all—which is why she would cancel her plans to go there. And it’s also the reason she made no plans to glamorize herself that day.

  * * *

  There is a two-hour period in Marilyn’s day that is more or less unaccounted for, and—like so many events in her life—it is surrounded with mystery: Between twelve and two o’clock Mrs. Murray was out doing some shopping.