If Bobby Kennedy visited Marilyn at her home that afternoon, it would have been an unexpected visit because she was not dressed for visitors—especially a love interest. This would not have been the seduction scene she had planned for later on that evening at the Lawfords’: Her hair was a mess. She had been working in the garden—her feet and nails were dirty. Her face was clean of cosmetics.
This version suggests that Bobby quarreled with Marilyn—telling her that the relationship was over for good. There was no chance of it reviving. It was becoming too dangerous to his political career—and to the future of the president—to be involved with her.
If the confrontation did happen, Pat Newcomb would have still been at the house. In one of her last accounts of that day, Mrs. Murray said that when she came home from shopping Bobby was indeed there. But since her story about that day changed so many times, she is not a reliable source.
What we know for sure, however, is that by 4:00 p.m., Marilyn was in such a despondent state that she called Greenson to ask him to come to the house to see her for a therapy session.
* * *
When he arrived Greenson observed: “She seemed somewhat depressed. Somewhat drugged.” Greenson ensconced himself with Marilyn in her bedroom for an intense therapy session. He would later tell the Suicide Prevention Team that Marilyn was in a jealous rage over Pat Newcomb, without, however, specifying the reason for her jealousy. Several days later, with time to start establishing scenarios, he would write to a colleague that one of the reasons for her depression and fury—on that day—was that Pat Newcomb had slept for fifteen hours and Marilyn—as usual—had had such a troubled night. This was the first time that the “lack of sleep” reason was put forth as one of the excuses for her anger. But there was more to it than that. After Marilyn’s death Greenson planned to take a trip to New York to see his friend, the physician Max Schur (who had been a friend of Sigmund Freud), “where I can say certain things which I cannot say to anybody here.”
* * *
It was during this last session with Greenson that Marilyn complained that “here she was, the most beautiful woman in the world, and she didn’t have a date on Saturday night.” Greenson, of course, knew that Marilyn was involved with the Kennedy brothers. She told him she had been expecting to see Bobby that evening. He would later disclose that Marilyn had been expecting to see one of the “important men in her life” that night and was disappointed when the expected visit was called off. Marilyn died, Greenson said, “feeling rejected by some of the people she had been close to.”
Suddenly Marilyn told Greenson that she wanted Pat Newcomb out of her house. The doctor stepped outside her bedroom, found Newcomb, and said, “I’m going to talk to her now. I think it would be better if you go.”
Mrs. Murray said that Newcomb sprang up and left without saying a word, not even a good-bye. Since Marilyn remained in an agitated state, Greenson asked Mrs. Murray to spend the night—which she normally did not do, especially on weekends.
Greenson continued talking to Marilyn. The doctor realized that Marilyn would not, could not, accept it if he didn’t take her side completely. She wanted him to be furious with Newcomb too. To soothe her, Greenson agreed, but she sensed that his agreement wasn’t wholehearted. Now her anger spread to include Greenson.
During the session Ralph Roberts called to ask Marilyn if he should still come over that evening for dinner. He was taken aback when Greenson answered the phone. When Roberts asked to speak to Marilyn, Greenson replied curtly, “She’s not in,” and abruptly hung up.
It is unknown if Greenson ever told her that Roberts had called. Marilyn apparently had changed her mind about grilling steaks anyway; by this time she wasn’t up to seeing anybody. Now she announced to Greenson that she would like to take a walk on the beach. The doctor discouraged her, feeling that she was too groggy to go walking. Instead he suggested she drink a Coke and go for a drive up the coast with Mrs. Murray.
When he left Marilyn at seven fifteen, Greenson thought she still seemed “somewhat depressed but I had seen her many, many times in a much worse condition.” He went home to prepare for a dinner party.
Shortly after Greenson left, Marilyn received a phone call from Joe DiMaggio, Jr. After her divorces, she maintained a warm relationship with all her stepchildren. Joe Jr. wanted to share the news that he had broken off his engagement. Marilyn—who didn’t think that they were a good match—was delighted that the twenty-one-year-old had decided not to get married yet. Marilyn sat down with the phone on some cushions on her bedroom floor. Mrs. Murray remembered Marilyn’s voice rising with enthusiasm and laughing with delight.
After this phone call Marilyn called Greenson, now in the middle of dressing for his dinner engagement. She told him that she had had a nice conversation with Joe Jr., and expressed how happy she was that he was breaking up with his fiancée.
It was during this call that she told Greenson that she had decided not to take a drive with Mrs. Murray after all. In spite of sounding more cheerful, before she hung up, Marilyn asked Greenson, “Did you take my Nembutal?”
Greenson became alarmed. He had been weaning Marilyn off Nembutal and had Engelberg prescribe her the milder chloral hydrate for sleep instead.
“I didn’t know you were taking Nembutal,” he told her.
Marilyn didn’t press him about the missing drugs. “Oh, forget it,” she said.
Since she had been disoriented that day, Greenson didn’t make much of the notion that Marilyn was asking about Nembutal. But it turned out to be a significant factor in her death.
* * *
Those in Marilyn’s circle understood that Engelberg had made a deal with Greenson: Whenever the internist prescribed pills for Marilyn, he would let Greenson know. That way Greenson could keep track of the amount of pills Marilyn had in the house—and might keep her from doctor shopping. “I mean, here’s somebody who everybody knows is capable of suicide,” Pat Newcomb stated.
Also, if on a house call Greenson noticed too many pills on Marilyn’s nightstand, he would pour some out and put them in his pocket, leaving Marilyn with a supply that would enable her to get some sleep but not enough to be lethal.
During a visit with Engelberg on Friday, Marilyn told him that Greenson had said it was okay for her to take some Nembutal and—believing her—he wrote her a prescription. Unfortunately, during this period, Engelberg was having problems with his wife, and—preoccupied with marital troubles—he forgot to tell Greenson that he had prescribed twenty-five Nembutal for Marilyn.
This miscommunication took a dangerous turn. The previous night, with Marilyn in an ornery mood, Newcomb—who admittedly shared pills with her—took Marilyn’s Nembutal from her bedroom nightstand and brought them to the guest room, where she swallowed one. (That’s why she had the solid fifteen-hour sleep that so ticked Marilyn off.)
When Greenson was having the therapy session with Marilyn in her bedroom, there was no Nembutal on her bedside table. When he left her in her depressed state, he felt assured that there was no Nembutal in the house: “She had stopped taking barbiturates for three weeks,” he said. Now Greenson was relieved to hear that Marilyn was feeling a little better—although still depressed—and ended the call by saying, “I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
* * *
Marilyn walked through the house looking for her bottle of Nembutal and eventually found it on the nightstand in the guest room, where Pat Newcomb had left it the night before. Marilyn carried the bottle back to her bedroom and began taking her nighttime dose on top of the tranquilizing medication she had been taking all day. There were twenty-four capsules left. When the pill bottle was confiscated several hours later it would be empty.
“I think I’ll turn in now, Mrs. Murray,” she told her housekeeper. Then she closed the door. That’s the last time anyone ever saw Marilyn alive.
THIRTY-FIVE
MISCOMMUNICATIONS
Rather than being tired of living, she was tired o
f dying.
Her private phone was in the bedroom with her—it had a long extension cord so, when she felt like it, she could wander all over the house while she was talking. The telephone cord snaked under the closed door to an outlet in another room.
Naked in her bed, Marilyn called Peter Lawford to inform him that she wasn’t going to attend his dinner party. “Peter, I’m tired,” she said. “I’m going to have a sandwich and take a couple of pills. Then I’m going to go to sleep. Please forgive me.” In reality she wasn’t interested in food. She hung up with Lawford and swallowed some pills.
Her hair was in disarray—perhaps there was a hint of roots growing in. She needed a manicure and a pedicure. Marilyn loved to go barefoot, and she had worked in the garden earlier—her feet were dirty. In the coming days all these details of her appearance would be reported to the press by the morticians who attended to her corpse, for even in death she wasn’t permitted to be viewed as a normal woman. “She didn’t look good, not like Marilyn Monroe,” a coroner’s man, Guy Hockett, who a few hours later removed her body from the bed, remarked. “She looked just like a poor little girl that had died.” Which—at the time of her death—is what she was.
Alone, abandoned and angry, Marilyn thought—as she often did in the nighttime—about where her life was. When her fears and problems looked bigger than her accomplishments and hopes, the world closed in on her—her petite body, her overbleached hair—in her tiny, cluttered rooms, with her mirrors, her makeup, her breast pads, and a wardrobe of brightly colored clothes. What some considered vanities were really just a way of life for her; it was what she knew, what she thought was expected of her. Other Hollywood stars served up illusion too, but they had lasting loves, families, and confidence, things that never materialized for her. By this time Marilyn felt all she had to stand on was a fantasy, an illusion that was becoming harder to maintain.
* * *
Marilyn was blessed with qualities other than her physical perfection. A lively intelligent mind. A hunger to know more. Kindness. Empathy for those who had been held down or hurt. A love of children. A keen sensitivity that made her genuine talent unique. But all these wonderful qualities seemed useless to her if people didn’t find her beautiful.
The lust of men was what had always given her confidence. She mostly saw her worth through their eyes. These men—some kind, but mostly cruel—were a manifestation of the father she never knew and the love she never felt strongly enough. The more powerful the man, the more worthy she felt. John and Bobby Kennedy were the biggest prize. But they, too, proved to be temporary.
The hack writers who had built her up wanted to see her career in ruins now because they thought it might make a few headlines. Before she was fired, Marilyn gave an interview to Photoplay about her nude swim scene. It was one of the few publications that did not praise her still-perfect proportions. Instead it accused her of despairing, exploiting her final years of beauty. “Desperate Monroe Poses Nude” declared the headline on the magazine’s cover.
She thought her magic was leaving her, but really it was just transitioning. But she was too tired now to believe that, to believe in anything. Instead of embracing the transformation she willed things to stay as they were.
Feeling the effects of the drugs, Marilyn continued dialing. She reached her New York friend Henry Rosenfeld, and they talked about an East Coast visit, but eventually the call turned into a diatribe against Pat Newcomb.
Around eight o’clock Peter Lawford called her again. He tried to persuade her to come to his house. It was clear to Lawford that she was very drugged.
She faded out. Peter waited for her to say something more, and when she didn’t he said sharply, “Marilyn! Are you okay?” Suddenly she came to for a moment and said, “I’m fine. I just wanted to let you know that everything you’ve done for me is beautiful. I can’t thank you and Pat enough.” And her voice became very low, and her last words to him were, “Say good-bye to Pat and Bobby … say goodbye to the president … and say goodbye to yourself because you’re a nice guy…” and her voice trailed off once more.
He tried to awaken her with what he later called “a verbal slap in the face,” screaming into the receiver, “Marilyn! Marilyn! Marilyn!!”
She was silent. Lawford hung up. After trying the line several times, he called Milt Ebbins. It was approximately eight fifteen.
Ebbins agreed to try and get through to Marilyn. He called the operator, who checked Marilyn’s line and informed him the phone was off the hook. In those days of busy signals, no call-waiting, and no caller ID, Marilyn had two phones. A white one that only her close friends had the number to—a sort of “hotline,” and a pink “house” phone for business calls and secondary people. Lawford had only the number of the white phone that Marilyn was holding.
When Ebbins informed Lawford that Marilyn’s phone was off the hook, Lawford became hysterical. “Let’s go over there. I want to go over there right now,” he demanded. Ebbins had a more guarded response, “Wait a minute, Peter! You’re the brother-in-law of the president of the United States. What if something happened? You’d see headlines all over the place.” Ebbins offered to call Mickey Rudin—Marilyn’s increasingly impatient lawyer. Ebbins thought it was best to get advice legal advice before they made any kind of move.
The alarm bell had been rung. On a social Saturday evening in Hollywood, while Marilyn lay dying, people were being called, tracked down, and discussing options, as crucial minutes were ticking away.
* * *
At approximately eight forty-five p.m., Mildred Allenberg—the widow of Frank Sinatra’s agent—interrupted her dinner party to call Mickey Rudin to the phone. Rudin was not pleased that the caller was Ebbins. He was further irritated when he heard that the reason for the call was that Marilyn Monroe was, perhaps, in the middle of yet another crisis.
“Mickey,” Ebbins said, “Peter was talking to Marilyn, and the phone went dead. Peter’s worried—he wants to go over to her house. He’s adamant about going over there now. I don’t think he should.”
Rudin, a gruff man often described as an exceptional attorney, recalled it being mentioned that Marilyn had made distressed calls wanting to talk to Bobby. “She could have been hysterical or something,” Rudin commented. He also realized the potential problem with John F. Kennedy’s brother-in-law being seen at the home of Marilyn Monroe on a Saturday night. “I think you’re right. Let me check it out. I’ll get back to you.”
Mrs. Murray was in her guest bedroom reading when she heard the house phone rang. It was Rudin, calling from Mrs. Allenberg’s dinner party.
Rudin asked Mrs. Murray if Marilyn was all right.
“As far as I know everything is fine,” Mrs. Murray replied.
Rudin said, “Do you think anything’s wrong?”
According to Rudin she replied, “No. She’s done what she does every night. She takes her pills. She goes in. She puts on music. She locks the door. She calls somebody, and she drops the phone.”
That was enough for Rudin—in his opinion Marilyn was simply having one of her “despondent moments.” He called Ebbins back. “Don’t go over there,” he said. “She’s driving me crazy. Tell Peter not to worry about it.”
Of course Rudin could have called Greenson to find out if Marilyn had been in any kind of distress, but his sympathy was with his brother-in-law, not with Marilyn. “He spent most of the day with her,” Rudin explained. “He was upset.” He wasn’t about to go tracking Greenson down because, as he later explained, he wanted “the poor guy to have one dinner without being interrupted”—a decision that would trouble him for the rest of his life.
Through the years Mrs. Murray maintained that had there been more urgency in Rudin’s voice she would have made it a point to bang on Marilyn’s door. But knowing that Marilyn was in a foul mood, Mrs. Murray didn’t want to take a chance of waking her up for no reason.
* * *
Ralph Roberts was having dinner with a friend, but he was
wondering about Marilyn. Why hadn’t she returned his call? He had completed the errand of getting a copy made of the Janice Mars record she wanted and never heard back from her regarding dinner plans.
* * *
Because of the high content of barbiturates in her liver, the coroner could conclude that Marilyn died slowly. The drugs had had a chance to be absorbed. At 10:00 p.m. the phone was still beside Marilyn on the bed, and she dialed Ralph Roberts’s number, but the call was picked up by Roberts’s answering service. Marilyn did not leave a message. The following day Roberts would be told simply that he had received a call from a woman with a “slurred voice.” The operator had no way of knowing that it was one of the last phone calls made by the dying Marilyn Monroe.
* * *
Though Lawford became more and more inebriated, he continued to call Ebbins throughout the night—getting drunker with each phone call. Then Ebbins got angry. “Get in the car and go! If you can’t drive, get one of those guys there and go! You don’t need me.” The last time the two men talked was about two in the morning.
Very drunk now—and beginning to realize that Milt Ebbins wasn’t going to cave in—Peter Lawford began calling other friends to try to get them to go over to Marilyn’s house with him. One of the people he may have tried was Pat Newcomb. “I was out to dinner that night,” Newcomb said. “I wasn’t even home.”
Eventually Lawford got through to William Asher and asked if he would drive with him. Asher was irritated that he called in the middle of the night, wanting to go over to Marilyn’s.
After telling him there was no way he would go, Asher suggested he call the “old man”—meaning Joe Kennedy, adding, “If we go over there and find something, I don’t know if you should be there. Call Mr. Kennedy and ask him what you should do.”
Asher was well aware of the inside rumors of Marilyn being involved with both Kennedy brothers. “I blush to admit now,” Asher said later, “I’ve thought about maybe … had I gone. It might have been different. That makes you crazy.”
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