by Donald Spoto
For two days and nights, she endured this frightening situation. Marilyn, who since childhood hated locked doors and never barred her own bedroom, was almost in a state of total nervous breakdown, and from this point in her life never locked her bedroom door nor permitted a key or latch to operate it. Susan Strasberg agreed with Ralph Roberts and Rupert Allan that Marilyn “always had a means of making a fast getaway even from a studio soundstage whenever she felt the walls were closing in on her. She hated to feel closed in,” at work or at home.
Finally a sympathetic nurse’s aide agreed to give her notepaper and then to deliver a message to Lee and Paula Strasberg, who received it on Wednesday, February 8:
Dear Lee and Paula,
Dr. Kris has put me in the hospital under the care of two idiot doctors. They both should not be my doctors. I’m locked up with these poor nutty people. I’m sure to end up a nut too if I stay in this nightmare. Please help me. This is the last place I should be. I love you both.
Marilyn.
P.S. I’m on the dangerous floor. It’s like a cell. They had my bathroom door locked and I couldn’t get their key to get into it, so I broke the glass. But outside of that I haven’t done anything that is uncooperative.
But the Strasbergs were only friends, powerless to help, much less to order or obtain Marilyn’s release. They may well have contacted Kris, who would not have provided any details of Marilyn’s condition.
When there was no reply from the Strasbergs by the morning of Thursday the ninth, Marilyn was permitted to make one telephone call. Frantic for help but managing to affect calm, she tried two or three friends but received no answer at their homes. At last she reached Joe DiMaggio in Florida.
Joe and Marilyn had not met for almost six years, but during that time she had remained in contact with his family and asked about his welfare. Since 1958, Joe held a $100,000-a-year job as a corporate vice-president for V. H. Monette, Inc., a supplier for military posts. For this company, Joe was essentially a goodwill ambassador, traveling to army bases worldwide and presiding at exhibition baseball games. During the training season, he coached the Yankees in Florida.
As for his private life, Joe had come close to marrying a woman named Marian McKnight in 1957, but this relationship ended when she was crowned Miss America; otherwise, there was no serious romance in his life. He was, according to family and friends, never out of love with Marilyn: “He carried a torch bigger than the Statue of Liberty,” according to his close friend, the Washington attorney Edward Bennett Williams, whose testimony was typical. “His love for her never diminished through the years.” And so it was to Joe that Marilyn now turned for help. “He loved her a great deal and they had always remained in contact,” agreed Valmore Monette.
DiMaggio arrived that evening from St. Petersburg Beach and demanded that Marilyn be released from the clinic into his custody the following day. Informed that this would have to be approved by Dr. Kris, he telephoned her and said that if Marilyn were not discharged by Friday he would (his words, according to Marilyn) “take the hospital apart brick by brick.” Kris suggested that Marilyn enter another hospital if Payne Whitney were not to her liking; Joe replied that would be discussed in due course.
Things then happened quickly.
First, to avoid even the possibility of unwelcome publicity, it was arranged for Ralph Roberts to deliver Marilyn back to Fifty-seventh Street, with Kris literally along for the ride. As Ralph recalled, Marilyn unleashed a storm of protest and criticism against her therapist, and after Marilyn was safely returned home (where Joe awaited), Ralph drove Kris back to her residence. En route, as he recalled, she was trembling with remorse, repeating over and over, “I did a terrible thing, a terrible, terrible thing. Oh, God, I didn’t mean to, but I did.” It may have been the most accurate statement of her therapeutic relationship with Marilyn; in any case, it was the last time she had anything to say, for Marianne Kris was dismissed that day and never saw Marilyn Monroe again.
Second, it was clear to Joe that, whatever her condition when she entered Payne Whitney, she was wretchedly unhappy, shaking and anorexic on her departure. She agreed to enter a far more comfortable and less threatening environment if he would stay at the hospital and be with her daily. At five o’clock on the afternoon of Friday, February 10, he helped her to settle into a private room at the Neurological Institute of the Columbia University—Presbyterian Hospital Medical Center. There she remained, regaining her strength, until March 5.
For years a letter from Marilyn Monroe to Ralph Greenson was believed lost—a document providing details of Marilyn’s state of mind and feeling and her assessment of her life that winter; in 1992, it was at last discovered. The letter was written on March 1 and 2, 1961, from Columbia-Presbyterian, and the sanity, sobriety, wit and maturity of the writer are everywhere apparent. If ever there was any doubt that Marilyn Monroe at this time was a woman who, despite problems, had a clear take on her life, a native intelligence and compassion, it is forever belied by her letter.
Dear Dr. Greenson,
Just now when I looked out the hospital window where the snow had covered everything, suddenly everything is kind of a muted green. There are grass and shabby evergreen bushes, though the trees give me a little hope—and the desolate bare branches promise maybe there will be spring and maybe they promise hope.
Did you see “The Misfits” yet? In one sequence you can perhaps see how bare and strange a tree can be for me. I don’t know if it comes across that way for sure on the screen—I don’t like some of the selections in the takes they used. As I started to write this letter about four quiet tears had fallen. I don’t know quite why.
Last night I was awake all night again. Sometimes I wonder what the night time is for. It almost doesn’t exist for me—it all seems like one long, long horrible day. Anyway, I thought I’d try to be constructive about it and started to read the letters of Sigmund Freud. When I first opened the book I saw the picture of Freud inside, opposite the title page and I burst into tears—he looked very depressed (the picture must have been taken near the end of his life), as if he died a disappointed man. But Dr. Kris said he had much physical pain which I had known from the Jones book. I know this, too, to be so, but still I trust my instincts because I see a sad disappointment in his gentle face. The book reveals (though I am not sure anyone’s love letters should be published) that he wasn’t a stiff! I mean his gentle, sad humor and even a striving was eternal in him. I haven’t gotten very far yet because at the same time I’m reading Sean O’Casey’s first autobiography. This book disturbs me very much, and in a way one should be disturbed for these things, after all.
There was no empathy at Payne Whitney—it had a very bad effect on me. They put me in a cell (I mean cement blocks and all) for very disturbed, depressed patients, except I felt I was in some kind of prison for a crime I hadn’t committed. The inhumanity there I found archaic. They asked me why I wasn’t happy there (everything was under lock and key, things like electric lights, dresser drawers, bathrooms, closets, bars concealed on the windows—and the doors have windows so patients can be visible all the time. Also, the violence and markings still remain on the walls from former patients). I answered: “Well, I’d have to be nuts if I like it here!” Then there were screaming women in their cells—I mean, they screamed out when life was unbearable for them, I guess—and at times like this I felt an available psychiatrist should have talked to them, perhaps to alleviate even temporarily their misery and pain. I think they (the doctors) might learn something, even—but they are interested only in something they studied in books. Maybe from some life-suffering human being they could discover more—I had the feeling they looked more for discipline and that they let their patients go after the patients have “given up.” They asked me to mingle with the patients, to go out to O.T. (Occupational Therapy). I said, “And do what?” They said: “You could sew or play checkers, even cards, and maybe knit.” I tried to explain that the day I did that they would
have a nut on their hands. These things were farthest from my mind. They asked me why I felt I was “different” from the other patients, so I decided if they were really that stupid I must give them a very simple answer, so I said, “I just am.”
The first day I did mingle with a patient. She asked me why I looked so sad and suggested I could call a friend and perhaps not be so lonely. I told her that they had told me that there wasn’t a phone on that floor. Speaking of floors, they are all locked—no one could go in and no one could go out. She looked shocked and shaken and said, “I’ll take you to the phone”—and while I waited in line for my turn for the use of the phone, I observed a guard (since he had on a gray knit uniform), and as I approached the phone he straight-armed the phone and said very sternly, “You can’t use the phone.” By the way, they pride themselves in having a home-like atmosphere there. I asked them (the doctors) how they figured that. They answered, “Well, on the sixth floor we have wall-to-wall carpeting and modern furniture,” to which I replied, “Well, that any good interior decorator could provide—providing there are funds for it,” but since they are dealing with human beings, I asked, why couldn’t they perceive the interior of a human being?
The girl that told me about the phone seemed such a pathetic and vague creature. She told me after the straight-arming, “I didn’t know they would do that.” Then she said, “I’m here because of my mental condition—I have cut my throat several times and slashed my wrists,” she said either three or four times.
Oh, well, men are climbing to the moon but they don’t seem interested in the beating human heart. Still, one can change them but won’t—by the way, that was the original theme of The Misfits—no one even caught that part of it. Partly because, I guess, the changes in the script and some of the distortions in the direction.
Later:
I know I will never be happy but I know I can be gay!
Remember I told you Kazan said I was the gayest girl he ever knew and believe me, he has known many. But he loved me for one year and once rocked me to sleep one night when I was in great anguish. He also suggested that I go into analysis and later wanted me to work with Lee Strasberg.
Was it Milton who wrote: “The happy ones were never born,”? I know at least two psychiatrists who are looking for a more positive approach.
This morning, March 2:
I didn’t sleep again last night. I forgot to tell you something yesterday. When they put me into the first room on the sixth floor I was not told it was a psychiatric floor. Dr. Kris said she was coming the next day. The nurse came in after the doctor, a psychiatrist, had given me a physical examination including examining the breast for lumps. I took exception to this but not violently, only explaining that the medical doctor who had put me there, a stupid man named Dr. Lipkin, had already done a complete physical less than thirty days before. But when the nurse came in, I noticed there was no way of buzzing or reaching for a light to call the nurse. I asked why this was and some other things, and she said this is a psychiatric floor. After she went out I got dressed and then was when the girl in the hall told me about the phone. I was waiting at the elevator door which looks like all other doors with a door-knob except it doesn’t have any numbers (you see, they left them all out). After the girl spoke with me and told me what she had done to herself, I went back into my room knowing they had lied to me about the telephone and I sat on the bed trying to figure that if I was given this situation in an acting improvisation, what would I do? So I figured, it’s a squeaky wheel that gets the grease. I admit it was a loud squeak, but I got the idea from a movie I made once called Don’t Bother to Knock. I picked up a light-weight chair and slammed it against the glass, intentionally—and it was hard to do because I had never broken anything in my life. It took a lot of banging to get even a small piece of glass, so I went over with the glass concealed in my hand and sat quietly on the bed waiting for them to come in. They did, and I said to them, “If you are going to treat me like a nut, I’ll act like a nut.” I admit the next thing is corny, but I really did it in the movie except it was with a razor blade. I indicated if they didn’t let me out I would harm myself—the farthest thing from my mind at the moment, since you know, Dr. Greenson, I’m an actress and would never intentionally mark or mar myself, I’m just that vain. I didn’t cooperate with them in any way because I couldn’t believe in what they were doing. They asked me to go quietly and I refused to move, staying on the bed so they picked me up by all fours, two hefty men and two hefty women and carried me up to the seventh floor in the elevator. I must say at least they had the decency to carry me face down. I just wept quietly all the way there and then was put in the cell I told you about and that ox of a woman, one of those hefty ones, said, “Take a bath.” I told her I had just taken one on the sixth floor. She said very sternly, “As soon as you change floors, you have to take another bath.” The man who runs that place, a high-school principal type, although Dr. Kris refers to him as an “administrator,” he was actually permitted to talk to me, questioning me somewhat like an analyst. He told me I was a very, very sick girl and had been a very, very sick girl for many years. He looks down on his patients. He asked me how I could possibly work when I was depressed. He wondered if that interfered with my work. He was being very firm and definite in the way he said it. He actually stated it more than he questioned me, so I replied, “Don’t you think that perhaps Greta Garbo and Charlie Chaplin and Ingrid Bergman had been depressed when they worked sometimes?” It’s like saying a ball player like DiMaggio couldn’t hit a ball when he was depressed. Pretty silly.
By the way, I have some good news, sort of, since I guess I helped. He claims I did: Joe said I saved his life by sending him to a psychotherapist. Dr. Kris said that he is a very brilliant man, the doctor. Joe said he pulled himself by his own bootstraps after the divorce but he told me also that if he had been me he would have divorced him, too. Christmas night he sent a forest-full of poinsettias. I asked who they were from since it was such a surprise—my friend Pat Newcomb was there and they had just arrived then. She said, “I don’t know, the card just says, ‘Best, Joe.’ ” Then I replied, “Well, there’s only one Joe.” Because it was Christmas night I called him up and asked him why he had sent me the flowers. He said, “First of all, because I thought you would call me to thank me,” and then he said, “Besides, who in the hell else do you have in the world?” He asked me to have a drink some time with him. I said I knew he didn’t drink, but he said occasionally now he takes a drink, to which I replied then it would have to be a very, very dark place! He asked me what I was doing Christmas night. I said nothing, I’m here with a friend. Then he asked me to come over and I was glad he was coming, though I must say I was bleary and depressed, but somehow still glad he was coming over.
I think I had better stop because you have other things to do, but thanks for listening for a while.
Marilyn M.
Joe visited her every day at the hospital, and before her release he went ahead to Florida, whence she had agreed to join him for a few weeks’ rest.
On March 5, Marilyn left Columbia-Presbyterian after a twenty-three-day rest and rehabilitation. Six security guards escorted her through a mob of four hundred fans and dozens of photographers and reporters crowding round the hospital entrance; present to help were May Reis (still willing to be helpful in such circumstances), Pat Newcomb and her colleague John Springer, from the New York office of Arthur Jacobs. “I feel wonderful,” she said. “I had a nice rest.” Smiling “as radiantly as an Oscar winner” (thus one reporter on the scene), Marilyn also appeared healthier than ever: she had lost most of the fifteen pounds she had gained during the unhappy summer of 1960 and sported an elegantly casual new champagne-colored coiffure that matched her beige cashmere sweater and skirt and her identically dyed shoes.
Three days later, she attended the funeral of Arthur’s mother at a Brooklyn funeral chapel, where she comforted her former father-in-law and offered condolences to Arth
ur. “She had just been discharged from the hospital,” Isadore Miller told a writer later, “and I was about to enter one myself. When I did, she called me every day after my operation, wiring flowers and phoning my doctor.” Their affection was unaltered by the divorce from Arthur.
By the end of March, Marilyn was with Joe, who left the Yankees in St. Petersburg and took her to a secluded resort in Redington Beach, Florida. Here they relaxed, swam, combed the shore for shells, dined quietly and retired early. Once or twice, they drove to St. Petersburg and watched the Yankees train, and Marilyn thrilled the team simply by being there and cheering them on; Joe was very proud of her indeed. Said his friend Jerry Coleman, “Joe DiMaggio deeply loved that woman”—an attachment that was quickly becoming mutual once again. Lois Smith: “The attraction to Joe remained great. Marilyn knew where she stood with him. He was always there, she could always call on him, lean on him, depend on him, be certain of him. It was a marvelous feeling of comfort for her.” DiMaggio was, as Pat Newcomb said years later about that year, “a hero. Marilyn could always call on Ralph, who was generous with his time and the best friend she ever had. But Joe had the power to come to get her released from the hospital.”