Marilyn Monroe

by Donald Spoto

  The morning was hardly a dramatic one. Marilyn signed for several deliveries (the bedside table from The Mart, the trees from Frank’s Nursery) and spoke with friends on the telephone. Ralph Roberts called, and they arranged to have a barbecue at Fifth Helena the following evening, after she returned from her second visit to Mama Jean Bello with Sidney Skolsky. It seemed, that sunny summer morning, the crisis with Fox that past season had somehow propelled her to a stage of freedom and a strength of purpose that had been her goal since 1955, when she deserted Hollywood for New York. Never before had her professional prospects been so various or so potentially rewarding, both financially and artistically.

  Just before noon, Pat Newcomb arose, only to find her client and friend surly and sarcastic. “Marilyn seemed angry that I had been able to sleep and she hadn’t—but something else was behind it all.” Nevertheless while Marilyn telephoned friends, Eunice prepared lunch for Pat, who remained throughout the afternoon. She lay quietly, sitting under a heat lamp for her bronchitis and taking the sunshine at poolside while Marilyn attended her own business.

  Shortly after one o’clock, Ralph Greenson arrived. Except for an interval between three and four-thirty, he remained with Marilyn until after seven that evening: “He spent most of the day with her,” as Milton Rudin said, based on his later conversations with Greenson. While Marilyn and Greenson retreated to her bedroom for a therapy session, Eunice as usual answered the telephone; there was apparently only one caller—a collect call, from Joe DiMaggio, Jr., then on duty with the Marines in nearby Orange County. Then twenty, he had maintained close ties with Marilyn, as had the Miller children, and scarcely a month passed without their exchanging several phone calls. But because Marilyn was closeted with her doctor, Eunice told Joe that Marilyn was not home. This occurred, as he told the police, at about two o’clock.

  At about three, according to Pat Newcomb, Greenson “came out and told me to leave, that he wanted to deal with Marilyn alone. She was upset, and he told Mrs. Murray to take her out for a walk on the beach, in the car. And that’s the last I saw of her.”

  With that, Greenson returned home, while Eunice drove Marilyn to Peter Lawford’s home; the housekeeper then went shopping for groceries as Marilyn instructed (so Eunice documented in her memoir) and then returned for Marilyn within an hour.

  William Asher, who had directed the presidential gala, was a director in Lawford’s production company and was also a regular at Lawford’s social events, recalled Marilyn’s visit to the beach that afternoon between three and four. “I was there along with a few other people who had dropped by, when Marilyn arrived and took a walk on the beach.” Asher knew Marilyn through his frequent visits to the Lawfords, and through negotiations for yet another prospective new film project then being discussed—a comedy about a train heist to star Marilyn, Lawford, Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. Screenwriter Harry Brown (who had written Ocean’s Eleven for the same quartet of men) had completed a treatment for the new project, and Milton Rudin was already negotiating contracts.

  But there was a drastic change in the sober manner and clear speech Eunice and Pat had observed in Marilyn that morning. After Greenson’s visit and by the time she arrived at the beach she was drugged, according to Asher—“not staggering, but clearly under the influence, and she wasn’t too steady in the sand.” Whether at Greenson’s suggestion or by her own choice, Marilyn during or after their session had taken sufficient sedation that her speech was now slurred and her gait wobbly: as her autopsy later revealed, there was a high concentration of sodium pentobarbital (Nembutal) in her liver, for which several hours of accumulation would be required.

  There were several reasons for Marilyn to be given or to resort on her own to her habit of taking tranquilizers that day, and they were the same causes of the scratchy humor Pat had seen that morning. Eunice’s final hours in her employment must have made the atmosphere at Fifth Helena awkward, as would the imminent interruption of her therapy necessitated by her marriage and trip to New York. Marilyn was also restless because of her insomnia the previous night; she was eager for Joe’s arrival; and however enthusiastic she was about her many projects, she was as usual nervous and insecure about her participation in any professional activities. Asher remembered that Marilyn watched part of a volleyball game on the beach and then departed at about four o’clock.

  At half past four, Joe DiMaggio, Jr., put through a second collect call to Marilyn, and Eunice Murray again told him she was not at home—but this cannot have been true, for by this time Eunice and Marilyn had returned from the beach together. The fact is that, as Greenson mentioned in his August 20 letter to Marianne Kris, he returned to Marilyn at exactly that time to continue what was becoming virtually a day-long therapy session, during which Eunice again answered the telephone. Greenson also wrote to Kris words that reveal most pointedly the extent of his emotional upset and the likelihood that they had at least discussed terminating her therapy: “I was aware that she was somewhat annoyed with me. She often became annoyed when I did not absolutely and wholeheartedly agree [with her]. . . . She was angry with me. I told her we would talk more, that she should call me on Sunday morning. . . .”

  At about five, however, Marilyn did take a call from Peter Lawford, who was trying to assemble a few friends for the usual Saturday night casual Mexican supper; he hoped Marilyn would return to the beach to join them—George Durgom, a personal manager of (among others) Lawford and of Jackie Gleason; Lawford’s closest friend, the agent Joe Naar, and his wife, Dolores, and Milton Ebbins and his wife (Patricia Lawford was in Hyannis Port visiting her ailing father). This invitation she declined, but Peter persisted: “Oh, Marilyn, come on down. You can go back early.” Lawford then said he would call again, hoping she would reconsider.3

  But there were two other telephone calls that Marilyn was not able to intercept. The first came from Isadore Miller, to whom Eunice said that Marilyn was dressing and would call him back; Isadore never received a return call. The second call was from Ralph Roberts, at about five-forty or five forty-five, just before he drove to Jurgensen’s in Beverly Hills to purchase the food for their barbecue next evening. “But it was Greenson who picked up the phone,” according to Roberts. “When I asked for Marilyn, he said abruptly, ‘Not here,’ and immediately hung up on me without asking if I wanted to leave a message. Nothing else, just a blunt ‘Not here,’ and he put down the receiver.”

  His manner may not have sprung from simple rudeness, however clear was the resentment of Ralph the analyst toward Ralph the friend. At precisely this time, Greenson was expecting a call from Hyman Engelberg, whom he had been trying to reach, and whom he wanted to come and provide Marilyn with medication—most likely an injection to help her sleep, as the internist so often did. Earlier that same day, amid the awkwardness of separating from his wife, Engelberg had received a message through his answering service from Greenson, asking him (as Engelberg’s first wife clearly recalled) to come to Fifth Helena. The internist had refused. Now, just after six, Greenson traced him to his home on St. Ives Drive. To Greenson’s dismay, Engelberg again declined, leaving the psychiatrist to cope alone.

  At seven o’clock or seven-fifteen, Greenson claimed, he departed, leaving Marilyn alone with Eunice Murray. And shortly thereafter begins the series of inconsistencies, misrepresentations and outright lies masking the truth of the tragic and unnecessary death of Marilyn Monroe.

  First, there is a conflict between Ralph Greenson’s account of Eunice’s remaining with Marilyn, and Eunice’s tale. In The Last Months, Eunice’s co-author and sister-in-law Rose Shade wrote that “before he left, [Greenson] asked [Eunice] if she planned to stay over that night, and she said she did. That was all.” Two weeks after Marilyn’s death, however, Greenson expressly noted in a letter to Marianne Kris, “I asked the housekeeper to stay over night, which she did not ordinarily do on Saturday nights.”4 In 1973, Greenson said he made this request because he “didn’t want Marilyn to be alone,”
which was curious in light of the fact that by then everyone knew this was to be Eunice’s last day of employment under Marilyn. Things become more ominous still in light of what Eunice told the district attorney in 1982: that “this was the first time Dr. Greenson had asked Murray to spend the night at Monroe’s residence,” and that she had no knowledge of Marilyn’s ordinary sleeping habits or attire.5

  Greenson and Murray were less than forthcoming and much less than consistent in subsequent accounts over the years. But two telephone calls provide important clues to a final resolution of the mystery surrounding Marilyn’s last night.

  The first call came from Joe DiMaggio, Jr., who persisted in his day-long effort to get through to Marilyn. He finally succeeded between seven and seven-fifteen, when she picked up the telephone and the two had a pleasant conversation during which he informed her that he had decided to break his engagement to a young woman Marilyn did not like.6 As Joe, Jr., told police, he found her alert, happy and in good spirits—especially when he shared this news. Their chat lasted about ten minutes. Even Eunice Murray confirmed that during this conversation Marilyn was “happy, gay, alert—anything but depressed.” Greenson repeated a similar impression: he said Marilyn called him after hearing from Joe, Jr., and that she sounded “quite pleasant and more cheerful.”

  The second call came from Peter Lawford, still hoping to persuade Marilyn Monroe to attend his little supper party. Lawford spoke with Marilyn soon after Joe, Jr.—at seven-forty or seven forty-five—and heard a woman in a very different condition from that heard by Joe, Jr.

  Lawford heard Marilyn muttering in thickened speech, her voice slurred and almost inaudible. Distressed and disoriented, she frightened Peter, himself no stranger to the effects of barbiturates, alcohol and other drugs, and familiar with Marilyn’s own habits in this regard. Attempting to rouse her to consciousness, he shouted her name several times over the telephone, asking what was wrong. Finally, with a great effort, she seemed to inhale, and then Marilyn Monroe said, “Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to the president, and say goodbye to yourself, because you’re a nice guy.” At that point, Lawford said later, “I really started to get angry and frightened.” Oddly, Marilyn whispered, “I’ll see, I’ll see,” and then she was silent.

  Thinking Marilyn had hung up the telephone, Lawford immediately tried to call Monroe back, but he heard only a busy signal that engaged the line for the next half-hour. When he asked an operator to interrupt the conversation, he was told that the phone was off the hook or out of order. Frantic, he telephoned Milton Ebbins, who had also been invited to and declined the now defunct supper party. “Peter was obviously deeply concerned,” Ebbins recalled—and he would remain concerned through the evening, despite repeated assurances from several people that Marilyn was well and there was no cause for alarm.

  There was, of course, very much cause for just that.

  In less than a half hour, something terrible happened to Marilyn Monroe, as the coroner later noted:

  Monroe was laughing and chatting on the telephone with Joe DiMaggio’s son . . . and not thirty minutes after this happy conversation, Marilyn Monroe was dying. . . . This was one of the strangest facts of the case.

  Peter Lawford understood her few words as indicating that she was dangerously drugged or even dying. Something was so wrong and different that he was convinced this was not what some people later claimed—a cry of “Wolf!” With panic in his voice, he then tried to obtain help for her from whomever among his friends he could enlist. And in this effort he persisted so fiercely that even an eventual call from no less than Milton Rudin was not enough to allay his fears.

  First, there was Ebbins:

  Peter said, “Let’s go over there [to Marilyn’s house]. I want to go over there right away—I think something terrible is happening to Marilyn.” But I said, “Peter, don’t do it! You’re the president’s brother-in-law! If you go over there, if she’s drunk or drugged or something, you’ll see headlines all over the place and you’ll get yourself involved. I’ll tell you—let me call Mickey Rudin, and if he says so, then you can go, because otherwise, if you go, you’re really opening a can of worms.”

  Ebbins then called Rudin—a logical choice, since he was Marilyn’s attorney—reaching his office at eight twenty-five. He learned that Rudin was attending a party at the home of Mildred Allenberg, the widow of Sinatra’s agent, and Ebbins called Rudin there. “Rudin asked me to let him check it out—to see if there was any trouble,” Ebbins recalled. “So he telephoned Mrs. Murray.” With this account Rudin concurred: “I did not call [Greenson]. He had had enough, quite frankly. He had spent the day with her. But I did call the housekeeper.”

  Rudin reached Eunice at about eight-thirty or a few moments later, in the room at the guest cottage. After asking her to check on Marilyn, he waited “for about four minutes, and then she came back to me and said, ‘She’s fine.’ But I had a feeling she never went out to take a look.” Rudin’s intuition served him well, as Eunice’s account of his call suggested: “If only [Rudin] had told [me] that he had received a worried call from someone,” she lamented in her book. “If only . . . ,” then what? She would have actually taken the trouble to ascertain Marilyn’s condition? But in her memoir, Eunice wrote nothing about Marilyn’s nonresponse: she did not say that she went to the door, that she knocked, called out to her—nothing.

  Rudin then called Ebbins and reported his conversation with Eunice; Ebbins in turn reported to Lawford. Still, Lawford was neither satisfied nor convinced: becoming more and more drunk as the evening progressed (and Ebbins knew from subsequent calls), he persisted in his anguished concern for Marilyn, calling other friends to enlist help.7 Among these was Joe Naar, who lived on Moreno Avenue, a half-mile from Fifth Helena. Lawford called him at about eleven, asking him to drive over to determine Marilyn’s welfare “because she sounded as if she might have overdosed,” as Naar said later. As he was dressing to do just that, Naar received another call—this time from Ebbins, countermanding Lawford’s request and saying that everything was fine: Rudin had just contacted him to the effect that “Marilyn’s doctor has given her a sedative [thus Naar, quoting Ebbins] and she was resting. The doctor was Greenson.”

  While Ebbins continued to keep people away from Fifth Helena, Lawford repeatedly sounded the alarm, calling Asher as late as one o’clock Sunday morning, imploring him to make the trip to Marilyn’s house. Only at one-thirty did Lawford desist in his efforts—because by then he had learned the truth in a telephone call from Ebbins, who had heard the news from Rudin. According to Lawford, Rudin had telephoned Ebbins at exactly that time from Fifth Helena, where Rudin and Greenson “had found Marilyn dead at midnight.” Lawford’s confidence as to the time was based on his simultaneous glance at a bedside clock.

  In fact, according to Milton Rudin, Marilyn was dead before midnight. He recalled, in his first full discussion of this night for the record, that he returned home early from the Allenberg dinner party and before he prepared to retire, he received a call from his brother-in-law Ralph Greenson: “I got a call from Romey. He was over there. Marilyn was dead.” Rudin said he drove at once to the scene.

  The brief timespan during which Marilyn’s death must have occurred becomes narrower still in light of another telephone call, this one received by Arthur Jacobs at the Hollywood Bowl, where he was attending a concert with the producer Mervyn LeRoy and his wife, and with the actress Natalie Trundy—later to be Mrs. Arthur Jacobs—on the eve of her birthday. “At about ten or ten-thirty,” according to Natalie Jacobs,

  someone came to our box and said, “Come with us right now, please, Mr. Jacobs. Marilyn Monroe is dead.” That I will never forget. Arthur asked the LeRoys to take me home. I don’t know why, but I had the distinct impression it was Mickey Rudin who called Arthur at the Bowl, and that he [Rudin] had been called by Greenson from Marilyn’s house.

  Well before midnight, then, several people close to Marilyn were aware of a terrible disaster and were m
oving to control it.

  According to Natalie Jacobs, Arthur arrived at Fifth Helena, conferred with those already present and then departed. The burden of the worldwide public-relations tangle that was soon to begin would be handled by Marilyn’s friend, Pat Newcomb. Pat was not at home that evening and could not be reached until several hours later. She was finally informed of Marilyn’s death about five o’clock Sunday morning by Rudin. “I remember his exact words,” according to Pat. “He said, ‘There’s been an accident. Marilyn has taken an overdose of pills.’ I asked, ‘Is she okay?’ and he said, ‘No, she’s dead. You’d better get over here.’ That I remember.”

  These firsthand reports fully contradict the entire official report of Marilyn Monroe’s death, which depends on Ralph Greenson’s and Eunice Murray’s versions of the events.

  To be accepted, the accounts of Greenson and Murray relied on the consensus that no one thought there was anything amiss until around three o’clock Sunday morning, August 5—fully ninety minutes after Lawford’s telephone call from Ebbins and almost five hours after the news was reported to Jacobs.

  At three, Eunice said, she awoke, “for reasons I still don’t understand” (as she said with her typical blend of feigned innocence, coy vagueness and a soupçon of bogus mysticism). She then noticed a light under the door to Marilyn’s room, tried to open the door, found it locked and then, her concerns aroused, telephoned Greenson. He instructed her to take a fireplace poker, then to go outside the house and part the draperies through the open grille-covered front casement windows, to see if Marilyn was asleep and apparently well. Eunice did as she was told and saw Marilyn lying nude and motionless on the bed. This she reported back to Greenson on the telephone. He rushed over and, using the same fireplace iron, broke a second, unbarred window (on the side of the house), which he unlatched, thereby climbing into Marilyn’s bedroom. A moment later he unlocked the bedroom door from within to admit Eunice, saying quietly to her, “We’ve lost her.” At three-fifty, Greenson telephoned Engelberg, who pronounced Marilyn dead. At four-twenty-five, the two doctors then called the police, who arrived at the house ten minutes later.