Pataki recalled that Slatzer had returned to Columbus to work on a wildlife television series in the summer of 1962, and he remembers two calls that Slatzer received from Marilyn shortly before she died.
“It may have been the last part of July or the first of August when Marilyn called,” Pataki stated. “I was at Bob’s and answered the phone. They spoke for a long time. After Bob hung up, I knew he was upset, and I asked him what was wrong. He told me Marilyn was having trouble with the Kennedys. He was very worried about her, and we talked about the problems Marilyn was having with JFK and his brother, the attorney general.”
When Pataki was recently asked if he had talked to Dorothy Kilgallen or Howard Rothberg about Marilyn’s problems with the Kennedys, Pataki paused before responding, “I may have.”
Pataki and Dorothy Kilgallen were lovers. Referred to in Lee Israel’s book Kilgallen as “the out-of-towner,” Pataki was one of the last people to see Kilgallen before her untimely death, and he knew many of Dorothy’s friends—including Howard Rothberg.*
On Friday, August 3, Marilyn again called Robert Slatzer in Columbus, Ohio. Slatzer related that Marilyn was anticipating seeing Bobby Kennedy that weekend. When Slatzer told her he had read that Bobby was in San Francisco to attend a conference, she told him she was going to try to find out from Patricia Lawford where he was staying, and said, “I’m going to blow the lid off this whole damn thing! I’m going to tell everything! Everybody has been calling trying to get the story anyway—Winchell, Kilgallen. And it’s clear to me now that the Kennedys got what they wanted out of me and then moved on!”
Slatzer related, “I warned her against proceeding with the press conference and advised that she be discreet in revealing her plans to others. She said, ‘Well, I’ve told a couple of people already.’ I urged her to keep quiet about it, and wait and see what happened over the weekend.” It proved to be the last time they spoke.
Although Bobby Kennedy’s family was staying at the Bates Ranch, the American Bar Association had provided accommodations for him at the St. Francis Hotel. After calling Patricia Lawford in Hyannisport and learning that Kennedy had reservations at the St. Francis, Marilyn called the hotel on Friday afternoon. A hotel operator stated that Marilyn unsuccessfully tried to reach the attorney general a number of times, and left several messages.
It must have been disconcerting for Robert Kennedy to note that everywhere one looked that week there were pictures of Marilyn Monroe. She was on the cover of Life and Paris-Match. Life was involved with a special publicity campaign that featured large billboard displays of Marilyn. The Life magazine story had hit the newsstands that Friday and contained the Richard Meryman interview, in which an outspoken Marilyn discussed the Hollywood studio system and her thoughts on fame:
If I am a star, the people made me a star—no studio, no person. The people did…. But fame to me certainly is only temporary and a partial happiness—even for a waif. Fame is not really for a daily diet, that’s not what fulfills you…. It might be kind of a relief to be finished. It’s sort of like, I don’t know, some kind of yard dash you’re running, but then you’re at the finish line and you sort of sigh—you’ve made it! But you never have—you have to start all over again.
And Marilyn was starting all over again. In that last week she had told Slatzer, “I’m cleaning house, and I’m starting with Paula. She’s gone!” And in fact Marilyn had already given Paula Strasberg a one-way ticket back to New York.
Marilyn had once said, “I’m not as mature as I should be. There’s a part of me that has never developed and keeps getting in the way, getting me in lousy situations, screwing up relationships, stopping my rest. I think about it all the time. My mother wasn’t strong-minded. Maybe what I’m talking about is a weak-minded quality I inherited from her.”
But things were coming together now. At age thirty-six, the waif was becoming independent. Her battle with Fox and her determination not to let the Kennedys control her were maturing experiences, and had steeled her will. People were no longer going to be able to take advantage of her vulnerability. She had made up her mind to rid herself of people she now realized didn’t have her best interests at heart.
She was planning to get rid of Pat Newcomb as well as Dr. Greenson. “That last month she became convinced that Greenson wasn’t doing her any good,” Ralph Roberts said. “It was only a question of time before she was going to get rid of him, as well as Mrs. Murray. She was radically turning on Greenson and Mrs. Murray the woman he’d put with her, she felt, to spy on her.”
Marilyn had learned that her old publicist and friend Rupert Allan was returning from his stay in Monaco, and Marilyn hoped he would replace Newcomb. She commissioned Roberts to find Allan for her. “Tell him this is very important,” Marilyn said.
“Ralph did reach me,” Allan remembered. “But I had jet lag after the flight from France and a bad case of bronchitis. I knew if I spoke one word to Marilyn, she would insist on coming over with chicken soup and aspirin. And I was really too sick for that.” When Allan later learned that the “very important business” may have concerned her press conference regarding the Kennedys, he commented, “I don’t know how I would have handled that…. I was angry and saddened by the way the Kennedys had treated her, but I think that I could have talked her out of making it public knowledge.”
On Friday morning, Marilyn called the Rostens in Brooklyn to ask their opinion concerning the Life article. Norman Rosten recalled that he told Marilyn how much he and Hedda had enjoyed reading the interview, and how great she looked in the pictures. Marilyn invited the Rostens to join her theater party at the Mr. President gala in September.
Later in the day, Marilyn spoke to Newcomb, who said she was suffering from a bad head cold. According to Newcomb, it was Marilyn who suggested she come by and relax around the pool and use Marilyn’s heat lamp. However, Newcomb knew that Dorothy Kilgallen was trying to reach Marilyn, and it was incumbent upon Newcomb to ensure that Kilgallen and Marilyn didn’t speak.
Marilyn was led to believe that Bobby Kennedy might arrive at Lawford’s on Friday evening for a last-ditch attempt at an understanding, but when he failed to arrive Newcomb and Lawford took Marilyn out to dinner at La Scala in Beverly Hills, one of Marilyn’s favorite restaurants. Billy Travilla had a vivid recollection of seeing Marilyn at La Scala with Lawford and Newcomb that night. He recalled that Marilyn appeared to be so intoxicated or drugged that she didn’t recognize him when he came over to the table to say hello. “She looked up at me with no recognition at all,” Travilla remembered.
Newcomb returned home with Marilyn, where the evening ended in an argument. Still intent on having her confrontation with Bobby Kennedy, Marilyn again called the St. Francis Hotel and left another message. Newcomb slept over in the telephone room, which was near Marilyn’s bedroom door. At night, Marilyn went through the ritual of closing the blackout curtains on her windows and placing her private phone near her bedside before retiring.
That weekend the Los Angeles basin was going into one of its hot, dry “Santa Ana” conditions, when the winds blow in from the Mojave Desert. Sometimes Maf, Marilyn’s poodle, would bark when wind rustled through the trees, and after dark he was kept out in the guest cottage, where his bark wouldn’t interfere with her sleep.
In her last months, Marilyn still suffered from night terrors. Eunice Murray recalled Marilyn frequently “awakening from sleep with a small shriek shortly after falling asleep…. She awoke each time shivering with fright and bathed in perspiration. She would then get up and sit in a chair until the bad feeling left.”
In a sense, Marilyn’s home on Fifth Helena was a bulwark against the outside world and her fears. The walls were made of two-foot-thick cement blocks, and the windows were protected by decorative wrought iron. The thick hand-carved doorways and gates spoke of permanence and protection. Outside, high stucco walls ensured seclusion, and the towering eucalyptus trees served as a curtain of privacy. When Marilyn had moved
in, she described her home as “a fortress where I can feel safe from the world.” But the enemy was her loveless, terrifying childhood, and no matter what she built around her—her career, her startling success, her accumulated knowledge, or her “fortress”—the night would usher in the demons of her childhood. They came with the dark. When she was alone. When she was afraid. Nobody but Norma Jeane would ever know the remarkable courage it took for her to live each day.
Outside, the antique wind chimes, which had been the gift of Carl Sandburg, tolled in the tall trees as she waited for the prescribed sleeping tablets to have their merciful effect. Norma Jeane needed her sleep so that Marilyn Monroe could be reborn with the dawn.
Eunice Murray said, “It’s my feeling that Marilyn looked forward to her tomorrows.”
Tomorrow would be her last day.
60
Night Terrors
Don’t cry my doll
Don’t cry
I hold you and rock you to sleep
Hush hush I’m pretending now
I’m not your mother who died…
Down the walk
Clickety clack
As my doll in her carriage
Went over the cracks—
“We’ll go far away”
—Marilyn Monroe
The dry desert winds had warmed the L.A. basin and by 9 A.M., August 4, 1962, it was already eighty degrees.
Marilyn got up early, wrapped herself in her robe, and made some coffee in the kitchen. Pat Newcomb was still asleep in the telephone room. Marilyn had been up most of the night. With the blackout curtains closed, her room had been stifling—and then there were a series of disturbing phone calls. Jeanne Carmen related that Marilyn woke her at 6 A.M. to tell her about strange calls she had received during the night. A woman whose voice Marilyn wasn’t sure she recognized had called a number of times between midnight and dawn, telling her to “leave Bobby alone” and calling her a “tramp.” Carmen wondered if it could have been Ethel Kennedy.
“Marilyn sounded nervous and exhausted,” Carmen stated. “She begged me to come over and keep her company.” Marilyn had things she needed to talk to Carmen about—things she knew she couldn’t say over the phone. But Carmen wasn’t fully awake or aware of the anxieties she sensed in Marilyn’s voice. She remembered Marilyn saying, “Bring over a bag of pills,” and thought Marilyn was referring to “uppers” to help her through the day after a bad night. She told Marilyn she didn’t have time to come over that day because it was her birthday, and she had a series of engagements that would keep her busy until late that night. They planned to see each other on Sunday.
Eunice Murray had spent the night at her own apartment on Ocean Avenue and arrived at approximately 8 A.M. Her car was being serviced at the nearby garage of Henry D’Antonio. He had driven her to Marilyn’s house and was to deliver her car in the late afternoon. Shortly after Mrs. Murray arrived, Norman Jefferies drove through the newly installed wooden gates and parked his red pickup next to Pat Newcomb’s car.
By 8:30 A.M. Jefferies had begun working on the new kitchen floor. He remembered seeing Marilyn walk into the kitchen shortly after nine o’clock. She was wrapped in a huge bath towel, and Jefferies stated that she didn’t look well. “She looked sick,” he said. “She was pale and looked tired. I thought there must have been something wrong with her.”
During the course of Robert Slatzer’s interview in 1974 with Eunice Murray, Slatzer asked what Marilyn ate that day, and she replied, “We sat down at the table and had some grapefruit juice. Marilyn liked juice, as you know…but she didn’t have an appetite that day. She didn’t have anything to eat.” Slatzer added that Mrs. Murray seemed quite firm about this. She stated, “Marilyn did not consume any food or liquor that day.”
Marilyn’s lack of appetite on Saturday is in keeping with Dr. Engelberg’s comment to Sergeant Clemmons, “I only recently gave her an injection because she was suffering from diarrhea.” The autopsy, which revealed an inflamed lower colon, would corroborate the statements of Engelberg, Clemmons, and Murray. The diarrhea Engelberg cited may have been an episode of the colitis diagnosed in 1961 by her New York physician, Dr. Richard Cottrell, who noted that Marilyn suffered from an ulcerated colon. He attributed the problem to “a chronic fear neurosis,” and stated that on occasions when his patient was “highly nervous, frightened and confused,” her emotions brought on episodes of colitis.
During the morning, Marilyn spoke on the phone to Sidney Skolsky and mentioned that she planned to see Bobby Kennedy later that day. In the mid-morning, Ralph Roberts called to check on a tentative dinner date with Marilyn. He recalled that she wasn’t sure if she could make it, and she suggested he call back in the afternoon.
According to Mrs. Murray, around 9:30 or 10 A.M., photographer Larry Schiller stopped by to talk to Marilyn about photographs for Playboy magazine. Schiller recalled that from the gate he saw Marilyn kneeling beside the flowers bordering the guest cottage. She was pulling weeds or plucking flowers, he thought. When he called to her, she turned and walked across the lawn. Schiller said that Marilyn was having second thoughts about the value of being on the cover of Playboy, where she would again be promoted as a sex object. They decided to talk about it again on Monday.
Mrs. Murray observed that Pat Newcomb, who had spent the night in the telephone room, rose close to noon. She walked into the kitchen, where she encountered Marilyn; an argument ensued. In a rare interview granted to Robert Slatzer in 1974, Newcomb stated, “The small argument that day was because I had been able to sleep all night and Marilyn hadn’t.” But the “small argument” was a continuation of the quarrel that had begun Friday night when Bobby Kennedy didn’t show up, and on Saturday they had a bitter disagreement that led to Newcomb’s dismissal.
According to Norman Jefferies, the argument was over Pat Newcomb’s loyalty to the Kennedys. It was a loud, vitriolic confrontation that Eunice Murray initially claimed not to have heard. Later, Murray would admit that there had been a major disagreement.
Despite the conflict and being told to leave, Newcomb stayed on at Marilyn’s, hovering around the telephone room—the self-appointed Marilyn monitor until Bobby arrived. Newcomb told the press that she had started to leave after the “small argument,” but was stopped by Mrs. Murray, who asked her to stay for lunch. However, Murray and Newcomb had never been friendly and scarcely spoke. In fact, they had an intense dislike for one another.
In speaking of Eunice Murray, Newcomb stated, “Marilyn sought her advice because she was supposed to be this wonderful housekeeper Greenson had found for her. But from day one, I did not trust Eunice Murray, who seemed to be always snooping around. I tried to stay out of her way because I just didn’t like her. She was sort of a spook, always hovering, always on the fringe of things…. I think Mrs. Murray should have been hung up by her thumbs.”
In her 1974 interview with Robert Slatzer, Newcomb said, “Mrs. Murray fixed Marilyn and I [sic] lunch. They were [sic] hamburgers.”
“But you definitely remember that you and Marilyn ate together?” Slatzer asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “About lunchtime.”
However, Mrs. Murray clearly stated that Marilyn went to her room and Pat Newcomb ate alone, and she was very firm about the fact that Marilyn didn’t eat anything that day—a fact confirmed by the autopsy.
Early Saturday afternoon, the roar of a helicopter echoed off the soundstage walls at the Fox studios. A Fox security guard squinted into the bright blue sky as it began its descent into the heliport near Stage 14, the same heliport Marilyn had used when she flew off to the president’s birthday gala. As noted in the studio’s security log, the helicopter had received approval to land shortly after 11 A.M. A dark gray limousine waited in the shade as the helicopter touched down in a whirl of dust. Studio publicist Frank Neill, who was working on the lot that Saturday, knew that Darryl Zanuck had shelved The Enemy Within, and he was surprised to see Bobby Kennedy leap from the helicopter and dash
to the limousine. As the limousine door opened and Bobby jumped in, Neill caught a glimpse of Peter Lawford. Frank Neill’s observation of Bobby Kennedy’s arrival was corroborated by former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, who stated, “The truth is, we knew Robert Kennedy was in town on August 4.”
Former Los Angeles mayor Sam Yorty also confirmed the attorney general’s presence in Los Angeles on the day Marilyn died. Yorty stated, “I had a conversation with Chief Parker, and he told me himself that Robert Kennedy had arrived in Los Angeles that day and checked into the Beverly Hilton Hotel.”
Retired police chief Tom Reddin, who in 1962 was an assistant to Chief Parker, recently stated, “It was reported to me by security officers that the attorney general was in Los Angeles on the weekend when Marilyn Monroe died.”
And after twenty-three years of denials, Eunice Murray admitted in 1985 that Bobby Kennedy was in Los Angeles and visited Marilyn Monroe’s home on August 4, 1962. During the interview for the BBC documentary Say Goodbye to the President, she said, “I was not supposed to know the Kennedys were a very important part of Marilyn’s life, but over a period of time, I was a witness to what was happening.” Asked point-blank if Bobby Kennedy had been present at Marilyn’s house that Saturday, Murray stated, “Oh sure, yes, I was in the living room when he arrived. She was not dressed.”
In 1993 Norman Jefferies also confirmed the attorney general’s visit to Marilyn Monroe’s residence on Saturday, August 4, 1962. Jefferies revealed that he had never left the vicinity of Marilyn’s home that Saturday, and he was at the side of his mother-in-law, Eunice Murray, until she left in her car on Sunday morning. He was a witness to Marilyn Monroe’s death and the cover-up that ensued.
The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe Page 52