Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love

by C. David Heymann

  Marilyn’s escort for the evening was Arthur Miller’s father, whom she introduced to both the president and the attorney general. At midnight, she placed Isidore Miller in a taxicab and returned to the party. Later that night, she joined JFK for a private birthday celebration in one of the bedrooms of the family’s penthouse suite at the Carlyle. As usual, a Secret Service agent was posted outside the front door of the suite to guard against the possibility of somebody walking in on the couple. An FBI report not released until 2010 revealed a new wrinkle concerning Monroe’s dealings with the Kennedys. Apparently in an alcoholic haze, she’d spent an hour in bed with JFK, and then entered a second bedroom and passed the remainder of the night with Robert F. Kennedy, whose aggressive nature and perseverance had obviously paid off. The following day, RFK bragged to Pierre Salinger, the White House press secretary, that he’d finally “bagged Miss Monroe.” It was Salinger who disclosed this information to an FBI agent.

  Back in Los Angeles, Marilyn went to dinner with Ralph Roberts. “She gave me a detailed account of the birthday bash, but couldn’t seem to recall what happened after she and the president reached the Carlyle,” said Roberts. “However, I must admit I didn’t realize until this particular point in time just how much John F. Kennedy had meant to her. She’d built the affair into a full-blown romantic fantasy. For months she’d been calling the president at the White House, writing him letters, even sending him snippets of her love poetry. But what truly amazed me was her admission that she’d once telephoned Jackie Kennedy. She actually told the First Lady she wanted to marry the president, and apparently Jackie humored her by saying she had no objection and, in fact, had grown weary of her fishbowl existence in the executive mansion. I could well imagine their conversation, both women expressing their thoughts in that whispery, Little Bo Peep voice they shared. Still, I had some serious misgivings about Marilyn. She seemed to have constructed a whole new reality for herself, a magic kingdom in which she—and she alone—reigned supreme.”

  On May 25, back on the set, Marilyn did a nude swimming pool scene. “It’s the only time she seemed to come alive,” said George Cukor. On June 1 she celebrated her thirty-sixth birthday by taking Dean Martin’s teenaged son to a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game and then went to dinner with Frank Sinatra at Trader Vic’s. The next morning she came down with a head cold, and again production on the film had to be suspended—but not before the cast threw a small birthday party for Marilyn at the Fox Studio. On June 8, having seen and heard enough, Peter Levathes issued the following public statement: “Marilyn Monroe has been removed from the cast of Something’s Got to Give. This action was necessary because of Miss Monroe’s repeated willful breaches of contract. No justification was given by Miss Monroe for her failure to report for photography on many occasions. The studio has suffered losses through these absences.”

  Levathes attempted to salvage Something’s Got to Give by replacing Monroe with actress Lee Remick, but Dean Martin—the male lead—refused to work with anyone other than Marilyn. Levathes offered Martin’s role to Robert Mitchum, but Mitchum—a friend to both Monroe and Dean Martin—wasn’t interested. With few options available, the studio now sued Monroe for $750,000 in a futile attempt to recover a fraction of its losses. The lawsuit never reached court.

  “They ought to sue Elizabeth Taylor, not me,” Marilyn told Ralph Roberts. “Cleopatra has cost them far more than my stupid little film. But it’s easier to blame me for everything. I’m a pushover. Elizabeth Taylor’s the Queen of the Nile.”

  In despair over her ouster from the film, Marilyn turned to Joe DiMaggio for consolation. In spite of his past rages, his hatred of Hollywood and the movie industry, Joe had never turned away from Marilyn. Nor had he ever given up hope of getting back with her on a full-time basis. In anticipation of spending more time with her, he had just resigned his position at Monette. He arrived at Marilyn’s Brentwood home and asked her to marry him. He wasn’t a billionaire, but he had more than enough money to support them both. He would supplement what he already had by endorsing products and appearing in television commercials. They could still have children—if need be, they could always adopt. In time they could revive Marilyn Monroe Productions, and she could star in a film every year or two, but the films would be of a serious nature, and she would make far more than she currently earned as a “studio slave”—he would see to that.

  Marilyn turned him down, though not necessarily forever; she had to think about it. They argued. Joe told her she was killing herself, giving up all potential happiness, sacrificing all normal human emotions, and for what? For the sake of the studio dictators who’d imposed upon her the role of a super sex symbol and little else? “Now they’ve even got you posing in the nude!” he yelled, before slamming the door behind him.

  She later admitted to Ralph Roberts that she’d been high on pot and LSD when Joe proposed to her, but even if she hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have gone along with it. They had a good thing going now, so why ruin it by getting married again? They would only repeat all the same patterns and make the same mistakes that had befouled their first marriage.

  According to Richard Ben Cramer, DiMaggio’s biographer, Joe boarded the next flight to New York and headed straight for Toots Shor’s. When he recounted his conversation with Marilyn for the saloon keeper’s benefit, Toots said something like, “Aw, Joe, what do expect from a whore like that?” DiMaggio told his longtime buddy to go fuck himself. He never spoke to Toots Shor again.

  Chapter 19

  DESPITE A BIRTHDAY TO REMEMBER, and despite the $1 million Marilyn Monroe had helped raise for the Democratic Party that night at Madison Square Garden, John F. Kennedy was done with the actress. Her erratic behavior—her letters, phone calls, and love poems, as well as her call to Jackie—no longer amused him. Too many people, including the Secret Service and FBI, knew of the affair by this time, and while the press in those days didn’t peer into the closets (or private lives) of politicians, there were those that did. The Kennedy clan’s list of perceived enemies—Fidel Castro, the Mafia, and Jimmy Hoffa, president of the largest union in America, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to name a few—was long and getting longer. The president was only too pleased to assign Bobby Kennedy the unpleasant (some might say pleasant) task of getting Marilyn off his back.

  Bobby’s arrival on the scene came at a precarious point in Marilyn’s career. After Fox fired her from Something’s Got to Give, she suffered what Dr. Ralph Greenson described as a “deeply paranoid and depressive reaction.” She placed some of the blame for her misfortune on George Cukor, stipulating that Cukor, an outspoken and admitted homosexual, had been jealous of her affair with Yves Montand during their joint appearance in Let’s Make Love. Cukor, she claimed, had himself lusted after Montand despite the fact that the actor left little doubt as to his sexuality.

  Against Dr. Greenson’s advice, MM turned to Bobby Kennedy for help, asking the attorney general to intervene on her behalf with Fox. RFK discussed the situation with Pierre Salinger and urged him to do what he could. “I didn’t know anyone at the studio,” said Salinger, “so I contacted Peter Lawford for advice. Peter loved Marilyn. He said she was having trouble and was more dependent than ever on barbiturates and probably ought to be placed in a detoxification unit if she hoped to get back to work. She was doing with RFK what she’d previously done with the president, besieging him with letters and phone calls, which in fact she’d been doing since first meeting him at Peter’s house. Jackie’s problem had now become Ethel’s. In any case, Peter gave me a list of names at Fox. I placed several calls. I have no idea how useful I might’ve been, but within days negotiations began between Mickey Rudin and Fox about resuming work on the film.”

  Jeanne Carmen, an actress Monroe first met at the Actors Studio in New York and with whom she established a close friendship after both moved to Los Angeles, happened to see a good deal of Marilyn in 1962. “We were sleeping pill buddies,” recalled Carmen. “I
wasn’t a big drinker, but Marilyn thought nothing of mixing booze and pills, and that’s where she got into trouble. We once did cocaine together and wound up bouncing off the walls. Neither of us liked it. We were both chronic insomniacs, and all we wanted to do was fall asleep. We took mostly Seconal and Nembutal, both very potent sleeping pills. They helped me a bit, but they did next to nothing for Marilyn. It amazed me how little her psychiatrist, Dr. Greenson, seemed to help her. Somewhere along the line he decided she was a waif in need of a family, so for a while he had her sleeping over and helping out in the kitchen by peeling potatoes and washing dishes, the same chores she’d performed as a child in the orphanage. During the period I knew Marilyn, she suffered from drastic mood swings. I’m no shrink, but to my mind she was bipolar, a manic-depressive. She saw Greenson practically every day, but I can’t say I saw any improvement in her condition. If anything, her condition deteriorated, particularly near the end. I don’t believe Greenson had the faintest notion what to do with her other than medicate her to death.”

  Indeed, the idea seemed to be never to deny Marilyn when she wanted a prescription, because the only thing that would happen is she would procure medication elsewhere and not inform her primary physicians, in this instance Dr. Greenson and Dr. Engelberg. So whenever she asked for a drug, she usually got it. Daniel Greenson, Dr. Greenson’s son, noted that treating a celebrity of Marilyn Monroe’s magnitude was a complex and often thankless proposition. “She called the shots,” he said. “Because she feared not being able to fall asleep, she began medicating herself. If she had a ten-day supply of barbiturates, her tendency was to take them all in a day or two. There wasn’t much anyone could do about it. If my father had refused to renew a given prescription, she would’ve simply turned to somebody else.”

  The problem was that Marilyn turned to both Greenson and Engelberg for prescriptions. Engelberg discussed the procedure he and Greenson followed in attempting to coordinate efforts: “I usually communicated with Dr. Greenson as to her sleeping medication, but I didn’t go over it with him if, say, I wanted to give her antibiotics for an infection. Nor would I tell him every time I gave her an injection of liver or vitamins. I also used to inject her with Heparin, a blood thinner which at the time was touted as a ‘youth drug’ and which helped stave off strokes and heart attacks. There were other exceptions. During the shooting of Something’s Got to Give, she developed sinus problems and the flu, which I treated without conferring with Dr. Greenson. Near the end of Marilyn’s life, there seemed to be a misunderstanding of sorts, and it appears Dr. Greenson and I were simultaneously prescribing sleeping medication for her. I didn’t know Dr. Greenson was supplying her with barbiturates at this juncture. Had I known, I obviously wouldn’t have given her the same drug. Judging from the volume and variety of drugs in her house at the time of her death, I realized just how little control Dr. Greenson and I had over her. It appears that during her trip to Mexico, where you can procure every and any medication over the counter, she’d picked up a stash of sedatives and barbiturates. After her death, the police confiscated some fifteen bottles of pills from her house.”

  Another subject that went unspoken between the two physicians was that in early June, two months before her death, Marilyn Monroe began an affair with Hyman Engelberg, adding the doctor’s name to a roster of lovers that included John and Bobby Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, and Joe DiMaggio. Marilyn’s liaison with her internist served to further complicate a life that long before had begun to spiral out of control. Dr. Eric Goldberg, a Santa Barbara physician and Engelberg’s closest friend, was evidently the only person with whom the internist talked about the affair.

  “I’d known Hy for years,” said Goldberg. “We used to play tennis together every weekend. I had three sons, and so did he. He treated any number of celebrity patients, among them Rita Hayworth, Burt Lancaster, and Danny Kaye. At the time of his affair with Marilyn, which, by the way, has remained secret until now, Hy was separated from his wife. They eventually divorced, and he remarried. But in mid-1962 he was living alone in a three-bedroom house just off Sunset. I once met Marilyn at his house. On the surface, she seemed to possess everything you would want in a woman, except that she was hooked on prescription drugs. Hy wasn’t in love with her, nor was she with him, which I suppose is why the relationship worked. He introduced her to his youngest son, an undergraduate at Columbia University, and one morning they all had breakfast together, which Marilyn prepared. During June and July, Hy saw her almost every day, mostly for medical reasons. He told me she used to complain about pain in her chest, so he began giving her shots of morphine. It occurred to me she might be sleeping with Hy in order to get whatever drugs she wanted, but then again there were any number of physicians in and around Los Angeles who would have been more than glad to prescribe medications for her. After she died, Hy worried that she’d mentioned their affair to friends and that he could lose his medical license. Aside from the affair, there were questions as to the injections and medications he’d given her. What’s most bizarre, I suppose, is that she never mentioned the affair to Ralph Greenson. I can’t help but wonder what other secrets she kept from her psychiatrist.”

  Asked to elaborate on his affair with Marilyn, Dr. Engelberg would say only, “It happened. We were both very lonely. Let’s just leave it at that.”

  • • •

  With negotiations still underway over a new contract for Something’s Got to Give, the actress continued to publicize the figure known to the world as “Marilyn Monroe,” a persona entirely invented, designed, created, and controlled by the former Norma Jeane Baker. During the last week of June, she participated in a three-day shoot with photographer George Barris for Cosmopolitan. While in her company, Barris noticed that Marilyn would lapse into an occasional depression, then bounce back to her former, more jovial self. In a serious frame of mind, she told Barrris she wanted to have children but didn’t feel she could raise a child properly so long as she remained alone.

  She did two photo sessions with Bert Stern for Vogue. Stern had set up a makeshift studio at the Bel Air Hotel, supplying Marilyn with a case of Dom Pérignon and several bottles of vodka. After several hours of conventional shots, Marilyn asked Stern if he wanted to shoot her in the nude. She disrobed and donned a see-through bed jacket. Babs Simpson, Vogue’s photo editor, took one look at Monroe and said, “Oh, no! I don’t like that.” And Marilyn countered, “Well, I do.”

  As she assumed a suggestive pose, Marilyn said, “How’s this for thirty-six?” Stern didn’t know if she was referring to her breasts or her age.

  “I liked her . . . and I was also very attracted to her—like most guys,” admitted Stern. “She was very natural in a way that’s hard to explain. And she had a quality—like she was willing to be yours. She gave you the feeling it was okay to jump in a car and drive off with her.”

  Pat Newcomb had arranged and attended the Cosmopolitan and Vogue photo feature shoots. In her typically overgenerous manner, Marilyn rewarded Newcomb with an array of offerings: a new car, a black mink coat, and the emerald earrings Frank Sinatra had once given her. Newcomb had also set up an interview for Marilyn with Life, to be conducted by Richard Meryman.

  “We did it in two parts,” said Meryman. “We met at her Brentwood house on July 4 and then again about ten days later. Marilyn asked to have the questions in advance. Although she’d prepared for the interview, her answers seemed spontaneous. I sensed she gave the interview to rearrange an image of herself she didn’t like. She spoke from the heart. She was real. She was bright and businesslike. At one point during our July 4 interview, the telephone rang. Pat Newcomb, who was present the entire time, answered the phone. It was Joe DiMaggio. ‘Tell him to call back,’ said Marilyn.

  “During our second interview, she seemed weary, less relaxed, more on edge. Her mood had changed a good deal from our first meeting. Where before she’d been energetic and positive, she now seemed sad and ill at ease. She complained about being alone in th
e world. One of her themes throughout our two sessions was the fickle nature of fame—she had it today, but would it be there for her tomorrow? Or as she put it, ‘Fame may go by and—So long I’ve had you, Fame.’ ”

  Richard Meryman’s Q and A with Marilyn turned out to be the last interview she ever gave. It appeared in the August 3, 1962, issue of Life. She died the following day.

  • • •

  During the first week of July, Joe DiMaggio Jr., on leave from Camp Pendleton, his Marine base in San Diego, spent the afternoon with Marilyn at home in Brentwood. He told her his mother and her companion, Ralph Peck, had opened a supper club, Charcoal Charlie’s, outside Palm Springs. She sang, and he accompanied her on the piano. Joey couldn’t bring himself to visit the place. He went on to discuss Pam, his girlfriend, and said he was thinking of marrying her. Marilyn told him that sometimes getting married merely made matters more complicated.

  “I wondered when she said that,” remarked Joey, “if she had herself and my father in mind. I mentioned that I found him a bit more relaxed now that he was no longer working for Monette. I asked Marilyn if she knew he’d put together a number of scrapbooks devoted to her, containing articles and photographs, including one scrapbook dealing solely with their wedding. I also told her I’d discovered he kept garbage bags and pillowcases full of cash in San Francisco home. ‘He’s been doing that for years,’ said Marilyn. ‘He doesn’t trust banks. He distrusts them almost as much as he distrusts Twentieth Century–Fox.’ ”

  Marilyn showed Joey a Western Union telegram his father had sent her on her thirty-sixth birthday, which read: “Happy Birthday—Hope today and future years bring you sunny skies and all your heart desires. As ever, Joe.” Marilyn liked the telegram because it was simple yet eloquent.