The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  One of Marilyn’s best friends was Ralph Roberts, an actor and her personal masseur, who had the nickname “Rafe.” Because he was a constant companion of Marilyn’s, she had sent for him to be in Los Angeles with her. She thought of him as a brother. One day, Dr. Greenson announced that Roberts had to go. “There are one too many Ralphs in the picture,” he told Marilyn. She couldn’t believe her ears. “But he’s one of my best friends,” she said in protest. “I don’t care, he’s got to go, Marilyn,” Greenson said. “But I call him Rafe, not Ralph,” she said, now becoming hysterical. It would appear that she actually thought the problem was in her friend’s name—not in his presence. “Rafe! Rafe!” she said over and over again. Greenson concluded, “I don’t care what you call him. You are much too dependent on him.” That night, Marilyn told Ralph that he had to go back to New York. According to people who knew her best at that time, she sobbed all night long. Still, she felt she was powerless to do anything about it; that’s how reliant she had become on Dr. Greenson.

  Another example of Greenson’s seemingly territorial nature where Marilyn was concerned can be found in a letter he wrote to a colleague (in May 1961): “Above all, I try to help her not to be so lonely, and therefore to escape into the drugs or get involved with very destructive people who will engage in some sort of sadomasochistic relationship with her. This is the kind of planning you do with an adolescent girl who needs guidance, friendliness and firmness, and she seems to take it very well. She said for the first time, she looked forward to coming to Los Angeles, because she could speak to me. Of course, this does not prevent her from canceling several hours to go to Palm Springs with Mr. F.S. [doubtless, Frank Sinatra]. She is as unfaithful to me as one is to a parent.”

  It seems true that Marilyn felt inclined to explain her romantic experiences to Greenson as if he had a right to sanction them. For instance, in March 1961, she wrote a letter to him in which she described “a fling on a wing” with someone she did not name. She said he was unselfish in bed but that she knew Greenson would not approve of the relationship. Many reporters over the years have suggested that she was referring to one of the Kennedy brothers. She may also have been referring to Frank Sinatra.

  Making the situation all the more uncomfortable to observers at the time was that Marilyn’s new attorney was Mickey Rudin—Ralph Greenson’s brother-in-law. Rudin was also Frank Sinatra’s lawyer and, moreover, Greenson was Sinatra’s therapist. “Why in the world Sinatra would have Greenson as his shrink fully knowing the condition of his other famous patient, Marilyn, was a mystery to everyone,” said one of Marilyn’s friends at that time. “It was all just a little creepy. There was just too much Greenson everywhere you looked.”

  Pat Kennedy Lawford was one of those who did not support Marilyn’s relationship with Dr. Greenson, and she made that clear during a luncheon with Marilyn. Her father, Joseph, suffered a stroke in the fall of 1961, and she was having a difficult time coping with the fact that it had left such a vibrant man paralyzed. Marilyn and Pat arranged to have a drink and catch up at the Beachcomber restaurant in Malibu, a favorite haunt of Pat’s. When she had her son Christopher in 1955, she and Peter stopped there to celebrate on the way home from the hospital. They just plopped the infant right down on the bar in his little bassinet, ordered a couple of dirty martinis, and drank up. That was a happy, if not also crazy, day. However, on this later day, Pat was feeling melancholy and sad. According to Pat Brennan, who joined the two for drinks, Pat cried about her father while Marilyn watched, almost distantly.

  “Do you love your father?” Marilyn asked Pat, who was shocked by the question.

  “Of course I do,” Pat replied.

  “Dr. Greenson says I don’t need a father,” Marilyn said. “They’re optional—not everyone has one.”

  If Marilyn had been trying to console Pat, it certainly wasn’t working. More likely, however, Monroe was simply free-associating her conversation, without much of an agenda. This wasn’t one of Marilyn’s good days.

  “You are seeing too much of that guy,” Pat replied coolly, “he’s got you under a spell or something.”

  “But he’s like a father to me,” Marilyn confided, “and I can trust him not to tell anyone.”

  “Tell anyone what?” asked Pat.

  Marilyn had been confiding in Pat about her need to “quiet her mind” for quite some time, and she believed Pat had to know what she was talking about.

  “That I’m like my mother,” Marilyn said.

  Pat’s face hardened. Later she would say that it dawned on her that Greenson had convinced Marilyn her condition was serious enough that she needed him—indefinitely. “Now you listen to me,” she said, according to Brennan’s memory of the conversation. “That man doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Your mother is a very sick woman.”

  “So am I,” Marilyn said quite plainly.

  There was silence between the two. Pat Brennan watched the scene play out without saying a word. Everyone just looked at each other for a long moment, until Marilyn finally began to cry.

  “Don’t be angry with me,” she said, as she stood and started to collect her belongings.

  “Why would I be angry? Sit down, where are you going?”

  “Just don’t be angry with me. I couldn’t take that.”

  Marilyn headed for the door, and the two Pats—Lawford and Brennan—followed. They caught up with Marilyn in front of the restaurant, still visibly upset. Pat Kennedy Lawford hugged her.

  “This is all that damn doctor’s fault.”

  “No it’s not,” Marilyn said. “But it’s not my fault either.”

  “Let’s just talk about this,” Pat insisted.

  “No. I’ve upset you both,” Marilyn said. She gave Lawford a quick peck on the cheek and Brennan the same. Then she looked the former in the eye and said, “I swear, this isn’t my fault.”

  Marilyn, again on the verge of breaking down, walked off toward her car while both women were left to try to make sense of what had just happened.

  Eunice Murray

  Dr. Ralph Greenson replaced the other Ralph in Marilyn’s life—Roberts—with perhaps the strangest character who had ever come into the picture—another reason he is so maligned by historians. She was fifty-nine-year-old Eunice Murray, a dowdy, bespectacled woman with not much personality who called herself a “nurse,” but who had no medical training whatsoever. She had a very stern face and hard features. In fact, Marilyn hadn’t had anyone in her life like this since Ida Bolender. The difference between the two, though, was that Ida had great warmth beneath the cold exterior whereas Eunice didn’t, or at least not that anyone was ever able to discern. Because she had “homemaking skills,” she was installed as Marilyn’s companion—sometimes she spent the night, sometimes not—much to the dismay of almost every person who knew Marilyn, it’s safe to say. It seemed to Marilyn’s friends and associates that there was nothing Marilyn could do during her private time at home that wasn’t immediately brought to Dr. Greenson’s attention by Murray. Indeed, in their view, he had a new spy in the household. Even Marilyn’s publicist and friend Pat Newcomb, not usually one to make waves and who went along with practically every decision made on Marilyn’s behalf, was suspicious of Eunice Murray. Saying she was frightened of her, she didn’t even want to be around the woman. “She keeps giving me that fishy stare,” Pat told John Springer, “and I don’t like it one bit.” * In Greenson’s defense, however, he believed strongly that Marilyn needed to be monitored as much as possible. He didn’t care if people thought he was spying on her via Eunice Murray, as long as he knew what his patient was up to every moment of every day.

  “I heard that she [Murray] was constantly on the telephone, whispering information to him,” said Diane Stevens, who came to Los Angeles with John Springer for business meetings at that time. “Marilyn couldn’t have guests over without Greenson knowing who they were, how long they stayed, and what they wanted. This woman was always peering around corners, t
aking mental notes, and then reporting back to the doctor. I met her once. I had to drop some paperwork at Marilyn’s house and when I did, this woman came to the door. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded to know. ‘Why haven’t I seen you around here before? What business do you have here?’ Oh my God, I was horrified by her attitude. I thought to myself, she’s a housekeeper. What right does she have to talk to anyone like this? So I said, ‘Who are you? Why haven’t I seen you around here before? What business do you have here?’ She looked at me with an angry face and then slammed the door in my face. I told John about it and he said, ‘Oh no. What has Marilyn gotten herself into now?’ ”

  At the end of 1961, Dr. Greenson wrote in his notes of what he called “a severe depressive reaction” to something that had happened in Marilyn’s life. He wasn’t clear as to what had transpired. “She had talked about retiring from the movie industry, killing herself, etc.” Certainly it’s not good news when a psychiatrist becomes so used to hearing a patient’s threats to commit suicide that he adds “etc.” to his notes about it, suggesting that he’s heard it all before. “I had to place nurses in her apartment day and night,” he wrote, “and keep strict control over the medication since I felt she was potentially suicidal. Marilyn fought with these nurses, so that after a few weeks it was impossible to keep any of them.”

  After hearing her voice on the telephone, Joe DiMaggio decided that he’d better fly to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with Marilyn. She was happy to see him. As difficult as he was at times, she knew he loved her and she felt safe in his arms. “Joe was there maybe thirty minutes when he figured out that things had gotten much worse with her,” said his friend the sportswriter Stacy Edwards. “Let me put it to you this way. He took one look at that Mrs. Murray and knew she was trouble. From what he told me, he said to her, ‘I don’t want you knowing anything about me or my business. You work for Marilyn, but you are not her friend. And you are not my friend. If it were up to me, you wouldn’t even exist.’ He was very direct with her. I’m sure she had a lot to tell Greenson about him.”

  Joe wanted to make certain that Christmas Day would be happy for Marilyn. To that end, he had purchased a large tree and had decorated it for her. He was as solicitous and as romantic as he could be, doing whatever he could think of to make the day festive. He purchased gifts and even had them wrapped at the store. “He told me it was a great day,” recalled Stacy Edwards. “He said she seemed okay, not too manic. I’m pretty sure the housekeeper wasn’t there, though I don’t know where she was—or where he sent her, I should say. Everything was going well… until that night, anyway.”

  Earlier in the day, Marilyn announced that they were having dinner with… the Greensons. Joe hadn’t met the doctor, but already he wasn’t a fan. However, he was anxious to spend time with him and come to his own conclusions. It didn’t take long for him to make a determination, though. Joe had always thought that Natasha Lytess had too much influence on Marilyn, and he certainly felt the same way about Lee and Paula Strasberg. However, that night—after just thirty minutes of watching his ex-wife act as if Ralph Greenson was her long-lost father and Greenson’s family was the one she’d never known—Joe DiMaggio would say that he had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “You know what it’s like when you’re in a car with someone and they run a red light and you know you’re gonna crash but you’re not driving so there’s nothing you can do about it?” he asked Stacy Edwards. “That’s how I felt that night. I felt like Marilyn was about to crash, but I was no longer in the driver’s seat anymore… and there was nothing I could do about it.”

  Joe wasn’t the only one worried about Marilyn. Others who were not aware of her disease had no frame of reference for her strange behavior. “ ‘She’s not well.’ ‘She’s acting strangely.’ ‘What’s wrong with her?’ That’s all I kept hearing by the beginning of 1962,” said Diane Stevens from John Springer’s office.

  “Pat Newcomb and a young publicist named Michael Selsman were mostly handling her from the Arthur P. Jacobs Company by this time. She was paying them $250 a week, I think, which was $50 more than she’d been paying John Springer’s firm. Every now and then we still had to field a press request, and it wasn’t easy. She had become difficult and argumentative. Once you got her there, she was okay. But getting her there was hell. She’d have an appointment to do an interview and just not show up. It had been her custom to be late, but to not show up was not her. Then, she was saying the strangest things. For instance, she said that the reason she bought her new house was because it reminded her of the orphanages in which she was raised. After spending the better part of the last decade bemoaning the orphanages she was sent to—and I believe it was just one, by the way—to now suddenly start making that statement seemed more than odd. The word was out that she was sick, a drug addict. I was scared.”

  PART EIGHT

  The Kennedys

  Kennedy Style

  It was late January 1962. “You have just got to meet him,” Pat Kennedy Lawford told Marilyn Monroe. “You’ll never know anyone quite like my brother.” She was taking about her brother, Bobby, now attorney general of the United States.

  One thing is certain, anytime Marilyn had the opportunity to be around the Kennedys, she took advantage of it. She was much more politically minded than people knew. What follows is a remarkable letter she wrote to journalist Lester Markel, a New York Times editor she had met and with whom she enjoyed lively discussions about politics. It was written before JFK won his party’s nomination for president:

  Lester dear,

  Here I am still in bed. I’ve been lying here—thinking even of you. About our political conversation the other day: I take it all back that there isn’t anybody. What about Rockefeller? First of all, he is a Republican, like the New York Times and secondly, and most interesting, he’s more liberal than many of the Democrats. Maybe he could be developed? At this time, however, Humphrey might be the only one. But who knows since it’s rather hard to find out anything about him. (I have no particular paper in mind!) Of course, Stevenson might have made it if he had been able to talk to people other than professors. Of course, there hasn’t been anyone like Nixon before because the rest of them at least had souls. Ideally, Justice William Douglas would be the best President, but he has been divorced so he couldn’t make it—but I’ve got an idea—how about Douglas for President and Kennedy for Vice-president, then the Catholics who wouldn’t have voted would vote because of Kennedy so it wouldn’t matter if he [Douglas] is so divorced! Then Stevenson could be secretary of state.

  It’s true I am in your building quite frequently to see my wonderful doctor [here she is referring to her psychiatrist, Dr. Marianne Kris] as your spies have already reported. I didn’t want you to get a glimpse of me though until I was wearing my Somali leopard. I want you to think of me as a predatory animal.

  Love and kisses,

  Marilyn

  PS Slogan for late ’60

  “Nix on Nixon”

  “Over the hump with Humphrey” (?)

  “Stymied with Symington”

  “Back to Boston by Xmas—Kennedy”

  Back to Boston by Christmas? It doesn’t sound as if Marilyn—a registered Democrat—had much confidence that JFK could win the election. She was well-read and knowledgeable enough to have an opinion, though, and could definitely hold her own in any political conversation. As they got to know one another, she and Pat also had lengthy discussions about civil rights, a subject about which Marilyn had become quite passionate. She identified with the underdog, and began to realize that Pat and her dynastic family shared those ideals. When the two would discuss coverage of world events in the press, Marilyn always took the position that important stories that made the country look bad—such as certain riots taking place in urban areas—were not given enough prominent space. “Sometimes I think the government is running the media,” she told Pat in front of friends. “I don’t trust anything I read these days.” Pat was certainly not ash
amed to have Marilyn Monroe mixing with her peers because she viewed her as a woman of substance. Pat especially enjoyed having her visit when her siblings were present because she also knew that Marilyn never really had a family. Therefore, it gave her pleasure and satisfaction to share hers with her new friend.

  Of course, as is well known, the Kennedys were a raucous bunch totally devoted to each other. It seems that when they weren’t running the country, they were having a good time at Peter and Pat’s. One writer once opined, “The problem with the Kennedys is that they have no problems.” Of course, history has shown us that this wasn’t the case—but it certainly seemed like it to the outside world back in 1961. “You’re a Kennedy now,” Pat told Marilyn shortly after having met her. Pat didn’t throw around the designation easily, either. For instance, when JFK won the Democratic nomination, all of the Kennedys were to join him onstage at the convention in Los Angeles at the Coliseum. When Peter Lawford started to walk out with the rest of them, his wife, Pat, stopped him. “You’re not actually a Kennedy,” she told him, “so I think it’s not right.” JFK overheard what was going on and stopped his sister. “He’s married to you so that makes him a Kennedy, don’t you think?” he asked her. She shrugged. “Besides, he’s a good-looking movie star,” he added with a wink at Peter. “So we can certainly use him up there.” Poor Peter had even taken the citizenship test just to become an American so he could cast his vote for JFK. If Pat still didn’t think of him—her own husband—as a Kennedy, she must have really taken to Marilyn to have awarded her with the appellation. Of course, Marilyn loved being around the Kennedys—the joyous laughter, the intense rivalry, the crazy drama that informed everything they ever did… the many children, more than she could count… and all of the dogs. The Lawfords always had at least a half dozen dogs running around the property, chasing and yapping at whichever team of Kennedys was playing touch football on the beach. Because Pat was deathly allergic to the animals, she kept her distance. Peter pretty much ignored them. In his view, they were just part of the grand scenery that surrounded him. However, Marilyn took to the pets and made sure they were bathed and well fed whenever she was around. “Why, they’re just like little people,” she would tell Pat. “Oh yeah?” Pat would shoot back. “Well, little people don’t shit on my white carpets, now do they?”