The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  “The limousine arrived at 8:15 and she still wasn’t ready. At that point, Peter called and said, ‘What the hell is going on? Does she realize that she’s keeping the president waiting?’ And when he said that to me, something clicked in my head and I thought, ‘Hmmm, I wonder if that’s the whole idea.’ ”

  At 8:30, still no Marilyn—but the hairdresser came out of the bedroom very casually as if he had not a care in the world. Before breezily taking his leave, he said to Milt, “It’s worth the wait. Believe me. She looks fabulous.”

  At 8:45, another call came in from Peter to Milt. By now, Peter was frantic and, with Dave Powers cursing in the background, hollered into the phone, “Get her over here, God damn it. The president wants her here, now.” Milt replied, “I’m trying, I’m trying.” Peter bellowed, “Well, try harder,” before slamming down the phone.

  At 9 p.m., the telephone rang again and the maid said it was Peter. Milt told her to say they’d already left the premises. By now totally exasperated, he burst into Marilyn’s bedroom. There she was, with her back to him, sitting at her vanity, staring into the mirror and, with what looked to Ebbins like an eyeliner pencil, darkening her famous beauty mark (a little mole on the right cheek of her face). “Marilyn, Jesus Christ, almighty!” Milt said. “Do you realize you’re keeping the president waiting.” She rose to face him. She was completely nude except for a pair of black high heels. “Oh, calm down, Milt,” she said casually. “My goodness. Just help me put this dress on.” After taking a casual sip of sherry, she lifted a little beaded and sequined number off the bed and put it over her head. Then she shimmied it down over her breasts, to her hips.

  For the next ten minutes, Milt Ebbins attempted to assist Marilyn into what he described as “the tightest goddamn dress I have ever seen on a woman. We couldn’t get it past her hips. Of course, typical of Marilyn, she wasn’t wearing underwear either. So there I was, on my knees in front of her, my nose an inch from her crotch, pulling this dress down with all my might trying to get it past her big ass. And she kept saying, ‘Keep pulling, Milt. Keep pulling. You can do it. You can do it.’ ”

  Finally, with one final tug, the dress gave way past Marilyn’s hips and down to her knees. “Ah, perfect,” she squealed. “I knew you could do it, Milt.” She then put a red wig over her hair and sunglasses over her eyes and then… back to the vanity where she sat down and began studying herself again. “Finally, I just grabbed her by the elbow,” Milt recalled, “and said, ‘That’s it. We’re leaving.’

  “We got into the limousine and made it to Park Avenue. When we got out of the car, the place was mobbed with photographers waiting to see who the president’s guests were. Not one person recognized her. We went up to the floor he was staying on and two Secret Service agents met us as soon as we got off the elevator. They escorted us to the apartment.”

  Standing in front of the closed door, Marilyn took off her wig and handed it to one of the agents. After fluffing up her halo of blonde hair, she took the glasses off and handed them to the other agent. Then she drew a deep breath, smoothed down her dress, and said, “Okay, shall we?” One of the agents opened the door and Marilyn walked into the apartment, followed by Milt Ebbins.

  “When she walked in, Christ almighty, it was like the parting of the Red Sea,” Ebbins recalled. “There were about twenty-five people in there, and the crowd divided into halves as she walked through the room.”

  The actress Arlene Dahl, who was married to Fernando Lamas and is actor Lorenzo Lamas’s mother, was also at that party. “Marilyn walked in with her agent and, I’ll never forget it, everything stopped, everyone stopped. It was magical, really. I’ve never seen anyone stop a room like that. The president turned around and noticed her and you could see that he was immediately attracted to her. ‘Finally! You’re here,’ he said with a big smile as he walked over to her. ‘There are some people here who are dying to meet you.’ Then, she was descended upon. People just wanted to stand near her, smell her fragrance, breathe the same air as she.”

  JFK took Marilyn’s arm and off she went with him. But not before turning to Milt Ebbins and giving him a wry little smile and a wink.

  As it happened, JFK was immediately taken by Marilyn that night in New York—no surprise there. Before she left, he asked for her phone number. Of course, she gave it to him. He called her the very next day with a suggestion. He explained that he was going to be in Palm Springs on March 24. He would be staying with his friend and, as he understood it, hers as well—Frank Sinatra. Why not join him there? Oh, and incidentally, he told her, “Jackie won’t be there.”

  Notorious Players

  Wasn’t it remarkable enough that Marilyn Monroe had made plans for a romantic getaway with the president of the United States? Did fate also have to decree that their assignation would occur in the center of a big melodrama involving both Kennedy brothers, Frank Sinatra, and Peter Lawford, the husband of Marilyn’s friend Pat?

  Everyone who knew Bobby Kennedy knew one thing about him: He was determined to bring down the underworld. Not only that but, as he had earlier indicated to Marilyn, he felt that J. Edgar Hoover was involved in certain illegal activities, too, and that he was using mob informants to beef up his scurrilous files on the Kennedy family. The scrappiest and most volatile of the brothers, Bobby spent most of 1960 and 1961 looking into these kinds of hunches. The irony was that pretty much everyone knew that his father, Joseph, had all sorts of underworld connections—and is there any doubt that a man as shrewd and savvy as Bobby knew about them, too? Still, in February 1962, his investigation of the underworld was completed and a report compiled by the Justice Department. Basically, it claimed that Sinatra was in so deep with the mob, he was practically running his own little syndicate.

  Matters became even darker for Sinatra when, on February 27, 1962, FBI agents reported to J. Edgar Hoover that a woman named Judith Campbell Exner was sleeping with President Kennedy. Exner was one of the many girlfriends of leading Mafia kingpin Sam Giancana. It didn’t take long for Hoover to figure out that Sinatra was the one who had introduced all these notorious players to one another. Finally, the FBI got it right!

  As JFK had mentioned to Marilyn, he was scheduled to stay with Sinatra at his Palm Springs home. As it happened, Sinatra idolized JFK (whom he referred to as TP—The President) just about as much as he did any mobster he knew. Sinatra had spanking new cottages built on the property for JFK’s visit. He also hung pictures of the Kennedys all over the main house, and even put up a gold plaque in the president’s bedroom that said, “John F. Kennedy Slept Here.” He had new phone lines installed for the Secret Service as well as a new helipad.

  However, Sinatra was in for a rude awakening. Bobby told his brother Jack that due to the circumstances of Frank’s mob ties, there was no way the president of the United States could stay in his home. JFK concurred. Of course, this sanctimonious reasoning was the height of hypocrisy, since one of the reasons Bobby and JFK agreed that Sinatra should be ostracized was because he was friends with Sam Giancana and his girlfriend, Judith Exner—a woman with whom JFK was having sex! “President Kennedy liked to live on the edge and he liked to take chances,” observed retired Secret Service agent Lawrence Newman, “and I think he was walking on the edge of issues that were dark and dangerous.”

  Poor Peter Lawford was the guy chosen by Bobby to break the news to Sinatra. Peter never had a chance, especially when he told Frank where JFK would be sleeping in Palm Springs. As expected, Sinatra hung up on him. Then Sinatra dropped the phone to the floor. Staring out at the hot desert, he said to his valet, George Jacobs, “You want to know where he’s staying? Bing Crosby’s house, that’s where—and he’s a Republican!” After that, Frank dropped Peter from two upcoming Rat Pack films, Robin and the 7 Hoods and 4 for Texas. As far as he was concerned, Peter Lawford was history.

  Pat Kennedy Lawford was angry about this turn of events. Lately, Frank hadn’t been on her list of favorite people anyway. That hadn’t alwa
ys been the case, though. In fact, it had been due to Pat that Sinatra and Peter Lawford reconciled after a spat in the 1950s over (Sinatra’s) ex-wife, Ava Gardner. That argument marked the first time Sinatra gave Lawford the heave-ho and didn’t speak to him for a couple of years. But then he met Pat one night at a dinner party at actor Gary Cooper’s home in Holmby Hills. Even though she was pregnant, she and Frank flirted a bit. Apparently, it then occurred to Sinatra that his former friend, Lawford, was actually married to one of the daughters of a family that had the potential to become one of the most powerful in the world. Sinatra always had his sights set on getting into politics and began to hope that the Kennedy family might assist him in that regard. The next thing everyone in his circle knew—voilà!—he and Peter Lawford were best pals again. When Pat had the baby, sure enough, she and Peter named the girl Victoria Francis—after Francis Sinatra. Pat even put up her own Kennedy dollars to option the script of Ocean’s 11, thinking it would star Peter with Frank. But guess who ended up starring in it? Frank. With Dean, Sammy, oh, and… Peter. “But after what Sinatra did to Peter where JFK was concerned, she was done with him for good,” concluded her friend Pat Brennan.

  Marilyn’s Weekend with the President

  On Saturday morning, March 24, 1962, Marilyn prepared for her date with presidential destiny.

  As the plumbing wasn’t functioning at her home, Marilyn had to race over to Dr. Greenson’s to wash her hair on the morning of the twenty-fourth. Then she returned to her own home and got dressed. Meanwhile, Peter Lawford paced back and forth in her living room waiting for her to finish so that he could drive her to the desert. That Peter was still involved in any of this business suggests he was hopelessly hooked to the Kennedy-Sinatra-Monroe story and really didn’t want it to end for him. Marilyn finally emerged from the bathroom with a black wig over her newly washed and styled hair. Lawford and Monroe then made the two-hour drive to Palm Springs.

  In order to comprehend how Marilyn felt about this date with the president, one has to understand the woman Marilyn had become, and what she was accustomed to in her life. She had been much sought after for many years, the poster girl for human sexuality in this country since the mid-1950s. She was long used to being the center of attention, to being the one focused on anytime she showed up at a party. In fact, it usually wasn’t a party until she showed up! Also, she was used to being around smart and powerful men—such as Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller—and also used to them falling for her. So, while one might have thought she would be thunderstruck by the idea of meeting the president of the United States for a date while his wife, the First Lady, was not on-site, that wasn’t really true. To her, it was… interesting—just another mad day in the mad life of a mad actress. This attitude is borne out by a couple of credible sources.

  Diane Stevens from the John Springer office recalled, “I telephoned her on March 22 to ask her a question about Something’s Got to Give and said, ‘So, what have you got planned for the weekend?’ Very casually, she said, ‘Oh, I’m going to Palm Springs to spend the weekend with Frank Sinatra and Jack Kennedy.’ [Apparently, at this time, Marilyn didn’t know that the locale for the party had been changed.] She was so casual about it, it was a little strange. I said, ‘Wow! Marilyn, that’s really something.’ And she said, ‘Really? Is it?’ I said, ‘Well, yeah!’ And her reaction was, ‘Well, you know, Bobby and I have had a couple of dates’—which was news to me—‘and I met Jack in New York recently. He’s a nice guy, so I’m just going to go and see what happens.’ I hung up thinking to myself, wow. What a life!”

  Philip Watson, who was a former Los Angeles county assessor, actually met Marilyn while she was with Kennedy in Palm Springs, and he says she seemed quite calm and casual wearing what he described as “kind of a robe thing.” He further recalled, “There were a lot of people poolside, and some people were wandering in and out of a rambling Spanish-style house. Marilyn was there and the president was there and they were obviously together. There was no question in my mind that they were having a good time.” He added, “She obviously had a lot to drink. It was obvious they were intimate, that they were staying there together for the night.”

  While Marilyn was with JFK in Palm Springs—Jackie was in India—she telephoned her friend Ralph Roberts. The three had a conversation that suggests that she and the president either didn’t understand how troubling it could be to so many people if word of their tryst got out, or they just didn’t care. Marilyn told Roberts that she was with “a friend” who was having certain back problems. The two—she and Roberts—had previously discussed certain muscle groups and she believed these were the specific areas troubling her friend. She also wanted to ask him about the solus muscle, which she had read about in a book called The Thinking Body by Mabel Ellsworth Todd. She wanted Roberts to talk to him. He agreed. The next thing he knew, he was talking to a man who sounding exactly like the president. They had a few words and Roberts hung up thinking that his friend Marilyn was, once again, up to no good. Later, she told him that it had most certainly been Kennedy and that he appreciated Roberts’s quick diagnosis of his back problem.

  Marilyn spent two nights with President Kennedy. It’s not known that they were intimate on even one of those nights, let alone both. It can be presumed that they were, though, if only because JFK was used to having relations with a variety of beautiful women—and Marilyn was, no doubt, on top of any man’s list of most desirable women, especially in 1962. Also, for her part, Marilyn would have found it hard to resist Kennedy. He was strong, powerful, and good-looking. Not only that, he was the president. Indeed, to think that these two passionate people did not find themselves in the throes of passion would be a little naïve. Rather, the question is whether it was on one or on both nights. As it would happen, though, this assignation would be the first and last for Marilyn where Jack Kennedy was concerned. “That was really the end of it,” Ralph Roberts recalled many years later. “She told me very specifically that they were together that one weekend, and that it was the only time. It wasn’t until many years later that I had begun hearing rumors to the contrary, but I just didn’t believe them because she was so specific in what she said back then when it happened.” Indeed, according to Roberts and a number of other credible sources, including Secret Service agents whose job it was to keep track of the president’s activities, this weekend was the only one ever shared by the movie star and commander in chief. One agent who asked for anonymity put it this way: “If there had been an affair, I would have known about it. There was no affair. Sorry. There just wasn’t. It was one weekend, and that’s it.” Another agent further stated, “At the time [1962], we all knew about the weekend. It wasn’t until she [Monroe] and the president were both dead that people started talking about an affair. Trust me, no one was saying anything about an affair in 1962. What we knew was that JFK and Marilyn had sex at Bing Crosby’s, and that’s it. We didn’t think it was a big deal. He had sex with a lot of women. At the time, looking back on it now, she was just one of many and it wasn’t that noteworthy. If there was more to it between them, they [Kennedy and Monroe] somehow managed to keep it from us—and I don’t think you can keep something like that from the Secret Service.”

  Indeed, contrary to decades of speculative reports of a long, protracted relationship with him, what Marilyn really shared with JFK was either one or two nights of—maybe—passion. Of course, it’s always possible there was more. Obviously, anything is possible. However, there’s just no credible evidence to support the existence of a long affair between them. Anything more to tell about it would be strictly the product of many an overworked imagination.

  Something’s Got to Give

  Marilyn Monroe owed Fox one last picture under her 1956 contract and they wanted it in 1962. That one would be Something’s Got to Give, a moderately budgeted remake of My Favorite Wife, the 1940 screwball classic that starred Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott, and Gail Patrick.

  At this time, the Fox ex
ecutives were panicked because the studio was close to bankruptcy due to its losses on Cleopatra, the epic being filmed in Rome. Though Elizabeth Taylor was paid a million dollars to make that film—ten times what Marilyn was making for Something’s Got to Give!—it would suffer numerous delays due to its leading lady’s many different illnesses and missing days on the set. The studio couldn’t afford any more problems on the set of one of its major films. It had already sold off its back lot to finance Cleopatra and it desperately needed the operating capital that a Marilyn Monroe picture would provide. Unfortunately, there was simply no way such an endeavor was going to be smooth sailing. Making a movie with Marilyn was quite often an ordeal under the best of circumstances due to her habitual tardiness. At this time, she was obviously not well at all, emotionally as well as physically.

  As it turned out, there have been entire books and DVDs based on the troubled production of Something’s Got to Give, that’s how much of a mess it was from the start. As many as five different writers worked on the script, culminating with Walter Bernstein’s final work, which was anything but stellar. The movie was over budget almost before it even began filming! Making matters even more confounding, Dr. Ralph Greenson found his way into this aspect of Marilyn’s life as well, even if not completely by design. Fox studio head Peter Levathes must have known that his star Marilyn was going to cause all manner of problems on the production considering her condition, so he recruited Greenson as the point man responsible for making sure she showed up on set every day. Apparently, all Greenson needed was an invitation to participate, because before anyone knew what had happened, somehow producer David Brown had ended up being replaced by Greenson’s friend Henry Weinstein—much to director George Cukor’s outrage.