Marilyn's Last Sessions

by Michel Schneider

  ‘It’s not a gift. I’m keeping it!’

  Marilyn had once written to Greenson – and told him a hundred times since in person – that she did not know what nights were for. The answer was simple: for waiting. For saying to the other person who has been gone so long, ‘Come back!’ But that night she wasn’t waiting for a person. She was waiting for Nembutal, Librium, Miltown, Demerol, chloral hydrate. When the limousine came for her the next morning, she wasn’t answering the door. Two hours later, Greenson discovered Marilyn, overdosed, sprawled under her satiny white sheets.

  Santa Monica, Franklin Street

  April 1962

  Marilyn was to be paid a derisory hundred thousand dollars for Something’s Got to Give, a third of what Dean Martin was getting for playing her forgetful remarried husband. Dean, who had always had a soft spot for Marilyn, now thought her more lost than ever. Sinatra was leaving her – he had got engaged to Juliet Prowse in January. When Peter Lawford had introduced Marilyn to Bobby Kennedy, Sinatra had enjoyed the prospect of that fearless opponent of the Mafia and upholder of his brother’s honour falling under the spell of one of his exes. Marilyn, meanwhile, had fallen hard for the Kennedy mystique. The attorney general and the platinum-blonde goddess had furtive, clumsy sex. Although he was Sinatra’s friend, Dean was too fond of Marilyn to leave her on her own to struggle with the Kennedy entourage of politicians and mafiosi. She broke his heart, really – and, besides, he owed it to her to make this film: he was only in it because she’d insisted he be given the part.

  ‘What’s the date tomorrow?’ Marilyn asked, standing in the doorway to Greenson’s consulting room.

  ‘Ninth of April,’ answered the analyst.

  The first day of filming, like the first day back at school: a grim reckoning you could only escape by playing dead or stupid. Marilyn had to get back into the studio’s harness and take direction from Cukor again, Cukor who had loathed her ever since her problems and disappearances had reduced Let’s Make Love to a virtual fiasco.

  ‘That fucker.’ Marilyn was sitting facing Greenson. ‘It’s not that he doesn’t like women . . . anybody can sleep with who they want, I don’t care. No, he hates them so much he can’t even point his camera at them. He can’t even try to understand what they think, what they want. He just waits until they collapse into a heap, until their make-up and tears are all smeared together in a disgusting mush. Did you know he wanted to film Something’s Got to Give in his house? That says it all. He’s too busy looking at himself, his beautiful works of art, his pool, his luxurious mansion. You know what he does with his little boys in the evening round that pool? I do, because I’ve got a friend who’s one of his crowd. He has fake Marilyn competitions. They get dressed up and imitate my walk, my stupid, kinky little girl’s voice. Oh, don’t worry, Doctor, they don’t like you either. When he’s asked if I’m up to filming, he says, “I haven’t a clue. Ask her psychiatrist.”’

  Greenson wondered if she was objecting to the film and its director or to the fact she was back playing the ditzy blonde after her tragic role in The Misfits.

  ‘I’ve met Cukor,’ Greenson pointed out. ‘I didn’t get the impression he disliked me. As a matter of fact, he asked me to help him work on your acting. He doesn’t hate you either.’

  ‘Are you kidding? A reporter asked him what he thought of me. He said I was so racked with nerves I couldn’t even match one take with another and, if the journalist wanted to know why, he should ask my shrink. Well, no, Mr Cukor, I don’t know what or who to be in sync with from one shot to the next. No, I’m not the same from one take to another because I never feel in sync with myself. I always feel cut off, always wondering who people want me to be.

  ‘The script’s not too bad, though,’ she continued, when she got her breath back. ‘A woman is shipwrecked with a handsome man on a tropical island. She’s reported dead, her husband remarries, and then, after being miraculously rescued, she comes to reclaim him. Her children don’t recognise her and she pretends to be a babysitter. Her husband is uneasy about the whole thing, but his second wife keeps him on a tight rein—’

  ‘I know the story,’ Greenson interrupted. ‘Why can’t you play the first wife, Ellen, though? Don’t you like the fact your character’s unrecognised? Do you feel your image has been taken away from you, that you’ve been cut out of the picture?’

  ‘You don’t get it at all. You were the one who said the men who’ve made the most impression on me have been photographers – André, Milton Greene and now George Barris, who I’ve started seeing again. Visual people. That’s the point: seeing someone is not the same as knowing them. I want to be seen, constantly, from all angles, by all eyes, men’s and women’s – and the reason I want that is because then no one will know me.’

  ‘How can you be afraid of filming and yet want to be photographed so much?’ Greenson asked.

  Marilyn fell silent. When she felt utterly alone, like a little girl on her first day at a new school, and was terrified that this was what her death would be like, she had only one recourse: to have her picture taken, to find herself again in her own image.

  ‘I meant that as a question,’ the analyst persisted.

  ‘I’m afraid when I have to talk,’ Marilyn declared, her voice suddenly loud. ‘When I have to do dialogue, when I have to say words somebody has written for me, in front of the dead eye of the camera. Someone captures me in a photograph, they shoot me – that’s the word, isn’t it? Shoot. You shoot a story like a gun, you do photo shoots, and it’s all wordless, not like the movies. I prefer men who go about their business in silence and don’t want a commentary afterwards. Hey, you know what gets me on set and allows me to act? That’s a shot too – the injections Fox’s doctor with the magic syringe, Lee Siegel, has been giving me since The Seven Year Itch. Play it again, Lee. Give me a good youth shot.’

  And, with that, Marilyn stood up and left.

  Something’s Got to Give got off to a nightmarish start. The first day of filming had to be postponed until the end of April and Marilyn took the opportunity to fly to New York, where she attended a dinner for JFK in a penthouse on Park Avenue. She arrived some time after ten looking sublimely pale, like a white ember on the verge of fading out. She strolled nonchalantly over to Kennedy. ‘Hi, Prez.’

  He turned, smiled at her. ‘Hi! Come on, I want you to meet some people.’ Then they disappeared.

  On the evening of 22 April, a Sunday, Marilyn left her session with Greenson in a state of intense panic and had herself driven to Hermosa Beach, south of Los Angeles. There she got her old hairdresser Pearl Porterfield out of bed to dye her hair so she could face the cameras at dawn the following morning. As always, she had her pubic hair dyed as well. But filming next day had to start without her. For a week, she couldn’t get out of bed, and her only contact with the outside world was her analyst, who made daily visits.

  One brief appearance on set on 30 April was as much as she could manage – but not even her collapse at the end of ninety minutes of filming could convince the Fox executives that she was really ill. Greenson, who had guaranteed her presence, received increasingly frustrated calls from the studio, and fired off a stream of reassuring memos.

  Beverly Hills, Roxbury Drive

  May 1962

  Marilyn arrived distraught at her next session. ‘So this is it. You’re really leaving me. Joannie told me.’

  ‘Yes, as I said, I—’

  ‘I know,’ Marilyn cut in, ‘but I didn’t believe you. This is really it, is it?’

  ‘I’m going on a cruise around the Mediterranean with Hildi. She needs to visit her mother, in Switzerland, who had a heart attack recently, then I’ve got to give a lecture in Jerusalem on transference. On the way back, I have to see my editor in New York to talk about my book on psychoanalytic technique. I’m entitled to a vacation, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Marilyn stammered. ‘Oh, shit! Yesterday I made a real effort. I arrived at the studio twenty-five minute
s early, at six in the morning, just for a make-up call. I worked till four then came here for my session. But today, when I knew Hildi was leaving and that you would be too, that this was it, you were really leaving, I fainted half an hour after getting on set and had to be taken home. I was such a mess when I got out of bed, you’ve no idea. I had to drag my body to the bathroom like it wasn’t even mine. Something’s got to give . . . Right. Me.’

  ‘I’ve had a thought,’ her analyst said. ‘What if I give you something of mine as a token, which you could give back to me on my return? It could act as a physical bond between us, a talisman. Here, one of these chess pieces, for instance. What do you reckon?’

  After walking Marilyn to the door that evening, Greenson returned to his desk and transcribed their conversation. Then he began an article explaining why, with this sort of patient, he had felt compelled to act as well as talk, to give rather than merely wait or receive. He only managed a first draft, dealing with the significance and role of the transitional object as an analyst’s substitute, and it wasn’t until twelve years after his patient’s death that he was finally able to go back and finish it. Writing to forget; writing to obscure the fact he had lost that last game of chess. Even so, he remained hesitant: how could he write about her without naming her? Surely everyone would recognise the anonymous subject of ‘On Transitional Objects and Transference’, the most neutral title he could think of to avoid any hint of passion. It was Greenson’s only published piece of writing in which he mentioned, although not by name, his most famous patient:

  I told an emotionally immature young woman patient, who had developed a very dependent transference on me, that I was going to attend an International Congress in Europe some three months hence. We worked intensively on the multiple determinants of her clinging dependence, but made only insignificant progress. Then the situation changed dramatically when one day she announced that she had discovered something that would tide her over in my absence. It was not some insight, not a new personal relationship, it was a chess piece. The young woman had recently been given a gift of a carved ivory chess set. The evening before her announcement, as she looked at the set, through the sparkling light of a glass of champagne, it suddenly struck her that I looked like the white knight of her chess set. The realisation immediately evoked in her a feeling of comfort, even triumph. The white knight was a protector, it belonged to her, she could carry it wherever she went, it would look after her, and I would go on my merry way to Europe without having to worry about her.

  I must confess that despite my misgivings, I also felt some relief. The patient’s major concern about the period of my absence was a public performance of great importance to her professionally. She now felt confident of success because she could conceal her white knight in her handkerchief or scarf; she was certain that he would protect her from nervousness, anxiety or bad luck. I was relieved and delighted to learn, while in Europe, that her performance had indeed been a smashing success. Shortly thereafter, however, I received several panicky transatlantic telephone calls from her. The patient had lost the white knight and was beside herself with terror and gloom, like a child who had lost her security blanket. A colleague of mine who saw her in that interval said that all his interventions were to no avail and he reluctantly suggested that I cut short my trip and return. I hated to interrupt my vacation and I doubted whether my return would be beneficial. Surprisingly, it was. I no sooner saw her than her anxiety and depression lifted. It then became possible to work for many months on how she had used me as a good luck charm rather than an analyst.

  The talisman, the chess piece, served her as a magical means of averting bad luck or evil. It protected her against losing something precious.

  Beverly Hills, Roxbury Drive

  8 May 1962

  Marilyn returned home, clutching the chess piece in the palm of her hand. She poured herself a drink and looked through the glass at the distorted golden figure of the knight. She started to cry, remembering a scene in The Misfits where Miller and Huston had wanted her to be almost invisible behind a window as a man tried to look in. The next scene they’d had her putting on makeup, anxiously scrutinising her reflection in a mirror. ‘Fuck all these windows and mirrors!’ she’d shouted at the director. ‘Show me straight. Don’t put me behind glass!’ She scribbled a few lines in her notebook:

  Tuesday 8th. He’s given me a present. A knight from a chess set. A game of knights and bishops. All the pieces can take and kill each other. The queen’s the strongest. The king’s dead before the game even starts. I don’t know who I’m playing for, it feels like I’m moving my pieces in the dark.

  I don’t like writing. I’ll have to find some other way of expressing myself. Maybe it’s because I like reading too much. The first time I read books I really love, it feels as if I’m rereading them. Like when you meet people and you’re sure you’ve already met before. I came across this line in Kafka today, ‘Capitalism is a condition of the world and of the soul.’ I never finish books though. I don’t like last pages. Last words. Last takes. Last sessions.

  Greenson knocked on Wexler’s door very late that day.

  ‘Can I talk to you?’

  ‘About her?’

  ‘Of course, who else? I’m entrusting my madwoman to you. Watch out, though. She’s more lovable than you could possibly imagine. She suffered a terrible childhood, you know, truly terrible – she was raped, abused by her foster fathers . . . I thought it was fantasy at first, but now I believe it all happened, I feel overwhelmed. I’m not going to bring this off. Two things have been clear since our first session. First: that this wouldn’t be a traditional course of analysis, with well-defined boundaries and the usual staging of the couch with its back to the chair. Second: that only death, hers or mine, would us part.’

  ‘No half-measures, then. So what do you want me to do, baby-sit?’

  ‘I’m going to Europe for five weeks. I can’t leave her on her own and I’m not sure she’ll make it even if you take over from me.’

  ‘Well, take her with you, then.’

  ‘Freud used to do that with his favourite patients.’

  ‘He also didn’t charge in some cases and invited certain patients to lunch at home or in his office. He was very talkative in sessions and analysed his own daughter . . . So what does that prove? That Freud sometimes wasn’t a Freudian and broke his own rules. That’s all.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I’ve been trying to wean Marilyn off barbiturates for the last two years, and the whole time I’ve been getting them for her – even last autumn when she’d stopped filming and was seeing me seven times a week. Meanwhile Hyman’s been giving her Lee Siegel’s miracle injections behind my back. Now her analysis has become a drug for her. She and I have become co-dependent unbelievably fast. You ought to know that I have given her permission to call my children if she needs anything when I’m away.’

  ‘Aren’t you taking this too far?’ Wexler asked. ‘Wait a second, I’m going to read you something.’ He got up, took some stapled papers from a pile on a shelf and read out,

  ‘Psychoanalysis is not the treatment of choice for emergency situations, nor is it suitable for psychiatric first aid. When such instances arise during the course of an analysis, it is usually necessary to do some unanalytic psychotherapy . . . the wish to relieve the patient’s misery is fundamentally antagonistic to analysing and understanding his problems. Ralph R. Greenson, MD.’

  ‘Stop! How can you cure someone without intervening, if necessary by force? And love is the only force we have. I am her analyst. I want to be a positive version of the paternal, a father who won’t disappoint her, who will awaken her conscious mind, or at least treat her with every possible kindness.’

  ‘But where’s it supposed to end, this therapy based on love? Our schizophrenic or borderline patients are not always lacking love, you know that. Love can trigger madness in a person just as much as lack of love.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not in
this case, at any rate. It’s all a question of degree. I wouldn’t describe love as the driving force in my relationship with Marilyn.’

  ‘Who’s your Juliet, Romeo?’ Wexler asked, as Greenson, staring into space, turned and left his office without a word. ‘Read the play again. It ends badly!’

  Michigan, Ann Arbor University

  1969

  Seven years after the actress’s death, Ralph Greenson was invited to give a lecture on psychoanalytic technique. Such intellectual high-wire acts had lost their appeal for him, but he accepted anyway, out of friendship for a former colleague who had moved from California to teach in Michigan, and also, he thought, out of loyalty to Marilyn’s memory. He began his talk in an unsteady voice: ‘“Mistakes and Beginnings in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy”: This was the subject I was going to address for the purposes of your clinical training in this beautiful university of Ann Arbor. I have changed my mind, however. Perhaps because Michigan is a long way from California, perhaps also because Marilyn Monroe is fading from my memory, as I’m sure she is from yours, young as you are, I would now like to talk about her in a way I have not yet had the chance to publicly.

  ‘I was by no means a beginner in 1960 and yet, when the actress was sent to me, I immediately had the feeling that I should forget everything I knew and start again from scratch. After her death, it was awful, but I felt I had to go on. And I went on, and I was upset. And my patients saw me upset. Some of them saw no reaction in me, and were furious at me for being so cold and impersonal. They asked how I could come and work the next day, and how I could have taken such a patient anyway. They were angry at me for having decided to shorten or cancel their sessions so I could see her every day. Others felt sorry for me. They’d express their condolences in the usual way, “I’m sorry for your loss”, but I’d hear not only, “I’m sorry for the loss you’ve suffered”, but also, “I’m sorry I’ve lost you. I’m sorry you are not yourself any more.”