Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe

by Anthony Summers

  A special FBI report, submitted to headquarters two weeks later, said the Attorney General and his family ‘spent the weekend at the Bates ranch located about sixty miles south of San Francisco. This was strictly a personal affair.’ The ranch was owned by John Bates, a wealthy lawyer who was acting as Kennedy’s host on behalf of the Bar Association.

  Bates says there were no calls from Marilyn that weekend at the ranch. One of the few contemporary reporters who did any serious research, however, found traces of Marilyn’s despair. Florabel Muir, then Hollywood columnist for the New York Daily News, spent several weeks trying to reconstruct Marilyn’s last days. Although Kennedy chose to spend the weekend at the Bates ranch, outside San Francisco, the Bar Association had provided accommodation in the city, at the St Francis Hotel. That is where Marilyn would have expected to find him.

  According to her former assistant, Elizabeth Fancher, reporter Muir paid a telephone operator at the St Francis for information about calls made that weekend. ‘She discovered Marilyn had called the hotel several times, leaving messages for Kennedy,’ said Fancher, ‘and the calls were not returned.’

  As Robert Kennedy flew West that day newspapers published a White House announcement that his brother would be going to California in two weeks’ time. Marilyn had already advised reporter Sidney Skolsky, whom she had told only about her relationship with John Kennedy, that the President was coming. She said she expected to ‘be with him’ during the visit.

  If either Kennedy brother read the New York Journal-American that Friday they saw all the more reason to shrink from contact with Marilyn. Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen wrote a teaser, saying that Marilyn had recently ‘proved vastly alluring to a handsome gentleman who is a bigger name than Joe DiMaggio in his heyday. So don’t write off Marilyn as finished.’

  Friday, August 3, was the day before Marilyn was to die. She spent part of it normally enough, visiting Frank’s Nursery in Santa Monica and picking out plants for her garden. She also saw her doctor and her psychiatrist, which for her was routine. What she did that evening, however, presumably after the abortive effort to reach Robert Kennedy in San Francisco, remains mysterious.

  Some information, albeit vestigial, suggests she made a frantic flying visit northward, to seek out Robert Kennedy for herself. Pat Newcomb, Marilyn’s press aide and a friend of the Kennedys, said she and Marilyn dined out that night at a Santa Monica restaurant. It was a favorite of theirs, she said, but she could no longer remember its name or where it was located.

  The District Attorney’s investigators, who talked to Newcomb during a review of the case in 1982, were not happy with Newcomb’s account of the evening. There are some other, though inconclusive, clues. During the day Marilyn ordered food and liquor worth forty-nine dollars — a major purchase when translated into todays prices — from the Briggs Delicatessen. That night, according to Jean Leon of the fashionable La Scala restaurant, she ordered food to be brought to her home.

  Leon, a Frenchman, had risen from being a waiter at the Villa Capri — haunt of Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio — to becoming proprietor of La Scala. He had known Marilyn for years. He went as far, when interviewed, as saying he had taken food to Marilyn’s house the night before she died, but backed off from saying anything more. He indicated that somebody else was at Marilyn’s home that night, someone he refused to name. ‘I have a vivid memory,’ said Leon, ‘but you have to go into a lot of things, big personalities, and they are not here now.’

  For reasons that remain mysterious, events that Friday evening demand secrecy. For Marilyn, it was to be a sleepless night.

  43

  ON SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, Jeanne Carmen, in bed at her Doheny apartment, was awakened by the telephone at first light. Still half-asleep, she listened as Marilyn poured out a story of a night disturbed by more than the usual demons.

  Carmen recalled that ‘she said some woman had been calling all night, harassing her and calling her names, then hanging up. Then she would call and not say anything, and hang up. Marilyn said the voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t put a name on it.’

  In the first calls, according to Carmen, the anonymous woman said words to the effect, ‘Leave Bobby alone, you tramp. Leave Bobby alone.’ The calls had gone on till 5:30 A.M. and Marilyn was now exhausted. ‘She wanted me to come over. She said, “Bring a bag of pills” — we were sleeping-pill buddies, and we always referred to them that way — “and we’ll drink some wine.”’

  Carmen, who had appointments that day, said she could not come around. They agreed to talk again later. It was Carmen’s birthday and, when she opened her mail, she found Marilyn had remembered to send her a card. As others confirmed, Marilyn was good about remembering birthdays.

  At three that morning, presumably during the spate of anonymous calls, Marilyn had tried to reach Arthur James. He was out of town, and did not get the message until after her death.

  It was going to be another hot day, with the temperature up in the eighties. Eunice Murray, who had stayed at her own apartment the previous night, came to work about eight o’clock. She said Marilyn wandered into the kitchen about an hour later, then chatted a little over a spartan breakfast of grapefruit juice. She said Pat Newcomb had stayed overnight, and was still asleep. She was to stay asleep till noon, a state of bliss which irritated Marilyn.

  Arthur Miller’s father, Isadore, called that morning. He was told that Marilyn was dressing and would call back. She did not, which he found out of character. Marilyn was devoted to him, and usually interrupted even urgent business to return his calls.

  During the morning Norman Jeffries, working on the kitchen floor, found himself looking at a pair of bare female feet. He looked up to see Marilyn wrapped in a huge bath towel, and was appalled.

  ‘I will never forget the sight of her,’ Jeffries said. ‘She looked sick, desperately sick — not only in the physical sense — and I thought there must be something terribly wrong. She must have taken a lot of dope or something, or maybe she was scared out of her mind. I had never seen her look that way before.’

  Marilyn had two telephones: one pink, with a number provided to ordinary callers; one white, with a number given only to the specially privileged. Both were on long extension leads, so Marilyn could wander about the house as she talked.

  The surviving phone records, for ominous reasons that will emerge later, throw no light on Marilyn’s calls during her last twenty-four hours. However, closeted in her room — probably with the white phone — Marilyn had several conversations that last morning.

  Ralph Roberts, the masseur, said Marilyn called to get him to do a chore: she wanted him to get hold of an unreleased record by a singer she hoped to help. She also talked of having dinner with Roberts that evening — a cookout on the patio — and they agreed to talk more about it later. By late afternoon, Marilyn said, she should know what she was doing.

  From his home across the city, reporter Sidney Skolsky made his regular weekend call to Marilyn. He had been alarmed by her confidences about the Kennedy family and, as on other recent occasions, had his daughter Steffi listen in on an extension. He felt he wanted a witness.

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’ Skolsky asked cheerily. By now Marilyn appeared to have a plan for the evening. She replied, ‘Maybe I’ll go down to the beach. Everyone’s going to be there.’ As Skolsky s daughter remembered it, Marilyn said she expected to be seeing one of the Kennedys at the Lawford house.

  That Saturday, probably in the late morning, Marilyn received a visit from Agnes Flanagan, one of her hairdressers and a longtime friend. Something very odd occurred while Flanagan was at the house, one of the most bizarre incidents of a mysterious weekend.

  Soon after she arrived, said Flanagan, a messenger arrived with a package. Marilyn opened it and walked out to the pool carrying its contents — a stuffed toy tiger. She then sat down by the pool, holding the tiger and saying nothing. Flanagan thought she was ‘terribly, terribly depressed,’ but did not say wh
y. Flanagan, wholly at a loss, got up and left.

  Photographs of the back of Marilyn’s house, taken the next day, showed two stuffed animals lying by the pool. One of them could be a tiger. Had some devastating note arrived with the tiger or — curious thought — was the tiger itself the message? It may not be irrelevant that — fact — a real-life stuffed tiger had pride of place in Robert Kennedy’s office at the Justice Department. Marilyn, at all events, now lost control.

  The events of her remaining hours hang largely on the accounts of Peter Lawford, Pat Newcomb, Eunice Murray, and Dr Greenson. The first two witnesses are controversial, not least because of their close relations with the Kennedy brothers. Mrs Murray’s statements about the evening hours, as will be seen, were questionable.

  Research for this book, including interviews with Dr Greenson’s family and colleagues, and his contemporary correspondence, satisfied this author that Marilyn’s psychiatrist was honest about that weekend — or so far as he was able to be. It is he who takes up the story of that Saturday afternoon.

  ‘I received a call from Marilyn about 4:30 in the afternoon,’ Greenson was to write. ‘She seemed somewhat depressed and somewhat drugged. I went over to her place. She was still angry with her girlfriend who had slept fifteen hours that night, and Marilyn was furious because she had had such a poor sleep … but after I had spent about two and a half hours with her she seemed to quiet down.’

  Dr Greenson’s letters, and his statements to fellow psychiatrists on the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Team, offer information on two key factors in Marilyn’s last hours. They show that as early as Friday, when he had also seen her, Marilyn had been ‘angry and resentful towards her friend Pat’ — clearly, in this context — Pat Newcomb. On Friday night, according to Greenson, they continued bickering, and Marilyn was still in rage against Newcomb as late as Saturday afternoon.

  Why such rage against Pat Newcomb? The press aide agreed ‘it made Marilyn crazy that she was not able to sleep. She was furious, it’s true. But I think that she also was furious about something else, I think there was a lot more, not related to me, and that I don’t even know about.’

  Clearly referring to Newcomb, Susan Strasberg recalled that Marilyn nicknamed her publicity aide — as early as The Misfits — ‘Sybil,’ for sibling rivalry. Steffi Skolsky said the same. Marilyn had been jealous of Newcomb in the past, as on Bus Stop years earlier, when she believed Newcomb — a woman a dozen years younger than herself — was pursuing a man Marilyn liked.

  Now Steffi Skolsky, listening in on one of Marilyn’s last conversations with her father, heard Marilyn say the tables were turned. ‘Pat’s jealous of me,’ she said. Marilyn’s quarrel with Newcomb, at the end, may have been about Robert Kennedy.

  Dean Martin’s former wife, Jeanne, who would remain close to Newcomb, remembered how involved she got with her clients, how they became ‘literally, her whole life. She always got overly involved.’ Another deep commitment, apparently, was with Robert Kennedy.

  Martin said, ‘Pat got far too involved; she was deeply in love with Bobby Kennedy. She’s only just got over that. If you want to know who knew more about Marilyn than anyone it’s Pat Newcomb.’ More than two decades later, Newcomb would still clam up when asked about the Kennedys.

  Of the squabbles with Marilyn that fatal Saturday, Newcomb would say only, ‘Marilyn had calls that morning, and by the time I saw her she was in a rage.’ Psychiatrist Dr Greenson, in his talks with the Suicide Prevention Team after Marilyn died, dropped heavy hints as to why she was so upset.

  Along with saying that Marilyn had recently had sexual relationships with ‘extremely important men in government … at the highest level,’ Dr Greenson revealed that on Saturday afternoon she ‘expressed considerable dissatisfaction with the fact that here she was, the most beautiful woman in the world, and she did not have a date for Saturday night.’

  According to one Suicide Team doctor, Norman Tabachnick, Greenson said Marilyn had been expecting to see one of the ‘very important people’ that night. She had called Greenson when she learned the meeting was off. Marilyn died, Greenson said, feeling ‘rejected by some of the people she had been close to.’

  Sometime before she called Greenson that day — over the telephone or conceivably in a message accompanying the mysterious tiger — Marilyn had learned she would not be seeing Robert Kennedy in the evening. That it was almost certainly Kennedy she had been expecting will become apparent as these final chapters unwind. On the evidence, the cancellation triggered her final despair.

  After seeing Marilyn virtually every day for weeks, Greenson had hoped to keep that weekend free. He had a dinner appointment on Saturday night, and his afternoon visit to Marilyn seems to have been a holding operation.

  Marilyn wanted Pat Newcomb to leave, and Greenson asked her to go. Newcomb said that she left of her own accord. Eunice Murray said Newcomb sprang up and left without saying good-bye.

  At 6:30 P.M. Ralph Roberts called as planned, to ask Marilyn whether he was to come round to dinner. Greenson answered the phone and said Marilyn was out. Then, his dinner appointment in mind, the psychiatrist prepared to leave.

  ‘Marilyn wanted to go for a walk on the pier at Santa Monica,’ Dr Greenson recalled later, ‘and I said she was too groggy for that, and if she drank a lot of fluid, I would allow the housekeeper to drive her to the beach.’ Greenson thought, ‘She seemed somewhat depressed, but I had seen her many, many times in a much worse condition.’ As a precaution, he asked Eunice Murray to stay overnight. Then Greenson dashed home to dress for dinner. It was 7:15 P.M.

  One of Marilyn’s stepchildren, Joe DiMaggio, Jr., had twice tried to call her that afternoon. DiMaggio, a young marine serving at Camp Pendleton, California, telephoned collect, only to hear Mrs Murray say that Marilyn was out. Now, soon after Greenson had left, Joe, Jr., got through.

  At 7:40 P.M. Marilyn called Dr Greenson, now busy shaving. He was glad to hear her sounding more cheerful: Joe, Jr.’s news had been that he had broken off his engagement, and that pleased Marilyn. Dr Greenson told her to get a good night’s sleep and to call in the morning.

  According to Eunice Murray, Marilyn now announced that she would not be going for a drive after all. Then she went into her bedroom and closed the door. Mrs Murray heard the sound of music from the record player — Frank Sinatra songs.

  According to Mrs Murray, she never saw Marilyn alive again. It was about eight o’clock, and dusk began to fall along the Pacific shore. In Marilyn’s room, the music played on and on.

  In her last call to Dr Greenson, Marilyn had asked, ‘Did you take away my bottle of Nembutal?’ He had not, and he was caught off-balance because he thought Marilyn had recently cut down on barbiturates. Nor was Greenson especially worried — if his patient had no sleeping pills.

  The psychiatrist would have been more concerned had he known then what he learned later. An empty bottle, with a label indicating it had contained twenty-five Nembutal pills, would be among the medicines retrieved from Marilyn’s room after her death. The label showed it had been prescribed on Friday, the day before her death. There would also be an almost empty bottle that had contained fifty capsules of chloral hydrate, a less dangerous sleeping aid, which had been prescribed on July 31.

  Dr Hyman Engelberg, Marilyn’s internist, rarely gave interviews. However, his contemporary bill shows that he visited Marilyn at home on Friday, the day of the Nembutal prescription, and a document in the Coroner’s file says he prescribed Nembutal that day.

  The Suicide Prevention Team would conclude that Marilyn had been receiving Nembutal prescriptions from both Dr Engelberg and from a Dr Lou Siegel, and that neither doctor knew of her visits to the other. Dr Lou Siegel, a gynecologist who has since died, vehemently denied in 1982 that he had ever treated Marilyn. Dr Lee Siegel, the studio doctor who did frequently treat Marilyn, says he did not see her for many weeks prior to her death.

  Dr Greenson would later say he had brought in Dr Engelb
erg to try to wean Marilyn away from sleeping pills. The two doctors agreed to keep in touch concerning the drugs they prescribed for her, but the system may have broken down.

  Marilyn had made an odd inquiry earlier that day, according to Eunice Murray. ‘Mrs Murray,’ she supposedly said, ‘do we have any oxygen?’ Marilyn let the subject drop, but Murray said it bothered her enough to telephone Dr Greenson. Greenson never mentioned such a call. Oxygen, of course, is used by medical teams as an aid to resuscitation.

  Certainly Greenson knew nothing of Marilyn’s dawn call to Jeanne Carmen, asking her to come over with ‘a bag of sleeping pills.’ According to Carmen, she called again later, pressing the request. Carmen still pleaded other engagements.

  Marilyn’s wealthy New York friend, Henry Rosenfeld, telephoned her — probably between eight and nine, California time — and she answered the phone herself. He said she sounded ‘groggy’ but that was not unusual.

  At about 9:30 P.M. Marilyn called Sidney Guilaroff, a prominent Hollywood hairdresser who knew her well — he has not thus far featured in these pages because he made it a rule never to discuss his clients. When interviewed before the first edition of this book, he would say only that Marilyn told him that night that she was ‘very depressed’ — then rang off without saying goodbye. Guilaroff was used to Marilyn, and saw no cause for alarm. He would dramatically expand on this account only in 1996, shortly before his death — and what he said will be covered in the Postscript.

  Jose Bolaños, the lover who had followed Marilyn from Mexico, said he telephoned Marilyn from the Ships Restaurant, not far from her home, between nine-thirty and ten o’clock. He would not reveal what they discussed. He did say Marilyn ended the conversation by simply laying down the phone — she did not hang up while he was on the line. Like Guilaroff, Bolaños thought it was typical Marilyn behavior. He thought he was the last person to speak to Marilyn — but perhaps not.