Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe

by Anthony Summers

  At one meeting, Vice President Wald said he personally had changed his mind. He would recommend, after all, that the program be shown. Roone Arledge, the chief executive, imperiously refused to meet the journalists. Both bosses made comments no reporter could forgive.

  According to Wald, it would have been fine simply to report the contents of Goddess — it was the producers’ corroborative investigation that was the problem.

  Arledge, as President of ABC News, said publicly that — given more hard data — he might yet run the piece. In private he had warned, ‘I don’t want Sylvia Chase or anyone else coming in here with some little extra bit of information.’

  The struggle at ABC became national news. On transmission day, October 3, Daily News columnist Liz Smith wrote, ‘I just hope ABC isn’t going to let itself be a party to suppressing the history of 1962. … That, in my opinion, is not the function of a network with a great news gathering arm. …’

  Westin was determined that the final decision must be seen to be the President’s. The 20/20 team continued last-minute preparations. At 6:00 P.M., as reporter Chase sat in Makeup, word came that Arledge had cancelled. The Monroe item was replaced by a piece on drug-sniffing police dogs.

  All newspapers reported the debacle. Arledge’s explanation was that the piece had been merely ‘gossip-column stuff. … A sleazy piece of journalism’. In protest, 20/20’s most celebrated names, Barbara Walters, Hugh Downs, and Geraldo Rivera, publicly came out in support of the journalists.

  Downs, at the time one of the most respected figures on American television, issued a damning riposte. Arledge’s ‘sleaze’ was for Downs ‘more carefully documented than anything any network did during Watergate’.

  ‘What disturbs me,’ said Downs, ‘is the implication that people I respect more than any others in this business, who knew what the Monroe segment was and that it was accurate, were all over-ruled. … A dead President belongs to history, and he belongs to accurate history.’

  Thanks to the ABC dispute a rival program, made by the BBC and American independents, was broadcast repeatedly across the United States. It was seen by a vast audience, and was nominated for three British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards.

  Sylvia Chase and Geraldo Rivera are no longer with ABC Television. Others considered resignation, then went back to work. Amidst the bitterness, there was acid humour. At 60 Minutes, 20/20’s opponents at CBS, a sign appeared on the office notice-board: ‘Support-Your-Staff-of-the-Year-Award — Roone Arledge’.

  Roone Arledge was a longtime, close friend of Robert Kennedy’s widow, Ethel. His then assistant, David Burke, is a former Kennedy strategist. Jeff Ruhe, then an Arledge aide, married one of Robert Kennedy’s children.

  Because of those connections, 20/20 staff were at first told that Arledge and Burke were distancing themselves from the Monroe decision. They stepped in ruthlessly when no other executive intervened.

  Arledge denied the Kennedy connection influenced him. ‘I wouldn’t censor anything,’ he said, ‘because it would offend a friend. I’ve already offended half the friends I have.’

  20/20 producer, Stanhope Gould, offered the most generous explanation. ‘The program would have been heavily scrutinized,’ he said, ‘even without Roone s connections. It’s as though, in England, the BBC got the goods on the Queen. The Kennedy name is an icon in this country, and television, the medium with the real power, had never told the full story.’

  Others took the more sinister view, that the ABC executives kowtowed to the Kennedy old guard. At one point, reporter Chase recalled, she was accused of being unfair to the Kennedy side. Why, she was asked, were there no interviews with Kennedy spokesmen, denying the reports about Marilyn Monroe? Chase had pressed hard to get comments from Senator Edward Kennedy, the official family standard-bearer, or from Kennedy brother-in-law Stephen Smith. Neither responded, and the Senator’s spokesman treated Chase with open hostility.

  The timing of 20/20’s calls to the Kennedy office may be significant. ABC executive concern escalated immediately after Chase’s first call to the Senator’s office in Washington.

  During the ABC fracas, Chase received a call from Dick Tuck, a Democrat campaigner who served as a friendly contact with correspondents. He told Chase that Goddess was ‘just ridiculous hearsay, supposition’, then tried to persuade her that one witness’s story was inaccurately reported. Chase had already confirmed that information by interviewing the witness — twice — and told Tuck so.

  Shortly afterwards, at a diplomatic reception, 20/20 producer Riisna met former Kennedy aide, author Witham Haddad. Haddad seemed unaware that she had been a producer of the Monroe program. ‘He told me,’ Riisna said, ‘that he had been asked to analyse your book, Goddess, in order that it could be refuted.’ Asked who exactly had made this request, Haddad replied, ‘Just some friends …’

  Haddad confirmed that, while a Kennedy aide, he collated information to counter the Marilyn allegations. I told him I would welcome any information that might rebut key points in the story. Haddad promised to offer some, but I received no further word.

  At ABC, Executive Producer Av Westin continued to stand by his journalists. He told me, ‘The piece was sourced well. The journalism in it was first-rate, and it should have been run.’ Because of Arledge’s action, some twenty million citizens were deprived of the opportunity to see that journalism. Rightly or wrongly, few are likely to believe that the Kennedy connection with Arledge and Burke had nothing to do with the decision.

  Even as it was being made, on the other side of the continent, officialdom was crushing a development that could have resolved the mysteries surrounding Marilyn’s death.

  The Grand Jury Fiasco

  This is a short, sad footnote to the Monroe story. In September 1985, in Los Angeles, Marilyn’s friend Robert Slatzer wrote a letter to Mike Antonovich, of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, about the new evidence in Goddess. Slatzer noted information that Marilyn had been removed from her home alive, by ambulance, and that some people knew she was dead or dying some five hours before Dr Greenson was summoned to ‘discover’ her dead in bed.

  Slatzer felt that some witnesses had told less than the truth. He appealed to the County Supervisors to have the surviving witnesses questioned — for the first time ever — under oath.

  The Los Angeles Board of Supervisors is a curious creature of local government. It is, theoretically, the governing body for Los Angeles County. The Supervisors had tried once before to have Marilyn’s death investigated. It was at their request, in 1982, that the then District Attorney John Van de Kamp ordered a review of the evidence. The conclusion then was, that in spite of ‘factual discrepancies and unanswered questions … the cumulative evidence available to us fails to support any theory of criminal conduct.’

  In 1985, in the pages of Goddess, fresh information was available. This time the Supervisors asked the grand jury — the body empowered to decide whether there are grounds for prosecution — to look into the new information. The job was referred to the jury’s Criminal Justice Committee.

  Two weeks after the Supervisors’ request, grand jury foreman Sam Cordova said the Justice Committee had signed an agreement to investigate Marilyn’s death. District Attorney Ira Reiner denounced Cordova’s statement as ‘irresponsible almost beyond description’ and untrue.

  That was on a Friday. On Monday jury foreman Cordova was removed by a Superior Court judge. The new foreman said of the Monroe investigation, ‘I am reluctant to see it go forward.’ It did not — the grand jury decided against reopening the investigation.

  Cordova claimed the District Attorney had been telling the grand jury what to do. Other jury members said, ‘Reiner had pre-empted the issue.’ Almost all the jury’s information had come from the same DA’s officials who — in 1982 — recommended that the case remain closed.

  The Marilyn case foundered in 1985 in a morass of personality conflict and political bias. Sam Cordova was a controversi
al jury foreman. District Attorney Reiner, a liberal Democrat, frequently confounded prediction. This time he performed as one would expect, by opposing any new inquiry.

  The Board of Supervisors, which sent the case to the grand jury, was Republican — by a margin of 3 to 2. Mike Antonovich, the Board’s moving force on Monroe, was a conservative Republican running for the U.S. Senate.

  There was little sign, during the fracas, that anyone was interested in the evidence. It emerged after it was all over, that neither the grand jury foreman nor the Board of Supervisors had yet seen this book, the publication that led to calls for a new inquiry.

  A good deal was learned that year by the journalists of ABC Television, the British Broadcasting Corporation — and by myself. There was further material on the Kennedys’ affairs with Marilyn, on the malign surveillance by their enemies, and on Robert Kennedy’s actions on the day she died. For the record, here it is.

  Marilyn and the Kennedy Brothers — Walking on the Water

  A key source for Marilyn’s affair with the President is Pete Summers, a senior Kennedy adviser in 1960, and a man instrumental in bringing the Democratic Convention to Los Angeles. Summers was to reveal that the affair was a matter of grave concern to Kennedy advisers, concern that began at the height of the Convention.

  ‘There were a number of celebration parties going on,’ said Summers. ‘Marilyn was at one — at the Beverley Hilton, where there was a private celebration, with dancing. She was there, and I saw Jack, right after telephoning his wife on the East Coast, go out and start dancing with Marilyn.’

  Summers said, ‘We didn’t know how serious this affair would be — platonic or otherwise.’ On a visit to the Lawford beach-house, he found out.

  ‘I had to go and see Jack,’ Summers recalled. ‘He came out of the shower, putting on his tie, and started talking. And a few minutes later Marilyn came out of the shower, with just a towel around her. She had clearly been in there, in the shower, with him. It was obvious, but neither of them seemed worried about it.’

  Summers and other Kennedy advisers were worried. He said, ‘I had buddies in the media that started asking me about it. I told the President, and I told Bobby, that we could have something very explosive here that could blow us out of the water. … Bobby made a real strong admonition to Jack on this. He was getting out of line. He was no longer, you know, just Senator Kennedy. He was more and more under the zoom. This was something that could destroy us.’

  During the presidency, as Marilyn’s affair with John Kennedy ran its sporadic course, the brother-in-law’s house came in useful again. Peter Lawford’s last wife, Pat Seaton, could not be interviewed till after her husband’s death, in 1984. She offers corroboration on the more colorful uses of the bathroom at the beach house. ‘Peter told me there was an affair with JFK,’ Seaton said. ‘When we went through the house he showed me the onyx bathtub, and said, “Jack and Marilyn fucked in here.”’

  Marilyn’s rendezvous with the President in March 1962, at Palm Springs, is now further documented. Producer ‘Bullets’ Durgom, Lawford’s close friend, recalled ‘flying down to join the party in a private plane. On the way to the airport I was told there would be someone else on board, but I was not supposed to recognize them. She was wearing a wig, and all that, but of course I knew. It was Marilyn, and when we got there a car picked her up and took her off.’

  Marilyn’s friend and masseur, Ralph Roberts, provided detail. Marilyn often used a false name while traveling. On the Palm Springs trip, with Roberts’ connivance, she called herself ‘Tony Roberts’, a mix of the masseur’s name and that of another friend.

  Actress Terry Moore, former wife of Howard Hughes, said Marilyn told her of her affairs with both Kennedys, and that her hopes knew no bounds. ‘She even imagined herself as a future First Lady, with one or the other of them.’

  During the presidency John Kennedy borrowed a house in Florida from Josephine Paul, celebrated as the first woman to head a member firm on the New York Stock Exchange, widow of a former Ambassador to Norway. Mrs Paul was ‘scandalized’ by the goings-on in her house on some of the President’s visits. Sometimes he would arrive with two male friends and a bevy of young women. The German housekeeper learned it was unnecessary to make up separate rooms for the women.

  According to one of Mrs Paul’s friends, who contacted me following publication of Goddess, Marilyn was one of the female guests. Mrs Paul complained, ‘They are flying Marilyn Monroe to my home for Bobby, and that is not why I let them have the place.’

  Robert Kennedy’s image as the faithful husband, the puritan of the three brothers, had long gone unquestioned. During the writing of Goddess, I looked no further than the relationship with Marilyn — the subject of my book. ABC and BBC producers established that the President’s brother had extramarital affairs with at least four women. One was the wife of a key Kennedy aide. Robert Kennedy was, after all, human.

  The Attorney General’s press secretary, Ed Guthman, told me he was almost certain Kennedy did not meet Marilyn till six months before her death. Guthman, it turns out, was right.

  During the years of research, I stayed in touch with Marilyn’s business manager, Inez Melson. Aged and sick, she often spoke of a locked file cabinet in the garage, unopened since Marilyn’s death. In 1985, after Melson’s death, I at last examined its contents.

  In a jumble of papers, I found two letters written by Marilyn the day after meeting Robert Kennedy. They are unsigned carbon copies, but undoubtedly authentic.

  On February 2, 1962, in a letter to her former father-in-law, Isadore Miller, Marilyn wrote,

  Last night I attended a dinner in honor of the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy. He seems rather mature and brilliant for his 36 years, but what I liked best about him, besides his Civil Rights program, is he’s got such a wonderful sense of humor.

  On the same day Marilyn wrote to ‘Bobbybones’, Arthur Miller’s fourteen-year-old son Robert. She thanked him for recommending a book. ‘Is it Lord of the Flies or the Fleas?’ Marilyn asked, ‘I would love to read something really terrifying.’*

  Then Marilyn turned to her latest news:

  Oh Bobby, guess what. I had dinner last night with the Attorney General of the United States, Robert Kennedy, and I asked him what his department was going to do about Civil Rights and some other issues. He is very intelligent, and besides all that, he’s got a terrific sense of humor. I think you would like him. Anyway, I had to go to this dinner last night as he was the guest of honor and when they asked him who he wanted to meet, he wanted to meet me. So I went to the dinner and I sat next to him, and he isn’t a bad dancer either. But I was mostly impressed about how serious he is about Civil Rights. He answered all of my questions and then he said he would write me a letter and put it on paper. So, I’ll send you a copy of the letter when I get it because there will be some very interesting things in it, because I really asked many questions. First of all he asked if I had been attending some kind of meetings (ha ha!). I laughed and said ‘No, but these are the kind of questions that the youth of America want answers to and want things done about.’ Not that I’m so youthful, but I feel youthful. But he’s an old 36 himself which astounded me because I’m 35. It was a pleasant evening, all in all.’

  Marilyn wrote to the Millers, Robert and his grandfather, the day after dinner with the Attorney General, the evening she had prepared for by mugging up on politics with Danny Greenson, her psychiatrist’s son. The date makes it clear that the relationship with the Attorney General spanned only the last six months of Marilyn’s life, almost to the day.

  Two further interviews indicate that, after Kennedy’s return from a world tour, the meeting he had requested led to romance.

  Lawford’s friend ‘Bullets’ Durgom recalled an interruption while dining at the beach-house in 1962. ‘Suddenly, unexpectedly,’ he remembered, ‘Marilyn and Robert Kennedy came in. They took one look around them, saw there were several people there, and left. It was just “Hi!
” and “Bye!”. We looked at each other and said, “Well, okay. …” I guess they felt it was the wrong place for them to be seen together. And they left.’

  Peter Dye, Lawford’s neighbor at the beach, said, ‘She told me she was nuts about him. … I get the impression he felt the same way. But she was infatuated, and scared of him at the same time.’

  Marilyn, an emotional mess, was now involved with both brothers. Both called her in California, Eunice Murray now admits. The New York maid, Lena Pepitone, says Robert Kennedy called ‘many times’.

  Meetings were secret, but not always secure. ‘There was some sort of problem,’ said the President’s close friend, Senator George Smathers. As I recall it, Marilyn got drunk on a plane, when she was going to meet Bobby. … They were trying to quiet her down, but she told them, “I’m going to meet Bobby. …”

  The President, said Smathers, ‘expressed some concern to me, about his brother’s relationship with Marilyn.’ Here was an ironic reversal. The philandering President — who had been cautioned at the 1960 Convention by his younger brother — was now worrying about Robert’s involvement.

  Three weeks after he met Marilyn, at the end of February, the Attorney General flew back from his world tour to a memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover. It warned that another presidential mistress, Judith Campbell, was in regular touch with mobster Johnny Roselli. Hoover had also discovered that Campbell was seeing both the President and Roselli’s boss, Sam Giancana. It is generally accepted that Hoover now warned the President against further contact with Campbell.

  Compelling evidence suggests that both the Kennedys failed to respond seriously enough — in terms of their relations with either Campbell or Monroe. On the one hand, Campbell’s phone contacts with the White House ceased. On the other hand, Campbell herself insists she remained in touch with the President for at least three months longer.

  Many weeks after Hoover’s warnings about her, Campbell was in Beverly Hills, climbing into Eddie Fisher’s limousine with actor Main Delon and the President’s friend, actress Angie Dickinson. Campbell quoted Dickinson as exclaiming, ‘You’re Judy Campbell? … John has told me so much about you!’