Marilyn Monroe

by Donald Spoto

  These were Engelberg’s so-called youth shots. When Pat Newcomb learned of them, she told Marilyn to remember she was only thirty-six, “but she implied that whatever she was receiving was going to keep her young. Of course it was hard to argue with her, because she looked so great—better than I’d ever seen her in films.” But this was cause for alarm, for Engelberg tracked down Marilyn wherever she was to provide the injections: Pat never forgot the day he found the two women at a Brentwood restaurant, where “he took her back to some private place to give her the shot.” In his way, Engelberg was clearly as proprietary with Marilyn as Greenson; his first wife recalled him almost dancing with schoolboyish glee, showing off to his friends and announcing as he shook a set of keys, “I have access to Marilyn Monroe’s apartment,” and then, “I have the keys to Marilyn’s house! When therapy or the usual dose of Nembutal failed to put Marilyn to sleep, Greenson routinely telephoned Engelberg, who in 1961 dashed down from his house on St. Ives Drive to Doheny, and in 1962 made the longer trip to Fifth Helena. Greenson was quite open about the arrangement: as he said, he had an internist provide the injections “so that I had nothing to do with the actual handling of medication.”

  The issue of her doctors and her work may have been among the items on her agenda when Marilyn placed a total of eight telephone calls that summer to the office of her new friend, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. According to Pat Newcomb and Edwin Guthman, their conversations were simply social, friendly calls, brief and uncomplicated, for they were not encouraged by the busy Mr. Kennedy. But he had assured her during their last meeting in June that he was indeed interested in her career and concerned for her health during and after the trials of Something’s Got to Give. In light of their several conversations about matters political and social at two previous dinners, Kennedy may not have anticipated that Marilyn, from afar, would depend on his compassion and encouragement in her private life, too. According to Edwin Guthman, however, there was never time in Kennedy’s office for him to devote to lengthy social calls, and Marilyn was gently but firmly discouraged from prolonging their conversations.

  In support of this, the telephone records document very brief calls. On Monday, June 25, Marilyn called Kennedy’s office to confirm his presence at the Lawfords’ on Wednesday evening and to invite him and the Lawfords to visit her home for a drink before dinner; she spoke only with his secretary, Angie Novello, for one minute. On Monday, July 2, she placed two calls, again to Novello and for the same length of time. The remainder of the calls were placed during the last two weeks of July, only one of them lasting more than one minute: on the thirtieth, Marilyn called Kennedy to say that she was sorry to have missed his Los Angeles speech the previous weekend; she had gone to Lake Tahoe.2 These calls and four meetings comprise the entire relationship between the two.

  During July, Marilyn relied on three sources of encouragement: friends like Ralph Roberts and Allan Snyder (and, by phone, Norman Rosten in Brooklyn); the admiration and encouragement of a few journalists and photographers; and the return to her life of Joe DiMaggio.

  “We often stopped in at her house in the evening for a drink in June and July,” according to Allan Snyder and Marjorie Pelcher. “She was in very good spirits, showing us her newest addition to the house—some tiles, a carpet and a new chair.”

  Since his return from Europe, Joe and Marilyn had frequently exchanged telephone calls, and he visited her once in June (on the twentieth) and twice in July (on the eighth and twenty-first); as all her friends knew, Joe’s presence and concern were her great strength, and ever since he rescued her from Payne Whitney they had maintained constant contact. Now, they shared simple suppers on the floor of her living room, since the shipment of Mexican furniture was delayed; they rented bicycles at the Hans Ohrt Bicycle Shop in Brentwood and freewheeled along San Vicente Boulevard toward the ocean; and they shopped together.

  Joe and Marilyn seemed much like the happy couple of ten years ago—but they were more serene, both of them respectful of their differences, he less alarmed by her public persona, yet somehow touched by her essential sweetness and simplicity, and perhaps impressed with her courage and core of strength. He agreed with her concern about the ongoing therapy with Greenson, and promised to support whatever decision she made.

  A decade had made a difference. Joe sat quietly, nodding appreciatively as she purchased an entire new wardrobe in Beverly Hills, at Saks Fifth Avenue and Jax: cashmere sweaters; blouses; two evening dresses; unfussy, spike-heeled shoes; a half-dozen pairs of pants in various pastel colors. The morning of July 21, he brought her home from Cedars of Lebanon after yet another procedure to alleviate her chronic endometriosis.3 As subsequent events revealed, his presence then must have marked a major step forward in the reunion of Joe with Marilyn, for the following week he informed Monette that he was resigning his position and would no longer be working for the company after the end of July.

  As for the interviews, it is no surprise that Marilyn was most articulate, secure and frank in Engelberg’s absence. On the fourth, fifth, seventh and ninth of July, for example, she gave what was her last interview, for Life magazine, a series of conversations conducted by Richard Meryman at Fifth Helena. Only during the second meeting, after Engelberg’s visit and treatment, were her remarks unusable; the final draft was drawn from the other three, during which Marilyn was at her best:

  • Regarding some unflattering remarks in the gossip columns: “I really resent the way the press has been saying I’m depressed and in a slump, as if I’m finished. Nothing’s going to sink me, although it might be kind of a relief to be finished with movie-making. That kind of work is like a hundred-yard dash and then you’re at the finish line, and you sigh and say you’ve made it. But you never have. There’s another scene and another film, and you have to start all over again.”

  • Leading Meryman on a tour of her home, she pointed out her plans for a small guest suite, “a place for any friends of mine who are in some kind of trouble. Maybe they’ll want to live here where they won’t be bothered till things are okay for them.”

  • On fame: “What goes with it can be a burden. Real beauty and femininity are ageless and can’t be contrived. Glamour can be manufactured. Fame is certainly only a cause for temporary and partial happiness—not for a daily diet, it’s not what fulfills you. It warms you a bit, but the warming is only temporary. When you’re famous every weakness is exaggerated. Fame will go by and—so long, fame, I’ve had you! I’ve always known it was fickle. It was something I experienced, but it’s not where I live.”

  • Replying to Meryman’s question as to how she “cranked herself up” to do a scene: “I don’t crank anything—I’m not a Model T. Excuse me, but I think that’s kind of disrespectful to refer to it that way. I’m trying to work at an art form, not in a manufacturing establishment.”

  • On her chronic tardiness: “Successful, happy and on time—those are all the glib American clichés. I don’t want to be late, but I usually am, much to my regret. Often, I’m late because I’m preparing a scene, maybe preparing too much sometimes. But I’ve always felt that even in the slightest scene the people ought to get their money’s worth. And this is an obligation of mine, to give them the best. When they go to see me and look up at the screen, they don’t know I was late. And by that time, the studio has forgotten all about it and is making money. Oh, well.”

  • On her recent troubles at Fox: “Executives can get colds and stay home and phone in—but the actor? How dare you get a cold or a virus! I wish they had to act a comedy with a temperature and a virus infection! I’m there to give a performance, not to be disciplined by a studio. This isn’t supposed to be a military school, after all.”

  • On being a sex symbol: “A sex symbol becomes a thing, and I just hate to be a thing. You’re always running into people’s unconscious. It’s nice to be included in people’s fantasies, but you also like to be accepted for your own sake. I don’t look on myself as a commodity, but I
’m sure a lot of people have, including one corporation in particular which shall be nameless. If I’m sounding ‘picked on,’ I think I have been.”

  • On her interest in social and humanitarian causes: “What the world needs now is a greater feeling of kinship. We are all brothers, after all—and that includes movie stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs—everyone. That’s what I’m working on, working to understand.”

  • On her future: “I want to be an artist and an actress with integrity. As I said once before, I don’t care about the money. I just want to be wonderful.”

  But Marilyn had been burned so often by the press that she seemed not to trust Meryman entirely, and by the conclusion of their sessions she seemed to him cool and withdrawn. When photographer Allan Grant arrived to take the photos that would accompany the interview, Marilyn was, as Pat and Eunice recalled, in a giddy mood, making funny faces and joking. “What are you, some kind of a nut?” Meryman asked with remarkable insensitivity. This stopped her cold, for his remark had obviously hurt, and she was wary when he delivered a transcript of their conversation on July 9.

  Marilyn requested only one cut from her taped remarks: “She asked me to take out a remark she had made about quietly giving money to needy individuals.” Like the best of herself, her charity would remain private, a secret between her and those she longed to help. She walked with him to the driveway, and then, just as he was about to depart, she stepped forward. “Please,” she said in a whisper, “please don’t make me a joke.”

  After completing the month’s scheduled photo sessions and interviews, Marilyn and her old friend Sidney Skolsky were reunited—the first meeting in over a year—for a project that had long been important for both of them: he would produce and she would star in a film of Jean Harlow’s life. But first they would need the cooperation of Harlow’s mother, “Mama Jean” Bello, and so on Sunday, July 15, they traveled to Indio, a town near Palm Springs. There they found the charmingly eccentric old lady, surrounded by relics, photographs and mementos of her beloved “Baby Jean.” Her approval was immediately forthcoming, for she took one look at Marilyn and declared that she could swear her baby had come back from the dead.

  To those who knew the continuing parallels in the lives of the two platinum blondes, Mama Jean would not have sounded far from the mark. In fact, an outline of Jean Harlow’s last months provides an eerie stencil for Marilyn’s:

  On January 30, 1937, the newly re-elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt invited Jean to his Birthday Ball in Washington; in order to attend, she had to leave the filming of Personal Property, which caused a dustup in Hollywood—at least until Louis B. Mayer realized the enormous publicity value of her appearance.

  That spring of 1937, Jean spoke with Carolyn Hoyt, an interviewer from Modern Screen: “I have achieved, of late, a degree of peace. I feel now at peace with myself and with my world. I have attained this by forcing myself to realize that all I can do is done in the best way I know—and that, as they say, is that.” The sentiments might have been uttered by Marilyn to Meryman.

  Also during the spring of 1937, Jean’s recurring illnesses were blithely treated with only sedatives and narcotics by the notorious Dr. E. C. Fishbaugh, who prescribed the same, and with the same harmful effects, for Fay Wray’s alcoholic husband.

  On June 7, 1937—twenty-five years to the day before Marilyn was fired from Something’s Got to Give—Jean Harlow died of kidney failure, her last film incomplete. She was twenty-six, a creature of Hollywood, loved by millions, at last recognized for her talents—yet in the end failed by her Hollywood colleagues.

  After taking tea with Mrs. Bello, her guests returned to Los Angeles. The three agreed to meet again in August, and before that, Marilyn and Sidney decided to meet two weeks later, at four o’clock on the afternoon of Sunday, August 5, to work on a treatment for The Jean Harlow Story.

  Despite her almost daily injections, the difficulties of her sessions with Greenson and the uncertainties of the future, there was a fresh maturity in Marilyn Monroe that summer. And although she was dependent on certain chemicals, they seemed only fitfully to stymie her life—and this itself may be testimony to her fundamental strength, her resolve to overcome obstacles past and present. “Summarizing this time,” said Pat Newcomb, “I would say that yes, she was in control of things.”

  Ralph Roberts heartily agreed. “She was really taking control of her life and asserting herself that summer,” he said, sentiments echoed by, among others, Rupert Allan and Susan Strasberg. Roberts recalled that during the last months of her life, Marilyn was more optimistic than she had been in two years. She nurtured a close friendship with Wally Cox and renewed one with Wally’s special friend, Marlon Brando. “And she saw,” Roberts added, “that Greenson was severing all her close relationships, one by one. He had tried to cut me and the Strasbergs and Joe out of her life—and now Marilyn said he thought it would be better if she dismissed Pat Newcomb, too. By the end of July, Marilyn realized that if she was going to have any friends left, any life of her own at all, she might have to disconnect from Greenson.”

  This decision would soon be firm, but first there was the matter of her relationship with Fox. By Wednesday, July 25, Hal Kanter had completed his revision of Something’s Got to Give and submitted it to Peter Levathes, Weinstein’s future being now as uncertain as that of Skouras and company.

  Marilyn welcomed Levathes to her home on that same day, July 25. Before his arrival, Marilyn was awake early and, determined to look her best, greeted Agnes Flanagan (who washed and styled her hair) and Allan Snyder (who deftly applied a morning makeup). Cautious about a discussion without an agent or attorney present, Marilyn then asked Pat Newcomb to come over and stand unseen behind a bedroom door, to witness her meeting with Levathes.

  In 1992, Levathes provided an account of that morning with Marilyn, and his recollection was later confirmed by Pat:

  As so often with Marilyn’s history at Fox, we simply decided to reinstate her. I was the one responsible for firing her, so I wanted to be the one to personally rehire her. No one wanted bad blood. She told me she didn’t want her name tarnished, nor did she wish to ruin anyone. She did not seem unhappy or depressed at all, she asked if we could review the new script and we did. She read it and was very astute about it, thinking carefully before she made some excellent suggestions. Marilyn saw, for example, great comic potential for a scene she had in mind: “A woman who has been off on a desert island for years wouldn’t eat so delicately with knives and forks . . .” And she suggested another scene in which her character just forgot about shoes, because she was unused to wearing them. I remember saying, “Marilyn, these are beautiful ideas!” She was very happy and creative and glad to have a say in the revised script. She was in fine spirits and looking forward to getting back to work.

  It seemed to Levathes that all the anguish, all the pain could have been avoided but for “her so-called advisers, who caused her a terrible identity crisis.” He told her that the lawsuits would be dropped, and that she was to be rehired at a higher salary; to whom, he asked, ought the new contract be sent? Marilyn hesitated, then said she would reply later that week. She seemed to him very pleasant and reasonable, and before he departed she said something that stayed with him over the years:

  You know, Peter, in a way I’m a very unfortunate woman. All this nonsense about being a legend, all this glamour and publicity. Somehow I’m always a disappointment to people.

  He never saw her again, for very soon his fortunes changed, if not as dramatically as hers.

  When I said good-bye, she returned to the task she was engaged in when I arrived. There was an array of photos of her [by Bert Stern and George Barris], contact sheets and prints all over the floor, and she was making decisions about them. This was not, I thought, a shallow person, and I was sorry I never really knew her. She was a woman who made distinctions, who thought about her life, who knew the difference between sham and reality. She had depth. Of course she was enor
mously complex and I had a sense of some real underlying suffering there. But at her best there was no one like her. The wounds with Fox were healed, and when I last saw her, she was like a young and beautiful starlet, eager to do a picture that now had real possibilities.

  Their hopes were unrealized, for soon there was another corporate earthquake at Fox. Darryl F. Zanuck was elected president of Twentieth Century–Fox, Levathes was booted out, and Milton Gould and John Loeb resigned from the board. Every decision made before Zanuck’s return was to be reevaluated, but after forty years in the business, even he (who never had a great appreciation of Marilyn’s talents) knew something about the box office. If anything had to give, he said, it would not be Marilyn Monroe. Zanuck personally attended the meetings on the recommencement of Something’s Got to Give.

  For the last weekend of July, Marilyn had been invited to be the Lawfords’ guest at the new Cal-Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe, where Frank Sinatra was going to sing. To this she had readily agreed, and (as Ralph Roberts and Rupert Allan knew) she had telephoned Joe and asked him to meet her there. Although Robert Kennedy was due to arrive in Los Angeles that weekend and she had originally planned to hear an address he was to give, there were now more important matters on Marilyn’s agenda. Except for her appearance at Sinatra’s Saturday evening performance, she and Joe kept a low profile during the entire weekend. “She didn’t want to be seen about too much,” recalled Roberts, “because she was afraid of any discord between Joe and Frank.”