Marilyn Monroe

by Donald Spoto

  Marilyn did, however, want to meet briefly with Dean Martin, who was also at the Lodge that weekend—not only to express thanks for his support during the June crisis but also to discuss briefly a movie project that Arthur Jacobs wanted to produce for her and Dean, a comedy called I Love Louisa. Next week, Marilyn said, she was going to watch some of the films of director J. Lee Thompson, whom Arthur had suggested.

  For years, there were scurrilous and unfounded rumors of Marilyn accidentally overdosing on barbiturates that weekend and requiring emergency revival; and rumors of Marilyn socializing with various figures from the criminal underworld with whom she became sexually involved (among them, Johnny Roselli, Bugsy Seigel and Sam Giancana). But the actor Alex D’Arcy, who knew Marilyn (since appearing with her in How To Marry a Millionaire) and was also a close friend of Roselli—a key mob figure in Los Angeles—hotly denied both insinuations: “There was absolutely never any affair between Marilyn and any of these men,” he said. “In fact there was no connection between Marilyn and the mob at all! She was in Lake Tahoe to be with Joe!” Betsy Duncan Hammes, who also knew Roselli and Sinatra well, agreed: “I was in Lake Tahoe that weekend, and I saw Marilyn eating dinner. Giancana and his crowd weren’t there, and I would have known if they were.”

  On Sunday evening, Marilyn returned to Los Angeles with the Lawfords, and Joe headed for San Francisco, to appear in an exhibition game and to tell his family what he and Marilyn had decided that weekend. As Valmore Monette confirmed, Marilyn had finally agreed to remarry Joe. “He loved her a great deal and they had always been in contact,” according to Monette, “and he told me that he had decided to remarry her. He thought things would be different than they had been before and that everything would work out well for them now. I knew that was why he left us and was going back out there in 1962.”

  Marilyn and Joe planned a wedding date of Wednesday, August 8, in Los Angeles, and a radiant Marilyn returned home with Joe’s pajamas. “She was fighting to take responsibility for her own life,” said Susan Strasberg, “and so she was getting out of relationships that were not good for her and back into one that was. She knew she needed some sort of emotional and spiritual anchor.” The same need could be said of Joe, who had become a kind of commercial Flying Dutchman, respected but lonely.

  On Monday, July 30, Marilyn saw excerpts from Thompson’s films in Arthur Jacobs’s screening room and, on the spot, agreed to accept him as director for I Love Louisa early in 1963.4 Jacobs added that Jule Styne, who had given Marilyn “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, had agreed to write new songs for her. The same day, Marilyn tried to reach Milton Rudin, for she wished to make a new will; as attentive and supportive as he had been, however, Rudin felt that he could not sign a will and certify that she was of sound and disposing mind, for he believed her to have serious problems with both pills and paranoia. In a way, Rudin was correct, for Marilyn’s problems were far from solved, and she knew she had to face her dependence on drugs and on Greenson just as she had to continue a maturation that in many ways was just now beginning. But that she was of unsound mind is quite another assertion.5

  Since her teens, Marilyn had long believed she had nothing else to offer but what Grace Goddard, photographers and studios claimed: the mass appeal of her beauty and her body. She also believed that “Marilyn Monroe,” although at least partly a false pretender, represented a part of her true self. She had indeed encouraged an image of sexual allure and availability, and the endorsement and acceptance of her in those terms were important.

  But there was another aspect of her personality—or more accurately, a real identity behind the persona. Marilyn had often tried to repress and disguise the image with black wigs and dark glasses, without makeup. She tried to separate herself from “Marilyn Monroe” by reducing “her” to another, a third person—“her”—“Would you like to see me be her?” Unlike other screen stars, Marilyn never fused the two. Marlene Dietrich, for example, eventually believed the illusion created for her, and the fall that injured her body at the age of seventy-five also wounded something within. Believing her youth and illusory self were all she had, Dietrich had to withdraw from public view when the youth and glamour faded, and for the last sixteen years of her life she was virtually a recluse.

  Marilyn, on the other hand, always reaching for an integration of her personality, knew in some way that her emotional health depended on a separation between the public Marilyn and the private self. Sorrow, confusion and neuroses prevented her rising above the image she deplored to become the woman she yearned to be. Her film roles continually forced her to rely on what she wanted to put behind her; no wonder, then, that most of all she longed to sleep. When she awoke, she was restrained, forced to assume “Marilyn Monroe” again, the conundrum of the sexually available, ever-popular teenage waif who somehow retained her innocence. That she recognized her popularity was caused by an image she hated—and that now, for the first time in 1962, was openly admitting—showed how clearly she realized the split in herself. This can hardly, however, be called “schizophrenic”; in fact it reveals a remarkable clarity of self-perception.

  Had she not been a woman who (as Levathes said) “made distinctions, who thought about her life, who knew the difference between sham and reality,” there would have been no need for a struggle, no need for her to admit that she needed to grow, no anguished cries to get on with her life: “There’s a future and I can’t wait to get to it.”

  When Marilyn left Fox in 1954, she had taken a bold step in abandoning the identification of herself with its false image; new friends, new work, studies—all these would, she hoped, enable her to transcend her own limitations. Only a courageous woman would so act.

  But part of the problem was, then as in 1962, that part of her still depended on outer approval, still considered herself a child—only a body without a soul worth probing, and in this regard we are very close to sounding the reasons for her mass appeal decades later. She still believed the Gladys/Grace tales of family madness, and her refuge into an adopted false self was something she could not entirely abandon. Something in Marilyn still feared that she might forever slip back to being the patronized child-bride, the girl who would do best to forget her unknown lineage and assume the identity of America’s ultimate pin-up darling after World War II.

  In a profound sense, she was still telling the culture about the Kinsey Report a decade later, for she was still the worrisome union of national needs: sex with innocence; worshipful gaze with the fear of experience; adolescent longing and adult responsibility; desire and, in its aftermath, too often disappointment when too much is demanded. What was endemic to a culture—from just after the war, when she entered movies (1947) to the beginning of a social revolution (1962)—was almost inextricable from Marilyn Monroe.

  Kinsey spoke of sex, wrote about it, inquired into its most intimate details, and Hollywood was more and more parading the new sexual frankness. The boys he interviewed had been in the war and were entitled to be considered men. But the men seen on television and in the movies in the 1950s were mostly boys: Cary Grant in Monkey Business is nothing so much as a handsome preppie; the “romantic lead” of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes turns out to be a rich child; even in River of No Return, where the wild man to be tamed is no less than Robert Mitchum, a boy is necessary to link the couple.

  Amid all this confusion, Marilyn Monroe and her aspirations had to be mocked by the culture. The thought of so independent a woman was anathema: the country wanted a child-woman—a busty, sexy gal, not too bright, whom distance made somewhat unreal, the stuff of dreams, someone who would not (and whom we could not allow to) grow up.

  Just as harmful as the studios that reflected the culture and in ways more tragic, she had become unwittingly trapped in the pop-Freudian circle that urged her continually to consider her childhood—the worst possible agenda for the orphan’s unending absorption with self. But her parent surrogates—Strasberg, Miller, Kris,
Greenson—suggested it, demanded it. And so to please them she underwent Freudian therapy. Instead of freeing her, it froze her. In the end, it was wondrous that she did not break down sooner, for each time she tried to go forward there were those whose advantage it was to keep her ever the subordinate child.

  On the morning of Tuesday, July 31, Marilyn telephoned Jean Louis’s assistant, Elizabeth Courtney, who was to come over as soon as possible for the final fittings of a new gown Jean had designed for her. “She was so happy,” recalled Courtney—and with good reason, for this was to be her wedding dress. That afternoon, after a ninety-minute session with Greenson, Marilyn returned home and spent several hours on the telephone, placing calls to (among others) a florist, her local wine shop and a caterer.

  “I want to be loved by a man, from his heart, as I would love him from mine,” she had said in an interview that June. “I’ve tried, but it hasn’t happened yet.” Now at last, the fulfillment of that longing seemed very close indeed.

  1. Italics are the author’s. Considering the visit to Gurdin the previous day, Greenson’s allusion to Svengali sounds chilling.

  2. All these calls were put through the main switchboard at the Department of Justice (REpublic 7-8200) and then transferred to the attorney general’s secretary. Her address book lists only this number; she never had access to Kennedy’s private line.

  3. The notes of her regular surgeon, Leon Krohn, M.D. (chief of the gynecological service at Cedars), leave no doubt that the later rumors of an abortion are sheer fiction.

  4. The film, starring Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum and (in the role designed for Marilyn) Shirley MacLaine, with songs by Jule Styne, was released in 1964 as What a Way to Go!

  5. As for her will, the 1961 draft stood. At the time of her death, Marilyn left only the house, assessed at a value of $60,000; furniture, furnishings and personal effects valued at $3,200; $2,200 in bank accounts; and $405 cash on hand. The value of her Estate over the years grew as a result of the subsequent commercial marketing of her name and image.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  AUGUST 1–4, 1962

  ON WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, Nunnally Johnson told Marilyn’s old friend Jean Negulesco that he was going to be invited to direct Something’s Got to Give “because Marilyn has asked for you.” Negulesco, who had directed her in How To Marry a Millionaire, said he would be delighted to replace Cukor, for he considered Marilyn “a hurricane of glamour [who] had such a right sense of knowing the character she was playing—the way to enter a scene, to hold singular attention as the scene developed [and] the way to end a scene.”1 With Negulesco’s acceptance, everything was in place for the picture to recommence at the end of October. Marilyn was signed at a salary of $250,000, two and a half times the amount of her original contract.

  Evelyn Moriarty heard the news about Negulesco and telephoned Marilyn, who was, according to Evelyn, “in great spirits—she was so happy to be going back to work. We talked about the script and the new director—all sorts of things. She was really in tip-top condition, and we all looked forward to starting the picture.” Marilyn also told Evelyn that Arthur Jacobs was going to produce I Love Louisa for Fox later that year, so there was even more to anticipate. With these projects and The Jean Harlow Story being developed, Marilyn’s career had never seemed brighter.

  As for her immediate plans, Marilyn was preoccupied with preparations for a small reception to follow her wedding, and was drawing up a list of friends to be invited at the last moment. She also confirmed that the wine, sandwiches and salads would be delivered the following week from Briggs, the local emporium she frequented on nearby San Vicente Boulevard. Joe was due in Los Angeles Sunday night or Monday morning; they would be married on Wednesday and then proceed for a honeymoon in New York, where they both had close friends. Then perhaps they would spend a week on Long Island or Cape Cod.

  Marilyn’s telephone records for August 1 also list a call to Leon Krohn’s office at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. Krohn, whom she trusted without reservation and to whom she often went for advice on other than medical matters, had by this time attended her for a decade. From the 1952 appendectomy through the anxieties and heartbreak of Some Like It Hot and her subsequent third miscarriage right up to her recent minor surgery, “Red” Krohn was the gentlest of men and her most perceptive physician. He had been a good friend to her and Joe during their divorce proceedings, too, and so it was natural for her to call him with brighter news. She asked Krohn to dine with her that evening, saying she had something important to tell him; he replied that he would ring back after his hospital rounds. Then she telephoned again, late in the afternoon, and said she would call him in a few days.

  The reason for this postponement is not entirely clear, but before the day was over Marilyn had gone to Greenson for a two-hour session and Engelberg had come to Fifth Helena thereafter, in early evening. The sudden change of dinner plans may have been the result of an injection, or just simple exhaustion; it may also, however, have been related to the tensions of Marilyn’s relationship with Eunice, whom she could at last dismiss permanently—and now had the perfect opportunity to do so, on the eve of her renewed life with Joe.

  Besides Eunice’s proprietary attitude, her attempt to control Marilyn’s life and her alliance with Greenson, there were three final moments that pushed Marilyn’s patience too far and sealed the housekeeper’s fate. First, as Cherie Redmond wrote from the studio to Marilyn at the end of July, Marilyn’s mail from Fox and from her private post-office box were now “being held by Mrs. Murray,” whose liberties were becoming more and more presumptuous. Informed of this, Marilyn was rightly angry, since she felt once again like a child in her own home under the supervision of her own employee.

  Second, at Marilyn’s invitation, Ralph Roberts had come that Wednesday morning to give her a massage. Eunice “made her presence known,” as he recalled, “and she looked at me with such hatred and venom, as if she were saying, ‘I thought we’d gotten rid of you.’ It was chilling how intimidating this little woman could be, how manipulative of Marilyn and divisive with Marilyn’s friends. Mrs. Murray was Greenson’s minion, that’s all, his on-the-spot representative.” Eunice’s attitude to Ralph did not escape Marilyn, who was further annoyed.

  The third incident fixed Marilyn’s determination. Eunice had planned to accompany her sister and brother-in-law on a European vacation beginning Monday, August 6. But she had chosen not to tell Marilyn of this in advance and had not even made travel reservations: apparently she was unsure about leaving Marilyn at all. Cherie Redmond remarked on this indecision when she wrote to Hedda, “It seems to me that Mrs. Murray’s devotion to MM is so intense—that may not be the right word, but you know what I mean—that she wouldn’t want to go away.”

  Whatever the rationale, several things are clear: on Wednesday, August 1, Eunice at last told Marilyn she would like to take a vacation on the following Monday. Marilyn, who must have been delighted with the news but perhaps did not show it, wrote her a check for a month’s wages and told Eunice not to return in September. Thus Marilyn, who always avoided confrontations, could fire the housekeeper for good with the excuse that she herself would be traveling for an indeterminate time and that her own future plans were as uncertain as Eunice’s sudden announcement. Although she made no mention of it in her memoir, Eunice probably also learned from Marilyn that afternoon about the marriage plans, for Marilyn knew that Eunice disliked DiMaggio as much as she did Roberts. In addition, Marilyn put through several calls to her New York maid, Hattie Stevenson, apparently to ask if she might be available on a short-term basis in Los Angeles that autumn.

  * * *

  Eunice’s reaction could only have been shock, hurt and possibly even anger. Here she was, finally in the ideal situation she longed for, in the replica of the dream house she had chosen, working with the wise father figure Ralph Greenson, determining more and more the life of her “daughter” Marilyn, nursing her as her sister Carolyn nursed children. At la
st she seemed to have fulfilled her lifelong dream of living up to the standard set by her sister; at last she had been able to correct the situation of her unhappy marriage and, through Marilyn, regain her lost home and head a kind of family.

  Marilyn . . . Marilyn’s busy life . . . Marilyn’s house . . . Marilyn’s insecurities . . . Marilyn’s dependency on Greenson—all these had become the emotional accoutrement of Eunice Murray’s identity, had provided her with a purpose. Without the house on Fifth Helena and its famous resident, without Greenson to serve and Marilyn to “nurse,” there would be no life for Eunice at all. Like Rupert Allan (who had returned to Los Angeles from Monaco for six weeks), Ralph Roberts and Pat Newcomb recalled that the final departure of Eunice Murray was in fact one of the important things Marilyn did in her own best interest. “I knew her attitude toward Greenson had changed,” Roberts recalled, “and concerning Mrs. Murray—well, Marilyn simply said how much the woman annoyed her, bored her to distraction.” The end of the employment, in light of the temporary separation in May, was not unexpected. “Marilyn just couldn’t stand her living there anymore,” said Pat. “The truth is that Marilyn at last felt in control of things, and so she fired Mrs. Murray. It was over.” Her last day of work would be Saturday, August 4; until then, there was a good deal of work to occupy them both. This was only the beginning of Marilyn’s healthy self-assertion, but the real challenge still lay ahead—confronting Greenson with her new autonomy.

  Marilyn spent that afternoon at Fox, conferring about the resumption of Something’s Got to Give; this was so cordial and creative a meeting that an outsider might have thought there had been only a brief hiatus for some minor reason, with no troubled history at all.

  On Thursday morning, August 2, Marilyn went to Greenson for a session and, as his subsequent invoices to her Estate testified, he drove to her house for a second meeting later that day. Clearly, there was a crisis. It is unimaginable that she would not have told him about the dismissal of Eunice and her forthcoming marriage, and to these news items he could not have reacted with any pleasure or approval. It also would have been logical for her to have discussed her temporary interruption of therapy in light of her travel plans, and with that, Greenson may have thought he, too, was about to be dismissed.