The Secret Letters of Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy

by Wendy Leigh

  The only reason I can write this letter—apart from the reason I said—is that my whole world has changed. It is as if there has been an earthquake in my heart. Mr. G has finally been eklipsed [sic] by another man—Mr. X. X as in exciting, exhillerating [sic], exceptional, sexy, and extra special. I can’t promise never to see Mr. G again, but I don’t think I will ever see him again in the way in which I have always seen him.

  All through the years, you never asked who Mr. G was. Nor did you try to find out. Many times, when you were kind and caring toward me, I longed to tell you the truth. But I knew that if I did, he’d kill me. But now I don’t care anymore about him. I just care about you, and not feeling guilty or dirty ever again in my life.

  There is no easy way to say this. Or any easy time. I am telling you now, I think, because I believe that once you know how much in love I am with Mr. X, you will realize that you are safe. Safe from me. Safe because Mr. G’s real name is Jack Kennedy and I don’t love him anymore. Please don’t stop reading. In some ways, I hope that you suspected all along. You might have, which is probably why you suggested I sing “Happy Birthday” the way I sang it. You probably knew Jack would hate it. You must have guessed that he would despise me for it. But I didn’t. I had no idea. You see, I know the private Jack real well, but the public Jack is completely aliun [sic] to me.

  Maybe, if I tell you how Jack and I ever happened—and remember, I promise from the very bottom of my heart that it won’t ever happen again—it won’t seem quite so bad, and then—so long as you forgive me—we can go on and still be friends like before.

  This, as they say in the movies, is how the story began. I read somewhere that a man called Charles Bartlett first introduced you to Jack. Life is so strange. A man called Charles also first introduced me to Jack as well. My Charles was Charles Feldman, the agent whom we all had dinner with in 1954. Long before that, though, I had already met Jack at Charlie’s. I met him there in 1951, on May 15.

  I nearly fainted when I read that you first met Jack just twelve days before I did, on May 3, 1951.

  I read that that first night, you played charades with jack and beat him—he would have been impressed, but deep down, somewhere, probably didn’t really like it. But you were a debutante, a prizewinner—Vogue’s Prix de Paris, I think—and rich and beautiful, so I suppose Jack decided to take it, and you.

  I once read a Victorian novel where the author said something like that the good luck and the bad luck of life all depend on who you meet when. I agree with that. But I want to add something. It also depends on who you meet where—and how. Because, looking back, if I had met Jack in another place, he might have thought of me differently and then things might have turned out differently as well.

  In those days—1951—I was hanging around Charlie Feldman’s house. Charlie handled some big stars—in every which way … including Gene Teirney [sic]. Johnny Hyde used to take me to Charlie’s with him and because I was Johnny’s girl, Charlie treated me with respekt [sic]. I liked that.

  But once Johnny died, Charlie was all over me like paper over a fly. I suppose I should have married Johnny—he asked me—but I didn’t love him. Everyone told me I was being real dumb—because I would have been a very rich widow. But I didn’t care. Still don’t. To me, money is like the tide, it comes in and then it goes out. You have it, and then you don’t. Then you do again.

  That night at Charlie’s, the night I met Jack, I was feeling scared and alone. My husband, Jim, and I were over, I’d had a fling with Elia Kazan—most of the time, all he could do was talk about Arthur miller. Isn’t life funny, that I ended up marrying Arthur. …

  I knew Charlie was going to make his move on me that night. I suppose you could say that in those days, I was easy. But that wouldn’t be right. I wasn’t easy. It’s just that sex was easy—for me, that is. But I still didn’t really want to go to bed with Charlie. Sure, he was powerful and clever, but there was a coldness to him. I couldn’t imagine ever being able to love Charlie.

  But I took one look at Jack and couldn’t imagine ever being able to love anyone else. Now, of course, I do—Mr. X. But looking back on how it all began with me and Jack, I see Jack as he was that first night. Even now, though, I still wish I hadn’t met him there, at Charlie’s, because I know he still sees me as I was then. No matter how famous I am, no matter how many men desire me, marry me, love me, no matter how many awards I win, how many acting lessons I take, to Jack, I will always be that easy little 24-year-old starlet whom he met that night at Charlie’s. Which is what that Victorian novelist I mentioned before meant. The bad luck of who you meet when. Or rather, who you are when you meet them.

  My first impression of Jack was that he was very young and very thin. Just a boy, really. That night, he had a bag of fudge in his pocket, which he kept popping into his mouth. A long time later, he told me that he always gorged himself on fudge when he was bored. After that first night, he never ate fudge around me again.

  The thing I most remember about Jack from that very first time is his eyes. When Jack focused those eyes on you, you really felt it. He had a special way of staring at you—his secret trick. Years later, he explained it to me—but I still can’t get it right—first he stared at your left eye, then your right. Each eye at a time, never together.

  The first time he looked at me, I felt like he was raping me with his eyes. Not the kind of rape that hurts you. The other kind. When he looked at me like that—that very first night—I blushed from head to foot. A red flush. All over my body.

  We had sex that same evening, at a bungalow he rented for us at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I am sure you don’t want to know any of the details. But Jack had magic on me. That night and always. Since then no one else—not Joe, and not even Frank—ever had that kind of magic on me. Only Jack—and now Mr. X.

  Jack was just a Congressman then. I didn’t know much about what he did. Just that he was a cute guy who set me on fire and that when I woke up in his arms, I felt safer, more special than I ever had before. I’ve had so many men, stronger, sexier, taller, and bigger than Jack. But no one ever reached into my heart, body, and soul like he did. Until Mr. X, that is.

  Jack made me want to be good for him, to be special for him. He made me want to improve myself. So that summer, because of Jack—and because I wanted to—I took an art history class at UCLA. I also did a lot of reading: the classics, Freud. I was hoping Freud could give me a clue to solving the mystery of Jack’s magic over me, and break the spell, but there was nothing he wrote that explained it. If I had had a father, then Freud might have said that Jack had magic on me because he reminded me of him. But I didn’t. So Jack couldn’t. Nor was he the father whom I dreamed of having. Gable was that. If anything, Jack reminded me of myself.

  In march 1952, when the calendar came out with me photographed in the nude on red velvet, I was petrified that he would despise me for it. But he didn’t. He just laughed and asked me to send him some copies. Then he said, “Don’t deny you did it. Tell them how you re an orphan, that you were broke. Be Cinderella. Everyone loves Cinderella, Marilyn. Cinderella sells. I remembered that. I remember everything Jack ever said to me, because when I am with him I am like a great big sponge. So when the press asked me why I’d posed for the calendar, I used Jack’s concept. I gave them a Cinderella story, just like Jack said, and it worked.

  The day after the calendar came out, I met Joe. I really went out with Joe only as a stunt, to kill any negative publicity that might have arisen from the calendar. More than that, I hoped that by dating someone as famous as Joe, I might make Jack forget how he first saw me and even make him jealous. It did a bit, but not enough to make him want to marry me. By that time, I knew that the higher Jack climbed in politics, the less chance there would be of him marrying a mere actress. I did think, though, that if I could one day do some theater, which, of course, I eventually did, I might make a suitable wife for Jack. I did want to marry him, but he didn’t want to marry me, so I married Joe
instead, for want of being able to marry Jack. A rebound marriage. I tried to be happy with Joe, to be a good wife to him, but he wasn’t Jack. He didn’t talk about politics or books or ideas. He just watched TV and played ball.

  When I read about you and Jack getting engaged, I felt as if I could die. He didn’t even warn me. I bought every newspaper and magazine featuring articles about you. I wanted to know all about you and what he saw in you. Seeing your picture made me want to die. I think I would have killed myself, only my career was on such a high. Just two days after the engagement announcement, Jane Russell and I did our footprints in the cement at Grauman’s, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was released three weeks afterwards. The studio loved me in it, I was doing great, but not in the way I wanted. I wanted Jack.

  He called and invited me to your wedding. He said he wanted me to come because his father had invited Marion Daveis [sic], and he wanted to win points over him by inviting me, because I was an even bigger star than she ever was. Typical of Jack, so set on competing with his father that he forgot all about me and how I would feel, standing there at your wedding, watching him promise to be faithful and to love you forever. It would have been hell for me. When the invitation arrived, I was surprised to see that it came from Jack’s father’s office, and not from Jack’s. Then Jack explained that, at the last minute, he was afraid you might suspect something, so he made his father invite me instead. He said that he thought the invitation might have the dual effect of making you think I was his father’s mistress as well. At first, that hurt me, nearly as much as the fact that he was getting married, because I felt as if he was throwing me away. Then I thought about it more and realized that it was a compliment, apart from which it showed that Jack still wanted to carry on with me, even though he was marrying you. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have cared so much what you thought. Anyway, even though I pretended to be mad at him for insinuating that about his father and me, inside, I wouldn’t have cared if Jack said I was fucking King Kong, just as long as he still wanted me.

  Jack had some nerve, though. He told me he really wanted me to come to the wedding, but for once. I told him exactly what I thought of him. No way. Of course, I turned the invitation down. Now and again, though, I fantasised [sic] about coming to the wedding and when they asked if there was anyone present who knew any reason why the marriage shouldn’t take place, shouting out, “Yes, me! I love him and he loves me.” But of course I didn’t do that.

  Instead, I sent you that wedding present. Part of me, the good part, the part that I want to be me—all of me—really did want to wish you and Jack luck. But another part of me—the dark part—the person within me that scares and terrifies me, wanted to put a curse on your marriage to Jack. Like the bad witch in Sleeping Beauty.

  So I sent you the music box that played “Falling in Love Again” instead. Jack always said I should do a remake of Blue Angel—and I thought he might hear the music and think of me. I held the music box before I sent it to you. Rubbed my hands all over it. Half imagining that I was rubbing Jack’s body. Half hoping that he would feel my hands, smell my scent, when he touched it. I used to picture it in your house, in the living room in Georgetown, the tune playing, reminding Jack of me.

  So I wrote to you. Jackie, and you wrote back. At the beginning, getting your letters was almost like getting a piece of Jack. But I didn’t keep writing to you because of Jack. Maybe at first, but then I grew to love your letters, Jackie, looked forward to them, used to he awake at night anticipating what you would write to me and what I would write back. When I was on the set, or out on a date, I would think, I must tell Jackie that.

  The good part of me did all that. The bad part kept writing to you about other men, hoping you would tell Jack, get him hot and jealous. That part of me thought of you as my secret weapon in my battle to get to Jack. To get Jack. What to do with him if I ever got him, I didn’t quite know. I just always felt as if there was a hand pushing me, more and more, faster and faster, toward him.

  So the bad part of me kept writing to you, Jackie, sending messages to Jack through you, staying close to the scene of the crime like a murderer stays close to his victim. The bad part of me wanted to come to the White House when you sent me formal invitations to events there. The good part knew I shouldn’t. The good part knew that it would have been wrong to look into your eyes while all the time, deep inside, I was lusting after Jack and still seeing him secretly. The good side won and I never came to the White House.

  Not when you were there, Jackie. But once, late one night—you were in Paris—Jack smuggled me in.* I wore a black wig and when I saw myself in the mirror, I looked like you. That felt strange, and wrong.

  I never wanted you to know the truth. Never. But when I was sick in the hospital and under the influence of drugs, the painkillers they gave me, plus the ones I brought with me and they didn’t know about, I wrote to you about Mr. G. The next day, I wished I hadn’t, and tried to get you not to read the letter, but it was too late. In a way, I suppose I secretly really did want you to know about Mr. G and was confessing—and you are the one who is Catholic—to you. Dr. Greenson says that in my unconscious, by telling you all about Mr. G in my letters, I was having a ménage à trois with you and Jack, and that it was you—not Jack—whom I really desired! But I don’t want to think about that. Sometimes I think that analysis can damage your soul—and your heart as well. The heart shouldn’t be torn apart in analysis. The heart should just be allowed to beat with love.

  I never wished you harm, Jackie. I just wanted to be you. I wanted to be in Jack’s bed instead of you. But I never really worked out how I would get there. I just let life and him—his arrangements for me—sweep me along. Sometimes, though, Jack and I were so happy together that I used to wish for a magic wand and that you would be happy with someone else, so that I could be happy with him and he could be happy with me. He comes from another world from me, but there are things—were things—between us that only God or fate or mystery can explain.

  Now, though, it is over. I have finally found the true love of my life, the only love, the last love. I don’t want to tell you about him in this letter. There is too much to tell.

  Just write and say that you forgive me. More than anything, I want to stay your friend. I know I sound a little confused—the nembutal, which I take because I’m having real trouble sleeping, is kicking in—but I am very clear about wanting to be your friend forever.

  Please don’t give up on me. Write and tell me I still mean something to you.

  Love,

  Marilyn

  P.S. I think my telephone is being tapped.

  __________________________

  * “Jack had Marilyn Monroe up at the White House absolutely,” Senator George Smathers said (see Heymann). “I know because I saw Marilyn at the White House. She was there.”

  According to Patty Renoir, Marilyn was in a pensive mood when she asked her to mail this letter to Jackie. “She was quiet at first, but I saw something in her eyes that I knew meant she was all drugged up. Suddenly, she grabbed my hand and said, ‘Hug me, Patty, hug me.’ I did, then she pulled away and said, ‘Patty, I’ve taken a gamble, a really big one. Just couldn’t help myself. A fucking big one.’ Then she starts laughing, a high, tinkling laugh, like the sound of glass breaking. ‘Put all my cards on the table, every single fucking one of them. So wish me luck, Patty.’ I said I did, although I didn’t know what the hell she meant.”

  JACQUELINE KENNEDY

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  Marilyn Monroe

  12305 Fifth Helena Drive

  Brentwood, California

  July 12, 1962

  Dear Marilyn,

  DON’T BE ALARMED THIS IS A FRIENDLY LETTER!

  I am grateful for your honesty in telling me the truth about you and Jack at last. In a strange way, it has come as an intense relief to me. Now, at last, I am no longer tortured by suspicions. For (as far as I am concerned) knowing is preferable to not knowing. Now that I hol
d all the cards, I can react accordingly.

  On reflection, dear Marilyn, I bear you no animosity, for no woman alive is more aware than I regarding the potent nature of Jack’s special magic and the spell his presence weaves. Only a corpse could resist the full force of Jack’s charm, his seductive cleverness, his charisma.

  Perhaps I always knew about you and Jack, but I was never sure. Maybe I didn’t want to confront the truth, until you made that flimsy excuse about Gramble Bear. On a subconscious level (as your Dr. Greenson would say) I suppose I was hurt by you and angry with you and deeply threatened by the thought that you and Jack could be lovers. Consequently, and to my everlasting shame (for I blame Jack for seducing you, not vice versa), I set you up to sing “Happy Birthday” in such an overt manner. In retrospect, I think I did so not merely in order to damage Jack’s feelings for you but also to punish you for having lied to me. That: emotion was unworthy of me, and I am sorry. You always were, and remain, very dear to me, Marilyn.

  As soon as I received your last letter, I wanted to telephone you, but as you told me of your fears that the phone was tapped, I restrained myself. “Restrained” reminds me of Jack, of how it all went wrong between us, and why—despite your misgivings—I truly can cope (employing a certain amount of equanimity) with all that you have told me.

  I shall explain the “restrained” reference later. First of all, I want to tell you that you have lost nothing through your letter. Least of all, our friendship. Quite the reverse, because now I, too, can tell you the truth.

  When you first wrote to us, after my wedding to Jack, I was surprised. I suppose I had my suspicions, but I tried to block them out (one of my more useful talents is my capacity for blocking out unpleasantness). But; had I known conclusively that you and Jack were lovers, I would probably have been almost fascinated. Nearly glad. To understand my meaning, you would have to comprehend my entire state of mind upon marrying Jack.