The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

by Donald H. Wolfe

  Arthur Miller observed, “I guess it [our marriage] was deteriorating…. Marilyn was looking at Montand rather idolatrously, and she couldn’t realize that he was not this tower of strength. At any period of her life, the oncoming stranger was vitally important. He or she was invested with immense promise, which of course was smashed when this person was discovered to be human.”

  Always in search of the man she could rely on, Marilyn found that Montand’s assurance and joie de vivre had a way of giving her confidence. Montand took pride in his professionalism, and it soon became apparent to those on the set of Let’s Make Love that Marilyn was responding to his influence—becoming more cooperative and showing up on schedule. Her new punctuality came as a gratifying surprise to Cukor and producer Jerry Wald.

  “She’s got so she’ll do whatever I ask her to do on the set,” Montand confided, “and everyone’s amazed at her cooperation.” Much to Paula Strasberg’s displeasure, Cukor noticed that Marilyn was often turning to Montand for approval after a take rather than Black Bart, who was now making two thousand dollars a week as Marilyn’s coach.

  There were bad days, however, when Marilyn would leave the set early in the afternoon to visit Dr. Ralph Greenson, and Cukor would have to shoot around her. Following the initial sessions with Greenson at the hotel bungalow in January, Marilyn continued her visits with the psychoanalyst at the office he shared with Dr. Milton Wexler at 405 North Bedford Drive—the libido lane of Beverly Hills. The doctor’s office was conveniently located between Fox Studios and the Beverly Hills Hotel, and Marilyn visited it as often as her schedule allowed—sometimes on a daily basis.

  In a letter Greenson wrote to Marianne Kris, he describes Marilyn as “such a perpetual orphan that I felt even sorrier as she tried so hard and failed so often, which also made her pathetic.” He encouraged her to telephone each day when she was out of town or unable to see him “so that she would understand his values and translate them into the things she needed to survive.”

  Another Ralph in Marilyn’s life was Ralph Roberts. While Ralph Greenson massaged the minds of the movie stars, Ralph Roberts was known as the physical “masseur to the stars.” He had studied physiotherapy and was familiar with the unique muscular problems of performers. An actor himself, Ralph Roberts had first met Marilyn at Lee Strasberg’s apartment in 1955 when he was studying with Strasberg and appearing on Broadway in The Lark with Julie Harris and Boris Karloff.

  In 1959 he traveled to Hollywood as Judy Holliday’s masseur during the filming of Bells Are Ringing. Learning that Ralph Roberts was in Hollywood, Marilyn called him when the rigorous dance rehearsals for Let’s Make Love began. They became close friends, and from the beginning she referred to him as “Rafe” (as in waif). Though he was well over six feet tall and had a rather forbidding appearance, Roberts was a gentle soul—a soft-spoken, cultured gentleman from North Carolina.

  At the end of February, production of Let’s Make Love was put on hold for several weeks by an actors’ and writers’ strike over television residuals. During the hiatus, Miller and Marilyn planned to fly back east for meetings with her attorney Aaron Frosch. “I’ll miss you,” Marilyn whispered affectionately in Montand’s ear—adding a special good-bye. Not understanding what she said, he noted down the words and later asked a friend what they meant. When the phrase was translated he was touched, but “thought no more about it.” Just before Arthur and Marilyn departed, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the Oscar contenders. Among the nominees were Shelley Winters as best supporting actress in The Diary of Anne Frank and Simone Signoret as best actress in Room at the Top.

  “Good luck! I know you’re going to get it!” Marilyn shouted to Signoret as the Millers left for the airport. But she was in fact a bit jealous and disappointed that her performance as Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot hadn’t received a nomination. It was regarded by critics nationwide as one of the best comedic performances in years. But Hollywood Academy voters were somewhat peeved by what they perceived as the East Coast parvenu pretenses of the valley girl, and while Doris Day was nominated for her performance in Pillow Talk, Marilyn wasn’t considered.

  On the starry night of the Thirty-Second Academy Awards, Shelley Winters won the Oscar for best supporting actress, and later in the ceremonies Fred Astaire introduced Yves Montand, who sang and danced a tribute to Astaire, “Un Garçon Dansait.” As he took his bows to thunderous applause and went to the wings, Montand was told by director Vincente Minnelli to return to his seat. “No, no,” Yves said. “The next Oscar is for best actress, and Marilyn say my wife is going to get it.” Rock Hudson opened the envelope and proved Marilyn correct. Simone had a picture commitment in Europe, and several days later she flew off to Rome with her Oscar—and Marilyn was bestowed with her Yves.

  Shortly after the Millers had returned to Hollywood, Arthur flew to Ireland for The Misfits preproduction meetings with John Huston, and Montand wondered if his halting English was playing tricks on him when Miller said good-bye to him and muttered, “What will happen will happen.”

  Doris Vidor, a friend of Montand and the Millers, recalled that Montand telephoned her in “an absolute state.” Montand exclaimed to Doris, “He’s leaving me with Marilyn, and our apartments are adjoining. Do you think that Arthur doesn’t know that she is beginning to throw herself at me?” Doris Vidor recalled telling Montand, “Yves, I think this is getting very complicated…. I would be suspicious of Arthur’s leaving at this time. How do you know that he isn’t deliberately going? Maybe he’s tired of the burden that he’s had, and maybe he’s glad someone is around to step in.”

  Montand recalled in his memoirs:

  I had Marilyn all to myself. But it was as a partner and a friend that I called on her to rehearse with. Every night after getting back from the studio we worked for an hour or two. When we got up after it was over, we were both still living in the tension of the rehearsal. I’d be smoking a cigarette, and then she’d smile and say, “Okay, now we’ll eat.” Then I look at her, and I think she is amazingly beautiful, healthy, desirable. I felt this powerful radiation, the impact of the amazing charisma!

  One day she was really, how you say?—“wiped out!”—much too tired to rehearse and not feeling well. And I had a tricky scene the next day. I was getting ready to leave the studio and go work on my own, when I bumped into Mrs. Strasberg. “Go and say good-night to Marilyn,” she said. “It’ll make her feel better. It’s bothering her that she can’t rehearse.” I went. I remember that the living room was all white—white chairs, white curtains—with the exception of a black table. There was caviar and, as usual, a bottle of champagne. I sat on the side of the bed and patted her head.

  “Do you have a fever?”

  “A little, but it’ll be okay. I’m glad to see you.”

  “So am I. I’m glad to see you.”

  “How was your day?”

  “Good, good.”

  It was the dullest exchange you can imagine. I still had a half-page to work on for the next day. I bent down to put a good-night kiss on her cheek. And her head turned, and my lips went wild. It was a wonderful, tender kiss. A kiss of fire. I was half stunned, stammering, I straightened up, already flooded with guilt, wondering what was happening to me. I didn’t wonder for long.

  It soon became obvious on the set of Let’s Make Love that the stars were taking the title seriously, and the love affair that developed between Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand quietly became a matter of Hollywood gossip.

  Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen gave the first hint to the public when she commented, “An actress whose name came up at this year’s Oscars is currently having marital problems.” Soon a Beverly Hills Hotel room-service waiter was telling bedroom stories to journalist James Bacon, and the Montand-Monroe affair became public knowledge. It was feeding time at the paparazzi zoo. Some reported that the star turned up at bungalow 20 “naked beneath her mink coat.’ Arthur Miller was reported to have left his pipe behind at the ho
tel and returned to discover the lovers in bed. Hedda Hopper confidentially advised Marilyn in her widely syndicated column, “You have still to prove that you are a great actress. Your success is due only to publicity. I beseech you, Marilyn, stop this self-destruction.”

  Amid the tabloid feeding frenzy, Marilyn Monroe was presented with the Golden Globe Award as the Best Actress of 1959 for Some Like it Hot. And Life and Look were preparing stories on the on-screen/off-screen lovers of Let’s Make Love.

  By the time Miller returned to Hollywood and rejoined Marilyn at the Beverly Hills Hotel, news of the Monroe-Montand affair filled the gossip columns and had become a public drama. In recalling his feelings at the time, Miller stated, “I couldn’t help her. By this time I represented betrayals and misplaced trust. And there was no possibility of erasing that from her mind. It was just there.”

  According to Norman Rosten, “Montand wasn’t the only one. There had been others. She hadn’t been totally faithful to Arthur for some time. Marilyn had this terrible neediness. When she felt insecure she went with other men simply for something to hold on to.”

  The extended shooting schedule of Let’s Make Love was slated to end in mid-June, and Marilyn wanted to believe that her relationship with Montand was more than a passing affair scheduled to end with the production. But as filming neared its conclusion, Montand admitted hovering between “intoxication and panic.” Marilyn, he said, “clung to me…and the light in her eyes indicated such joy was meant to last.”

  In his memoirs, Montand recalled, “I was touched—touched because it was beautiful, and it was impossible. Not for a moment did I think of breaking with my wife, but if she [Simone] had slammed the door on me, I would probably have made my life with Marilyn, or tried to. That was the direction we were moving in. Maybe it would have lasted only two or three years. I didn’t have too many illusions. Still, what years they would have been!” But when the shooting schedule drew to a close and Let’s Make Love completed filming, both the on-screen and the off-screen romance were a wrap.

  Marilyn left Hollywood for The Misfits wardrobe tests in New York, while Montand stayed on the West Coast for contract negotiations. On June 30, Montand flew to New York on his way back to Europe. Marilyn met him at the airport for what she hoped would be a rendezvous, but ended up being a tearful adieu. They said good-bye in the back seat of a Cadillac limousine parked at the terminal, while Montand waited to board his plane for France. He told her he had been happy with her and hoped that he had occasionally made her happy too, but he had no intention of leaving his wife.

  He flew off to Paris, where Simone and the paparazzi were waiting. “The Montands have survived Hurricane Marilyn,” headlined Paris-Match. And Marilyn was left, how you say?—on the lurch.

  46

  The Jack Pack

  You must remember—it’s not what you are that counts, but what people think you are.

  —Joseph P. Kennedy

  By the time Joseph P. Kennedy turned sixty in September 1948, the man from the east docks of Boston had amassed a fortune in excess of $400 million. He decided to give himself a birthday present worthy of the occasion, and a bevy of Boston beauties were paraded through his suite at the Ritz-Carlton. He chose Janet Des Rosier, a twenty-four-year-old graduate of Leicester High School with a timeless hourglass figure. Des Rosier was bright, funny, and beautiful. In her photos she has a striking similarity to Rose in her bloom.

  “He was very taken with me,” Des Rosier recalled. “He made up his mind right then and there that I would be his.” She became Joe Kennedy’s mistress, secretary, and companion.

  A decade later, when Kennedy became a septuagenarian and the flagging ambassador began hearing the echoing refrains of “September Song,” he arranged for his mistress to become an executive of General Dynamics Corporation. When it was decided that Jack Kennedy was going to run for president, Joe Kennedy discussed leasing a General Dynamics Convair twin-engine turbo prop for his company, and Janet Des Rosier arranged for a demo flight for the candidate and his entourage from Washington to New York. Ten days later, Joe Kennedy called Des Rosier and exclaimed, “Hell, Janet, Jack isn’t going to rent a plane from you. We’re going to buy him one.”

  Christened the Caroline after Jack Kennedy’s daughter, the Convair was purchased for $385,000 and came with many custom-built luxury appointments and plush features—along with Janet Des Rosier, who became Jack Kennedy’s stewardess, secretary, and masseuse. When Kennedy lost his voice during the campaign, he wrote notes on a legal pad instead of talking. Des Rosier kept the pad and later sold some of the more unusual notations from the rigors of the campaign. One of the notes read, “I got into the blonde.”

  On February 7, 1960, the Caroline, with Kennedy and his brother Teddy on board, arrived in Las Vegas for a meeting with Frank Sinatra, the “chairman of the board,” and Sam Giancana, the “boss of bosses.” Kennedy was gambling on winning the nomination, and his plans for the primaries were being made at the Sands Hotel, where Sinatra and the “Rat Pack” were performing nightly.

  While there was a credo that every young American had an opportunity to become president of the United States, Sam Giancana’s credo was that every young mafioso had an opportunity to own the president of the United States. Giancana was well aware of the Kennedy hamartia, or fatal flaw. He had observed it in the father, and knew that Jack Kennedy too was a womanizer. If they could catch the presidential candidate in a compromising situation, the Mafia would be holding a Kennedy marker. Through Sinatra, Giancana believed he could not only enrich Mafia coffers by having access to some of Hollywood’s biggest entertainers, but also add to his collection of Kennedy markers by utilizing Sinatra’s association with the presidential candidate.

  Perhaps only Sinatra’s psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, could have explained Sinatra’s aberration concerning power and the Mafia. Eddie Fisher once commented, “Frank wanted to be a hood. He once said, ‘I’d rather be a don of the Mafia than president of the United States.’ I don’t think he was fooling.” Sinatra and Giancana had a lot in common: both had a mercurial temperament, wild mood swings, and a giant ego; both loved to gamble and fornicate; both could be lavishly generous and lavishly cruel; both suffered from bottomless greed and had bottomless pockets—price was no object when it came to a flashy suit, a pretty girl, or a great toupee.

  Shortly after it became apparent that Jack Kennedy was a viable candidate, Sinatra began cultivating the friendship of “brother-in-Lawford,” and he became solicitous of Marilyn, whom he knew to be intimate with his new friend, Kennedy. Suddenly, Sinatra found himself with a pal who was headed for the White House, and a blonde acquaintance who occasionally slept in his pal’s bed. It was a strategic position of subtle power and influence. In 1983, in an unguarded moment shortly before his death, Peter Lawford made the statement, “I’m not going to talk about Jack and his broads because I just can’t…and, well, I’m not proud of this, but all I will say is that I was Frank’s pimp, and Frank was Jack’s. It sounds terrible now, but then it was really a lot of fun.”

  The FBI’s files reveal information regarding several of the women Sinatra brought to Kennedy’s attention in Palm Springs, Las Vegas, and New York. One FBI file contains the statement, “It is a known fact that the Sands Hotel is owned by hoodlums, and that while the Senator, Sinatra and Lawford were there, showgirls from all over the town were running in and out of the Senator’s suite.”

  It was at the Sands that Sinatra introduced Jack Kennedy to Judith Campbell Exner, an attractive divorcée with dark hair and sparkling blue eyes. Exner frequented the nightclubs in Los Angeles and Las Vegas and was frequently seen on the arm of West Coast Mafia boss Johnny Rosselli. According to her friend Patricia Breen, “Judith was absolutely the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever laid eyes on and had a subtle resemblance to Jackie Kennedy.”

  Describing the visit, Judith Exner recalled that Sinatra invited her, along with a group of friends, to be his guest. The entourage inc
luded Dean Martin’s wife Jeanne, agent Mort Viner, Gloria Romanoff, and publicist Pat Newcomb, who was a friend of Sinatra, the Lawfords, and the Kennedys.

  Sinatra’s guests flew to Las Vegas on Friday afternoon, February 5, 1960, and it was on Sunday afternoon at Sinatra’s table in the Sands’ lounge that Judith Exner was introduced to Senator Jack Kennedy and his brother Teddy. That evening Judith Exner, Pat Newcomb, and Gloria Romanoff were guests at Sinatra’s table in the Copa Room for the late show starring Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, and Sammy Davis, Jr. “I sat next to Teddy, and Jack sat across from me,” Judith Exner noted. “Jack looked so handsome in his pinstripe suit. Those strong white teeth and smiling Irish eyes…. I must say I was tremendously impressed by his poise and wit and charm.”

  Many years later, Judith Campbell Exner wrote about her affair with Jack Kennedy in her autobiography, My Story. She described dozens of trysts in hotel rooms around the country and in the White House. Though her revelations were initially met with skepticism, the subsequent release of FBI files and White House telephone logs confirmed over seventy phone conversations, some of extended duration, between Judith Campbell Exner and the president between February 1961 and April 1962. An additional call to JFK was logged on August 5, 1962, when Marilyn Monroe’s death hit the news.

  Judith Exner became the liaison for meetings between Giancana and JFK, and she told of arranging a meeting between the “boss of bosses” and the senator at the Fountainebleu Hotel in Miami, where plans were finalized to “get out the vote” in the West Virginia primaries. While Kennedy had beaten Hubert Humphrey in the New Hampshire and Wisconsin primaries, West Virginia was ninety-five percent Protestant. In order to become the presidential candidate, Kennedy would have to prove to the Democratic Party that he could win the Protestant vote despite his Catholicism. The Kennedy forces entered the West Virginia primary with all the energy, determination, and cash at their disposal. FBI wiretaps later revealed that Giancana contributed a war chest of $150,000, which was distributed by Sinatra and Giancana’s friend Paul Emilio “Skinny” D’Amato. More than $50,000 was disbursed to convince the West Virginia sheriffs, who controlled the political machine, how important it was for Kennedy to win.