The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

by Donald H. Wolfe

  But there were other things that Marilyn Monroe discussed with Frederick Vanderbilt Field that set off loud alarms in the FBI office in Washington, D.C. Ever since Louis Budenz had identified Frederick Vanderbilt Field as a Comintern operative for the Soviets, Field had been under close surveillance, and electronic listening devices had been placed in his home.

  An FBI document dated March 6 and headed “MARILYN MONROE—SECURITY MATTER—C [Communist]” was sent from the Mexico City office to J. Edgar Hoover’s desk. The contents are heavily redacted, but an FBI briefing revealed that this report, which was filed several days after Marilyn’s departure from Mexico, concerned her conversations with Frederick Vanderbilt Field relating to confidential information she had learned in discussions with the president and attorney general (see FBI document in Appendix).

  While J. Edgar Hoover had been alarmed by Jack Kennedy’s flagrant womanizing, he was deeply disturbed to learn that his warnings had again been ignored, and that confidential information had been unwittingly passed by Marilyn Monroe to a suspected Soviet espionage agent, known by the FBI to be in communication with foreign intelligence operatives. According to sources close to Hoover at the time, he became enraged and demonstrated a degree of anger seldom witnessed by his subordinates.

  Incredibly, the president of the United States had become a security risk.

  52

  The Hand of God

  Miss Monroe knows the world, but this knowledge has not lowered her great and benevolent dignity; the world’s darkness has not dimmed her goodness.

  —Dame Edith Sitwell

  Jack Kennedy was planning a political trip to California in March 1962, and in January, Peter Lawford had asked Frank Sinatra if the president could stay at Sinatra’s Palm Springs home during his visit. Sinatra not only readily agreed, but he spent over half a million dollars on a massive construction project designed to turn his Palm Springs estate into the western White House. A giant heliport was constructed along with special guest cottages, Secret Service accommodations, and a communications center with over twenty-five extra phone lines. “It had been kind of a running joke with all of us in the family,” Peter said later. “He even erected a flagpole for the presidential flag after he saw one flying over the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport. No one asked Frank to do this.” Sinatra even ordered a special gold plaque inscribed “John F. Kennedy Slept Here,” to be mounted at the front door.

  During one of the daily briefings of the attorney general’s staff, a zealous young lawyer complained about the president’s friendship with Frank Sinatra and said, “We are out front fighting organized crime on every level and here the president is associating with Sinatra, who is associating with all those guys.”

  Bobby Kennedy responded by saying, “Give me a memorandum and give me facts.”

  The memorandum and the facts revealed that Sinatra had personal associations with ten of the leading figures in organized crime and listed times and dates when these gangsters had telephoned Sinatra at his private number.

  “Sinatra has had a long and wide association with hoodlums and racketeers which seems to be continuing,” stated the memorandum. “The nature of Sinatra’s work may on occasion bring him into contact with underworld figures, but this cannot account for his friendship and/or financial involvement with people such as Joe and Rocco Fischetti, cousins of Al Capone; Paul Emilio D’Amato, John Formosa, Sam Giancana, all of whom are on our list of racketeers.”

  Though Bobby Kennedy was well aware of Sinatra’s underworld associations, the portion of the memo he found disconcerting was the number of visits that Sam Giancana had made to Sinatra’s Palm Springs home.

  The cement was barely dry on the new presidential heliport at the Sinatra compound when Bobby Kennedy prevailed on the president not to stay at Sinatra’s. “Sam Giancana has been a guest at the same house,” complained the attorney general. “How is it going to look? There are too many people who know about Sinatra’s ties to those guys. We can’t take the risk, Jack.”

  Though Jack Kennedy didn’t want to disappoint his pal Sinatra, after reading the Justice Department’s memorandum, he was forced to agree. He told his brother to make different arrangements. Bobby Kennedy telephoned Peter Lawford and told him to let Sinatra know that the president’s plans had changed. Lawford panicked when he heard the news. He knew that Sinatra’s reaction would be less than pleasant, and he didn’t want to take the brunt of his anger. Lawford called the president and pleaded with him to keep the plans unchanged, trying to elicit Kennedy’s appreciation for all Sinatra had done for the campaign.

  “I can’t stay there,” Kennedy told Lawford. “Bobby says it’s impossible because of Frank’s associations. You can handle it, Peter!”

  Admittedly frustrated by his unenviable task, Lawford braced himself as he telephoned Sinatra with the news.

  “Frank was livid,” Lawford recalled. “He called Bobby every name in the book and then rang me up and reamed me out again. He was quite unreasonable, irrational really. George Jacobs [Frank’s valet] told me later that when he got off the phone he went outside with a sledgehammer and started chopping up the concrete landing pad of his heliport. He was in a frenzy.”

  To make matters worse, the president now planned to stay at Bing Crosby’s nearby estate. “He felt that I was responsible,” Lawford lamented, “for setting Jack up to stay at Bing’s—the other singer and a Republican to boot. Well, Frank never forgave me. He cut me off like that—just like that!”

  Sinatra informed friends that he wanted nothing more than to punch Lawford in the face. He refused Lawford’s phone calls and canceled Lawford’s appearances in future Rat Pack shows at the Sands and the two upcoming Rat Pack movies. Price was no object when it came to revenge, and it was rumored that Sinatra paid Bing Crosby close to a million dollars to replace Lawford in Robin and the Seven Hoods.

  Lawford’s manager, Milt Ebbins, recalled, “Frank just wrote Peter off, and Peter was destroyed. He loved Frank. He loved being part of the Rat Pack, and all of a sudden he was on the outs. Not only did he lose the Rat Pack movies, but a lot of other opportunities as well.”

  It became clear to Peter Lawford that he would never be allowed back into the inner sanctum of the “chairman of the board.” He grew despondent over the loss of this relationship in his life, and he soon ran up against the stumbling blocks that Sinatra began setting up in the path of his career. At the same time, he knew that his marriage to Patricia was in serious trouble, and he began drinking heavily as his troubles increased.

  During the Eisenhower years, the Oval Office had an open door to J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover and Eisenhower frequently had lunch and spoke on a weekly basis, but during the Kennedy years, Hoover was denied his easy access to the president. According to Kenny O’Donnell, JFK’s appointment secretary, “Hoover was very unhappy” about the situation. “During the thousand days, Hoover was invited to the White House on less than a dozen of them.”

  On March 22, 1962, the president and J. Edgar Hoover had one of their rare meetings at the White House. They met privately for lunch in the White House living quarters. It was just two weeks after Hoover had received the alarming document regarding Marilyn Monroe’s meeting with the suspected communist espionage agent, Frederick Vanderbilt Field, in Mexico City. “What actually transpired at that luncheon may never be known,” said a Senate report thirteen years later, “as both participants are dead and the FBI files contain no records relating to it.”

  Reportedly, the meeting concerned JFK and his relationship with Judith Campbell Exner; however, the most important item on the luncheon agenda would have related to Kennedy’s affair with Marilyn Monroe and her subsequent association with Field. Hoover certainly made it very clear to the president the imminent danger he had succumbed to. Perhaps for the first time since the days of Inga Arvad, Jack Kennedy no longer had to speculate on just how much information Hoover possessed about his private life.

  Kenny O’Donnell reported that Ke
nnedy was very disgruntled after the meeting with Hoover and made the remark, “Someday I’m going to get rid of that bastard. He’s the biggest bore!” It is evident, however, that some of Hoover’s admonitions had an effect. After more than seventy logged phone calls between the president and Judith Campbell Exner, there were few calls after that date. But perhaps Kennedy resolved merely to be more clandestine. Exner insists that she remained in touch with the president until the summer of 1962, and Kennedy rendezvoused with a disguised Marilyn Monroe soon after the luncheon with Hoover.

  On Saturday, March 24, just two days after Kennedy and Hoover met, Marilyn emerged from her new bedroom on Fifth Helena Drive before 9 A.M. Usually she slept until noon, but that day she told Mrs. Murray, “I’m going on a trip, and my hairdresser’s going to help me get ready.” But at 8 A.M. the plumber had arrived with a crew to install a new hot water heater, so there was no water.

  “Never mind,” said Marilyn. “I’ll go over to the Greensons’ to have my hair washed—it’s all right.”

  Several hours later Marilyn returned with her hair done, and her mind prepped for things to discuss with the important men in government she was preparing to visit. At noon, Peter Lawford arrived to pick her up. “Peter paced back and forth,” Mrs. Murray recalled, “while Marilyn put the finishing touches on her attire.” Over an hour later, she was finally ready. Wearing a brunette wig over her neatly coiffured hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and a severe Norman Norrell suit, and carrying a steno pad and a handful of pencils, Marilyn drove with Lawford to the airport, where Air Force One was waiting. The president’s plane had already dropped off the presidential entourage in Palm Springs, and then diverted to Los Angeles, where it waited for over two hours to pick up Peter Lawford and the “president’s new secretary.”

  When Marilyn arrived in Palm Springs, she found that the president was quartered at the sprawling Bing Crosby estate. Marilyn was sequestered in a secluded guest cottage, hidden from the main house by trees and shrubs. Philip Watson, the Los Angeles County assessor, had been invited to the formal affair in Crosby’s baronial living room, where the president hosted an exclusive dinner party. Later, according to Watson, there was another, less formal party in the secluded guest cottage. Watson was invited to the smaller gathering and saw that Marilyn Monroe was there. He wasn’t particularly surprised. He had seen Marilyn at another party at the presidential suite in the Beverly Hilton the previous November. What astonished him was how little effort either made to disguise their intimacy.

  Watson stated, “The president was wearing a turtleneck sweater, and she was dressed in a kind of robe thing. She had obviously had a lot to drink. It was obvious they were intimate, that they were staying there together for the night.”

  That night Ralph Roberts received a phone call from Marilyn in Palm Springs.

  “I’ve been arguing with a friend,” she said mischievously, “and he thinks I’m wrong about those muscles we discussed. I’m going to put him on the phone, and you can tell him.”

  “A moment later,” Roberts recalled, “I was listening to those familiar Boston accents. I told him about the muscles and he thanked me. Of course, I didn’t reveal that I knew who he was, and he didn’t say.”

  Marilyn later told Roberts that she had been massaging the president’s bad back and discussing the muscle system. “I told him he should get a massage from you, Ralph, but he said, ‘It wouldn’t really be the same.’”

  While the president seemed to be oblivious to the dangers of his private affairs, Marilyn had become talkative. Many of her intimate circle of friends knew of the relationship, and Marilyn continued nurturing the hope that Kennedy would one day divorce Jackie, and that she would become Mrs. Kennedy.

  The presidential jaunt to Palm Springs was followed by another glittering fund-raiser in Los Angeles at the Beverly Hilton. Marilyn attended the affair and was seen by several people in the Kennedy suite following the gala. Marilyn wrote to Norman and Hedda Rosten and again told them of dancing with Bobby Kennedy, whom she had begun referring to as “the General.” From the days that Marilyn first met him, she and the attorney general spoke frequently on the phone. “He was a wonderful person to tell your troubles to,” remembers his press aide, Ed Guthman. “And Marilyn called him a lot…but then, so did Judy Garland and a lot of other ladies in trouble.”

  Oftentimes they would continue the conversation that had begun in the den of the Lawford beach house that February, discussing social issues, politics, the Cuban problem, the “freedom rides” and civil rights, and even the morality of the atomic bomb. Determined to be knowledgeable, Marilyn would research the topics discussed, sometimes using the extensive Greenson library or calling Danny or Joan Greenson to brief her on the issue at hand.

  In the spring of 1962, Norman Rosten was in Hollywood working on a screenplay, and the day before he was to return to the East Coast he stopped by Marilyn’s to say good-bye. Later he wrote of a curious event that took place, which was inexplicable to him at the time. The incident occurred on the afternoon following the Democratic Party fund-raiser at the Beverly Hilton. The president was flying back to Washington that day, Sunday, March 25. Rosten recalled,

  It was noon…she stumbled out into the living room buttoning her robe: face heavy-lidded, bloated, drugged with sleep. The love goddess wasn’t looking too good. She moved to the window, shading her eyes. “God, it’s going to be a real dull Sunday.”

  I suggested, to cheer her spirits, we drive into Beverly Hills and check some of the art galleries that might be open. She agreed; in fact, it seemed to snap her awake…. We found a gallery that featured an exhibition of modern paintings. Marilyn began to relax and enjoy herself. She bought a small oil by Poucette, a red abstract study. Then her eye caught something not in the regular exhibit: a Rodin statue—a bronze copy, one of twelve—no more than two feet high. It depicted the full figure of a man and woman in an impassioned embrace: a lyric, soaring image. The man’s posture was fierce, predatory, almost brutal; the woman innocent, responding, human.

  Marilyn looked at the statue for a full minute, then decided to buy it. The price was over one thousand dollars. I suggested she think about it. No, she said, if a person thinks too long about something, it means they don’t really want it. She wrote out a check.

  We drove back with the statue. She held it balanced on her lap and stared at it. Shaking her head, she marvelled aloud, “Look at them both. How beautiful. He’s hurting her, but he wants to love her, too.” It seemed to confirm some deep feeling of exhilaration and fear. Then I recalled how, years earlier in New York, we had spent an hour in the Rodin section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She had been enraptured with the exquisite white marble figures of The Hand of God. The lovers entwined in that hand represented an ecstasy she could dream of and possibly achieve…

  For some unexplainable reason, her mood shifted from cheerful to sullen, possibly even hostile. She said abruptly, “We’ll stop off at my analyst. I want to show him the statue.”

  “Now?” I asked. I was worried about this turn of events.

  “Sure,” she mumbled. “Why not now?”

  Dr. Greenson greeted us courteously. Marilyn immediately set the statue on the sideboard adjoining the bar, announcing her purchase with pride. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, stridently turning toward him. He replied quietly that it was a striking piece of art. Marilyn seemed unusually restless and kept touching the bronze figures. A belligerence crept into her speech. “What about it? What does it mean? Is he just screwing her, is it a fake? I’d like to know….” Marilyn kept repeating, her voice shrill, “What do you think, Doctor? What does it mean?”

  To a perplexed Norman Rosten, a hidden drama was exploding. She was demanding an answer. Like a child locked in the dark, she was crying out to the man who held the key.

  Later they returned to her home and placed the Rodin on a living room table. The next day Rosten returned to the East Coast. It proved to be the last time he saw her ali
ve.

  53

  The White Knight

  If you needed to get in touch with Marilyn, you didn’t call her secretary, her agent, or her lawyer. You called her psychiatrist!

  —George Cukor

  The filming of Something’s Got to Give was scheduled to start on April 9, and Marilyn was fully prepared for the start of production; however, director George Cukor insisted on additional rewrites and the start was delayed until April 23. Marilyn wanted to go to New York during the delay. Henry Weinstein had a premonition of disaster and pleaded with Marilyn not to go.

  “She went east for one of those superprivate fund-raisers for the rich and beautiful of Manhattan—a ten-thousand-dollar-a-plate affair,” said publicity consultant Rupert Allan, who dined with Marilyn in New York on April 14. “The president had promised his well-heeled supporters that Marilyn would attend.”

  The affair was a black-tie dinner party in the president’s honor given by socialite Fifi Fell in her Park Avenue penthouse. Among the invited were Peter Lawford and Milt Ebbins. Around 7 P.M., Ebbins was to pick up Marilyn at her Fifty-Seventh Street apartment, but when he arrived she wasn’t ready. The dinner was scheduled for eight. At ten minutes after eight, Marilyn’s phone rang and Ebbins picked it up. It was Lawford, “Where is she? The president’s here—everybody’s waiting.”

  “She’s not ready yet. I’m sitting here waiting,” said Ebbins.

  “C’mon,” Lawford said. “Get her over here. She’s holding up the dinner!”

  At eight-thirty, Marilyn’s maid, Hazel Washington, announced that she would be out shortly. By nine there was still no Marilyn. Lawford called again. “You son of a bitch!” Lawford screamed. “Get her over here—they’re still waiting dinner!”