Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love

by C. David Heymann

  • • •

  Having dismissed Marianne Kris as her psychoanalyst and having learned that Lee Strasberg had been instrumental in placing her on a locked ward at Payne Whitney, Marilyn Monroe decided to leave New York, return to Los Angeles, and resume her therapy sessions with Dr. Ralph Greenson. Tired of living out of a suitcase at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Marilyn sought a more permanent address and found it in a ground-floor flat at 882 North Doheny Drive, the same Beverly Hills apartment complex in which she’d resided before marrying Joe DiMaggio. Gloria Lovell, Frank Sinatra’s personal secretary, lived on the same floor in the same building. While waiting for workmen to renovate the apartment, Marilyn moved in with Frank Sinatra. Comedian Joey Bishop, a sometime member of Sinatra’s Rat Pack, saw her at Sinatra’s house in early June 1961.

  “I’d gone over there for our weekly poker game,” said Bishop. “Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and two or three other guys were there, and in the middle of the game, this tiny white puffball of a puppy waddled into the room. ‘New dog?’ Dino asked, and Sinatra said, ‘It’s Marilyn Monroe’s dog. She named it Maf, as in Mafia. Isn’t that a dumb name?’ And then Marilyn came into the room, evidently looking for the dog. And the thing is, she was completely nude except for a pair of emerald earrings that Sinatra had given her. We froze, and she stopped dead in her tracks. I could tell that Sinatra wasn’t too pleased about her not wearing any clothes. I’d heard she’d just recently undergone some minor gynecological surgery at Cedars of Lebanon, but she’d seemingly recuperated because she looked pretty damn good. After saying hello to everyone, she gathered up the mutt and went back into Sinatra’s bedroom. Marilyn was thirty-five at the time and perhaps a bit afraid of losing her great sex appeal, and I couldn’t help but think that being with Sinatra confirmed for her that she still had it—in spades. I’d seen her with Sinatra at his home in Palm Springs and at the Palm Springs Racquet Club. I once went out with them on a yacht; before we left, Marilyn went wandering around the pier trying to find someone who could provide her with sleeping pills because she’d forgotten to bring hers along. Another place Sinatra brought Marilyn was the Cal-Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe, which was coowned by both Sinatra and Sam Giancana. Then there were all sorts of crazy rumors involving Marilyn, Sinatra, and John F. Kennedy, the wildest being that on November 6, 1960, they had a threesome in Palm Springs. JFK, on the campaign trail at the time, stayed at Sinatra’s home that day. Sinatra even mounted a plaque in the house to the effect that Kennedy ‘had slept’ there. But that was the extent of it. There was never a threesome. There were two twosomes, both involving Marilyn. But I can also tell you that the most important man in Marilyn’s life was Joe DiMaggio. His love for her knew no limits. And though their marriage ended in divorce, she loved him as well. When she needed him, he’d race to her side, like one of those Saint Bernard dogs in the Swiss Alps.”

  Joey Bishop acknowledged hearing rumors of a possible marriage between Sinatra and Monroe but rejected the notion. “They were lovers and friends,” he said, “but essentially they were friends. Marilyn enjoyed Sinatra’s company and liked talking to him. He was a great listener and an excellent dispenser of advice. He could also be a bit of a jerk. He’d lose his temper and start yelling at her, particularly when she got drunk. I remember being in Las Vegas at a party Sinatra threw for Dean Martin. Marilyn was drinking out of a flask, and Sinatra started shrieking at her. It was almost comical. ‘Shut your fucking filthy mouth, Norma Jeane,’ he bellowed. ‘Just shut your fucking filthy mouth.’ ”

  Ralph Roberts had caught up with Marilyn in Los Angeles and went with her to the Dean Martin party. “It took place on June 7,” he said, “and Marilyn drank a lot, too. But there was good reason for it. That entire spring she had digestion problems and a chronic pain on her right side. I convinced her to have a complete physical.”

  Marilyn went to see Dr. Hyman Engelberg and told him she had to return to New York to finish packing up her apartment, so Engelberg set up an appointment for her with an associate of his at the French and Polytechnic Medical School Hospital (closed since 1977). Ralph Roberts accompanied her to New York. On June 28 a physician at New York Polyclinic Hospital examined the actress and determined she had an impacted and inflamed gallbladder. A two-hour operation to remove the gallbladder was performed the following day. Joe DiMaggio stayed in the hospital with her the first night and visited her daily for a week, until he flew to San Francisco on family business, thereafter calling Marilyn several times a day until her release from the hospital on July 11. As she left the hospital, she found herself surrounded by hundreds of screaming fans and a hundred reporters and press photographers. “It was frightening,” said Ralph Roberts, who picked her up by car and drove her back to her apartment, where she recuperated until the second week of August, adding painkillers and the diet pill Dexedrine to her once again burgeoning amalgam of barbiturates.

  Roberts recalled that Joe DiMaggio, currently on a lengthy business trip for the Monette Company, managed to see Marilyn in New York on several occasions in late July and early August. Another time Roberts drove Marilyn to the Waldorf to visit with Frank Sinatra, in town on a singing engagement. “She downed a flask of vodka in the car on the way to his hotel,” recalled Roberts. “I wasn’t crazy about her affair with Sinatra. I liked Joe DiMaggio. I believe if she’d married him again, she would’ve been happier and less lonely. She told me Dr. Greenson didn’t like Sinatra for her either, though strangely enough he didn’t object to John F. Kennedy.

  “While still in New York, Marilyn tried to find a New York therapist. She had no intention of resuming with Dr. Kris, but she couldn’t find anyone to take her place. Had she found an adequate replacement, she very likely would’ve remained in New York, a city she loved. But then, also, she’d begun to pull away from the Strasbergs. She credited them for having helped her both professionally and personally, but she couldn’t get past the Payne Whitney disaster for which Lee Strasberg was partially to blame.”

  Before returning to California, Marilyn asked Ralph Roberts to drive her to Roxbury so she could retrieve some personal belongings. She’d made Roberts call Arthur Miller to let him know they were coming. When they arrived, the farmhouse was empty. Marilyn gathered some of her clothes, a few pairs of shoes, some books and records, and her tennis racquet. On the way back to Manhattan, Monroe wondered aloud why her former husband hadn’t bothered to show up. “We could’ve said our good-byes,” she mused. Then she added, “Maybe he’s right—what’s over is over.”

  Marilyn wanted Ralph Roberts to return with her to Los Angeles. She offered to put him up at the Chateau Marmont, while she shifted back and forth at first between her new apartment on North Doheny and Frank Sinatra’s Coldwater Canyon home. After several weeks, she moved back into her apartment. That fall, she leased a Thunderbird for Roberts, and he drove her around, at the same time continuing in his role as her masseur.

  “At the end of October,” said Roberts, “Joe DiMaggio Jr. paid Marilyn a visit. He wrote to Marilyn all the time, and she wrote to him. He was the closest she ever came to having a child of her own. He was on better terms with her than he was with his father. He’d talk through his problems with Marilyn. She used to give him spending money. In any case, he’d enlisted in the marines and attended boot camp in San Diego. He had a young girlfriend, Pam Reese, to whom he’d become engaged. He brought her along. Marilyn didn’t like her, but she nevertheless asked me to let them borrow the car for the weekend. Within a period of two days, Joe Jr. managed to rack up half a dozen traffic violations. That’s when Marilyn bought him his own car and told him that henceforth he’d be held responsible for his own summonses. I once talked to Joe DiMaggio about his son. ‘Joey’s an okay kid,’ he said, ‘but he makes messes and expects others to bail him out. He imbibes beer the way most people drink water. Hopefully the Marines will help him mature.’ There seemed to be an undertone of anger in his voice. I had the feeling he resented the fact that his son had a relatio
nship with Marilyn separate from his own.”

  • • •

  Once more on drugs and drink, seeing Dr. Greenson six (and sometimes seven) days a week, Marilyn Monroe appeared to be back on the same roller coaster she’d ridden so many times before. “Dr. Greenson had long given up hope of weaning Marilyn off pharmaceuticals,” remarked Ralph Roberts. “He gave her whatever she wanted in the way of medication, because he realized she’d go elsewhere if he didn’t. The irony is that Dr. Hyman Engelberg was doing the same. As a result, Marilyn was getting double doses of a number of pharmaceuticals. Greenson didn’t seem to know what Engelberg was giving her, and vice versa.”

  That fall of 1961, according to Roberts, Marilyn appeared to be severely depressed. One reason for her downward turn may have been her relationship, however fleeting and sporadic, with the president of the United States. On November 19 she attended a dinner party at Peter Lawford’s beach house; JFK attended, as did Janet Leigh, Kim Novak, and Angie Dickinson (another of Kennedy’s girlfriends). Aware of the president’s liaison with Monroe, the two Secret Service agents on duty that evening noted in their daily report that Kennedy and Marilyn had spent the night together in Peter and Pat Lawford’s bedroom. Marilyn’s periodic encounters with JFK surely filled her imagination with visions of a possible future with the president. “I think I’m good for his back,” she joked with Peter Lawford, referring to Kennedy’s chronic back problems. “I’m a soldier,” she added, “and he’s my commander in chief.” Despite the frivolity and heightened drama of the moment, even Monroe must have realized the futility of the affair, adding the element of uncertainty to her already delicate state of mind.

  “By this point in time, I knew all about Marilyn and the president,” said Ralph Roberts. “In a way, I guess I knew all along. She didn’t discuss the matter in detail with me, but she left little doubt. For example, the morning after the Lawford party I picked her up with the car. ‘How did it go with President Kennedy?’ I asked her. ‘If I told you,’ she responded, ‘I’d have to kill you.’ ”

  Normally Roberts would arrive at Marilyn’s North Doheny apartment at nine in the morning and drive her to Dr. Greenson’s house for her therapy session. Some days she’d have a double session. Other times she’d stay the entire day, taking her meals with the psychiatrist’s family and relaxing in the guest bedroom. Greenson adopted her in a manner not unlike the Greenes or the Strasbergs, incorporating her into his private life, creating an illusion of dependence on Marilyn’s part not particularly useful to the therapeutic process and completely at odds with the classic methodology described in his own textbook, The Technique and Practice of Psychoanalysis. Greenson’s methodology with respect to Monroe struck her friends and acquaintances as highly unorthodox and unprofessional, if not potentially dangerous to her mental well-being. And there was no denying, as Ralph Roberts was quick to notice, that the more Marilyn saw of her psychiatrist, the worse her condition became.

  One morning in early October, Roberts went by Marilyn’s apartment to pick her up. He rang the doorbell, but there was no answer. “I began getting vibrations that something was wrong,” he ventured. “I had a set of keys to Marilyn’s apartment, and I tried to open the door, but it was double-locked from within. Gloria Lovell, Frank Sinatra’s secretary, lived in the next apartment. I had the keys to her place as well. I rang her bell. There was no answer, so I went in and called Marilyn on the phone. She finally answered. She sounded totally incoherent, as if she’d had a stroke or something, so I went outside, jumped a fence, and started banging at Marilyn’s window with a garden hose. After a while she came to the window and said, ‘I’m a little tired this morning, Ralph. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ ”

  Roberts arrived the next day at nine in the morning, and the scene repeated itself. The front door was double-locked from inside, and there was no response. Roberts called Dr. Greenson, and the psychiatrist ordered him to break into Marilyn’s apartment, so Roberts jimmied open the bathroom window and went in. “Marilyn heard the commotion and came to the bathroom door,” said Roberts. “She was very, very drowsy—completely out of it. She mumbled something about a wild party in the building the night before, and the revelers found out she lived there and kept ringing her doorbell until she finally called the police. Anyway, she got dressed, and I drove her to Greenson’s house. She seemed upset when she went in but much more so when she came out after her session. In fact, I’d never seen her so upset before. She said Greenson wanted her to come back in and have a double session. I told her I’d wait. When she came out again, she seemed extremely withdrawn. On the way home, the only thing she said was that everyone was swindling her. She didn’t sound totally rational. I called her early the next morning and asked if I should come over. ‘Ralph,’ she said, ‘Dr. Greenson thinks you should go back to New York, and he’s sent over a woman to take care of me and drive me around. He doesn’t want me to speak to a lot of people, including the Strasbergs.’ ”

  Ralph Roberts flew back to New York later that day. He called Gloria Lovell a few mornings later to tell her he’d returned to New York. He also told her about the woman Dr. Greenson had sent over to look after Marilyn.

  “I bumped into the woman in the corridor,” said Gloria. “She introduced herself to me. Her name’s Eunice Murray. She claims she’s Marilyn’s new housekeeper.”

  “Housekeeper, my ass!” scoffed Roberts. “She’s Marilyn’s watchdog. Greenson wants to control her by severing her ties to the outside world.”

  Born in Chicago in 1902, Mrs. Eunice Murray first met Ralph Greenson in 1948 when she sold him her Santa Monica house. Through her connection to Greenson, Mrs. Murray had worked as a psychiatric nurse both in mental hospitals and on a private baisis. Paid $200 per week, Eunice, who had a married daughter named Marilyn, fulfilled multiple roles in Monroe’s life, one of which, as Roberts asserted, was that of watchdog. She regularly reported back to Greenson, keeping him fully apprised of his prize patient’s comings and goings, including the names of any and all visitors.

  There is no question that Greenson attempted to separate Monroe from those he considered a negative influence or counterproductive to her mental health. There is likewise little evidence to indicate that Greenson possessed great insight into Marilyn’s particular set of problems.

  At this stage in the psychoanalytic process, Marilyn remained steadfastly loyal to Greenson, oblivious to his questionable approach to her condition and happy to be included in his family’s activities. She began attending the chamber music recitals he organized at his home on Sunday afternoons. She befriended his wife as well as his two grown children. She treated Joan Greenson, his twenty-year-old daughter, like a younger sister, teaching her how to dress, dance the Twist, and walk in a sensuous manner. She engaged in political discussions with Dan Greenson, four years older than his sister Joan, a medical student at Cal Berkeley.

  Dr. Greenson gradually lured Marilyn into his lair by making himself available to her whenever she needed to talk. She had his permission to call at all hours, day or night. Because he had so many sessions with her, he granted her a preferential fee of $50 an hour. He gave her a tape recorder and encouraged her to make free-association tapes, recording her daily thoughts, a process she seemed to enjoy. Yet for all his seeming generosity and openness, behind her back in a never-ending cascade of indiscreet notes and letters, the psychiatrist continued to describe his patient in terms that most assuredly would have wounded her.

  Ralph Roberts, Pat Newcomb, Susan Strasberg, Lee Strasberg, and Whitey Snyder would all point out that Marilyn was “lonely and had so few friends” principally because Greenson had cut her off from the world. They further agreed that her psychotherapy didn’t help her much, and the more time and money she invested in it, the more depressed she became. As for the “day” and “night” nurse, they were one and the same, and her name was Eunice Murray.

  • • •

  “Marilyn and I kept in touch by telephone,” said Ralph Ro
berts. “Late in 1961, she called and said she’d be coming to New York for a few days. She missed Joe DiMaggio and wanted to see him. She said he was going to lend her some money. She’d borrowed from him in the past. She surprised me by stating she was having a miserable time of it in therapy but figured her best option for the moment was to remain with Greenson. She said she missed her New York friends and asked me to return with her to California when she flew back. ‘What about Dr. Greenson? He won’t approve,’ I said. ‘To hell with him,’ she responded.”

  The plane Marilyn boarded for New York encountered engine trouble and had to return to Los Angeles. Waiting for the airline to arrange a second flight, she sent DiMaggio a telegram: “Dear Dad Darling, . . . Leaving again on another plane at 5 p.m. . . . I thought about two things, you and changing my will. Love you, I think, more than ever.” Marilyn signed the telegram “Mrs. Norman,” one of her many pseudonyms.

  DiMaggio gave Marilyn a check for $15,000 and arranged to visit her in Los Angeles over Christmas and New Year’s. She flew back to California with Ralph Roberts. “She felt happy she and Joe were going to share the holidays together,” Roberts recalled. “She called him her ‘best friend ever.’ ‘I love him and always will,’ she went on. ‘The problem with our marriage was that Joe formulated an image in his stubborn Italian mind of a traditional wife—one who would be faithful, do what he told her to do, and devote all her time to him. There was no way I could stop being Marilyn Monroe and suddenly become someone else, even if I’d wanted to. It didn’t take either of us very long to realize the situation and end our marriage. But it didn’t end our love for each other.’ ”