Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love

by C. David Heymann

  “I picked up Marilyn at her house and learned that Jeanne Carmen would be joining us. Marilyn gave me a drink and poured herself one as well. We stepped outside into the garden, which was illuminated by a floodlight. She told me she’d been to a shop on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, where she’d acquired a few items of furniture and a wall hanging depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. From her local nursery she’d also purchased three more citrus trees and a half dozen rose bushes that were supposed to be delivered on August 4. I found this a bit odd in light of the fact that she kept telling me she intended to leave Los Angeles and move back to New York.”

  By this time, Jeanne Carmen had arrived, and the three of them set off for Largo. “En route,” continued Roberts, “Jeanne started talking about Robert Kennedy, which I didn’t think was a great idea. She said Bobby and Marilyn had frequently engaged in phone sex. ‘Can’t you just see the attorney general jerking his chain while Marilyn talked him through the sex act?’ To change the subject, I asked Marilyn about Joe DiMaggio. She said he and his brothers Vince and Dom had agreed to participate in an Old Timers’ charity baseball game in San Francisco on August 4 and that he’d be joining her again in Los Angeles a day later. To which Jeanne said, ‘Yeah, but he bugged your phone just like the rest of them.’ ‘If that’s true,’ responded Marilyn, ‘it’s because he wants to protect me. Listen, if it weren’t for Joe, I’d probably have killed myself years ago.’ ”

  Those were Marilyn’s last coherent words that evening. When they reached Largo, Marilyn—in her usual disguise—headed straight for the bar, ordered three bottles of champagne, handed one each to Ralph and Jeanne, chugalugged the third herself, ordered another, grabbed Jeanne’s hand, and hit the dance floor.

  “I spent the better part of the night,” said Roberts, “standing at the bar, declining offers to dance from a variety of men in leather and chains. When I drove Marilyn home at three in the morning, her eyes were vacant. She looked like a zombie. She was drunk and drugged. The sight of her in that woeful state, as she wobbled out of the car and into her house, saddened and haunted me. After that night, we spoke on the phone once or twice, but I never saw Marilyn again.”

  • • •

  That summer, Marlon Brando and Marilyn communicated by telephone every few days. In his autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me, Brando claims they often spoke for hours. They frequently discussed the prospect of doing a film together. Another favorite subject was Lee Strasberg—both actors agreed he’d used them to further his own reputation. Brando and Monroe conversed for the last time in August, when she called to invite him over for dinner together with his great pal Wally Cox. Cox, a cast member of Something’s Got to Give, had established a separate friendship with Marilyn. Brando told her he and Wally had a previous engagement but that he would call her the following week to set something up. “Fine,” she said. He noted that she didn’t sound depressed. For that matter, she sounded healthier emotionally than she’d sounded in months.

  She also called Dr. Leon Krohn, her gynecologist, and asked him over for dinner. He accepted, but after hanging up, she called him back and said she wanted to have him to dinner the same night as Marlon Brando—she wanted the two to meet. She told Krohn she’d call him back the following week.

  That evening, she ate dinner by herself at La Scala. When she returned home, she called Norman Rosten and Kurt Lamprecht, both in New York. She told each of them that she and Joe DiMaggio were probably going to marry again. “I wondered,” said Lamprecht, “if this was simply some passing romantic notion, or whether it would really come to pass. What was predictable about Marilyn Monroe is that she was totally unpredictable.”

  Norman Rosten, with whom she spoke for more than thirty minutes, thought she sounded high on drugs. She prattled on and on, barely pausing for a breath, skipping from one subject to another, repeatedly returning to Joe DiMaggio and the topic of marriage. Monroe and Rosten had once made a deal that if either one ever felt like jumping off a bridge, he or she would first notify the other. Rosten sensed no such urgency in Marilyn’s voice, only perhaps a bit of forced joy.

  Next Marilyn called Lotte Goslar. “She sounded extremely positive at first,” said Goslar. “She had all sorts of plans in the works. First of all, there was her new house. She’d never owned a house before, and she loved furnishing and decorating it. Then there was Something’s Got to Give, which would soon resume production with Marilyn once again in the lead role. And Jack Benny, on whose television show she’d once appeared, had asked her to join him in a monthlong Las Vegas revue that would net her nearly $1 million. She still wanted to visit Russia and was now thinking of going to China and Japan as well. She was reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. She’d just bought an Italian cookbook so she could learn to prepare deep-dish pizza for Joe DiMaggio. They were seriously considering the possibility of getting remarried, so much so that she’d gone ahead and ordered a wedding dress from Jean Louis, the same designer who’d fashioned the gown she wore at Madison Square Garden the night of President Kennedy’s birthday shindig. She wanted to know what I thought of the idea. I assured her I was all for it. I always had been. Of all the men she’d known, he remained the one who loved her the most and was most capable of providing her with an emotional anchor. And she, in turn, understood him. She maintained a good sense of humor about him. I remember she gave him a record album of the Great Caruso performing a selection of arias, which he never unwrapped. ‘Joe,’ she kidded him, ‘you’re the only Italian I’ve ever met who doesn’t love opera.’ ‘I love you,’ he responded, ‘and you’re more than enough for me.’

  “My conversation with Marilyn ended on an ominous note. Before marrying Joe, she vowed to hold a press conference in which she would out the Kennedys, expose them for what they were—a pair of womanizers, users and abusers. I told her I’d support whatever she chose to do, though I personally felt it was a mistake. What possible benefit could she derive from publicly humiliating the Kennedys? I had no idea, of course, that this was to be our final conversation. In retrospect, I realized Marilyn had a long and complicated history of feigned suicide attempts. She was like the boy who cried ‘wolf’ one too many times. She had a death wish but didn’t want to die. And in the end, not even Joe DiMaggio could save her. Nobody could.”

  On Friday, August 3, Peter Lawford again went to dinner with Marilyn and Pat Newcomb. Pat Lawford had departed for Hyannis Port the day before. Over dinner the actress continued her obsessive rant about Bobby Kennedy, complaining that he hadn’t even had the common decency to apologize for his actions. Although he tried, Peter Lawford wasn’t able to assuage his dinner companion’s feelings. By the end of the meal, she was practically screaming.

  At home later, unable to sleep, Marilyn resolved to speak to Bobby, even if it meant instigating the conversation herself. She phoned Peter, and he told her the attorney general was scheduled to be in San Francisco that weekend before giving an address there on Monday to a meeting of the American Bar Association. Noting the coincidence of Kennedy’s being in the same town as Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn asked where RFK would be staying. Lawford didn’t know, but he thought his wife might, and he gave Marilyn Pat’s number at the Kennedy compound in Massachusetts. The movie star called. Pat Lawford told her to try to reach Bobby at San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel.

  Marilyn left several messages for RFK at the St. Francis, which is where a lawyers’ group had booked rooms for the attorney general, his wife, and four of their children. But the Kennedy family was staying at the ranch of John Bates, a wealthy attorney (and president of the California Bar Association) who lived in Gilroy, some eighty miles south of San Francisco. Marilyn at last heard back from Bobby; after a brief and somewhat caustic conversation, he agreed to see her the following day.

  Marilyn had demanded a full-scale, face-to-face explanation from her lover as to why she’d been abandoned. Bobby would now give it to her. Early Saturday morning, August 4, he flew to Los
Angeles. From the airport he took a helicopter to the Twentieth Century–Fox lot, where Peter Lawford picked him up and drove him back to his house.

  At eleven thirty, Lawford called Marilyn to say that he and Bobby would be at her place no later than two in the afternoon. It had already been a busy morning for Monroe. At eight in the morning, Pat Newcomb, having spent the night in the guest bedroom at the Brentwood house, drove Marilyn to Dr. Greenson’s home for a ninety-minute therapy session. The actress complained that Newcomb had “slept like a baby,” while she’d suffered her usual bout of insomnia. Overwrought because of her lack of sleep and Robert Kennedy’s impending visit, Marilyn convinced her psychiatrist to renew several of her barbiturate prescriptions, including one for chloral hydrate as well as another for Nembutal. She made no mention of the fact that on July 25, Fox’s Dr. Lee Siegel had given her two prescriptions for Nembutal, neither of which she’d filled as yet. Alarmed by Marilyn’s current state of mind, Greenson also called Dr. Engelberg and suggested he see the patient. Engelberg, who’d visited with (and injected) her the day before, was waiting for her when she returned home. Under the impression that Marilyn had run out of barbiturates, Engelberg administered a combination vitamin-barbiturate injection and wrote her a prescription for twenty-five additional Nembutal. When later asked by authorities why he’d given her a prescription for Nembutal without notifying Greenson, Dr. Engelberg replied that he’d been having problems with his estranged wife and hadn’t had time to report back to Monroe’s psychiatrist. Over the years, Engelberg’s version of events continually changed. The only explanation he failed to provide for his overt willingness to overmedicate the movie star was that he had, like so many other men, fallen victim to her charms.

  Pat Newcomb, her throat suddenly sore, departed Marilyn’s home shortly after Dr. Engelberg’s arrival. When Engelberg left, Lawrence Schiller, a photographer who’d worked with Marilyn on Something’s Got to Give, drove by and gave the actress photo stills from the unfinished film, a number of which appeared in Norman Mailer’s 1973 biography of Monroe. Eunice Murray, scheduled to sleep over on Saturday night (Dr. Greenson insisted that Monroe was never to be left alone), greeted Schiller and then drove to the pharmacy to fill the various prescriptions Marilyn had collected from her three physicians. When she returned, she fielded a call from Isidore Miller, who wanted to speak to his former daughter-in-law. He’d spoken to her two days earlier, and Marilyn had assured him, “Dad, I feel fine.” In response to his August 4 call, Mrs. Murray told Isidore that Marilyn would have to call him back. She never did. Mrs. Murray was quick to notice that in her absence Marilyn had downed half a bottle of champagne and several Nembutal tablets from an old prescription. A major dilemma in the management of Marilyn’s self-medication regimen was that she often forgot how many pills she’d previously taken and would simply take them again—and again.

  • • •

  Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford arrived at Marilyn’s house at two in the afternoon. “In anticipation of our arrival,” recalled Lawford, “Marilyn had set out a buffet consisting of guacamole, stuffed mushrooms, Greek olives, and Swedish meatballs, plus a chilled magnum of bubbly. I poured myself a glass and wandered out to the swimming pool so Marilyn and Bobby could talk. Within minutes, I heard shouting. I returned to the kitchen, where they were having it out. Bobby maintained he was going to leave and return with me to my house. Marilyn insisted he spend the rest of the day alone with her.”

  They argued back and forth for a good ten minutes, Marilyn—semipolluted and high on drugs—becoming more and more hysterical. At the height of her anger, she allowed how first thing Monday morning she was going to call a press conference and reveal the details of the treatment she’d suffered at the hands of the Kennedy brothers. At this point, Bobby Kennedy became livid. He told her in no uncertain terms that she would have to leave both Jack and him alone—no more telephone calls, no letters, no threats, nothing. They didn’t want to hear from her again.

  “He would’ve probably said a lot more,” remarked Lawford, “had I not prewarned him that she might be using a hidden tape recorder. As it is, she went batshit. She absolutely lost it, screaming obscenities and heaving the contents of her half-filled glass of champagne at Bobby, but drenching me instead. I’d moved in close to Bobby in case I had to separate them, and Marilyn’s drink splattered against my face rather than his. Marilyn apologized and handed me a napkin. Bobby was already halfway out the door. I caught up to him. After we drove off, RFK suggested we contact Marilyn’s psychiatrist—maybe he could help her. So I pulled into a service station and called Dr. Greenson from a public phone booth. I described the scene that had just taken place. Greenson thanked me and said he’d drive over to see Marilyn.”

  Bobby Kennedy said little as Lawford drove in the direction of his Santa Monica beach house. “Needless to say, he wasn’t a happy camper,” observed Lawford. “I don’t think he thought Marilyn would go through with her press conference threat, but Bobby wasn’t the kind of guy who liked to lose control of a situation. ‘Well, nobody can say I didn’t try,’ he ventured. ‘She’s crazy—it’s tragic.’ Indeed, by the end, Marilyn had slid into a psychiatric pit. She’d always been afraid of winding up like her schizophrenic mother. And in a sense, that’s what was happening.

  “As for Bobby, once we reached my house, he made a telephone call, and a government car picked him up a few minutes later. So far as I know, he flew back to San Francisco, because Monday morning he gave his little talk before the bar association. Once the press started nosing around, John Bates, at whose ranch he stayed, swore up and down that Bobby had never left his place and barely knew Marilyn Monroe. Nobody believed him.”

  • • •

  Eunice Murray opened the door for Ralph Greenson at four in the afternoon. He found Marilyn in far worse shape than she’d been that morning. He attributed her despondency in part to the interaction of the medications in her system in addition to the train wreck of the near violent confrontation with Robert Kennedy.

  Ralph Roberts called Marilyn’s house at about four thirty in the afternoon. “Dr. Greenson answered,” said Roberts. “I asked to speak with Marilyn. ‘Who’s calling?’ he asked, as if he didn’t recognize my voice by now. I identified myself. ‘Ralph,’ he said, ‘this is Dr. Greenson. Marilyn is not here at the moment, and I don’t know when she’ll be back.’ It made no sense. What would Greenson be doing in her house if she wasn’t around?”

  Greenson stayed with Marilyn until five and then departed to attend a dinner party with his wife. Before he left, he suggested to Eunice Murray that she take Marilyn for a drive along the Pacific Coast Highway. It would relax her. They drove around for an hour, and when they returned, the phone rang. It was Peter Lawford. Apparently suffering an attack of conscience, he wondered how Marilyn was doing. “Better,” she said. Did she want to come to his place for dinner? He’d send out for Mexican food and maybe ask a few friends to join them, perhaps play a little poker.

  “Is Bobby Kennedy still with you?” she asked.

  “He left,” Lawford replied. “I’m all alone.”

  Marilyn thanked Peter for the dinner invitation but told him she felt tired. “I think I’ll eat a sandwich, take my pills, and try to sleep,” she said.

  As soon as she’d hung up with Lawford, Marilyn’s phone rang again. It was Joe DiMaggio Jr. calling from his marine base in San Diego. “I told Marilyn I’d broken my engagement to Pamela,” he recalled. “She seemed delighted to hear it. She never liked the girl and suggested I was too young to get married. ‘But you were only sixteen when you first got married,’ I reminded her. ‘Yeah—and divorced before you could blink an eye,’ she answered. I thought she sounded a bit spacey, but nothing out of the ordinary—not for her, at any rate. She didn’t sound depressed. On the other hand, I later realized she would’ve done and said almost anything to protect me, to prevent me from seeing her at her worst.

  “The one subject that didn’t come up in o
ur conversation was the possibility that she and my father might remarry. I never mentioned it, and neither did she. I don’t know what she had in mind; whether she intended to go through with it or not. I don’t think she herself knew what she intended to do. That’s Marilyn for you: fey, capricious, unpredictable. And when you get down to it, those were the very qualities that my father loved about her. He was stiff, regimented, and set in his ways; she was elusive, unmanageable, a creature from another realm.

  “Our conversation lasted about fifteen minutes. Had I known what she was about to do to herself, I would’ve kept her on the phone forever.”

  At approximately seven o’clock, Peter Lawford called Milt Ebbins, his business manager.

  “I’d flown with Marilyn, Pat Newcomb, and Peter from Los Angeles to New York in May when she sang ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’ at Madison Square Garden,” said Ebbins. “Peter introduced her that evening with the words ‘Mr. President, I give you the late Marilyn Monroe.’ He meant she’d been delayed coming onstage, but in retrospect it takes on a much darker meaning. In any event, I knew all about her and the Kennedy boys and how they’d shamelessly exploited her. I wasn’t surprised to hear what had transpired when Robert Kennedy went over there to deliver the final kiss-off. Peter and I spoke for a few minutes and made plans to get together the following day. Then, about an hour later, he called me back. He said Marilyn had just phoned. She appeared to be in bad shape, slurring her words and whatnot. She sounded a million miles away. And that’s when she made that now classic little farewell speech of hers. ‘Say good-bye to Pat, say good-bye to the president, say good-bye to yourself because you’ve been a good guy.’ Then her line went dead.”

  Peter Lawford wanted Milt Ebbins to call Marilyn to make sure she was okay. He gave Ebbins her phone number. Ebbins called. The line was busy. Fifteen minutes later, he tried gain. Busy. He asked the telephone operator to check the line. The operator reported that Monroe’s phone appeared to be out of order. Ebbins got back in touch with Lawford and explained that he hadn’t been able to get through. Alarmed by the possibility that something had happened to Marilyn, Lawford told Ebbins he’d drive to her house and look in on her. Ebbins stopped him by suggesting that he—Ebbins—contact Mickey Rudin, Marilyn’s lawyer. When he reached Rudin, the attorney said to Ebbins, “Tell Peter to stay put. I’ll check it out and get back to you.”