Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (28 page)

“Jackie probably left the meeting feeling that Pat was completely useless to her,” said Brennan. “She accepted Pat’s money and took off with her Secret Service agent to her home on Squaw Island. Later, I was at a party with Pat and Peter, and Pat said, ‘You know, Jackie is still upset about this Marilyn thing. What do you think about that?’ And Peter said, ‘With all she has to worry about, she’s still worried about Marilyn? I think that’s absolutely priceless,’ to which Pat said, ‘I agree. Isn’t it?’ Then they shared a laugh. It seemed to me that they both rather enjoyed the fact that Jackie was annoyed, as if she was somehow getting her

comeuppance for some transgression that I didn’t know about.”

Marilyn Monroe’s Death

M
arilyn Monroe’s actions during the last day and night of her life have been studied and documented by dozens of bi- ographers and historians in seemingly countless books about the tragic movie star. It is known that on her last day of life Marilyn Monroe was greatly distressed. Dr. Ralph Green- son, who saw her late that afternoon, observed that she seemed “somewhat drugged and depressed” and, as a pre- caution, asked Marilyn’s housekeeper, Eunice Murray, to spend the night with her.

Alone in her bedroom with her pills, Marilyn Monroe took her phone with her, put on a stack of her favorite Frank Sinatra records, and closed the door. She made a series of phone calls to reach out to friends such as Peter Lawford and Sydney Guilaroff, her hairdresser. She often called people to tell them that she was thinking about committing suicide. In fact, she had tried to kill herself on numerous occasions in the past, and had been saved just in time by the people she had warned of her intentions.

Whether she had actually intended it to happen or whether it was purely an accident, on this evening Marilyn Monroe slipped under the complete control of the many pills she had taken. Some time later in the evening, in the stillness of her locked bedroom, alone, naked, her hand

still clutching the phone, she closed her eyes for the final time.

On August 6, Bobby and Ethel were with their San Fran- cisco host John Bates when they heard the news on the radio: Marilyn Monroe was dead. Bates recalls, “To tell you the truth, we didn’t treat it that seriously. Bobby said some- thing like, ‘Wow. Imagine that. Marilyn’s dead.’ It was taken lightly by both him and Ethel.”

Ed Guthman, Bobby Kennedy’s press representative, was also in San Francisco, where Bobby was set to address the American Bar Association. He says that Bobby had a slightly more emotional reaction. “We talked about the terri- ble tragedy,” Guthman said. “He said, ‘How terrible. How truly terrible.’ That was about it.”

“I believe it was Monday morning when I heard from Ethel,” says her assistant, Leah Mason. “Bobby was going to give his speech to the lawyers that day, and I believe she said they were headed to Seattle after that for the World’s Fair. Then they were going fishing on the Washington coast before camping on the Olympic Penin- sula with Justice [William O.] Douglas. She called me at Hickory Hill specifically to tell me that if anyone called to ask about Marilyn’s death, they should be told to contact Mr. Kennedy’s office. That I shouldn’t have any comment. Nobody called, though. I didn’t get one call. . . . Mrs. Kennedy sounded upset,” says Mason. “She said, ‘That poor woman, she actually killed herself. Can you believe it? I’m sure she must have overdosed. How terrible.’ ”

Ethel knew virtually nothing about Monroe; it appears that she considered reaching out to any survivors Monroe

might have had. “I wonder if she has a mother living, or any children,” she said to Mason. “I don’t know a thing about her. You find out.”

Later that day Mason did some research and found out that Marilyn had died childless, that her father was un- known, and that her mother was in a mental hospital some- where. The next day Ethel called Mason. “I then told her what I learned about Marilyn’s family,” Mason remem- bers. “Ethel was quiet for a moment. Then she said, ‘How awful,’ and hung up the phone without even saying good- bye.”

Jackie Kennedy flew to New York from Virginia with four tennis racquets, a golf bag, and eleven suitcases in preparation for her trip to Ravello for the vacation suggested by her sister, Lee Radziwill. The trip had been specifically designed to help Jackie forget her Marilyn-related problems. Ironically, on that same day, while in New York, Jackie heard about the movie star’s death from news reports—and almost canceled the vacation.

Nunziata Lisi, who had helped organize and plan the trip and was anxious to meet the First Lady, recalls, “I received a telephone call from Lee telling me that she had just heard from Jackie, and that Jackie wanted to cancel the trip be- cause Marilyn Monroe had died. I was shocked. This was the first I had heard of her death. She said that Jackie was ‘bloody distressed’ about it.

“Then that’s even more reason for her to come,” Lisi re- members having told Radziwill.

“That’s what I think,” Lee told her. “But Jacks [Lee’s nickname for her sister] is very distraught, and she wants to go back to Virginia now. She said she’s in no mood for a va- cation.”

“But I don’t understand why she cares so much about a death of this movie star,” Lisi said. “I know it’s terrible, but—
really
!”

Lisi recalls that there was a pause on the line, after which Lee said, “What can I tell you? She had great empathy for this person. I don’t know why . . . I don’t even know that she’s met her.”

Two hours after her first conversation with Nunziata, Lee called back.

“Guess what!” she said, brightly. “Jackie’s coming after all. I talked her into it. Thank goodness. I think the trip will do her a world of good.” Jackie would be accompanied by her daughter, Caroline, Maud Shaw, and three Secret Ser- vice agents. Her son, John, would stay behind, sick with the flu.

It would seem that she never openly discussed it, so it’s not known exactly why Jackie Kennedy was so upset about Marilyn’s death, only that she most certainly felt great anxi- ety over it. In the end, Jackie’s specific feelings about Mari- lyn Monroe remain as much a mystery as the movie star’s death. However, unlike what has been assumed for decades, Jackie most certainly was impacted by Monroe’s death, as was made clear to observers before and during her trip to Ravello, which was described by a White House press re- lease as “a private vacation.”

As distressed as she was about Marilyn’s death pri- vately, in public Jackie remained remote and detached from it. She released a simple statement to the media: “She will go on eternally,” the release said. With that im- personal statement, Jackie Kennedy closed the subject of Marilyn Monroe, refusing to ever discuss her again pub- licly.

Jackie Goes Away to Think

T
he picturesque clifftop village of Ravello, Italy, some twenty-five miles south of Naples on the Gulf of Salerno, must have seemed to Jackie a million miles away from her marital woes. El Episcopio, the twelve-room villa that Lee Radziwill had rented for her sister, was perched like a swallow’s nest on top of a steep, eleven-hundred-foot cliff. The sixteenth-century villa, with its own private beach across the bay, had been inhabited by the last King of Italy, Vittorio Emmanuel III, and his wife, Elena. It was the per- fect place for the kind of isolation Jackie seemed to require after the death of Marilyn Monroe. This was actually Jackie’s second time in Ravello; she had visited a decade earlier when she was a student in France, but only for a night.

From her room, Lee’s view was a spectacular panorama of ice-blue sky and deep aqua water. As she opened her win- dow, a cool sea breeze filled the room. “After breakfast, I’ll introduce you to my sister,” she promised her friend Nunzi- ata Lisi. “She’s so troubled these days. Her husband is mak- ing her crazy, you know?”

As they gossiped about Jackie’s troubles, the two women stared out the window at the thrilling scenic view. Lowering their gaze, they noticed a lone figure perched on one of the jutting rocks below.

“Why, that can’t be her, can it?” Nunziata said.

Nunziata recalls that Lee went to a dresser, opened a drawer, and pulled from it a large pair of binoculars. She

then went back to the window and began peering through the glasses at the scene below.

“Oh, my God,” she exclaimed. “That
is
her.” She handed the binoculars to Nunziata.

“Why, she looks like the loneliest woman in the world, doesn’t she?” Nunziata said.

Lee sighed deeply. “That is so like her to be sitting down there by herself,” she said sadly. “My poor, poor sister. She has it all, but she has nothing.”

“But that’s just not safe,” Nunziata said, ignoring Lee’s comment about Jackie and still looking through the glasses. It had been a long, steep walk for Jackie to get to the coast, three hundred uneven steps ending at a small rocky landing. Alone with her thoughts, Jackie was so still that she seemed at one with the scenery, as if she were a statue. “She shouldn’t be sitting down there,” Nunziata said, alarmed. “Why, one good wave, and America will have lost its First Lady.”

“Oh, let’s just leave her,” Lee said after a moment’s hesi- tation. “She’s thinking. That’s why I brought her here, any- way. To think.”

“But . . .”

“Don’t worry,” Lee said. “I guarantee that there’s a Secret Service man somewhere.”

Lee took the glasses from her friend and scanned the area. “See, right over there, behind that rock, there’s one,” she said, pointing.

Then, after a beat: “And there! Look—another. And over there—look, still another.”

Because of the way Jackie had reacted to Marilyn’s death, Lee wanted her sister’s vacation to be special. The spot had been recommended to her by millionaire Gianni Agnelli

who, with his brother Umberto, manufactured the Italian Fiat automobile. (Gianni had met Jack and Jackie earlier, in 1955, on board Aristotle Onassis’s yacht.) Lee had decided that the usual chef employed by the villa was not suitable and instead hired a sophisticated French chef she knew in London. She also organized a ten-car procession with police motorcade to pick up Jackie at the airport.

Mayor Lorenzo Mansi and practically the entire popula- tion of Ravello (2,500 people) were on hand to greet Jackie at the bottom of the hill leading to the resort. A troupe of six- teen children, wearing traditional Italian costumes, per- formed a tarantella dance, much to Jackie’s delight. Meanwhile, all of the quaint shops in Ravello had been dec- orated by the owners in carnival colors to celebrate Jackie’s visit.

Paolo Caruso, head of the tourist bureau at that time, re- calls, “It was like the arrival of a saint, the way she was treated by the Ravellesi. She looked beautiful in white harem pants and white top, with black belt and matching bag and gloves. She had on a white scarf, tied around her neck, which she took off after a while. She smiled, waved, and was very gracious.”

“Privately, I found her to be a very quiet, very sad person when I finally got to meet her,” Nunziata Lisi said. “She, the Prince, Lee, I, and a bunch of others went on Gianni’s [Ag- nelli] yacht,
The Agnelli
, on her first evening at the resort. We sailed under the stars to Capri, which was about twenty miles. We ate spaghetti and piccata and drank the local wine. It was an evening of almost intolerable sweetness and melancholy.

“Irene Galitizine-Medici, who was one of the country’s top designers, was also aboard with her husband. I remem-

ber that Jackie didn’t like her at all. At one point, Irene said to her, ‘My dear, I would love to design some little frock for you to wear to one of those fabulous White House balls.’ Jackie stared at her rather coolly and said, ‘Dear, I don’t wear little frocks, and I already have a designer, thank you.’

“She was in a bad mood the entire trip, very preoccu- pied,” recalls Nunziata Lisi. “As if things couldn’t get worse, she had just gotten a wire from her secretary that her cat (Tom Kitten) had died. The poor dear was upset about that as well. So we were on the yacht, drifting on the Mediterranean, and some person said, ‘Have you heard this awful news about Marilyn Monroe?’ and I noticed Jackie immediately become very rigid. Lee interrupted quickly and said, ‘Oh, please. Nothing unpleasant while on the way to Capri.’