The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe (48 page)

Mickey Song, Marilyn's hairdresser at the event, stated, “While I was working on Marilyn, she was extremely nervous and uptight. The dressing
room door was open and Bobby Kennedy was pacing back and forth outside, glaring at us. Finally, he came into the dressing room and said to me, ‘Would you step out for a minute?' When I did, he closed the door behind him, and he stayed in there for about fifteen minutes.”

While waiting in the hall outside the dressing room, Mickey Song could hear Kennedy and Marilyn having an argument. The attorney general's voice was growing louder and louder, and he was using expletives. When Kennedy came out he said to Song, “You can go in now,” and then unexpectedly grabbed Song by the arm and demanded, “By the way, do you like her?”

Song recalled nodding enthusiastically that he did.

“Well, I think she's a rude fucking bitch!” Kennedy exclaimed as he stormed down the hall.

When Song entered the dressing room he noticed that Marilyn was disheveled. She tried to smile and asked, “Could you help me get myself back together?”

Marilyn grew terrified as showtime approached, and had some champagne to steady her nerves. She had difficulty in remembering a stanza of the birthday song that had been written especially for the president. Richard Adler, the producer of the show, had suggested to Jack Kennedy that Marilyn be cut from the production because he felt she might flub her song lines. “Oh, I think she'll be very good,” Kennedy responded.

During the show, the president sat in the presidential box, his feet up on the rail, smoking a cigar. Bobby and Ethel Kennedy sat nearby. Jackie Kennedy had begged off. When she heard that Marilyn was going to be there she elected to go horseback riding in Virginia.

While emcee Peter Lawford built up the running gag that led to her entrance, Marilyn sat in the wings. She had lost her white knight, and as she waited for her cue her terror increased. Milt Ebbins recalled that she was heavily fortified by champagne well before her cue at the finale. At last, Lawford said, “Mr. President, because, in the history of show business, perhaps there has been no one female who has meant so much, who has done more…Mr. President—the
late
Marilyn Monroe!” There was a thunderous ovation as the spotlights picked up Marilyn's entrance. The thousands of rhinestones created around her a halo of luminosity, and she seemingly floated toward the microphone. Handing Lawford the white ermine jacket she had secretly borrowed from the Fox wardrobe depart
ment, she began softly singing to the president in her inimitable breathless manner—giving each syllable a meaning all its own:

Singing over the raucous laughter and applause, she then rendered a flawless rendition of the special verse written by Richard Adler to the tune of “Thanks for the Memories!”:

As the giant birthday cake was wheeled onto the stage, Marilyn led the throng in another chorus, then stepped away from the microphone as the president took the stage during an overwhelming ovation and said, “Thank you. I can now retire from politics after having had, ah, “Happy Birthday” sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way.”

After Marilyn's performance, she was literally carried back to her dressing room, where she complained to her maid, Hazel Washington, of feeling dizzy. The stress of the event was exhausting, and she had a recurrence of the sinusitis. Hazel tried to persuade her to return to the apartment, but Marilyn insisted on attending a postgala party at the penthouse of theater magnate Arthur Krim. “I was very worried about her,” said Hazel Washington. “From that evening on, Marilyn just kept getting sicker and sicker, but she wouldn't stop.”

She was escorted to Arthur Krim's party by her former father-in-law, Isadore Miller, whom Marilyn introduced to the president and the attorney general. She had been the hit of the gala, and she mesmerized the crowd as she moved through the party from group to group receiving congratulations for her stunning performance. Adlai Stevenson, who attended the Krim party, said later, “I don't think I had ever seen anyone so beautiful as Marilyn Monroe that night. She was wearing skin and
beads. I didn't see the beads! My encounters with her, however, were only after breaking through the strong defenses established by Robert Kennedy, who was dodging around her like a moth around a flame.”

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., noted, “There was at once something magical and desperate about her. Bobby, with his chivalry, his sympathy and absolute directness of response, got through the glittering mist surrounding Marilyn as few did.” But Bobby Kennedy's “directness of response” and backstage maneuvers hadn't gotten through the mist surrounding Marilyn's determination to appear at the gala.

Later during the course of the party, the president and Bobby Kennedy escorted Marilyn to a quiet corner where the three held a private but animated conversation for a quarter of an hour. Although a number of photographs were taken of this occasion, only one photograph survives, the rest having been destroyed by the Secret Service. Dorothy Kilgallen later reported that Marilyn and Bobby Kennedy danced five times during the evening, while an angry Ethel Kennedy looked on. As they walked from the dance floor, they encountered uninvited White House journalist Merriman Smith. Smith was making notations in his notebook, and at two-thirty in the morning, Secret Service agents were banging on Smith's door to interrogate him about his notes. “They wanted to make sure I didn't write about Marilyn and Bobby.” Agents also appeared at eight-thirty the next morning in the photo lab of
Time
magazine and demanded the photo negatives showing the Kennedys and Monroe at the Krim party.

In the early hours of Sunday, the president and Marilyn left the party and took a private elevator that descended to the basement of the Krim apartment building. From there they walked through the labyrinth of tunnels that connected it to the Carlyle Hotel and the private elevator to the Kennedy penthouse overlooking Manhattan. It was the denouement of a very special day, and what Marilyn hoped would be the dawn of a new dream. But it proved to be the beginning of a rapid descent into a nightmare.

She never saw Jack Kennedy again.

W
hen Marilyn drove to the airport to fly back to Los Angeles, she decided to dispense with her disguise—her wig and sunglasses—and enjoy her new pinnacle of fame. If the public hadn't seen her singing “Happy Birthday” to the president on the network news, they had undoubtedly seen photos of the gala on page one of the Sunday morning paper. Her arrival at the airport caused a near riot that had to be quelled by an emergency call for police assistance.

Aided by amphetamines, Marilyn reported for work at 6:15
A.M.
on Monday, May 21, thirty-three hours after the gala. She sent word to George Cukor that she was prepared to film the scenes scheduled for the day, but close-ups were ruled out. She was obviously ill, and makeup artist Whitey Snyder couldn't hide the evidence of fatigue from her whirlwind weekend. To complicate matters, Dean Martin had reported for work despite a bad cold and a temperature, and studio doctor Lee Siegel advised Marilyn against working with Martin until his fever was gone.

On Tuesday afternoon, Pat Newcomb called photographer Lawrence Schiller at his home. “I would plan to be on the set all day tomorrow if I were you, Larry, and bring plenty of film,” advised Newcomb, “Marilyn
has the swimming scene tomorrow and, knowing Marilyn, she might slip out of her suit!” The scene was a midnight swimming sequence in which Marilyn, in the nude, would lure Dean Martin from Cyd Charrisse's bed. No actual nudity was planned; normally, a body stocking was worn to create the illusion. But Newcomb knew the film needed a publicity boost and that this could be a photo opportunity not to be missed. That she did the scene
des nuda
took everybody by surprise. “She was aware that she still had a fabulous body,” recalled Robert Slatzer, “and this was a way to show the world that she wasn't over the hill at the age of thirty-six.”

As Schiller and photographer Billy Woodfield took their photos, Monroe swam to the edge of the pool and put one leg up on the rim. In another sequence she sat on the pool steps, looking over her shoulder in wide-eyed innocence. Word quickly spread on the Fox lot that Marilyn was doing a nude scene.

“The reaction was incredible,” recalled Henry Weinstein. “Everyone wanted to get on that set. It became a stampede.” The producer called for emergency security guards to bar the stage entrance.

With her fever quelled by amphetamines and her headaches eased by Demerol, Marilyn was in the water for four hours while the shutters clicked and Cukor rolled the cameras. Schiller and Billy Woodfield orchestrated an international bidding war for the photographs and they appeared on covers of seventy magazines in thirty-two countries. Schiller and Woodfield made over $150,000—more than Marilyn's salary on the film.

The next day Fox executives screened the dailies of Monroe's “midnight swim,” and they were ecstatic. Marilyn had been on the set all week. On Sunday, Lee Siegel gave Dean Martin a clean bill of health and said he was well enough to work with Monroe. There was reason for optimism.

On Monday, May 28, Cukor had scheduled an eight-minute scene with Marilyn, Dean Martin, Cyd Charisse, and Tom Tryon. But something was wrong with Marilyn that Monday morning. Tom Tryon was one of the first to sense that she was in trouble. “What's the matter with Marilyn?” he whispered to the director. Cukor agreed that something was very wrong. “I've never seen her like this,” he said. “She looks like she's falling apart.”

“From the moment she came on the set, she looked like a piece of fine crystal about to shatter,” said Tom Tryon. “All of her moves were ten
tative and tenuous. In the first take she only had two words to say, which were ‘Nick, darling,' but she couldn't get the words correct no matter how many times we tried it. My heart went out to her.”

News of the problems on the set quickly rippled through the Fox rumor mill. A switchboard operator recalled that “Marilyn tried to reach Frank Sinatra.” Unable to locate him, Marilyn learned through Mickey Rudin's office that Frank was performing on a world tour.

Following ten agonizing takes, in which Marilyn began stuttering, Cukor began treating her with growing impatience and Marilyn ran from the set. “She almost knocked me over,” recalled Hazel Washington. “Cukor was acting like a bully—making a bad situation worse.” Running hysterically into her studio bungalow, she grabbed a scarlet lipstick and scrawled several times on the mirror, “Frank, help me! Frank, please help me!” before collapsing.

Weinstein found her behavior quite puzzling. When Marilyn had finished filming on Friday, she was in excellent spirits. She had several glasses of Dom Pérignon with members of the cast and crew she invited to her bungalow. Later she met with Larry Schiller to approve selected stills from her nude scene. She was delighted over the angles caught by Schiller's camera, and he found her “vibrant and excited.” As she waved good-bye that Friday night when she drove off to Brentwood in her limousine, the photographer admired her determination and effervescent spirit. She then vanished for seventy-two hours. Appointments were broken. Phone calls weren't returned. Dinner dates were canceled.

“This was perhaps the most mysterious weekend of Marilyn's life,” said Weinstein. “It was even more puzzling than the day of her death. Something terrible happened to her that weekend. It was deeply personal, so personal that it shook Marilyn's psyche. I saw it happen, and I blame myself for not immediately calling Dr. Greenson and asking him to return.” Weinstein dates the beginning of the events that led to Marilyn's “slide to death” as something that happened to her after she left the studio on Friday, May 25.

It wasn't long before the Hollywood rumor mill started grinding out stories concerning what may have occurred on that fateful weekend. Some said she had an abortion, others said that she had been on a LSD trip with Timothy Leary, still others said she had an episode of the same madness that struck her mother. Every possible combination of tabloid trauma was rumored and even printed as fact.

“I don't think we'll ever know for sure about what happened that weekend,” Weinstein said. “I mean, there are a few people who do know. Somebody who I think really knew what happened is Pat Newcomb.”

What happened that mysterious weekend related to a chain of circumstances that occurred shortly after the presidential birthday gala. On May 22, the Oval Office received an urgent call from J. Edgar Hoover. He wanted to see the president on a matter of national security. It was to be another one of the rare meetings these powerful adversaries would have during the “Thousand Days.” Their battle of wills had skirmished in the subcellars of Pennsylvania Avenue for over two decades of public life, and a meeting was scheduled for Thursday, May 24, just five days after the gala. It is possible that the conversation between the two may be one of the 270 confidential Oval Office conversations secretly recorded by President Kennedy and now secured within the confines of the Kennedy Library. But it is doubtful that the public will ever hear the recording.

Hoover was well aware that the clandestine relationships with Monroe and Judith Campbell Exner had continued despite warnings of the inherent danger. If Kennedy persisted in this pattern of behavior, which went back to the days of Inga Arvad, it could conceivably bring down the presidency in the midst of an escalating cold war crisis over Cuba.

The vehemence of Hoover's warning can be judged only by the effect.

On the very day of JFK's meeting with Hoover, May 24, 1962, word went out to the Oval Office switchboard that calls from Marilyn Monroe would no longer be accepted, and the private number the president had given her was disconnected. They never saw or spoke to each other again. Jack Kennedy called Judith Campbell Exner himself to tell her the relationship had to end, but he left the responsibility of telling Marilyn to his brother-in-law, Peter Lawford. Patricia Seaton Lawford confirmed that it was left to Peter to inform Marilyn of the president's decision. On Saturday, May 27, Eunice Murray recalled, “Somebody had called long-distance—somebody close to the Kennedy family.” That “somebody” was Peter Lawford calling from Hyannisport. It was a job he didn't relish. He knew how much the liaison with the president meant to Marilyn.

Lawford knew he had to be blunt. He decided to let Marilyn know in no uncertain terms that the relationship was over, according to Patricia Seaton Lawford. “There was no effort to let her down easily. She was told that she'd never be able to speak to the president again—that she was never going to be the First Lady. She was not even a serious affair.” When
Marilyn broke down, Peter said, “Look, Marilyn, you're just another one of Jack's fucks.”

Pat Newcomb was the logical person to look after Marilyn. Alarmed at Marilyn's state of mind and afraid that in her hysteria the film star might call one of her press friends and reveal her relationship with the president, Newcomb literally moved in that weekend, bringing her own bottle of sedatives to be sure that Marilyn was well supplied. According to Eunice Murray, “Pat Newcomb moved in for a couple of days to take over Marilyn's care. Pat said she knew just what to do. Presumably, bringing her own sedatives along to let Marilyn use until her doctor returned.” Murray observed, “The door to her bedroom was closed for two days while Pat kept her sedated.” The publicist slept at the foot of Marilyn's bed and seldom left the room. Norman Jefferies, who was working at the home that weekend, stated, “Marilyn seemed to be a prisoner in her own bedroom.”

On Monday morning, the studio limousine was at her door at six to drive Marilyn to the studio. “She could hardly stand up,” said Hazel Washington, “but she insisted on working.” What had happened to Marilyn that weekend remained a mystery to the cast and crew. “We just knew she was shattered and needed help,” said Tom Tryon. But Marilyn was an amazingly resilient person. Her whole life had been a question of overcoming obstacles. There was a remarkable spirit within her that would not accept defeat. She returned to the set of
Something's Got to Give
on Tuesday afternoon with a renewed dedication. With the exception of the debacle on Monday, May 28, Marilyn worked nine straight days—May 21 through June 1. If she had lost everything else, she still had her career and her fans and her most constant secret admirer—the camera.

 

On Friday morning, June 1, 1962, the lights were burning in Marilyn's windows as early as four o'clock. Mrs. Murray was busy brewing coffee in the kitchen. She had already run Marilyn's bath and poured in the ritual one ounce of Chanel No. 5. Outside, her driver, Rudy, stood by the waiting limousine; he could hear a Frank Sinatra album playing on Marilyn's record player. He was to wait over an hour and a half while she bathed and put on her makeup. Murray noted, “she seemed to need all this, the perfume baths, the makeup, the background music, to woo that sensual persona into existence.”

Once more, Norma Jeane would conjure up her magic trick for the one-eyed black box that produced the illusion millions would come to know as “Marilyn Monroe.” Norma Jeane had no idea that this day, June 1, 1962, would prove to be the last day Marilyn Monroe would ever appear before the motion-picture cameras—the culmination of an astonishing career that had spanned sixteen years.

Ironically, this day was also her birthday. She became thirty-six, a worrisome time for a film star. The mid-thirties had been the turning point in the careers of many Hollywood actresses who were dependent on their looks. But Marilyn never looked better. She had lost some weight for the film and her beauty had acquired a delicacy that was enthralling. “To me, she looked marvelous during
Something's Got to Give
—better than she had in years,” said Whitey Snyder.

The scene being shot on June 1 was more complicated than most. Marilyn was to pass off anemic Wally Cox as the man she had shared a desert island with for seven years. She was unhappy with the poorly scripted, wooden quips she was supposed to make, but managed to turn them into something that sounded ingeniously clever on film.

During a break in filming that day, Cukor spied Pat Newcomb crossing the stage with two crystal glasses and a bottle of Dom Pérignon. “He was furious about those few sips of champagne,” said stand-in Evelyn Moriarity. “And he was angry that a birthday party was being planned for her later in the day.”

“Not on this set. Not now!” stormed Cukor.

Fox spent more than five thousand dollars on Elizabeth Taylor's birthday bash on the set of
Cleopatra
in Rome. But Fox executives, angry about the many delays in production, weren't about to spring for Marilyn's birthday party, especially one that could cause further delay. The crew had collected five dollars for a small cake, Dean Martin supplied the champagne, and the Fox commissary sent over a large urn of coffee, which it later billed to the Monroe estate. With the tawdry celebration awaiting, Marilyn, Dean Martin, and Wally Cox completed the last scene Marilyn Monroe was ever to do before a motion-picture camera. “She was wonderful in those last scenes,” recalled editor David Bretherton. “She had never been better, or displayed more perfect timing.”

For those few who have seen the entire collection of printed takes from
Something's Got to Give
, Marilyn Monroe's work is astonishing. In over six hours of dailies and edited footage that constitute all of Marilyn's completed scenes, the viewer witnesses the performance of a consummate
professional. One is struck by the fact that she never blew a line, never missed a cue, never missed her marks—despite how she may have felt either emotionally or physically. As Gable once said, “When she's there, she's really there.”

After the last take on Marilyn's last day before the cameras, Henry Weinstein escorted Marilyn to the dark edges of the soundstage where the cast, with sparklers sputtering in their hands, waited around the pitiable birthday cake. Marilyn displayed an artificial gaiety, and for the camera, she gamely fed a piece of cake to a petulant Cukor. “It was only a pretend celebration,” said Weinstein. “There was a real pall over it. I don't know why.”