The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story (17 page)

Another meeting between Monroe and Kennedy supposedly took place on Tuesday 20 September 1960, at a party to celebrate the official assumption of control of the Cal-Neva Lodge by Frank Sinatra and his pals. The singer’s star-studded guest list that night apparently included Joseph Kennedy and his son John. But, once again, that was simply not
feasible. On the day of the celebration, JFK was on a tour of New Jersey, West Virginia and Washington campaigning and promising that, if he was elected President of the United States, he would ‘launch within 90 days three programs to bolster national defence, send more help to underdeveloped countries and attack poverty at home’. Later that Tuesday evening, while Frank and his guests were partying the night away in Lake Tahoe, Kennedy was on nationwide television outlining how, if nominated, he intended to deal with the Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev. (It was impossible to miss. The live 30-minute coast-to-coast transmission began at 8.30 pm Eastern Daylight Time and was screened on 180 ABC-affiliated stations.)

The following day, Wednesday 21 September, Kennedy launched his second big campaigning tour with appearances in Tennessee and Iowa. It is absurd to suggest that he could travel all the way from the eastern seaboard to Lake Tahoe in a day or less, while at the same time managing to avoid any press coverage of his visit. However, Marilyn
was
at the Cal-Neva on the night of Tuesday 20 September. With husband Arthur Miller by her side, she joined in the festivities, watching performances by Sinatra and singer Andy Williams. It is therefore safe to assume that JFK’s only presence in the Cal-Neva that night came by way of the television set when Frank and his patrons tuned into his coast-to-coast address.

Several times during the filming of
The Misfits
, Marilyn and the cast and crew travelled up to the lodge for the evening. One such visit took place on Saturday 13 August, when the actress was pictured sitting at a table chatting with Sinatra and Bert ‘Wingy’ Grober, the club’s former owner. Watching a performance by Frank in the Indian Room at the establishment concluded her night. It was Monroe’s very first trip to a club she was infamously to visit again in late July 1962.

Belief that Monroe and Kennedy were clandestinely seeing each other in late 1960 was actually born out of a short piece by Art Buchwald, the American humorist and long-time columnist for
The Washington Post
. In his article entitled ‘Let’s Be Firm On Monroe Doctrine’, published on Saturday 19 November, he wrote:

Who will be the next ambassador to Monroe? This is one of the many problems President-elect Kennedy will have to work on in January. Obviously you can’t leave Monroe adrift. There are too many greedy people eyeing her, and now that Ambassador Miller has left she could flounder around without any direction.

Credence that Buchwald had some kind of inside knowledge on their liaison came from the fact that, during the late 1950s, he and Monroe
were rumoured to be romantically involved. During this time, it was believed, he had introduced her to Judaism, to which she did later convert. Furthermore, it was said that Marilyn was the basis in part for a character in Buchwald’s 1958 novel A
Gift from the Boys
. They had remained friends and therefore it was rumoured that the fact that Monroe was seeing the President-elect had originated from her own lips.

As we know, Monroe was a master of self-publicity and would often leak valuable inside information about herself to influential show business columnists such as Buchwald. However, in this case, she did
not
. Buchwald was nonetheless famous for his humorous, astute digs at Washington politicians and so, with the news that Marilyn’s marriage to Arthur Miller had collapsed coming just four days after JFK had won the American presidential race, he obviously thought it was the perfect opportunity to link the two famous names together. What started off as a satirical, quite innocent, disposable remark went on to be used as evidence by rumourmongers and conspiracy theorists to prove that Marilyn and Kennedy were romantically involved.

In the weeks leading up to Buchwald’s piece, it was, once again, impossible for the two of them to be together. Filming of
The Misfits
wrapped in Reno on Friday 4 November 1960, after which Monroe flew back to New York and spent several days (until at least Tuesday 15 November) resting in her apartment and fending off questions from reporters about the break-up of her marriage to Miller.

At this juncture, Kennedy was away in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts and at precisely 2.30 on the afternoon of Friday 11 November, just two days after winning, by the slimmest of margins, the American presidential race, he flew out to Palm Beach, Florida for a working vacation. His private plane stopped in Washington to allow his pregnant wife Jacqueline to disembark and, once he reached his destination, he headed straight for his father Joseph’s summer house. Five days later, on Wednesday 16 November, Kennedy flew out alone to the Texan ranch of the new administration’s Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson. Scandal-mongers influenced by Buchwald’s piece and desperate to pinpoint a November 1960 rendezvous between Marilyn and JFK quite conveniently failed to locate this information.

Rumours that the actress and the President-elect met up in New York during January 1961 still persist. True, the two of them
were
in the city at varying times during this period, but the chances of them having clandestine meetings were once again extremely remote. Kennedy arrived on the East Coast of America for the first time that month on Wednesday 4 January to discuss with his defence chief, Robert S. McNamara, the critical background of broken Cuban-US relations. He remained in Washington at
the White House for one full week until Wednesday 11 January when he flew out to Palm Beach. He returned to New York six days later, on Tuesday 17 January, and took up his obligatory residence in the Carlyle Hotel.

Marilyn meanwhile spent most of the month relaxing in her East 57th Street, New York apartment, receiving massages from Ralph Roberts, attending special screenings of
The Misfits
, approving stills from the film and enjoying nights further out with her former husband, Joe DiMaggio. Their reunion, following her separation from Arthur Miller, had taken place just two weeks previously, on the evening of Christmas Day 1960. It was a case of two former lovers finding themselves bereft of company for the festive period. She called him on the night of Sunday 25 December, immediately after receiving his gift, a large bunch of poinsettias. (The cluster of flowers was so huge that Marilyn jokingly referred to them as a ‘forest’.)

DiMaggio knew instinctively she would call him after receiving his unexpected gift. ‘Who in the hell else do you have in the world?’ he asked during their conversation. ‘I was married to you and know you’re not bothered about friends or in-laws.’ DiMaggio confirmed what the actress already knew: despite her worldwide fame, she was still an exceedingly lonely woman.

He then asked Marilyn out for a drink. ‘But you don’t drink,’ the actress insisted. ‘I occasionally drink,’ he replied. ‘Well, it would have to be a very, very dark place then,’ she insisted. Joe asked Marilyn what she was doing on Christmas evening. When she replied, ‘Nothing,’ DiMaggio agreed to drive over. He ended up staying for several days and their friendship was rekindled. From that moment on, they were almost inseparable.

On Saturday 7 January 1961, she was seen relishing his company at a New York theatre and restaurant. Eight days later, on Sunday 15 January, one day past their seventh wedding anniversary, Marilyn and Joe made it public that they were once again seeing each other when they dined together at the Le Pavilion restaurant and attended the closing night performance of the play
The Hostage
at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre. The couple even sat in Row B so everyone could plainly see them. (Marilyn had phoned the auditorium’s box office and booked the plum seats herself.) Curious onlookers walked up and down the aisles just to get a better glimpse of the reunited pair.

Two nights later, on Tuesday 17 January, the day that JFK returned to New York, Monroe was once more spotted at Le Pavilion, sharing steaks with her former husband. This time they were joined by George Solotaire, the Broadway ticket broker and long-time friend of DiMaggio. Earlier in the day, Marilyn and Joe were seen walking around Sutton Place and were pictured chuckling at pages in Maurice Zolotow’s recently released biography of the actress.

News that she had seemingly renewed her acquaintance with the baseball legend naturally became a big story. ‘Marilyn And Joe Are Dating’, screamed
The Press Courier
newspaper. A close pal of DiMaggio’s was even quoted as saying (in the
Lowell Sun
newspaper on Wednesday 18 January), ‘They
will
re-wed,’ although the actress’s press agent, John Springer, was quick to play down the renewed romance, saying, ‘She considers Joe a good friend and that’s the status of their relationship.’

On Friday 20 January, Marilyn, her publicist Pat Newcomb and New York attorney Aaron Frosch flew out of New York en route to Juarez in Mexico where, at a special night session at Judge Miguel Gomez’ court, she filed a Mexican (quickie) divorce from Miller. (‘Arthur is a wonderful writer,’ she remarked, ‘but I think he’s a better writer than a husband. I’m sure writing comes first in his life.’ As an acquaintance of the couple commented, ‘When she knew that she could never have a child, the marriage held no interest.’) It came just one day after she had signed a property settlement with him. In an attempt to avoid any unwanted publicity, Marilyn chose the day of JFK’s inauguration to put the wheels of her split into motion. (During the stopover in Dallas, the actress and her companions gathered round a television set at the airport to watch live coverage of Kennedy’s swearing-in ceremony.)

Monroe touched down across the border at El Paso Airport at 7pm Eastern Standard Time (EST). The town’s First Civil Court stayed open for three extra hours especially for the actress to file the complaint. She was represented at the 8pm hearing by the local lawyer, Arturo Sosa Aquilar. Miller did not attend, but was spoken for by Mexican attorney Areliano Gonzalez Vargas.

After the hearing, she and her two companions were driven around Juarez and shared a celebratory margarita in the city’s Kentucky Bar. Dinner at attorney Vargas’s home followed. Once the meal had been digested, Marilyn, Newcomb and Frosch returned to El Paso Airport, where they boarded a Continental flight, which took them through Albuquerque and then Denver where she had a stopover before her flight back to New York became available. Monroe’s entourage arrived back in the Big Apple at noon on Saturday 21 January. The actress then headed back to her Manhattan apartment. Three days later, on Tuesday 24 January, her divorce became absolute when her papers were signed by Judge Miguel Gomez Guerra (though they would not become effective for another two days).

JFK meanwhile, was busy himself during this period. Preparing for his inauguration on Friday was naturally uppermost in his thoughts and obviously he had no spare time whatsoever in the days preceding it. On Tuesday and Wednesday, 17 and 18 January, from his base at the
Carlyle Hotel, he met important officials and entertained show business luminaries, such as actors Anthony Quinn and Laurence Olivier and singer Ethel Merman. His encounter with the latter trio concluded with personal invites to fly them up to Washington in his private Convair CV-240 plane for his main inauguration-eve gala event, a showcase of America’s greatest talent, produced and hosted by Frank Sinatra, which was set to take place at DC’s National Guard Armory during the evening of Thursday 19 January. In effect, by participating at such an event, the President was informally acknowledging his induction into Sinatra’s Rat Pack.

Unfortunately, the joyous occasion was ruined by a rare snowstorm, the worst Washington had seen in years. Local traffic was harshly disrupted, which meant that, by the start of the concert, which had been delayed by two hours, less than a quarter of the 13,000 seats in the auditorium had been occupied. The local weather bureau announced later that, by midnight, the time Sinatra’s glossy gala was coming to an end, six inches of snow had fallen. By the morning, JFK’s inauguration day, the snow had stopped and been hurriedly cleared.

A large number of the country’s finest entertainers were in attendance at the gala, including singers Helen Traubel, Ella Fitzgerald, Ethel Merman, Mahalia Jackson, Nat King Cole and Harry Belafonte, comedians Joey Bishop, Alan King, Jimmy Durante and Milton Berle, actors Bette Davis, Angie Dickinson, Kim Novak, Fredrick March, Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis, dancers Gene Kelly and Juliet Prowse and composer Leonard Bernstein. But Marilyn was not. She did not even make the short-list. So why the rebuff? The answer was elementary. Regardless of the picture many previous biographers have tried to paint, by January 1961 Monroe’s path had still not properly crossed JFK’s. Each artist on the bill that night was either a close friend of JFK or of his family and, despite the fact he was obviously aware of Marilyn and a great fan of her work (a poster of the actress was once known to have hung on the wall above his bed), he was still a stranger to her. Furthermore, if the actress had met the President-elect in his room at the Carlyle Hotel, as many have implied, why wasn’t it reported by the American press in the same way that Ethel Merman, Laurence Olivier and Anthony Quinn’s quite innocent visits were?

To prove conclusively that Kennedy did
not
meet Marilyn during this time, we must fill in the other gaps in his timeline. On the morning of Thursday 19 January, shortly after dropping in to see his New York dentist, JFK was back at the White House for a two-hour meeting with the outgoing President, Dwight D. Eisenhower. His time on the East Coast had lasted just two days. In the period preceding his inauguration
and, aside from visits to church (on Sunday 22 January), the CIA (between 2.35 and 4.30pm on Thursday 26 January), the Andrews Air Force Base (between 11.58am and 12.09pm on Friday 27 January) and the National Press Building (between 7.46 and 7.55pm on Saturday 28 January), Kennedy remained in Washington at the White House right up to Saturday 11 February, when, at 12.35pm, he and his wife Jacqueline boarded a helicopter heading for Glen Ora, Virginia. Punctuating these dates, at 6pm EST on Wednesday 25 January JFK appeared in the very first live, nationwide US TV question and answer session with an American president.