The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story (23 page)

The people Monroe mingled with in Mexico during that ten-day period in February and March 1962 were already known to the FBI: José Bolaños because of his recognised ‘left-wing’ tendencies and Frederick Vanderbilt Field since he was a dedicated communist and long-time Marxist who had fled the USA in 1953 and had been in regular contact with other Mexican-based communists. Field served as Executive Secretary of the American Peace Mobilization, an organisation with ties to the Soviet Union that had been dedicated to keeping the United States from entering the Second World War. He had also been arrested during the McCarthy era for refusing to reveal names. As a long-time communist, he both supported and befriended Fidel Castro. The FBI feared that if Monroe did indeed know state secrets through her brief conversations with Bobby Kennedy, and shared them with Field, the Cuban leader would then hear them clearly, and in turn so would Nikita Khruschev, the leader of the Soviet Union.

FBI reporters on Marilyn’s case were naturally greatly alarmed when Field made it clear to associates and friends that Marilyn had several times spoken to him openly, proudly and unreservedly about her two liaisons with the Attorney General. In the FBI’s apprehensive eyes, Monroe was fast becoming a lady who spoke too freely to the wrong people about the President’s brother. J. Edgar Hoover must have been pretty worried about Marilyn’s pillow talk; indeed, after detailed examination, it becomes apparent that the bureau’s interest in the actress gained extra momentum after her alleged, but unfounded intimacy with Bobby at Peter Lawford’s home on Thursday 1 February 1962. Unfortunately, the bureau’s classification of the actress as a communist had now increased to that of a ‘liability’.

Of course, Monroe was at fault in being so liberal with delicate information at such a precarious time in American history. (Her monitoring
by the FBI would increase another notch in May when she, quite innocently, allowed Field and his wife to stay at her apartment in Manhattan during their trip to America.) But those following and filing reports on the actress must also be held accountable for the inaccuracy of some of their writings. For instance, FBI files state that ‘the subject’ (i.e. Monroe) ‘arrived in Mexico’ on Monday 19 February. But that was just not possible. The journalist camped outside Joe DiMaggio’s motel in Fort Lauderdale early on Wednesday 21 February provides us with reliable evidence that Monroe was still in Miami that morning. Furthermore, a photograph exists of DiMaggio kissing his former wife goodbye as she left his company at Miami airport that day. This information clearly demonstrates that some of the detail to be found within the FBI’s ever-growing files on Marilyn can be thrown into question.

Meanwhile, interest in Monroe’s alleged involvement with John F. Kennedy had caught the eye of some sinister organisations. Marilyn’s activities were now being monitored by the corrupt Teamster Union leader, Jimmy Hoffa, and by the Mafia, in particular by the powerful Chicago mob boss, Sam Giancana. Alongside their obvious links to the American underworld, they also had one other thing in common – a strong hatred for the Kennedys, especially Bobby who, since his appointment as Attorney General one year earlier, had made it clear he was out to nail organised crime and eradicate all ‘mob’ activities in the country. Top hoodlums such as Giancana and mobster Johnny Rosselli were soon placed under heavy physical and electronic surveillance by FBI agents. Subsequently, some form of revenge was always on the cards.

So when news reached them of Kennedy’s friendship with Monroe, the chance of obtaining incriminating, defamatory evidence against him, particularly with regard to sexual indiscretions, was an opportunity too good to miss. A plan to deposit secret listening devices inside Marilyn’s new home was soon hatched. The order to do so originated from Hoffa (FBI reports dated Wednesday 16 August 1961 reveal he was ‘out to bury the Kennedys . . . [by] every means possible’ and set up ‘listening devices on the Kennedys’ wherever feasible). When he announced his scheme to Giancana, the mobster naturally offered to help.

Bernard B. Spindel, Hoffa and America’s premier wire-tapper and eavesdropper, another zealous hater of the Kennedys, was placed in charge of the operation. Soon after his appointment as Attorney General, Bobby had ordered the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) to keep Spindel under 24-hour surveillance. Even his tax returns going back to 1957 were pulled off the shelves, dusted down and re-examined. Inaccuracies were spotted and a prosecution for ‘criminal violation of the tax code’ followed. As a result,
by 1962, Kennedy had gained another enemy. When Hoffa came to Spindel with a deal to bug Monroe’s home and to catch Bobby red-handed with the actress, Spindel leapt at the chance.

However, the man handed with the task of concealing the bugs in the property was the internationally known Hollywood private detective Fred Otash, who one year earlier had proudly hinted to anyone who would listen that he had had FBI approval since 1955. Spying on Marilyn was certainly not new to him. A bureau memo dated Friday 23 April 1965 disclosed that he had investigated the actress in 1954 at the behest of both Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio, the latter to see if his then wife had been sleeping around with other men.

Nor was snooping on John and Bobby Kennedy a novelty. An FBI document dated Sunday 10 July 1960 showed he had contacted a ‘high-priced Hollywood call-girl’ for salacious gossip about her ‘participation in sex parties’ involving Senator John Kennedy and his brother-in-law, Peter Lawford. Nine months later, in April 1961, Hollywood tabloid magazine
Confidential
confirmed it had hired him to ‘dig up dirt’ on both the Attorney General and Lawford.

So, in late February 1962, while Monroe was out and about, shopping, socialising and generally enjoying herself in Mexico, Otash – accompanied in all likelihood by his assistant, John Danoff – gained access to her house and began secreting wires and small transmitters, some no bigger than the size of a small box of matches, in the building’s loft space, her telephones and, naturally, her bedrooms. It was sophisticated, hi-tech equipment. The microphones, placed inside the mouthpieces of both of her phones, were so powerful that they were perfectly capable of eavesdropping on both her conversations and the activities in the room at the exact same time.

Proof that Monroe’s house, and most prominently her attic, was indeed a maze of microelectronic eavesdropping wires amalgamated with standard telephone lines, came from a most unlikely source. In 1982, actress Veronica Hamel, best known for her role as defence attorney Joyce Davenport in the popular US TV crime drama series
Hill Street Blues
, revealed that, shortly after her purchase of Marilyn’s home in 1972, a contractor called to modernise the property and repair, once again, its particularly leaky roof, discovered thin audio wires hidden around the house and behind a large bush on the estate. By a strange coincidence, the man had worked in the Central Corps of the United States Government before taking up his current occupation and was very familiar with wire-tapping and bugs. He recognised that these cables were not common house wires but ‘dead-room bugs’, the kind used for observations back in the 1950s and 1960s and capable of high-powered surveillance on
any given property for any length of time. In the words of a retired Justice Department official, they were ‘standard FBI issue’.

Oblivious to how involved she had become in a very dangerous game with equally treacherous people, on Friday 2 March Marilyn flew back to Los Angeles and once more took up residence at her now bug-infested home, where her attentions were drawn back towards
Something’s Got To Give
. Just a day after returning, she was once again visited by her dialect coach, Edith Evanson. ‘I spent many hours with her that day and many days afterwards,’ she recalled. ‘She never ate anything but chopped up steak [for] breakfast, lunch and dinner. Around the house, she always wore a ragged old red housecoat. She was unkempt . . . She only had two moods. One moment, she would be a little girl; the next, a serious, mature woman. There never was any young girl or young motherhood mood. Often she would dance around the house like a little girl. I remarked about it. She answered, “You know, my husbands all said that too.”’

Work turned to the new film. ‘As I spoke the lines,’ Evanson remembered, ‘she asked me to speak them as [Greta] Garbo would. “You know,” she said, “I have never seen Garbo in a movie.” So I spoke as Garbo. Marilyn loved it. After several weeks of coaching, Cukor auditioned her accent. You know, he had been Garbo’s favourite director. After the audition, Cukor was ecstatic. “She’s like a young Garbo,” he said.’

Evanson continued: ‘One morning, I was at her house for a lesson and Marilyn came in with a magnolia. I asked her where she got it. She said, “I was out walking with my boyfriend last night and this one hung low enough for me to steal it.” I said, “The magnolia is so like you; so white, so soft and so beautiful.” She answered, “Isn’t it terrible that there must be always something in life to live up to?” She looked so sad, so tragic when she said it. Marilyn did not name the boyfriend by name. I just assumed it was José Bolaños, the Mexican writer whom she had been dating.’

Late that Saturday evening, Marilyn heard, after a gap of more than ten years, from her father, Charles Stanley Gifford. The contact came via a phone call from a nurse at the Palm Springs Hospital, where the man was recovering from a severe heart attack. The nurse misleadingly informed Monroe that his condition was ‘grave’ and that it was unlikely he would survive, going on to relate to the actress, ‘His strongest desire is to see you. He keeps talking about you all the time.’

Marilyn had often attempted to track down her real father. The actress’s room-mate and fellow Hollywood star, Shelley Winters, once recalled an incident when, in March 1950, on the night that shooting had wrapped on the film
The Asphalt Jungle
, Marilyn called a man called Mortenson living in Whittier, Los Angeles, details of whom she had obtained from the
Orphan Asylum. ‘She was convinced that this man was her biological father,’ Winters recalled, ‘and she explained to the man who she was . . . A drunken male voice responded, “Listen you tramp, I have my own family, and I don’t want anything to do with Hollywood bums. Don’t you ever call me again,” and he hung up.’ It was a false lead, the wrong Mortenson.

Following confirmation by Grace McKee, she discovered Gifford was her real father and covertly passed the fact on to her trusted drama coach, Natasha Lytess. In early 1951, after discovering that Gifford was living near Palm Springs, she plucked up enough courage to drive there, accompanied by Lytess, and try to meet him. With nerves getting the better of her, she decided to stop and ring him from the area. ‘She called him three times and finally got through to him,’ Lytess recalled to show business columnist Ezra Goodman. ‘A lady answered. “I will tell him you’re calling,” she said.’

Following several agonising moments of silence, the woman returned to the phone and announced, ‘He says please see his lawyer in Los Angeles if there is some complaint.’ Gifford suddenly came to the phone. ‘His voice sounded cold and cruel,’ Lytess recalled. ‘He said, “I have a family and children.” He took her number and said he would contact her in Los Angeles.’ The call did not come and Marilyn was heartbroken.

It was only in 1961 that he finally made contact. In February of that year, while Marilyn was resting in the Columbia Presbyterian Center, he sent his daughter a get-well card. It read, ‘Best wishes for an early recovery. From the man you tried to see nearly ten years ago. God forgive me.’ But, by then, she was uninterested.

Now, after so many years of painful rejection, Marilyn’s response to the nurse’s call was to remain aloof. Her reply was short, direct and decidedly indifferent. ‘Tell the gentleman I have never met him. But if he has anything specific to tell me, he can contact my lawyer. Would you like his number?’ The nurse was initially shocked into silence and then declined to take down the attorney’s details.

Despite displaying no visible signs of emotion, Marilyn was clearly distressed by the incident and wasted no time in discussing it with Dr Greenson during a counselling session later that day. Just a day after her return from Mexico, an emotionally scarred Monroe told the doctor that, thanks to the phone call from her supposedly gravely ill father and the uncertainty surrounding
Something’s Got To Give
, her life was an ‘emotional and out of control mess’. She added that, in her eyes, the film was heading for ‘total disaster’.

Following her father’s unwelcome intervention, on Monday 5 March 1962, in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Marilyn
was once more back in the public gaze. At the 19th Golden Globes ceremony, after a poll carried out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the actress’s apparent fall from prominence proved to be premature when she was bestowed with the Henrietta Award for the World’s Favourite Female Movie Star. Now a pale-platinum blonde, Marilyn arrived at the event sporting a Norman Norell creation, a form-fitting, floor-length, backless emerald-green and black beaded, sequinned evening gown and a pair of matching, $35,000 diamond and emerald-green earrings, the latter a present given to her by Frank Sinatra during their brief relationship the previous September.

By the actress’s side at the star-studded event was José Bolaños. Having arrived in the city just a few days before, he suggested he and Marilyn meet, and his presence naturally ignited rumours in the American press of a ‘Latin lover’ in Marilyn’s life. Aside from a few short walks in the moonlight, however, there was no romance. Just days after the lavish ceremony, and with the actress clearly tired of his company and the language barrier, Bolaños was packing his bags, heading back to Mexico.

According to previous Monroe scholars, Bolaños had accompanied Monroe back to Los Angeles from Mexico. This was not the case. But he did arrive on a later plane; moreover, once more conflicting with the information presented in previous Marilyn biographies, I can reveal that he had an ulterior motive for travelling to LA, one that had nothing to do with the actress. Like Marilyn, he was planning to attend the Golden Globes ceremony, which when he landed was due to take place in three days’ time. He took the pre-booked flight in the company of the acclaimed Mexican film director Ismael Rodriguez, whose picture,
El Hombre Important
(
The Important Man
), was up for a Best Foreign Language Film award (he would win).