Read The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story Online
Authors: Keith Badman
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #Arts & Literature, #Actors & Entertainers, #Television Performers
Even before Sinatra’s involvement, the place had a history. In the mid-to late 1950s, the President’s father, Joseph, had supplied liquor to a previous owner, receiving hospitality for himself and his family in return. Now Sinatra wanted to create a warm and welcoming environment in which he could entertain his friends and attract customers who wanted to sample his affluent lifestyle. The venue would become a Mecca for gamblers, gangsters and entertainers alike – major stars, many of whom, his close personal friends, were booked into the new Celebrity Showroom. It was Sinatra’s own piece of paradise, a private world awash with ample supplies of girls, gambling and booze. It was also a venue bereft of rules.
Sinatra’s Rat Pack acquaintances were, naturally, frequent visitors. However, regardless of claims that she and the Kennedys stayed so frequently, they were presented with their very own cabins (Monroe’s apparently being chalet 3, originally numbered 52; John’s and Bobby’s numbers 1 and 2 respectively), Marilyn Monroe visited the Cal-Neva only occasionally – and, as we saw in Chapter 4, neither JFK nor his brother ever went there at all.
At the Cal-Neva’s opening night on Tuesday 20 September 1960, Sinatra’s guests supposedly included Joe Kennedy and his son John. In fact, not only did JFK never visit the establishment, but Kennedy senior’s only verified travels there came during the summers of 1957 and 1958. Marilyn, though,
was
present, along with the mobster Johnny Rosselli. Unsought and secreted up in the hills surrounding the casino that night were men from J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.
Over the intervening years, we’ve been reliably informed that the chief reason for Monroe’s visit to the Cal-Neva during that final weekend in July 1962 was because Bobby Kennedy was in Los Angeles on business and wanted the actress well out of the way. Previous Monroe authors have added to the myth by announcing that, during that three-day period, ‘[Bobby’s] speech to the National Insurance Association was broadcast on all three television networks.’ Meanwhile Louis McWillie, an outfit-related gambler who worked for Sinatra at the Cal-Neva, remarked, ‘There was more to what happened up there than anybody has ever told. It would have been a big fall for Bobby Kennedy.’ Another Marilyn scholar confidently announced that Marilyn’s weekend trip to Lake Tahoe was to ‘ensure her silence about the Kennedys’ and that ‘Robert Kennedy was a guest at the Cal-Neva that weekend and was hurriedly secreted out when activities that weekend turned decidedly repulsive.’
In fact these claims are entirely unsubstantiated. The Attorney General did
not
pass the weekend of Friday 27 to Sunday 29 July in Los Angeles. He actually spent that period, at the very least, 2,591 miles away in the
company of his brother John at the White House and with the rest of the Kennedy clan in Hyannis Port, where on Sunday 29 July they celebrated the birthday of America’s First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy. Such was the importance of the day, she even posed for her first official White House portrait. That weekend was a true family affair. As
The New York Post
reported, ‘A flock of Kennedys got together today for a birthday celebration – the 33rd for First Lady, Jacqueline. The family made arrangements for a party tonight after taking it easy yesterday, aboard boat and water skis, at the scene of many Kennedy reunions.’ Later that evening, Jacqueline’s birthday was celebrated at a sumptuous dinner party. It is inconceivable that, as some previous Monroe biographers have claimed, Bobby would fail to show at such an important Kennedy family event.
True, Bobby had spent some in Los Angeles that week. On Thursday 26 July, shortly after his 5am arrival in the city, he made a speech at the National Insurance Association and took up residence in room 227 at the Beverly Hills Hotel. But his stay was suspended by an anonymous call that had come through to the Los Angeles office of the FBI, in which plans to assassinate him were announced. The Attorney General hastily flew out of the city at 9am on Friday 27 July, and headed back to Washington. Presidential diaries clearly demonstrate that, later that morning, Bobby was in attendance at a 10.25am US arms control meeting at the White House. His only appointment during that birthday party weekend was on the morning of Saturday 28 July, when he attended a 9.30am White House meeting with the Department of Justice’s Assistant Attorney General, Nicholas de Belleville Katzenbach. Working from this information, it is quite clear that the suggestion that Marilyn was ushered out of Los Angeles to the Cal-Neva simply because Bobby wanted her out of the way is entirely erroneous. The Attorney General had left Los Angeles a good two days before the actress set foot in Lake Tahoe.
It was actually for three reasons that Marilyn chose to visit the lodge that weekend. First, she naturally wanted to celebrate her revised, much-improved 20th Century-Fox contract. Her updated agreement with the studio was currently being prepared and was due to be delivered to her attorney’s office in three days’ time, on Wednesday 1 August.
Second, it provided an ideal time to catch up again with Dean Martin, who was headlining in Cal-Neva’s biggest room, the plush and elegant Celebrity Showroom. There has been much confusion about who exactly was performing at the lodge that weekend. It was even suggested in one Marilyn book that singer Jack Jones (or even Frank Sinatra) was the Cal-Neva’s main attraction. Examination of the club’s concert calendar for this period, however, confirms that it
was
Dean Martin. His residency began on Friday 27 July and concluded on Thursday 2 August.
Knowing that he was performing at the venue, Marilyn thought it was the perfect time to travel there to show him the new, hot-off-the press
Something’s Got To Give
screenplay, which had been completed by the veteran variety writer Hal Kanter on Wednesday 25 July. A bound edition was hand-delivered to Fox vice-president Peter Levathes two days later, during the morning of Friday 27 July. Immediately after receiving it, he excitedly drove out to Marilyn’s home in Brentwood to hand it over to her. With shooting of the problematic
Cleopatra
finally finishing on Tuesday 24 July, Fox were keen to resume Monroe’s movie as soon as possible. Plans to recommence it on Monday 23 July were even optimistically discussed. But with interruptions still blighting the picture, it was a short-lived scheme. However, delays this time were not down to the actress; they were due to Martin.
Before starting work on his next movie, the United Artists production
Toys in the Attic
, and although his six-month commitment to
Something’s Got To Give
did not officially end until Monday 17 September, he had signed up for an interim booking on the lucrative night-club circuit, of which his Cal-Neva appearances were a part. (Recently uncovered documents reveal that Martin had actually planned to delay restarting Marilyn’s movie until the opening week of 1963, or at the very latest, February. When Fox discovered he was unavailable, the studio became impatient and began toying with the idea of replacing him. According to Hollywood gossip columnist Earl Wilson, the name of Paul Newman was even touted.)
When Monroe was informed of the new script, no doubt by way of a phone call from the studio on the morning of 25 July (the day that Darryl F. Zanuck was elected the new president of Fox), apprehension began to set in. The thought that she would soon be returning to work, with a new boss to answer to, horrified her. Paula Strasberg was hastily summoned from New York and a reservation at the nearby Bel Air Sands Hotel was immediately made for her. An extra appointment with Dr Greenson was also arranged. Marilyn saw him twice that day, once at his office, on the other occasion at her home. Dr Hyman Engelberg was another visitor. Anxiety about resuming the movie was now engulfing her and extra medicine, to help ease her emotional turmoil, was requested from both of them.
Besides writing out a prescription for sulfathalidine to help ease her colon problems, Engelberg also wrote out one for Nembutal. Greenson, in an attempt to wean her off that drug, approved one for the hypnotic sedative chloral hydrate. The order was for a bottle of 50. It was a deadly combination. As medical testimony shows, the latter slows the metabolism of the former and together they act adversely. (Greenson would write out
a prescription for 40 more chloral hydrate tablets six days later on Tuesday 31 July. Providing she took them all – which she more than likely did – between 25 July and Saturday 4 August, in addition to the Nembutal capsules Engelberg was prescribing her, Marilyn would ominously consume approximately eight chloral hydrate tablets
a day
. Without a shadow of a doubt, Greenson’s attempts to deter her from Nembutal had been nullified.) Oblivious to these perilous actions, the actress felt it unnecessary to inform each doctor about what the other had just prescribed.
The actress collected her two sets of pills from the Vicente Pharmacy during the afternoon of 25 July. Afterwards, she paid a visit to Dean Martin at his home in Mountain Drive, where they discussed resuming their movie. Their get-together concluded with Marilyn promising to show him the latest version of the script at the Cal-Neva that weekend.
The third reason for Marilyn’s getaway trip to the lodge, as suggested by Sinatra, was that it would also provide the actress with a chance to see her intimate and discuss with him again their long-proposed film plans. It would also enable her to get the hell out of Los Angeles, a city she truly detested. However, due to her Friday morning appointment with Peter Levathes, her obligatory end-of-day 4pm rendezvous with Greenson (as his invoice supplied to Marilyn’s estate on Monday 15 July 1963 testified) and her regular Saturday engagement with masseur Ralph Roberts, it was agreed that Marilyn would drop by the club only on Sunday 29 July 1962, and
not
earlier as we are informed by many biographers.
Further evidence that she was at home on Fifth Helena that Saturday comes from her phone records, which reveal that, on that day, she made two telephone calls – one lasting four minutes, the other ten – to Florida and New York City respectively. The former was to Joe DiMaggio, the latter to Isidore Miller. ‘Your voice is very clear,’ Miller informed her. ‘I know you feel well.’ She replied, ‘Dad, I feel fine.’ With this information to hand, I feel safe in speculating that her time at the Cal-Neva Lodge was just 19 hours. Furthermore, realising she would be away that weekend, Marilyn arranged for Paula Strasberg to fly home to New York on the first available flight (via American Airlines during the morning of Monday 30 July). The first-class, one-way ticket, booked via the Rand-Fields Inc. Travel & Theatre Ticket outlet at 9406 Dayton Way, Beverly Hills, cost the actress $205.59, which she paid by way of a City National Bank cheque (no. 1800) on Thursday 2 August.
So, in all certainty, Marilyn flew out of Los Angeles International Airport in Sinatra’s luxurious twin-engined private plane,
Christina
, so-called after his daughter, Tina, on the morning of Sunday 29 July. She was met at Reno Tahoe Airport by the singer’s 300-pound aide-de-camp, Ed Pucci, who proceeded to escort her the 35 miles to the lodge. Since there
was nowhere safely to land it, she did not fly up in Sinatra’s private helicopter, as has been claimed. As we saw in Chapter 4, he had smashed up the heli-pad on the Cal-Neva roof in March during a fit of anger following the President Kennedy/Bing Crosby fiasco. Furthermore, with fears that heavier helicopters might damage the building’s roof, Sinatra had taken the pad out of service.
Moreover, Peter Lawford did not accompany Marilyn during any part of her journey and, contrary to another long-held belief, neither did his wife, Pat. She was still in Hyannis Port with the rest of the Kennedy clan celebrating Jacqueline’s 33rd birthday.
That final weekend of July 1962 is a date etched in Monroe folklore for all the wrong reasons. As ‘Skinny’ D’Amato, Sinatra’s close friend, manager of the lodge and owner of Atlantic City’s popular 500 Club, once remarked, ‘There was more to what happened [that weekend] than anyone has told.’ We will examine what exactly transpired shortly. Despite the claims of many biographies, however, which said the actress was out of commission for most of the day, she actually began Sunday in fine fettle and even managed to put in a lunchtime appearance at the lodge’s regular, ladies-only, ‘Bingo & Brunch’ event.
On the door that day was James Gray-Gold, the son of major league baseball player Lefty O’Doul. In an interview for the
Hollywood Nostalgia
website he recalled, ‘There are some dates that are seared into one’s memory forever. The last hot Sunday of July 1962 is one of those days. My roommates and I took jobs as parking attendants at Cal-Neva Lodge after graduating high school . . . Since we parked the cars at Cal-Neva, nobody came in or out that we didn’t see. Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis . . . In other words, whoever showed up at the lake paid their respects at the Lodge sooner or later.’
His most interesting recollection continued. ‘It was ladies “Bingo & Brunch” that Sunday as the black Lincoln pulled in. As I happen to have been by the front doors, I took the next car matter-of-factly. A woman stepped hesitantly out of the back, head down. I took her hand to steady her. At the time I remember thinking “another one of Sinatra’s imports.” As she rose her head, that thought quickly faded. Old memories welled up inside of me. It was Marilyn Monroe and I hadn’t seen her in eight years. She smiled at me and was whisked away by Ed Pucci, a Sinatra bodyguard. I stood there for the longest time wondering if Marilyn had remembered me. After all, I was only a young boy the last time I had seen her.’
Going by Gold’s impeccable memory, we can be assured that Marilyn
did
arrive at the venue at that time. Dressed in a matching green headscarf, blouse, slacks and shoes, she was in good spirits and, following her arrival, rushed to meet the others. A mix of friends, acquaintances and rivals, these
included Sinatra, Martin, Juliet Prowse and Sam Giancana, plus the actress Rhonda Fleming, jazz pianist Buddy Greco and hair stylist Jay Sebring. Black and white pictures of Marilyn playfully posing in the sun with Sinatra and Greco, who was performing in the club’s new casino-lounge, were taken by his then wife and manager, Sally Baionno. Further pictures of the actress standing, glass in hand, with Peter Lawford on the balcony of his cabin were also taken. Afterwards, Marilyn rushed back down to the club to catch the buffet and participate in the 1.30pm bingo session.