The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story (46 page)

Word that
Something’s Got To Give
might restart soon spread. Following a tip-off from the studio, Marilyn’s stand-in, Evelyn Moriarty, rang the actress at her home. They spoke excitedly about it for 45 minutes. ‘I heard we were going to do the picture,’ Moriarty recalled, ‘so I called her on the Wednesday and I talked to her. The conversation was, “We’re going to go back, we’re going to go back and work.” She was really up . . . She was happy. We were going to start in September.’ She was mistaken. With Dean Martin both busy and aloof, they were not.

Sensing a story, Hollywood journalist James Bacon was a surprise visitor to Marilyn’s house early that afternoon. ‘She was in very good spirits,’ he recalled. ‘She was laughing. Maybe the champagne helped her, I don’t know . . . I think she downed about two bottles while I was there . . . and maybe four or five pills. I said, “Marilyn, that combination is gonna kill ya.” She took another pill and defiantly said, “It hasn’t killed me yet.”’

Once he had left, the actress placed a call through to Elizabeth Courtney, the veteran dress designer and assistant to Jean Louis. She wished to order a formal $1,600 dress for the world premiere of the new Irving Berlin musical
Mr. President
, which was set to take place in Washington DC on Tuesday 25 September. The show in question, at the National Theatre, was to be a charity event hosted by the White House as a fundraiser to benefit the Kennedy Child Study Center For Retarded Children and The Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Institute For Mental Retardation. Given that the joint honorary chairmen for the event were Jacqueline Kennedy, the President’s mother Rose and brother Bobby, Marilyn’s acceptance of the invitation showed not only an element of defiance but also perhaps a reluctance to allow the family to deprive her of the chance to be present on a truly momentous night. After all, this would be Berlin’s very last Broadway production; it was billed by many as ‘
the
social occasion of the year’. Marilyn desperately wanted to
be there looking her very, very best and keen, no doubt, to sassily upstage the President’s wife.

‘She said she had a sketch of a gown Jean had drawn,’ Courtney recalled, ‘and she wanted me to talk it over with him and then come to her place for a fitting. “Come any time,” she said. “I’ll have time whenever you’re free. Maybe you can make it Saturday?” But because of the pressures of business, I was unable to get to Miss Monroe’s house. She also told me that someone from the studio had gotten in touch with her and talked about getting the film back in production. “Just keep your fingers crossed,” she told me. “I’m sure that I’m going to do the picture.”’ Immediately after finishing the call, amid fears that she might be lacking suitable attire for the Washington show, Marilyn placed a call through to Saks’ flagship department store at 611 Fifth Avenue in New York and ordered a $382.62 Gucci dress. (She would write a cheque out for it, no. 1782, two days later, on Friday 3 August.)

Once the work on the gates had been completed and her calls had been concluded, the actress paid a visit – with Eunice Murray once again acting as her chauffeur – to the architect, designer and bit-part actor William Alexander Levy at his art and antique store, The Mart, on Santa Monica Boulevard. During her stay, she chose a coffee table and a wall design depicting the images of Adam and Eve. When she went to purchase the items, the shop’s 53-year-old owner, realising immediately who she was, lurched forward and offered a proposal of marriage. ‘I’ll think about it,’ Marilyn laughingly replied before walking out of the shop.

From there, she and Murray travelled on to the Pilgrim’s Furniture store at 12217 Wilshire Boulevard where she purchased a Roman-style white chest of drawers. The shop assistant promised to deliver the item to the actress’s home on Saturday 4 August and agreed to let her pay for it upon its arrival. Marilyn and her companion then climbed back into their car and drove the short journey to Franks Nurseries & Flowers shop at 12424 Wilshire Boulevard, where (at a total cost of $93.08) she purchased from the proprietor, Robert K. Goka, a range of items including various sized tuberose plants, a Mexican lime tree, a hanging begonia basket and a Valencia orange. Remembering she would be busy with director J. Lee Thompson when the delivery was due to be made, late on Saturday afternoon, she instructed the salesman to ask for Murray’s son-in-law, Norman Jeffries, when he reached her home. Immediately after completing her acquisitions, the actress returned to the car but realised she had forgotten some other items. She walked back into the store and bought (at a cost of $63.53), among other items, some tomatoes, hummingbird feeding stands and food, plus petunias, begonias (in various sizes and quantities), sedums and terracotta pots.

As we can see, her spending was still out of control. On that first day of August, her City National Bank of Beverly Hills account ominously showed she was overdrawn to the tune of $4,208.34. Her others were only slightly better. Her savings accounts at the Excelsior and Bowery banks boasted balances of just $1,171.06 and $614.29 respectively, while in her cheque accounts at the Irving Trust Co. and the First National City banks, there were sums of $2,334.65 and $84.67. ‘Marilyn kept in her checking account only enough for current expenses,’ Milton Rudin explained at the time, ‘but she was to have received half-a-million dollars over the next two years alone as part of her percentage from the fabulously successful movie,
Some Like It Hot
.’

Later, back at her Brentwood home, after paying another visit to Dr Greenson and following a $25 injection from Dr Hyman Engelberg, she took a phone call from Gene Kelly. With news that they would be starring together in
I Love Louisa
now beginning to circulate, he thought it would be a good idea to make contact with the actress personally and arrange a time to discuss the project further. They agreed a meeting in four days’ time, on Sunday 5 August, to which director J. Lee Thompson would also be invited. A steak and baked potato barbecue on her patio, with Ralph Roberts doing the cooking, was proposed by the actress. ‘She was in excellent spirits,’ Kelly recalled, ‘very happy and very excited about her future projects.’

At precisely 7pm, the actress settled down in front of her television set to watch President Kennedy’s live, 32-minute, televised news conference. By now, however, she was feeling rocked after a confrontation with Joe DiMaggio.

Over in Virginia, several hours earlier, troubled by the events at the Cal-Neva, DiMaggio had resigned from his lucrative, $100,000-a-year job as vice-president of V.H. Monette Inc., a firm specialising in military post exchanges. He did so for one reason only, to be near his former wife. Remarriage was on his mind. This was substantiated by an old-timer at the DiMaggio family restaurant at 235 Jefferson Street, Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. In July 1962, a close, unnamed friend of DiMaggio’s remarked, ‘Joe never sold his home [there], the one he wanted for Marilyn. He has never stopped talking about her over the years. I think he believes she’ll eventually find herself and return to him. He’s in no hurry. He’ll wait.’ The chairman at V.H. Monette gave credence to this when he announced to an
Oakland Tribune
reporter at the time, ‘DiMaggio told me he was going back to the West Coast to live there the rest of his life,’ adding, ‘I couldn’t see any other reason for DiMaggio’s quitting other than the personal troubles of his ex-wife.’

During the afternoon of 1 August, now tired of waiting, DiMaggio excitedly flew out to Los Angeles and headed straight to Marilyn’s home in Brentwood where he asked for her hand in marriage. But although appreciative, she dismissed his offer outright and told him she wished to remain a friend only.

Though there were no doubts that DiMaggio was her best and most trusted friend, the chances of them ever remarrying were very remote indeed. In truth, Monroe’s marriage to the baseball legend had not been a happy one. Her former drama coach, Natasha Lytess, corroborated this when she revealed that, during Marilyn’s time with DiMaggio, the actress would phone her day and night, often in tears, complaining about the way he was mistreating her. Conclusive proof of this can be found in the revealing deposition which Monroe delivered during their brief, 15-minute divorce hearing in Santa Monica on Wednesday 27 October 1954. It read:

My husband would get into moods where he wouldn’t speak to me for days at a time, sometimes longer, maybe ten days. If I tried to coax him to talk to me, he wouldn’t answer at all, or he would say, ‘Leave me alone.’ He refused to permit visitors to our home. On one occasion, when he did allow someone to come to our home to see me when I was ill, it was a terrible strain. I don’t believe I asked anyone to our home more than three times during the nine months we were married. I offered to give up my work in hopes that would solve our problem. But it didn’t change his attitude at all. I had hoped to have love, warmth, affection and understanding out of marriage. But instead, he gave me coolness and indifference.

As quotes in two of her most recent interviews made clear, her sentiments towards him had not changed by 1962. To
Redbook
magazine’s Allan Levy in May she tellingly declared, ‘Believe me, there is
no spark
to be ignited. I just like being with him. We have a better understanding than we’ve ever had.’ And to photographer George Barris in July, she remarked, ‘Things just didn’t work out as far as marriage is concerned.’ With regard to her marrying again, she insisted, ‘It
hasn’t
entered my mind since the last one.’

According to several noted biographers, they were set to tie the knot again on or around Wednesday 8 August. Rumours of this were actually borne out of two short, incomplete notes that were apparently found in her room at the time of her death, and which read, ‘Dear Joe, if I can only succeed in making you happy. I will have succeeded in the bigest (
sic
) and most difficult thing there is, that is to make one person completely happy.
Your happiness means my happiness and . . . ’ (She corrected the mistake and removed the last six words in her second attempt at it.) Educated conjecture, however, makes me believe the notes pertained to only one thing: Joe’s recent proposal of marriage.

Such is the confusion about Marilyn’s final months that even those who agreed the marriage idea was a non-starter were wrong with their reasoning. Due to the fact that, in their eyes, she was, apparently, still romantically linked to José Bolaños, they asked, ‘Why would she remarry the baseball legend if she was still amorously connected to the Mexican?’ But as we have seen, she wasn’t. To reiterate, her last personal encounter with Bolaños had taken place on the morning of Thursday 28 June and their last telephone exchange, as he admitted himself in August 1962, took place in early July, a full month before Marilyn’s death. In fact she had no desire to remarry DiMaggio because, put simply, she no longer loved him. She saw him now only as a close, platonic friend.

DiMaggio was devastated. Genuinely believing she would accept his proposal and imagining he would spend the entire day (and the rest of his life) with the actress, he had even cancelled his appearance at that evening’s Fifth Annual Boys’ Invitational Baseball Tournament at Shepherd Stadium in Colonial Heights. His no-show naturally took everyone by surprise. It was something the ever-reliable Joe
never
did. With Marilyn’s rejection still ringing in his ears, he dejectedly left her home, heading out to San Francisco to meet up with his brothers and prepare for an old-timers’ baseball game which was due to take place at Candlestick Park on Saturday.

On Thursday 2 August, two phone calls kick-started Marilyn’s day. The first, early in the morning, was from the London-born Broadway composer Jule Styne, who was ringing from New York to offer her a starring role in the musical
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
, which was set to open next season. As a sweetener for his dealings with the actress, he had purchased from Spanish-born Catalan portrait painter Alejo Vidal-Quadras an exclusive drawing of her. The work, which depicted Marilyn in a transparent light blue dress, had originated from the artist’s time on the set of
Let’s Make Love
two years earlier, and Styne intended to present it to the actress when they met. Their conversation was brief and ended with Marilyn promising to drop in on him during her visit to the Big Apple the following week.

The second call, which came shortly afterwards, was from
New York Journal-American
newspaper journalist Dorothy Kilgallen. The arrival on her desk of the salacious note and risqué picture taken of Marilyn at the Cal-Neva just four days earlier had sent the columnist into a spin, and she was desperate to find out more. A day earlier, immediately after
the small packet had arrived, Kilgallen had called Bobby Kennedy at the White House to obtain his side of this alleged romance story. Unsurprisingly, he was reluctant to provide any clues. (In truth, there was nothing to say.) So, on the morning of the 2nd, she rang Marilyn. A columnist who had made her living from showbiz tittle-tattle such as this, she was unsurprisingly a captive listener when the actress decided to speak unreservedly during the call.

Kilgallen was stunned when Monroe, now awake and riding high on a tidal wave of emotion, once more spoke about holding a press conference and talked seamlessly about her break from the Kennedys, complaining about the way she was being ignored by them and making references to ‘bases’ in Cuba, the President’s plan to kill Fidel Castro and the contents of her ‘diary of secrets’. She told Kilgallen she knew exactly what the newspapers could do with such disclosures, and boasted to the columnist how she was once again attending parties hosted by the ‘inner circle’ of Hollywood’s elite (a reference to her visit to the Cal-Neva) and was becoming the talk of the town again. It was an optimistic phone call completely free of inhibitions.

As the phone call progressed, however, Monroe suddenly and strangely changed tack and began expressing fears for her life. For two months now, sensing that the phones in her Brentwood home were ‘tapped’ and perceiving that her private moments were being shared by unknown individuals, Marilyn had taken to making calls at the phone booth in the park near her home. As we know, her home was indeed being bugged. However, the declaration that most startled Kilgallen was the disclosure that President Kennedy (probably during their night together at Bing Crosby’s home) had privately divulged to her details about a UFO crash in New Mexico and how he had visited a secret air base for the purpose of inspecting dead alien bodies from outer space. Marilyn’s story referred to the July 1947 Roswell UFO crash and the subsequent retrieval of debris and alien cadavers.