The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story (15 page)

The casting of Steven ‘Adam’ Burkett, the man with whom the actress’s character has spent five years on a desert island, was also proving difficult. In mid-January, Marilyn suggested Gardner McKay, the 29-year-old star of ABC Television’s highly popular children’s series,
Adventures in Paradise
. Insider information reveals that Marilyn even rang the actor personally urging him to accept the offer. Director Cukor also spoke with Fox, the producers of the show, with a request for him to be given leave from their programme to appear in
Something’s Got To Give
. Considering that the majority of
Adventures in Paradise’
s filming took place on the studio’s own back lot, he believed this factor would also enable McKay to continue shooting his programme without any significant disruptions. Cukor was certain that they would agree to his request. They did. But McKay did
not
.

His reasons were soon forthcoming. ‘The script is very funny,’ he announced to the American trade papers, ‘but the part they wanted me to play was just plain pathetic.’ And in an interview published a year later, he revealed more about the proposition. ‘They wanted me to do the old-fashioned, Randolph Scott role in the original [
My Favorite Wife
]. I figured if I had acquired any value in three years of television, I was worth more than that.’ (The role would eventually be filled by 36-year-old American film and television actor Tom Tryon, a man best known for playing the Walt Disney television character Texas John Slaughter.)

Nunnally Johnson, an invaluable eyewitness to the incessant problems in getting Monroe’s latest movie off the ground, remarked to the American press at the time, ‘It is still all up in the air. So far they still do not have a finished script and no definite leading man. They can’t do anything until Marilyn says “yes” to anything.’ He concluded by saying, ‘They are running around like a lot of rabbits.’

Less than a month after making these remarks, Johnson was to become another casualty of the unfolding chaos when he was fired from the movie. Already infuriated by the time the writer was taking to complete his script, director George Cukor called time on his employment when he read Johnson’s (Monroe influenced) new version and noticed it had strayed too far away from the original charm of
My Favorite Wife
. In Cukor’s opinion, ‘The original film was now totally unrecognisable.’

Walter Bernstein was drafted in as Johnson’s replacement. Cukor instructed him to rewrite entirely his predecessor’s script, but in stark contrast to Cukor’s directive producer Henry Weinstein told Bernstein not to make many changes to the script but just do ‘a little polishing here and there’.

During one such conversation, Bernstein suggested introducing a scene whereby, when the wife (Marilyn) arrives back and finds her husband remarried, she goes off and attempts to sabotage the honeymoon. To this, Weinstein disconsolately shook his head and replied, ‘Marilyn won’t play it that way.’ The scriptwriter naturally enquired why. ‘Well,’ Weinstein replied, ‘she says Marilyn Monroe doesn’t chase after the man. The man chases after
her
.’ Bernstein then suggested that, since the actress did not have script approval, they should press ahead with the changes anyway. It was a fruitless suggestion. ‘You don’t understand,’ Weinstein retorted. ‘Marilyn doesn’t need script approval. If she doesn’t like something, she just doesn’t show up.’ Throughout the week, Weinstein would call Bernstein on a daily basis to enquire how the script changes were progressing and catechise how many pages he had rewritten.

To date, these numerous script revisions (now from
seven
different writers) had cost Fox a hefty $300,000, money they could barely afford. Between 1959 and 1962, 20th Century-Fox had lost $61 million, of which $22 million came in 1961 alone. Shareholders were aghast at these figures, and were soon threatening to depose the board and dethrone studio president Spyros P. Skouras. To make matters worse, Fox was currently haemorrhaging $150,000 on day on
Cleopatra
, an epic movie currently being shot on location in Rome. From the off, it was always intended to be the most expensive film in Hollywood history. Its star, Elizabeth Taylor, was on an extortionate $1 million salary, the highest wage of any star at the time. Originally expected to cost $5 million, however, the film’s production costs had spiralled to $40 million.

Fox were also reeling from the spiralling costs of Darryl F. Zanuck’s
The Longest Day
, the all-star Second World War epic about the Allied invasion of France on Tuesday 6 June 1944, which was currently being shot in CinemaScope on location in Europe. Its ten months of filming, one of the biggest and certainly one of the costliest projects since the war itself, had cost $10 million.

Fox were just one short step away from bankruptcy. Marilyn Monroe was one of the studio’s last remaining bankable stars and they were desperate to milk her for every dollar they could while she was still at the peak of her popularity. So, as 1962 rolled on, despite her bravest
attempts to do otherwise, Monroe knew she
had
to work on another movie for the studio, and she knew there was absolutely no legal way out of it.

Chapter Four

Marilyn and the Kennedys – The Unequivocal Truth

Saturday 23 September 1961 and beyond

F
or many years, the majestic Santa Monica home belonging to London-born Rat Pack actor Peter Lawford and his wife, Patricia, had been the site of many private parties and numerous all-star gatherings. And, since Patricia was the sister of both the President, John, and the Attorney General, Bobby, the Kennedys were, naturally, regular attendees.

On the evening of Thursday 1 February 1962, the coast-front building at 625 Palisades Beach Road played host to a crowd honouring Bobby on the eve of his six-day goodwill tour of Tokyo, Japan, a trip to be made on behalf of the President’s ‘New Frontier’ programme. Hollywood luminaries such as Judy Garland, Angie Dickinson, Gene Kelly, Dean Martin, Tony Curtis and his wife Janet Leigh were in attendance, as were many respected newspaper reporters. In other words, those regarded as close or important enough to Kennedy.

Marilyn Monroe had known the Lawfords for a number of years. She and Peter had become friendly and even dated in 1953, soon after meeting in his agent’s office – although, in his eyes, the thought of taking their relationship just that one step further was killed the moment he stepped into the excrement left by her small pet chihuahua at her Sunset Boulevard residence. Marilyn, too, was present at the Lawfords’ house that evening; however, she was not regarded as so important. ‘Sometimes I’m invited to places to kind of brighten up a dinner table,’ she despondently admitted to
Life
magazine, ‘like a musician who’ll play the piano
after dinner. I know you’re not really invited for yourself. You’re just an ornament.’

Lawford’s home, a $95,000 purchase in 1956 from MGM magnate Louis B. Mayer, had been the setting for Marilyn’s only previous encounter with Bobby Kennedy, just four months earlier on Wednesday 4 October 1961. This previous occasion had also been a party to honour the Attorney General.

As part of the Justice Department’s crackdown on organised crime, Bobby was in town to talk with local law-enforcement officials about the rise in mob activity in Los Angeles. Following his brother John’s favourable account of his first real meeting with Marilyn just 11 days earlier (which we will examine shortly), Bobby was keen to meet the great Hollywood star himself. The dinner was assigned as the perfect time to do it, and a request to that effect was placed through Lawford. Monroe, seeing this as the ideal occasion to quiz Bobby about why he had chosen to act against MCA, happily accepted. So excited was the Attorney General to meet her that evening that, in order to give him more time to prepare, he even cancelled that day’s 1pm cabinet luncheon appointment with the Postmaster General, J. Edward Day.

Marilyn was busy composing herself too. Over at 882 North Doheny Drive, following a special, $170 hair makeover, her personal beauty expert, George Masters, was on hand to put the finishing touches. ‘I did an extra-special make-up job on her,’ he recalled in 1979. ‘She looked like a fawn, innocent and wide-eyed. Then she brought out this dress.’ It was a black, eye-catching, figure-hugging, floor-length, strapless peek-a-boo creation by American fashion designer Norman Norell. The sheer eyelet cutouts on the outfit barely covered her breasts. ‘Aren’t you embarrassed?’ he asked. ‘Of course not,’ she replied. ‘At least I’ll be noticed.’

The actress spent so much time beautifying herself that she arrived at the party two and a half hours late. The joyous evening, moreover, ended on a low point when she practically passed out due to the amount of alcohol she had consumed and, as a result, had to be bundled into the back of Bobby’s car, driven back to her apartment and carried inside by him and his aide, Edwin O. Guthman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and journalist and now the Justice Department’s Chief of Information.

After ensuring she was safe and well, they shut the door behind them and left. Under his ruthless exterior, Kennedy possessed a compassionate heart. ‘She asked Bobby to drive her home,’ Guthman recalled to writer Maurice Zolotow in 1973. ‘He asked me to go along so they wouldn’t be alone. He knew damn well that there had to be gossip and he didn’t want to build it up. We drove her home and helped her into the house.’ It’s safe to say Marilyn made a big impression on a Kennedy brother that night, but
regrettably it was the unintended kind. Four months on, when the offer to meet the Attorney General came up again, she was determined to be more well-mannered.

For the sumptuous meal that evening in February 1962, Bobby strategically found himself seated between Marilyn and another top Hollywood actress, Kim Novak. Undoubtedly recalling their first infamous encounter and no doubt impressed by Marilyn’s beauty, impeccable conduct, revealing dress and eye-catching horn-rimmed glasses, the Attorney General obviously took immense interest in the actress from the start and practically ignored Novak.

The gathering no doubt gave the Attorney General the perfect opportunity to learn from the actress more about Hollywood and its star system. At the time, 20th Century-Fox were planning to make a big-screen adaptation of his controversial 1960 book
The Enemy Within
, a chronicle of his investigation into the convicted (but later pardoned) American labour leader James ‘Jimmy’ Hoffa and the Teamsters Union while he was Chief Council for the Senate Subcommittee. But Monroe captivated him further when she began asking him a number of highly intelligent, thought-provoking questions. Eager to make amends after her previous debacle, she had spent much of the day with Henry Weinstein, producer of
Something’s Got To Give
, preparing a wide-ranging set of queries, which varied from enquiries about his thoughts on the House Un-American Activities Committee to what his department was going to do about civil rights. The quizzing ended when the Attorney General caught sight of the actress peeking at the typed-out questions which she had secreted inside her handbag. He laughed at her endeavours and promised to answer Weinstein’s questions personally.

The actress’s famous, long-lost red diary has been an integral part of the mysteries surrounding her untimely death later that year. Many of those close to Marilyn denied that she had a diary of this sort. However, the party for Bobby Kennedy on Thursday 1 February 1962 proved conclusively that she
did
own a notebook like this and used it to jot down the answers he gave to her questions. The Associated Press’s Hollywood correspondent, James Bacon, who was also in attendance that night, innocently and revealingly corroborated the fact in his column the following day. ‘Listening attentively to every word he uttered,’ he wrote, ‘she frantically scribbled his answers in her small diary book . . . Marilyn came on like a High School reporter, asking RFK a batch of political style questions and jotting down the answers in longhand . . . Bobby was apparently delighted by Marilyn’s interest in global matters.’ (As Bacon himself would admit, she did this with most people, even during conversations with him.)

Hollywood and television columnist Erskine Johnson was another at the
party to see at first hand the actress scribbling down Bobby’s responses. So too was show business reporter Mike Connolly, who noticed that, besides taking the notes, Marilyn also scribbled a get-well message to the Kennedys’ ailing father, Joseph, who was fighting the paralytic effects of a cerebral haemorrhage suffered on Tuesday 19 December 1961.

So why was she jotting down the Attorney General’s replies? ‘To remind herself of what was said,’ explained those close to the actress. Even she was forced to remark how forgetful she often was. However, I tend to believe the theory that the diary was symbolic of something more important to her. I am certain that her handwritten scrawls – research notes if you like – were intended to form the basis of her next memoir. Her previous, largely inaccurate (and, at this point, still unfinished) biography, ghost-written by Ben Hecht, had concluded at the point when she visited Korea in February 1954, and she was keen to bring her life story up to date.

The person she eventually chose to help her do this was the photographer and writer, George Barris, the man who in June and July 1962 would take some of the actress’s very last pictures. As Barris himself commented at the time, ‘She said, “I’d like to set the record straight, all these lies that have been said about me.”’ On Wednesday 8 August 1962, the
Daily Mirror
announced, ‘She had asked Barris to write her biography and to illustrate it. She had posed for him; she had talked to him for ten weeks about her past and her future . . . She talked more freely and frankly than she had ever talked to anyone before.’

Unsurprisingly, thanks to their mutual fascination, Marilyn and Bobby’s hushed discussions continued throughout dinner. Once the meal had been consumed and the exchanges exhausted, they moved to the floor space assigned for dancing. Another guest at the party, Gloria Romanoff, wife of the great Los Angeles restaurateur, Michael, recalled the couple dancing to Chubby Checker’s ‘Let’s Twist Again’, which played repeatedly on Lawford’s record player. As the disc spun, Marilyn took great pleasure in trying to teach Bobby the rudiments of the twist. ‘She danced with Bobby several times that evening,’ Edwin Guthman recalled. ‘Marilyn loved dancing and was a good dancer.’