The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story (42 page)

The meeting came to a pleasant conclusion when it was announced that all lawsuits between Fox and Marilyn would be dropped. A major point in Fox’s decision to re-employ the actress had been her refusal to name the studio specifically in any of her newspaper outbursts. This loyalty impressed them. But for the actress, aside from the improved pay offer, she had now received from the studio and the industry what she really craved . . . respect.

Marilyn was now spectacularly happy. Two days later, on Saturday 14 July, her rush of optimism was once again evident when she sent a telegram to Ralph Greenson to acknowledge his wedding anniversary. It
read: ‘Dear Dr. Greenson: I hope all your roses are in bloom today including the blackest red ones. Happy Anniversary to you and Mrs. Greenson. Marilyn.’ As recent events demonstrated, she was buoyant and evidently in complete control of her career. Work around her house was also progressing. On that day, reminded by her associates that the locks on the filing cabinet in her cottage were still not functioning, the actress called locksmith Austin A. Innis, of 6919 North Figueroa Street. (At a cost of $71.55, his employee, Edward P. Halavaty, carried out the repair three days later, on Tuesday 17 July.)

Marilyn spent the remainder of the month in and around Los Angeles. That much is true. However, several substantial inconsistencies have arisen in the various accounts of this brief period of the actress’s life, which I am now able to clear up.

To begin with, there is biographer Donald Spoto’s claim that, on Sunday 15 July, she travelled to Palm Springs in the company of her old friend and confidant, the newspaper columnist and movie producer Sidney Skolsky, to discuss a movie based on the life of screen legend Jean Harlow with the late actress’s mother, ‘Mother Jean’ Harlow Carpenter Bello.

This visit simply could not have taken place. Harlow senior had passed away, aged 67, four years earlier, on Saturday 7 June 1958, precisely 21 years after and in the very same hospital as her daughter. Furthermore, the chances of Marilyn appearing in a movie such as this in 1962 were extremely slim. By this time, the idea of producing
The Jean Harlow Story
was already ten years old. First mooted in March 1952, stories about it had reverberated around the industry for years. Marilyn first became aware of the project one month later when she was informed about it by top Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons, who just happened to be the author of the 1937 publication
Jean Harlow’s Life Story
. In June 1954, Fox announced they would settle for no one else but Monroe in the lead role and even offered her a slice of the profits if she accepted the part. She didn’t.

Work on the project started afresh in late November 1957, when the great Hollywood scriptwriter (and Marilyn’s original biographer) Ben Hecht began penning a new version of the screenplay. But, contrary to the belief of some Monroe biographers, and despite the fact she was a big fan of the star, she wasn’t keen on appearing in the project. As she remarked to the movie’s intended producer, Jerry Wald, in 1958, she wanted to star in the 20th Century-Fox film
Blue Angel
first. (She would ultimately lose out in the role as Lola-Lola to Sammy Davis Jr’s future wife, May Britt. The story of screen legend Jean Harlow would eventually hit the cinema screens in July 1965 as the Paramount picture
Harlow
, starring Carroll Baker.)

What’s more, the suggestion that the actress was still seeing Sidney Skolsky in 1962 is highly implausible. The two parted company in less than amicable circumstances in December 1954, just weeks before Marilyn flew out of Los Angeles en route to New York where she was about to embark on a new life and, on Friday 7 January 1955, launch her new company, Marilyn Monroe Productions. This void in the actress’s life was soon filled by her new business partner, photographer Milton H. Greene.

The second and possibly more damaging lie told about Marilyn at this period of her life concerns Friday 20 July, when it is claimed she spent three days in Miami’s Cedars of Lebanon Hospital and apparently left, looking wan and exhausted, four days later, on Tuesday 24 July. Many of her so-called confidants hinted that she checked into the hospital under an assumed name and was there to abort President Kennedy’s (or Bobby’s) baby. Author Fred Lawrence Guiles originated the myth in his 1969 book,
Norma Jean: The Life of Marilyn Monroe
, when he wrote,

Marilyn discovered she was pregnant. Those few who knew Marilyn’s secret were horrified. While friends were told that Marilyn had gone for a long weekend to Lake Tahoe, she was secretly hospitalised on Friday, July 20 in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, and remained there for four days . . .

A surgical termination of pregnancy was decided upon by a doctor on the Cedars’ staff. The pregnancy was tubular, as was her first pregnancy with Miller, and could not have gone beyond its fifth or sixth week without the gravest complications.

It is highly likely that the instigator of the malicious abortion rumour was an employee of Arthur Jacobs.

According to other sources, on Thursday 19 July Monroe slipped away from her friends and colleagues and did not reappear until three days later. Hollywood gossip columnists at the time insinuated that she had ‘slipped into LA’s Cedars of Lebanon hospital to abort Robert [Kennedy]’s child’. In another story, allegedly picked up from illicit tapes recorded in her house, Marilyn was accompanied across the border to Mexico – since abortion was still illegal in America at the time – for the termination by an unnamed ‘American doctor’.

While it is true that Marilyn was angry with JFK (and later became so with Bobby) for dispensing with her, the same cannot be said about her aborted pregnancy. The sad truth is that, on Saturday 21 July, Monroe
was
admitted to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (as it was correctly called at the time), but only for treatment for endometriosis, a common disease
affecting an estimated 89 million women of reproductive age around the world and occurring in one in every five females, but one which often causes severe pelvic pain, irregular menstrual bleeding, infertility and sometimes bowel and bladder symptoms. The ailment was said to have developed as a result of the 12 abortions she was rumoured to have had when she was a starlet starting out in Hollywood, a period when the studios felt they had complete and utter ownership of their stars – although, according to Leon Kohn, a doctor at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and a medic to Frank Sinatra, she did not even have
one
.

As we know, however, the actress did spend much of her short life in chronic pain, suffering miscarriages and becoming addicted to painkillers; moreover, the condition would have severely impaired her chances of becoming a mother. For example, in August 1957, she suffered an ectopic pregnancy, which occurs when the fertilised egg attaches itself outside the cavity of the uterus (womb). She suffered a new miscarriage one year later, in 1958. (In his 2009 biography,
The Making of Some Like It Hot
, the actor, Tony Curtis, Marilyn’s co-star in the 1959 movie of the same name, sensationally claimed this baby was his.) However hard Marilyn tried, medical evidence proved that she could not successfully carry a child for most or all of the full nine-month duration and the chances of her doing so in 1962, at the age of 36, were very remote indeed.

One Marilyn book even claimed that she went into Cedars for a ‘D & C’ (Dilatation and Curettage), a procedure to scrape and collect the tissue (endometrium) from inside the uterus, used both as a means of ameliorating certain gynaecological conditions and as a method of abortion. The same publication claimed that Eunice Murray was oblivious to why the actress had been hospitalised and that ‘Marilyn called Bobby (from her home) to report everything had gone as planned and that the pregnancy was terminated.’

With such matters to discuss, it’s safe to assume that any conversation between the two at the time would have been a lengthy one. But not according to the actress’s phone records. The only date near her departure from the hospital on which Monroe called the Attorney General was Monday 23 July and the duration of the call was just
one
minute. So, if not to talk about the termination of her pregnancy, why did she contact him?

Well, on that day, between 3pm and 3.30pm, President Kennedy faced a press conference at the Department of State Auditorium. Parts of the event were relayed to the UK and Europe via the orbiting Telstar satellite which, just 13 days earlier, had been launched by NASA from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Since this was the first live transatlantic television signal from the United States to the UK, it was naturally a momentous event. History was being made in front of every viewer’s eyes, including
those of Marilyn, who watched the transmission from her living room at Fifth Helena. Without doubt, the call she placed to Bobby that day was to excitedly speak to him about his brother’s ground-breaking address.

In any case, he wasn’t there. He was away with his family at his summer house in Hyannis Port. (Pictures of him water-skiing with the First Lady appeared in many of the following day’s newspapers.) Instead, the actress once again found herself conversing with his secretary, Angie Novello.

The question still remains, what exactly happened to the actress that weekend? Working from original letters, notes and invoices, I can now lay to rest the lies about her alleged termination and reveal her precise activities during that five-day period.

On the morning of Thursday 19 July, clearly feeling homesick, Marilyn began the day by authorising a three-month subscription to
The New York Times
(both daily and Sunday editions). Afterwards, she was driven to see Ralph Greenson at his North Roxbury Drive home. Later that afternoon, she hosted a special birthday dinner party in honour of his daughter, Joan. (It was the only time that Marilyn’s home would host such an event.) Later that evening, no doubt because she knew she would be elsewhere on Saturday, Marilyn received her regular weekly massage from Ralph Roberts. A day later, on Friday 20 July, the actress once more visited Greenson at his home for another 90-minute counselling session.

In the company of Joe DiMaggio, during the morning of Saturday 21 July, Monroe travelled to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where she was admitted to receive treatment for endometriosis. But she left just hours later, and spent the remainder of that day and the whole of the following one recuperating at her home on Fifth Helena. On Monday 23 July, she was visited at her home by both Greenson and Dr Hyman Engelberg (who administered two anaemia injections: one costing $20, the other $10). Later that day, after watching Kennedy’s speech, the actress felt well enough to pay another visit to Greenson. She was driven there by Eunice Murray. It’s therefore clear that Marilyn did not stay in the Cedars hospital for up to four days. Four
hours
was the most likely duration.

However, there is still an element of truth to be found among the stories about her final month. For instance, in the last weekend of July, Marilyn
did
pay a visit to Frank Sinatra’s Cal-Neva lodge.

Built in 1926 by the wealthy businessmen Robert Pierce Sherman and Harry O. Comstock on the beautiful north shore of Lake Tahoe, in the picturesque lakefront community of Crystal Bay, the Cal-Neva was so-called because the dividing border between California and Nevada runs through the middle of the property. As Sinatra himself once joked, ‘It’s the
only place where you can walk across the lobby and get locked up for violating the Mann Act.’

The retreat, located high in the mountains, began life as both a guest harbour and an illegal gambling joint. Its unlawful activities were short-lived, however when, just a few years later, in March 1931, it obtained one of the first casino licences and subsequently became a desirable attraction for A-list celebrities and the wealthy alike.

Having been rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1937, the status of the venue was elevated a notch further when, in September 1960, American singing sensation Frank Sinatra purchased a substantial share in the resort. (In August 1960, at a cost of $100,000, Nevada State records show that he owned a 25 per cent stake in the operation. One year later, on Tuesday 15 August 1961, his stake in the premises had increased to 35.6 per cent and by Tuesday 15 May 1962, his interest had risen to 50 per cent.) The first public declaration about Frank’s involvement in the Cal-Neva came on Wednesday 13 July 1960. On the day that John F. Kennedy won the Democratic nomination in Los Angeles, papers announced that Sinatra, along with his Rat Pack buddy Dean Martin, pal and business partner Hank Sincola and convicted white slaver Paul ‘Skinny’ D’Amato had applied for permission from the State of Nevada to take over the running of the establishment. They soon got their wish.

However, a fact omitted from official reports was that the Chicago mobster Sam Giancana and his outfit had also acquired a small slice of it. By the time the news reached the papers, sensing trouble was in the air and after realizing the extent of Giancana’s involvement, Martin had wisely withdrawn his interests and distanced himself from both the project and the mobster.

It was a prudent move. Before the age of 20, the Mafioso leader had already been quizzed about three separate murders. Killing was not a problem for Giancana and his intimidating demeanour upset many people. In 1999, the former Chicago police detective, Chuck Adamson, spoke for many when he remarked, ‘Sam Giancana was the lowest form of human being . . . He was a little, mousey, rat-looking bum.’ However, as George Jacobs noted in his excellent 2003 biography
Mr S.: My Life With Frank Sinatra
, ‘Marilyn had total respect for Sam, and he always treated her like a lady. To her, Sam was no fearsome killer figure . . . She liked him a lot.’

Because he was listed in the State of Nevada’s black book of persons forbidden to enter a casino, Giancana’s involvement in the new operation was, naturally, kept under wraps. Owing to the fact he couldn’t even be seen
driving
through Las Vegas, he would be forced to arrive at the Cal-Neva in a helicopter; Sinatra therefore constructed a landing pad for one on the building’s roof.