The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story (44 page)

However, events later that night do have a ring of familiarity about them. Working from educated supposition, extensive research and reliable, first-hand accounts, I can reveal the true chain of events for the latter half of the day.

First, after finishing her drinks, food and game, Marilyn settled into her room (cabin 52), freshened up, rested, changed into a swanky evening dress and then walked through the lodge’s underground tunnel, which led to the venue’s Celebrity Showroom. There, from Sinatra’s favourite table, situated in the third booth from the entrance, she watched a performance by Dean Martin and his regular support act, the dance duo Brascia and Tybee.

Sitting alongside them were Sam Giancana (who, through his state ban, had no right to be there), the venue’s manager, the criminal, Paul ‘Skinny’ D’Amato, the mobster and Giancana associate, Johnny Rosselli and, most surprisingly, Peter Lawford. Since their almighty falling-out over the JFK/Crosby fiasco in March, he and Sinatra had not spoken once. But this weekend was different. The Kennedys’ brother-in-law had an ulterior motive for being there.

During dinner, once the free-flowing alcohol had started to take effect, he politely informed Marilyn she had to stop contacting Bobby Kennedy. He told her, in no uncertain terms, that the Attorney General had reluctantly severed his ties to her and that her calls to him had to cease. (This was indeed harsh since, up to this point, the actress had placed just seven through to his number at the Justice Department.) Just like the President, he had decided to disconnect himself from her. Reiterating the fears of his brother, the Attorney General knew that there were many individuals who hated their guts and possessed an agenda to do anything they could to remove them from the White House. No doubt acting on a direct order from JFK, who had once again found himself in the position of fearing recriminations thanks to his association with one of Hollywood’s sassiest yet most unstable women, Bobby knew that he had no alternative but to cut his ties to the blonde bombshell. Other reasons for this soon became apparent.

Around this period, the Attorney General had learnt from Lawford that his conversation with the actress, during the dinner party on Thursday 26 June, had been recorded by the surveillance equipment secreted into the actor’s beachside home. At the same time, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, no doubt led by Bobby’s clandestine conversations with Marilyn, was loosely making references to colleagues concerning an ‘especially hot’ file on RFK and the actress. Coincidentally, brother Ted’s senatorial primary election in Massachusetts was looming in September and so, without doubt, Marilyn was considered a liability to Bobby and his family’s political aspirations. According to some sources, the decision to drop her quickly had in fact originated from his mother, Rose, and other family members. Sadly for Marilyn, she had once more turned into an unaffordable luxury for the Kennedy clan.

Bobby’s rejection reawakened memories of Monroe’s father’s abandonment of her and she was naturally devastated and inconsolable. Furthermore, she was enraged that, unlike the President, the Attorney General did not possess the courage or the gallantry to explain or say his goodbye personally and instead had to rely on the family’s ever-dependable bagman cum lapdog, Lawford. As everyone plainly knew, he was besotted with the Kennedys and there was
nothing
he would not do for them, legal or otherwise.

While she was at the table, a lethal mix of Dom Perignon and vodka was incessantly poured into her glass by her so-called ‘live-it-up’ associates, and she became drunk. Precipitated by Lawford’s news, she began to speak unreservedly to D’Amato about matters of which, as he told her, ‘people ought not to speak’. In her alcohol-fuelled outburst, she made it clear that she had been ‘seeing’ or had been ‘intimate’ with one of the Kennedys and, as she did so, after many months of ambiguous speculation, the gangsters finally had their proof. She had unwittingly confirmed their long-believed suspicions about her and the two men.

As the drink continued to flow, Marilyn became uncontrollable and, in full view of the hundreds of guests at the club, practically passed out. She was carried up to her cabin and, when she reached it, was molested. Her dress was removed, she was showered with alcohol and a dog collar was placed around her neck. Her humiliation continued when the Cal-Neva low-life forced her to half-heartedly crawl around the floor on all fours and reluctantly participate in a lesbian sex act with prostitutes. Obtaining ladies such as these at a moment’s notice was easy. Individuals from the sex industry regularly littered the lodge. D’Amato was known to be operating a prostitution ring out of the building, bookings for which could even be reportedly made quite openly at the hotel’s front desk. Investigators suspected that the women involved in the operation were
flown in especially from San Francisco.

Due to the amount of alcohol she had consumed, the actress was oblivious to most of what was unfolding. It was therefore no surprise that, in a conversation with her close friend Ralph Roberts just one day later, she would describe the parts of the weekend she
did
remember as a ‘nightmare’ and disclose that she felt more like a ‘prisoner’ than a guest.

Legend has it that Giancana even took his turn with her. Soon after Monroe’s death, an FBI wire-tapper apparently recorded a conversation between Giancana and Rosselli, discussing a sex orgy at the Cal-Neva. On the tape, Rosselli allegedly told Giancana, ‘You sure get your rocks off fucking the same broad as the [Kennedy] brothers, don’t you?’ However, that scenario is highly doubtful since Giancana would never dare share or get sexually involved with any of Sinatra’s women. Sam’s daughter, Antoinette, waded into the debate by adding, ‘I knew my father’s taste in women. Marilyn was wiry, too active for him.’

Therefore, it seems highly likely that ‘Skinny’ D’Amato and Johnny Rosselli, who had a strong, predatory interest in the actress, worked alone in orchestrating the half-hearted debauchery. A motive? Rosselli was another individual who was increasingly angry at the Kennedys for giving the Mafia a hard time and frequently bragged about ‘friends in high places’ who were going to knock off the President. It’s also feasible that the spiritless orgy was intended to teach Marilyn a lesson for bestowing, as they believed, her sexual favours on the Kennedys. As Sinatra’s valet, George Jacobs, wrote in
Mr. S.: My Life With Frank Sinatra
, ‘She was
their
girl,
not
the Micks.’

Marilyn had arrived at the lodge hoping to get away from the horrors of Los Angeles and relax with friends such as Sinatra and Martin. Instead, she found herself substituting one traumatic situation for another. When the effects of the liquor started to wane, it began to dawn on her what had happened. Now alone in her chalet, depressed and too frightened to leave, Marilyn frantically called Joe DiMaggio who, following the actress’s announcement that she was going to be in Lake Tahoe that weekend, had instantly made arrangements to be in the vicinity too.

He had spent the first part of that day watching a Timber Little League baseball game. Later that evening, he travelled on to the five-star nightclub and gambling establishment Harrah’s, situated at the south end of the lake, to see a concert by movie star and entertainer Mitzi Gaynor, who was performing in the venue’s South Shore Room. (The story that he had booked himself into the Silver Crest Motel, approximately eight miles away in Kings Beach, is inaccurate.) When Gaynor announced to the crowd that the baseball legend was sitting among them, he stood up and received a rapturous ovation.

Marilyn’s frantic call to the hotel came at the tail end of Gaynor’s
presentation. When a waiter discreetly informed DiMaggio that he was urgently required on the telephone, he rose, walked to the manager’s office, picked up the receiver and listened intently to the actress’s highly emotional tale of despair. Immediately after concluding the call, he dashed out of the hotel, climbed into his car and sped the 20 miles round to the north end of the lake to the Cal-Neva, his intention to fly home immediately after Gaynor’s concert forgotten. News of his unexpected stopover even managed to reach the news wires of the ever-watchful Dorothy Kilgallen, who suggested in her column, ‘DiMaggio was held-over, either by the scenic beauty or one of the chorines [chorus girls] in the show.’

Engulfed by unhappiness and humiliated by what had just happened, Marilyn was in a frightful state. Unable to rest, she reached into her bag for her pills. Sick of being used, and aware that she had just been sexually mistreated, the actress popped several Nembutal capsules and, worryingly, a few chloral hydrates. Mixed with the large quantity of alcohol she had consumed, it was a deadly cocktail. Miscalculating the amount she had swallowed, Marilyn inadvertently took more than her body could handle. However, it was
not
a suicide attempt. As Dr Hyman Engelberg would later explain, ‘Marilyn had too much to drink, and had taken possibly slightly more than she should have.’

Fortuitously, at the end of her call to DiMaggio, she left her line to the lodge’s switchboard operator open. The connection would save her life. The operator raised the alarm when she overheard arduous breathing sounds emanating from the actress’s room. A maid sent up to her chalet found Marilyn now slumped across the floor, next to her bed. She was almost comatose. Lawford was notified and he rushed to the room.

Ted Stephens, a kitchen worker at the Cal-Neva, told the Sinatra biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli, ‘We got a phone call from Peter Lawford. “We need coffee in chalet 52,” he screamed into the phone, then he hung up. He sounded frantic. No less than two minutes passed and it was Mr. Sinatra on the phone, screaming, “Where’s the goddamn coffee?” I learned later they were in 52 walking Marilyn around, trying to wake her up.’ Regrettably, many of her friends assumed that it was just another cry for attention.

Contrary to reports, the actress was
not
rushed 20 miles to the nearby Carson-Tahoe hospital to have her stomach pumped. Neither was she attended to by a doctor. Desperate to keep a tight lid on the situation, the actress was in fact treated only by Sinatra, Lawford and various Cal-Neva employees, and sadly, her only form of medicine came in the shape of several cups of black coffee. Evidence that no doctors were summoned to the lodge is provided by the fact that there were no medical reports of the incident, as Dorothy Kilgallen discovered when she researched the
incident in August 1962. Furthermore, despite the compulsory order to do so, news of what was believed to be Marilyn’s believed suicide attempt was not even reported to the local police authority.

Before the night was over, completely oblivious to the lackadaisical orgy that had just taken place, Sinatra was discreetly handed a roll of film. Someone had unashamedly decided to capture a photographic record of the event. There are many who believe that it was in fact Sinatra himself who took the pictures. He didn’t. But his camera
was
the one used. The singer handed the film to
Life
magazine photographer Billy Woodfield and asked him to develop it. Within minutes Sinatra was reeling in shock at nine freshly processed images of a semi-unconscious Marilyn, in complete disarray, being sexually fondled in the presence of mobsters Rosselli and D’Amato. Reports soon came to light claiming that Sam Giancana was seen in one of the pictures. But, considering how respectful he was of the actress, I suspect he was an innocent bystander in the proceedings and was seen only at the tail end of the incident, attempting to haul Marilyn up off the floor.

Sinatra immediately ordered the pictures and negatives to be destroyed. However, I can reveal that, even though eight of the images were scrapped, one
did
escape the furnace. In an attempt to maximise the scandal and totally discredit the actress, one incriminating image was dispatched to Dorothy Kilgallen. In her Hearst-syndicated column, published on Friday 3 August, she wrote, ‘In California, they’re circulating a photograph of her that certainly isn’t as bare as her famous calendar, but is very interesting. Marilyn’s dress looks as if it was plastered to her skin and the skirt is hitched higher above the knees than any Paris designer would dare to promote in the fall showings.’ Accompanying the picture was an anonymously written note, which implied that Monroe had been rather intimate with the Kennedys. (The fact that she had indeed spent the night with the President at Bing Crosby’s home back in March was, at this point, still a closely guarded secret, known only by those in JFK’s and Marilyn’s elite circle of friends.)

Early the next morning, the roof truly caved in on the actress’s life when she discovered that the grapevine had picked up and begun speculating about the previous night’s events. Now sporting her dark shades, and bereft of both sleep and her shoes, the actress had managed to drag herself out of her hell-hole and was seen alone, wandering aimlessly in a drunken stupor, by the resort’s fog-covered swimming pool, looking up the hill to where Joe DiMaggio was now standing and watching. Neither spoke. They just glanced at each other. No speech was necessary. They were still close and the actress realised it. His attempt to rescue her this time, however, was futile, thanks to a years-old rift between Sinatra and DiMaggio.

Inevitably, Marilyn was at the core of it. On Friday 5 November 1954, in an attempt to catch his wife in a passionate clinch with another individual, Joe DiMaggio, along with Sinatra and the private detectives Barney Ruditsky and Phil Irwin, had broken into the Warring Avenue apartment belonging to Florence Kotz. But Marilyn wasn’t there. They had burst into the wrong lodgings. In May 1957, Kotz filed suit against Messrs DiMaggio, Sinatra, Ruditsky and Irwin to the tune of $200,000 but eventually settled out of court for the sum of $7,500.

Frank and Joe’s friendship plummeted from then on. In the early 1960s, even though DiMaggio had been separated from Marilyn for several years, the former baseball star began insinuating that his former wife was having an affair with the singer – as she was, albeit briefly – and Sinatra naturally became angry that the baseball legend was spying on him, hoping to find proof that a tryst was taking place. Their mutual dislike of each other never relented, with the result that Sinatra had banned the so-called ‘slugger’ from coming anywhere near his lodge.