The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story (45 page)

Oblivious of what had actually happened, Sinatra was furious about Marilyn’s apparent overdose and participation in an orgy. So much so that, early on Monday morning, shortly after seeing the recently developed pictures, he ordered her off his property and instructed George Jacobs to drive her (and the alcohol-ridden Lawford) back to Reno Tahoe Airport. Upon their arrival there, she was reportedly seen stumbling barefoot out of the car and climbing aboard Frank’s hastily summoned plane. With Lawford still in tow and with Santa Monica Airport still closed, they flew back to Los Angeles International Airport where Pat Newcomb and Eunice Murray were waiting to meet her and drive her back to her Brentwood home. Jacobs stated in
Mr. S.: My Life With Frank Sinatra
, ‘In the car, the thing that bothered her most was that her drugged-out behaviour had offended the straight-laced Mr. Sam, who was united with Mr. S in a hatred of drugs.’ This tends to corroborate my belief that Giancana played no part in the Cal-Neva debauchery.

The whole scenario had left a nasty taste in the mouths of those running the Cal-Neva and bridges to those involved were quickly burnt. The S&M orgy-party, with Marilyn as the unwitting participant, marked the end of their association. Although still fond of her, Sinatra was now through with the actress. He’d slept with screen legends such as Ava Gardner, Kim Novak and Juliet Prowse and knew there were plenty more to come. He didn’t need an unbalanced individual like Marilyn dangling over his head.

As she correctly guessed, Giancana was through with her too, as were Joseph Kennedy and his two spoilt sons. The Mafia boss had personally pulled strings in Chicago to help squeeze Kennedy past Richard Nixon
and into the White House in January 1961 and even shared good-time girl Judith Campbell with the President. The Chicago gangster had even, supposedly, been a witness to meetings with Joseph Kennedy at the Cal-Neva; now, with his son Bobby consistently making noises about bringing down the heat on organised crime in America, the hypocrisy of it all angered Giancana. Like Sinatra he was finished with the whole damn caboodle. It was the end of an era.

Early on the morning of Monday 30 July, with an intoxicated Lawford still by her side, Marilyn left Lake Tahoe. Naturally upset about what had just happened with Sinatra, Rosselli and D’Amato, and displeased that Bobby had used the actor to tell her their friendship had ended, she began making threats; warnings that, given her highly unstable condition, could not be taken lightly. The most disconcerting of these was her stipulation that if Bobby did not contact her personally and explain why he had dispensed with her, she would front a press conference at which she would make public details of her brief tryst with President Kennedy and announce how badly she had been treated by the brothers.

Later that day, immediately after completing her journey home from Los Angeles Airport, the actress attempted to place another call through to the Attorney General at the White House. Reiterating the scenario with his brother, John, the actress once again wanted to know precisely
why
she had been unceremoniously ditched. She had put her career on the line to appear at his brother’s gala and now she had been dumped again by another member of his family. And it
hurt
. In an exchange lasting precisely eight minutes, Bobby’s secretary, Angie Novello, correctly informed her he was out of the office. (In fact, he had been in a meeting with the President and wasn’t due to return to the bureau until the following morning.) Requests to be put through to him were allegedly rejected and she supposedly became angry. From that moment on, as we have been led to believe, she began referring to Bobby as ‘that little midget bastard’. As legend would have it, Marilyn was now a woman scorned.

Or was she? There is an alternative side to this story. As many historians believe, instead of ringing to ascertain why he had dispensed with her, what if Marilyn was actually trying to contact Bobby to warn him about a possible assassination attempt? As we know, the actress had just stayed the night at Sinatra’s Cal-Neva Lodge, an entertainment and gambling establishment awash with notables from enemy territory. While rubbing shoulders with these undesirables, did she perchance overhear tales of a planned assassination attempt on the Attorney General or the President? From the low-life hoodlum Skinny D’Amato to the parasite Johnny Rosselli, everything about the Cal-Neva reeked of conspiracy.

As we have seen, on Thursday 26 July 1962, three days before Monroe’s arrival there, the Los Angeles office of the FBI received an anonymous call warning about ‘gangland types’ who were plotting to murder Bobby Kennedy. Furthermore, the last proven date that Marilyn tried to contact Bobby at the Justice Department in Washington was Monday 30 July. Was she just desperate to pass on to Bobby the disturbing news she had heard about him or his brother? Many believe that Marilyn might even have been murdered because of what she’d accidentally overheard during her momentous stay at the Cal-Neva, although this is untrue.

Whatever is the case, the actress was understandably disturbed by her rejection and the incidents at the lodge. As surviving receipts show, upon her return to Fifth Helena that Monday, and immediately after attempting to contact Kennedy, she called two of her friends in New York, one of whom was Norman Rosten. Desperate for a friend to talk to in her time of need, their discussion lasted for 13 minutes. At its conclusion, she was hastily driven to Dr Greenson’s office in nearby North Roxbury Drive for another session. When her anxieties had alleviated, Marilyn ordered a $43.31 delivery of food and alcohol for herself and Eunice Murray from the Briggs Wines & Spirits store. Her eventful day concluded with a hastily arranged early-morning massage at 2.15am from her ever-reliable friend, Ralph Roberts.

She was in a high state of panic. The Nembutal pills Dr Hyman Engelberg had prescribed were failing to work. Within 15 minutes, with the aid of the front door key, still hidden in one of the fuschia pots by the front door, Roberts had arrived and was busy carrying out his work in her darkened bedroom. (This detail never concerned Roberts. Having been there many times to administer a soothing massage, he knew the layout of the actress’s sleeping quarters well. ‘Marilyn hated light and loved dark,’ he recalled. ‘If it was at night time, she insisted on having the lights off. She loved to have a massage to relax her. Sometimes she’d fall asleep on my table.’) His visit to the actress’s house lasted just under an hour. He left as discreetly as he had arrived.

Lawford, meanwhile, was naturally apprehensive about Marilyn’s plans for revenge. He knew she could be a powder keg to both the Kennedy brothers and his family. After parting company with her at the airport, he interrupted his drive home to Santa Monica by ordering his driver, the pilot Frank Lieto, to stop a few blocks away from his beachside house. He needed to make an urgent, pay-booth telephone call to the White House. He knew his home was bugged so he could not ring from there.

During the course of the call, Lawford fawningly informed the President that, as she had told him on the way back to the airport, Monroe was planning to front a tell-all press conference. No doubt referring to her
small red pocket diary, he apparently informed JFK drunkenly that the actress had documentation to substantiate her claims. (White House telephone records indicate that Kennedy received an 18-minute call on Monday 30 July at 8.40pm – 5.40pm West Coast time. By this time, he was relaxing back at his mansion. Bobby was still with him. Earlier that afternoon, the Attorney General had been in attendance at a meeting about nuclear testing involving the President and 23 other high-ranking officials.)

In Lawford’s alcohol-befuddled mind, Marilyn had become an angry woman who was not prepared to fade away into oblivion. He believed she was ready for a fight. As he saw it, she knew how America would want to hear about her tryst with the world’s most powerful man, learn about the Kennedys’ political secrets, discover how badly she had been treated by the brothers and learn about her revealing, politically sensitive conversations with the Attorney General.

However, her off-the-cuff claims to him during their trip home that she would tell all at a press conference were entirely hollow. As the timeline of her ensuing days testifies, she had no plans whatsoever to follow the threat through, but only
she
knew this. Her decision to declare an intention such as this was inspired by the President’s historic, televised, Telstar satellite-broadcast speech just a week earlier. Regrettably, she was unaware of the ramifications her threats would bring.

At the end of July and beginning of August 1962, Marilyn’s world-famous face and figure were once more featuring prominently on many magazine covers. Her name was being dropped in several noted newspaper columns, her work diary was once again beginning to fill and her future looked decidedly rosy. But regrettably, she had also become entangled with too many powerful individuals and was about to push her luck one step too far. The final tumultuous events of her tragically short life were about to commence.

Chapter Nine

Tuesday 31 July 1962–7.55pm, Saturday 4 August 1962

W
ith Dean Martin unable (or unwilling) to resume work on
Something’s Got To Give
until, at best, early in the New Year, Marilyn knew she had no reason whatsoever to stay in Los Angeles. So, on the morning of Tuesday 31 July, she decided to return to New York. Informed by Pat Newcomb that her first-class return flight via United Airlines, at a cost of $411.18, had been reserved, the actress made an 11-minute call to her housekeeper, Florence Thomas, and told her to clean and dust her apartment in Manhattan ready for her return the following week. September trips to Washington, and to Mexico on Saturday 15th, to celebrate the country’s Independence Day one day later, were also planned.

The same afternoon, once she had concluded her phone call to Florence Thomas, Marilyn was driven over to the Sunset Boulevard office of her publicist, Arthur Jacobs. Desperate to resolve his client’s career and kick-start his vocation as a movie producer, Jacobs was keen to sell to the actress the directorial expertise of J. Lee Thompson. Mindful of the hang-ups she had about certain people in their profession, Jacobs had earmarked Thompson to direct her and Gene Kelly (rather than Frank Sinatra) in the long-mooted First World War musical
I Love Louisa
(later retitled
What a Way to Go
). Before he could push the project further, he naturally needed Marilyn’s approval, so, in an attempt to do this, he summoned the actress to a meeting to see a taster of Thompson’s work.

In Jacobs’ small private cinema, a clip of Thompson’s recent movie,
The Guns of Navarone
, was screened. Even with its wartime flavour, it was a still a bad choice for the actress. ‘Excellent,’ she said at the end of it. ‘But it’s
not
a comedy.’ At once, Jacobs arranged for excerpts of two other Thompson movies to be projected, namely
Flame Over India
and
Tiger Bay
(both from 1959). Despite the fact that neither was humorous, Marilyn was impressed by what she saw. So when Jacobs enquired whether she would consider working with the director, she replied, ‘I’ll do it,
unless
I dislike him on sight.’ A meeting between the pair was suggested and a rendezvous at 5pm on the following Saturday, at her home in Brentwood, was swiftly arranged.

Meeting over, Jacobs immediately called Fox’s Phil Feldman and elatedly informed him the actress was interested in starring in
I Love Louisa
, confirming that the studio had thus obtained a second title for their new, two-picture deal with Marilyn. The actress meanwhile interrupted her journey home by attending a 90-minute session with Dr Greenson at his office in North Roxbury Drive. At the end of this, with concerns about work once again getting the better of her, Greenson wrote out another prescription for her, a refill of 10 chloral hydrate tablets. She collected it at once from the Vicente Pharmacy.

On Wednesday 1 August, the onslaught of bad press against the actress reared its ugly head again when she found herself on the receiving end of reporter Erskine Johnson’s caustic wit. On this day, in his weekly ‘Hollywood Today’ column, he launched the first of his off-beat, impudent ripostes to the Oscars, entitling them ‘Marilyns’ since, as he put it, ‘Marilyn Monroe is one of our top winners.’ In his sarcastic piece, Johnson proceeded to award the actress a ‘Marilyn’ in recognition for her ‘classy “Beat Dialog” when Fox bounced her out of
Something’s Got To Give
. “How can they do this to me?” she said, after becoming the year’s most celebrated no-show.’ His quirky, make-believe awards ceremony continued when, in recognition of her infamous non-attendance on the film set, he cheekily bestowed Marilyn with the ‘Best Song’ award, ‘Never on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday’.

Aside from the wisecracks, the actress continued to oversee the work on her Fifth Helena home. That morning, new wooden Reece Period furniture gates were hung at the front of the property. (With seven hinges, the total cost, including labour, materials and tax, came to $313.92.) ‘Marilyn was getting things done around the house,’ Pat Newcomb recalled at the time. ‘She loved it. She was so excited about it, just like a little girl with a new toy.’ No expense with the renovations was spared. She even paid $29.38 to the Film City Ornamental Iron Works Company at 5851 Sunset Boulevard for nails with specially made heads for her front door.

While the work was carried out, Marilyn spent time on the phone. One call was from Phil Feldman. Following Jacobs’ buoyant call the previous afternoon, he was ringing to confirm the studio’s offer of a $1 million, two-picture deal ($500,000 for the resumption of
Something’s Got To Give
and a further $500,000 for
I Love Louisa
) and to inform her that a contract to that effect had been sent to her attorney, Milton Rudin, for his and her approval. She agreed in principle to the plan immediately. Now on a higher rate of pay, the actress had just won a major personal victory against the studio and she was ecstatic. However, their conversation was still peppered with caveats. The studio agreed to hire her choice of director, Jean Negulesco, for
Something’s Got To Give
, but only on the condition that she excised Paula Strasberg from her professional life. She requested time to think about it. He agreed.