The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe (22 page)

H
ollywood, it has been said, is a state of mind, a celluloid city that extends from the back lots of the dream factories and has no boundaries—its false fronts and plaster streets wending endlessly through Oz, Shangri-la, the Casbah, and Jurassic Park to the darkened cinema palaces, multiplexes, and living rooms around the globe.

A visitor to the real Hollywood of today is often shocked by the dichotomy between the dream and the reality. Hollywood Boulevard, once a magical mecca, has become the street of busted dreams where panhandlers, grifters, psychos, and life's disenfranchised gather to commiserate in the silent scream of social rejection. The day of the locusts has come and gone, leaving the few vestiges of Hollywood's glory days in ruin and decay.

But there was a day and an arc-lit night when Hollywood was in a better state of mindlessness—the plaster was fresh, the tinsel was real tinsel, and the unrecycled dream was an honest simulation of genuine illusion. There were real stories, and there were real stars. Legendary stars such as Valentino, Gable, Harlow, Pickford, Fairbanks, and Garbo had an aura unknown to the stars of today. The star system and the stars' distinctive
larger-than-life individuality placed them in an outer orbit where they burned stronger, burned brighter.

To Norma Jeane, they were the beacons of a promised land—the land of Ingrid Bergman, Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Gene Tierney, and Jennifer Jones—and she thought,

Early in 1946 Norma Jeane spoke with Emmeline Snively about her ambition to be a movie actress, and Miss Snively recommended that she see her friend Helen “Bunny” Ainsworth, the West Coast representative of the National Concert Artists talent agency. A huge woman, Bunny Ainsworth weighed in at well over two hundred pounds and jokingly referred to herself as the biggest agent in Hollywood. Impressed by Norma Jeane, Ainsworth signed her to the agency on March 11, 1946, and Harry Lipton was appointed as her motion-picture representative.

But Norma Jeane was only one of thousands dreaming the same dream, following the same road sign,
THIS WAY OUT
. They packed up their hopes and hitchhiked, grabbed the bus, or jumped on the train for movieland, each one dreaming with all her heart that she would be the one who would make it to the top: hundreds and hundreds of smiles and capped teeth and dye jobs, fixed noses, electrolysis—all bumps and warts removed; thousands of brunettes, redheads, blondes with lithe legs, full firm breasts, and the perfect curve of the hip—or excellent falsies and bun pads; thousands and thousands of photos and head shots and résumés—
“Broadway experience,” can sing, tap-dance, do the hula, play piano, double-jointed, “Miss Wyoming,” studied with Meisner, Abbey Players, Pocono Playhouse, slept with Zanuck (has special wink and walk), has large expressive eyes; “Bright as hell, Jack, studied in London—
class
, but look at those jugs!”…“exudes confidence, charm and allure!”…“and listen, Harry, get this—she's J. Paul Getty's sweetie pie”…Thousands and thousands of babes and dolls and lays and lookers, schemers and dreamers with gams and grins, boobs and kissers, and—and then there was Norma Jeane.

She followed the prescribed trail from Schwab's Drugstore to the studio casting offices, portfolio and resume in hand. She read big books to improve her mind while waiting long hours on hard benches, only to be told, “We can't see you today.” She had heard through the grapevine at Schwab's that no major studio would put her under contract, in any event, if she was married. Her agent, Harry Lipton, confirmed that the studios felt they would be wasting money and time in training a starlet who might get pregnant. According to Lipton, he spoke to Norma Jeane about her marriage of four years to Dougherty, and realizing that the marriage was in fact over, persuaded her to go to Nevada and obtain a quickie divorce.

She filed for a divorce from James Dougherty in Las Vegas on May 14, 1946. Though she was legally required to live in Nevada until the divorce was finalized, she frequently commuted between Hollywood and Vegas, gambling on the odds that she wouldn't be caught.

Dougherty recalls that his ship had docked in Shanghai when the mail arrived from the states. Norma Jeane hadn't written for a long time, and he didn't really expect a letter. But his name was called out and one of the sailors handed a letter back to him and said, “Hey, your old lady's divorcing you!” It was from a Las Vegas attorney. “It was a Dear John,” Dougherty remembers, “and all kinds of crazy thoughts went through my mind. I thought about jumping over the side, about doing away with myself any way I could manage. But that feeling passed within minutes.” Despair quickly turned to anger as Dougherty saw that a movie contract meant more to his wife than a marriage contract. Instead of doing away with himself, Dougherty stated, “I immediately went to the captain and said, ‘I want my wife's allotment cut off as of
right now
!'”

In July, Norma Jeane appeared on the cover of four “girlie” magazines—
Click, Pic, Laff
, and
Sir
. Packing her bulging portfolio, she headed for 20th Century-Fox, determined to see the casting director, Ben Lyon.

In the wartime boom years and pre-TV days, Fox had become the larg
est and most successful of the Hollywood majors. Invariably, the studio empires had been built on the vision of individuals rather than executive boards, agents, and Wall Street lawyers; and it was Darryl F. Zanuck, an idiosyncratic man of dauntless will and energy, who had turned the ailing William Fox Corporation into a vast empire encompassing the worldwide Fox theater chain and the Westwood Studio, with its sixteen soundstages, three hundred acres of lakes and forests, western towns, New York City streets, medieval castles, railway stations, jungles, and Oriental bazaars—all on prime real estate bordering Beverly Hills.

With a stable of stars that included Betty Grable, Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, June Haver, and Clifton Webb, Fox made seventy-five films in 1945, and Zanuck ran the studio like a Prussian general. An ex–polo player, Zanuck had been barred from playing polo in Brentwood because he had swung his mallet at a horse in a fit of anger. He then turned his mallet into a swagger stick, and it was said that he swung it at yes men who said “yes” before he was finished talking.

In the summer of 1946 a nineteen-year-old journalist from Ohio was waiting in the crowded lobby of Fox Studios, hoping for an interview with Gene Tierney, when an attractive blonde carrying a bulging portfolio pushed open the large entry doors. Catching her heel, she stumbled and her pictures scattered on the linoleum floor. As the young journalist helped her pick up the pictures, she smiled at him with her bright blue eyes and said, “Thank you!” before walking to the receptionist's window.

Young Robert Slatzer tried to return to his book, but the blonde's perfume lingered, and he found it hard to concentrate on his reading. He glanced once more at the shy, beautiful blonde as the receptionist asked her to take a seat. Slatzer recalls feeling fortunate that there was only one place left for her to sit—next to him.

“What kind of book is that?” she asked as she sat down.

“
Leaves of Grass
,” Slatzer said.

“What's it about?” she asked with wide-eyed wonder.

“It's a collection of poems by Walt Whitman,” he told her as he handed her the book. “Are you an actress?” Slatzer inquired.

“No, I'm a model,” she responded enthusiastically, as she began thumbing through the book's pages. “But I hope to be an actress someday. My name is Norma Jeane.”

When he introduced himself, she began asking Slatzer about movie stars he had interviewed: What were they like? Were they the same in
person as they were on the screen? Where did they print his interviews? And as they spoke Slatzer realized there was something special about this shy, beautiful blonde. “We had an instant affection towards each other,” he recalled. “She had a certain magic about her that was quite different. I guess you could say my heart went out to her from that very first day—and she sensed that.”

Before he knew it they had made a date for that very night. He was to pick her up at the apartment on Nebraska, and they would have dinner up in Malibu at a place she liked that overlooked the ocean. He hadn't told her he was broke and didn't have a car. Slatzer was staying at the home of character actor Noble “Kid” Chissell, whom he had met on location in Ohio when Fox was filming
Home in Indiana
. Fortunately, Chissell wasn't using his car that night and let Slatzer borrow his car and ten bucks.

While Slatzer never got his interview that day with Gene Tierney, he did have an entrancing evening with the beautiful blonde. Gene Tierney was filming
Dragonwyck
with Walter Huston, and too busy to see the young journalist; however, there was another young man from the east who had no trouble in meeting Gene Tierney on the set of
Dragonwyck
, a charismatic man who had recently arrived in Hollywood—Jack Kennedy.

In June of 1946 Jack Kennedy had won the Boston primary in the Eleventh Congressional District by a landslide. Flush with his first political success, he packed his bags and headed for a vacation in Hollywood, where he could work on his tan and his image before launching the November election campaign. Following in the footsteps of his old man, he was intent on mingling with the stars and “knocking a name,” as he put it to his friend Chuck Spalding, who worked for Gene Tierney's agent, Charles Feldman.

Recalling meeting Jack on the set of
Dragonwyck
at Fox, Gene Tierney stated, “I turned and found myself staring into the most perfect blue eyes I had ever seen on a man. He smiled at me. My reaction was right out of a ladies' romance novel. Literally, my heart skipped.” Though she was married at the time to Oleg Cassini, Gene Tierney became enamored of Jack Kennedy and believed he was in love with her.

“I'm not sure I can explain the nature of Jack's charm,” she said, “but he took life just as it came. He didn't try to hide. He never worried about making an impression. He made you feel very secure. I don't remember seeing him angry. He was good with people in a way that went beyond
politics, thoughtful in more than a material way. Gifts and flowers were not his style. He gave you his time, his interest.”

But Gene Tierney was not the only woman to whom Jack gave his time and his interest. She was only one of many married women, divorcees, stars, and starlets he pursued on his Hollywood escapade.

“News from the Hollywood love front!” Sheilah Graham coyly revealed in her gossip column of August 15, 1946. “Peggy Cummins and Jack Kennedy are a surprise twosome around town during this Congressman-for-Boston's visit here!”

According to his
PT-J09
shipmate Red Fay, Jack also had an affair with Sonja Henie, whom he had met at the Hollywood home of his friend actor Robert Stack. Fay recalls Jack stating, “Making it with the ice-skating star was one of my greatest triumphs.” It was that summer, when Jack was eyeing the stars and starlets at Hollywood parties, that Robert Stack remembers seeing a pretty model named Norma Jeane.

“I first met Norma Jeane Dougherty before she changed her name, when a good-looking Hungarian actor named Eric Feldary took her to one of our swimming parties,” Stack recalled. Feldary, who was also a friend of Sonja Henie, appeared in
For Whom the Bell Tolls
and
Hold Back the Dawn
. Stack noted that Norma Jeane wore a white bathing suit, “which she filled beautifully, but then so did many of the other pretty girls. I remember that she appeared to be shy and somehow on the outside of everything taking place at the party. I tried being a good host, and every time I'd ask if she wanted anything she'd say, ‘No, everything is fine.'”

In the summer of 1946, Norma Jeane appeared in her bathing suit on the cover of
Laff
, a girlie magazine that Howard Hughes found more than amusing. On July 7, Hughes had narrowly escaped death when the experimental plane he was testing crashed into a Beverly Hills residence. He was semicomatose for days and encased in a plaster cast, but signs of life returned when he spotted Norma Jeane's photo on
Laff
's cover. Hughes called his office at RKO and told one of his associates to find out who the cover girl was and arrange a screen test. Learning of Hughes's interest, but savvy enough to know that a Hughes screen test for a starlet often meant a command performance between the call sheets, Bunny Ainsworth planted an item in Hedda Hopper's syndicated movie column of July 29: