The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe (49 page)

That day, the weather had become unseasonably cold for Southern California, blanketing Los Angeles in clouds and fog. The evening air was damp and chilly. As the birthday party wound down, Marilyn turned to Weinstein and asked if she could borrow the Jean-Louis suit and hat that she wore in the film. “I've got an appearance this evening at Dodger Stadium. I won't have time to go home now, and the suit is the only thing I've got that's warm enough.”

Henry Weinstein was immediately concerned. He stated, “I knew if she went out in that weather, she could turn sick.” He tried to persuade her to cancel her appearance, but Marilyn insisted, “I have to go. I promised the people from Muscular Dystrophy, and they sold thousands of tickets. Besides, I promised to take Dean Martin's son.”

Ignoring the cold descending mist, Marilyn spent an hour on the field that evening at Dodger Stadium while chatting with several children in wheelchairs. A chill wind caught her mink hat and blew it from her head, and the last photograph taken in public of Marilyn shows her waving to the children as she holds her hat in her hand.

As she drove home in her limousine later that night, she began feeling the blinding pain behind her eyes. The insidious sinusitis infection had returned with a vengeance.

O
n the weekend of June 2 and 3, Marilyn telephoned both Jeanne Carmen and Terry Moore from her sickbed and discussed the difficulties she was having in reaching Jack Kennedy. “She was very proud that she was given the president's private number and was devastated when he cut it off,” said her friend Terry Moore. Having known Jack Kennedy all her adult life, Marilyn felt he owed her an explanation.

Dr. Greenson's absence contributed to Marilyn's sense of abandonment. Eunice Murray recalled, “Marilyn didn't want to interrupt the doctor's trip with her problems.” Greenson's son, Danny, had made a point of requesting that Marilyn let him get through “the speaking engagement in Switzerland” without calling him home.

If Marilyn hoped for help from Peter Lawford, it wasn't forthcoming. He too began avoiding her. “Where the hell is Peter?” she asked Jeanne Carmen. “I haven't been able to reach him for days.” Carmen noted that “Peter had a way of making himself scarce when he didn't want to talk to you.”

Lawford had informed Jack Kennedy that Marilyn reacted very badly to being cut off from contact with the president. She wrote the president a
number of unanswered letters that became increasingly angry and belligerent in tone. Peter Lawford termed them “rather pathetic letters.” With both Hoover and Monroe to contend with, Kennedy was constrained to heed the warning of the FBI chief, and at the same time found it expedient to mollify the movie star. While Pat Newcomb could be relied upon to keep Peter Lawford and the Kennedys apprised of Marilyn's state of mind on a day-to-day basis, Bobby Kennedy was the logical one to solve the “Marilyn problem,” which had now become an imminent danger. Bobby Kennedy was the ameliorator for the family. Only he was privy to the complex personal matters relating to Jack Kennedy and Marilyn.

 

On Sunday, June 3, Marilyn succumbed to her feelings of rejection in a haze of Nembutal somnambulence. The Aztec calendar, purchased in Taxco during happier days, would count the deleterious days and hours. The chess board sat on the game table, the white knight missing. The Rodin, which stood on her living room table, silently answered her indefinable question, “What does it mean? Does he love her? Or is he just screwing her? Is it a fake? What do you think, Doctor? What does it mean?”

On Sunday afternoon, she called Dr. Greenson's children, Joan and Danny. She sounded heavily drugged and disconsolate. Danny recalled that they hurried over to her house. “She was in bed naked, with just a sheet over her, and she was wearing a black sleeping mask, like the Lone Ranger wore. It was the least erotic sight you could imagine. This woman was desperate. She couldn't sleep—it was the middle of the afternoon. She said how terrible she felt about herself—that people were only nice to her for what they could get from her. She said she had no one—that nobody loved her. She mentioned not having children. It was a whole litany of depressing thoughts.”

Nothing they said could reassure Marilyn. With their father out of the country, they called in Dr. Milton Wexler. He saw the array of pill bottles by the bed and promptly swept them into his medical bag. Though Pat Newcomb denied ever giving Marilyn prescription drugs, according to Mrs. Murray, the “spin doctor” came over that evening and brought sedatives to replace those taken by Wexler.

On Monday morning, June 4, Murray called Henry Weinstein to tell him that Marilyn's infection had returned, and that she was unable to report for work. At 8
A.M.
, the studio doctor, Lee Siegel, drove to Brent
wood to check on Marilyn's condition. He reported that her temperature was over 100 degrees, and instructed Marilyn to stay home. Rumors began spreading that Fox was going to shut down the production.

Weinstein succeeded in reaching Dr. Greenson in Europe, and apprised him of the deteriorating situation. Greenson agreed to fly home immediately, and promised to have Marilyn back on the set by the next Monday. He arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon, June 6, and went directly to Marilyn's home, arriving at the Brentwood house just before dark. After spending two hours with Marilyn and conferring with Dr. Engelberg, Greenson determined that she was strong enough emotionally and physically to complete the film.

On Friday, June 8, Rudin and Greenson met with studio executives Phil Feldman and Milton Gould. Twentieth Century-Fox had a long list of humiliating conditions for Marilyn to agree to when she returned to work. She would lose what little creative control she had over the production, report for work promptly, and observe the time limit for the lunch break, and Paula Strasberg would not be allowed on the set. Rudin thought Marilyn would balk at not having Paula; however, Greenson, who had no love for Paula Strasberg, interrupted with: “I can persuade Marilyn to go along with any reasonable request,” he said. “While I don't want to present myself as a Svengali, I can convince Marilyn to do anything I want her to do.”

Gould and Feldman were amazed by Greenson's statement, which is included in the Fox memos of this meeting. They then asked him, “Would you then determine what scenes Marilyn will or will not do, and decide which takes were favorable or unfavorable?”

“Yes,” Greenson replied. “If necessary, I'll even go into the editing room.” The luncheon with Feldman and Gould wound up at 1:45
P.M.
, and as Rudin and Greenson walked to their cars they were optimistic that the production would go forward. But a decision to fire Marilyn had already been made in New York by Fox's chairman of the board, Judge Samuel Rosenman. On Tuesday, June 4, while Greenson had been in flight to Los Angeles, Rosenman had issued orders to the Fox legal department in New York to prepare a dismissal notice and damage suit against Marilyn Monroe for $1 million. The papers were being filed in the Santa Monica court on Friday afternoon while Rudin and Greenson were still negotiating with Feldman and Gould.

Dr. Greenson heard about the firing on his car radio late Friday and hurried to Marilyn's home. The devastating news took Marilyn by surprise,
and Greenson stayed with her for more than an hour. After giving Marilyn a tranquilizer shot, the doctor lashed out at Fox and angrily said to Mrs. Murray, “You know, it isn't as if she was goldbricking or out partying. They have acted in bad faith!”

Whitey Snyder, who visited Marilyn shortly after Greenson left, observed, “She had never been fired before, so she was devastated. She couldn't understand it.” The morning editions of newspapers around the world carried the news of Marilyn's dismissal. It was the beginning of a campaign structured by the Fox publicity department in New York to discredit Marilyn as the studio geared up for one of the most negative campaigns against a film star in Hollywood history. Orders had come from New York to destroy the star Fox had helped build to the heights of celebrity. The studio executives were relentless, and the viciousness of their attacks was unprecedented.

On Friday, Charles Endfield, vice president of advertising, sent an exclusive to Sheilah Graham: “When Marilyn shows up for work on Monday she will find that she has been fired and replaced—perhaps with Kim Novak. Marilyn hasn't shown up for days, even though she's been out on the town doing the night spots. Twentieth Century-Fox doesn't want her anymore.”

Damaging stories were then sent out by Fox over the Associated Press quoting studio sources: “Miss Monroe is not just being temperamental, she's mentally ill, perhaps seriously,” declared studio boss Peter Levathes.

In the
Los Angeles Herald Examiner
, Henry Weinstein was quoted as stating, “By her willful irresponsibility, Marilyn has taken the bread right out of the mouths of men who depend on this film to feed their families.”

In Hedda Hopper's column George Cukor was quoted as saying, “The poor dear has finally gone round-the-bend. The sad thing is the little work she did is no good…. I think it's the end of her career.”

But Cukor, Levathes, and Weinstein later denied ever making such statements. Weinstein insisted, “They simply released these statements in my name. I never talked to anyone about it. In fact, I quit Fox in protest. After June 8, I was gone!”

The Fox publicity department excelled itself in ruthlessness and planted a full-page ad in
Weekly Variety
that stated, “Thank you, Miss Monroe, for the loss of our livelihoods.” It was signed, “The crew of
Something's Got to Give
.” However, the crew, which had only admiration for Marilyn, had not placed the ad.

The incongruous attempt by a major studio to destroy its own star was
puzzling. That the Fox publicity department would release statements questioning their star's sanity and refer to her as “mentally ill” was incomprehensible. Certainly to Marilyn it must have been the cruelest aspect of the strange campaign to discredit her. Some speculated that it was an insurance scam at a time when the studio needed cash. But insurance benefits were based on a star's confirmed illness—not alleged malingering. Others theorized that the campaign to destroy the star was merely bad judgment on the part of the Wall Street lawyers who had taken over the Fox board.

On Saturday, June 9, Marilyn called Spyros Skouras. As president of Fox he had always guided her and protected her interests. When Marilyn reached him, she discovered that he had been ill and was recovering from surgery in a New York hospital. Skouras explained that he had been saddened to hear about her dismissal, but he had nothing to do with it. Skouras was not the power at Fox he had been in the glory days. By 1962 he had become only a figurehead and was preparing to resign his post as president; the power was held by the Wall Street barracudas Milton Gould, John Loeb, and Chairman of the Board Samuel Rosenman. They had acquired enormous blocks of Fox stock in order to seize control of the company.

Marilyn learned that Samuel Rosenman was a close friend of Averell Harriman and the Kennedys. Rosenman had been an aide to Franklin Roosevelt and his key speechwriter. Later he was to become an aide to President Truman and a law partner of Clark Clifford, President Kennedy's White House attorney. JFK appointed Rosenman to several labor-relations panels, and Rosenman was instrumental in settling the prolonged steel industry strikes of the early sixties. It was through Rosenman that Bobby Kennedy set up the film deal at Fox for his book,
The Enemy Within
. It was rumored that Skakel and Kennedy money was involved in the studio takeover.

The Great Lakes Carbon Corporation, owned by Ethel Skakel Kennedy's family, had vast real estate holdings in Southern California. The Skakels had purchased thousands of acres for development in Rancho Palos Verdes, and were constructing the Del Amo Business Center in Orange County. Under the chairmanship of Samuel Rosenman, in 1962, the board sold the back lot of 20th Century-Fox for development as Century City. It was purchased by Alcoa Aluminum, an affiliate of the Skakels' Great Lakes Carbon Corporation.

Today, the pumps and invisible derricks of the Fox Hills oil field be
neath the towering skyscrapers of Century City are so well camouflaged that the casual passerby would never know they were there. But the massive slant-drilling operation, which extends well into Beverly Hills and beyond Rodeo Drive, has been the back lot's all-time biggest blockbuster.

Judge Rosenman and the Wall Street barracudas were pumping Fox production money into
Cleopatra
, and this gave the board a rationale for selling off the land where the deep pool of finders' fees and serious cash was well hidden.

The attorney general's telephone records indicate a number of calls to Judge Rosenman just prior to Marilyn's being fired. If Bobby Kennedy was behind Marilyn's dismissal and the ruthless campaign to discredit her in order to ensure her silence, he was holding hostage the one thing that mattered to Marilyn Monroe—her career. Marilyn found an unexpected ally in Darryl F. Zanuck, who was in Europe producing his World War II epic,
The Longest Day
. In a Paris press conference Zanuck had only recently expressed his displeasure with the current Fox management. He first heard about Marilyn's dismissal from Nunnally Johnson, who called him from London with the news.

“You know, I never particularly liked Monroe,” Zanuck said to Johnson, “but I've got a hell of a high regard for her box-office value. The treatment of her on this film makes me terribly frightened for the future of Fox.”

On the Monday following her dismissal, Marilyn called Zanuck in Paris. Whitey Snyder remembered Marilyn explaining to Zanuck that she had been truly ill, and that she very much wanted to finish
Something's Got to Give
. “I only heard one side of her conversation with Zanuck,” Snyder said, “but I got the impression that he agreed to help her engineer her comeback.” It was the opening gambit of Marilyn's strategy to outwit Robert Kennedy.

When Marilyn had called Zanuck in Paris, he was already over his own problems with Judge Rosenman and the Wall Street barracudas, who were selling off Fox real estate and bulldozing the studio. Ravenous for cash, they were planning to seize
The Longest Day
, slash thirty minutes from its running time, and dump it on the market in a mass release.

The Longest Day
had taken over two years to film and featured thirty-five stars, including Richard Burton, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, and Robert Redford. Zanuck expected the film to be presented as a prestige motion picture with a series of glittering premieres and a top-ticket road-show presentation, but Rosenman had informed Zanuck that “under no circumstances would
The Longest Day
have special handling.” It would
have to take its chances under a blanket release to thousands of neighborhood theaters.

Zanuck soon realized that
The Longest Day
could be rescued from the jaws of the Wall Street lawyers only if he regained control of the 20th Century-Fox board and became president of the company.