The Secret Letters of Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy (22 page)

WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM

M
ARILYN
M
ONROE

12305 Fifth Helena Drive

Brentwood, California

Jackie Kennedy

The White House

June 1, 1962

Jackie,

I can’t take it anymore. Make Jack call me, please.

WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM

M
ARILYN
M
ONROE

12305 Fifth Helena Drive

Brentwood, California

Jackie Kennedy

The White House

June 2, 1962

To Jacqueline Kennedy, The White House

Dear Mrs. President.

I am writing this to you and I hope that you will read it so you know. My heart is broken with a hammer, I stutter and I stammer every time I think of Mr. G, you know. Over, over, over, help me, Jackie, help me, I’m going crazy, purple is still crazy, and blue, very blue, blue eyes, the bluest in the world, teeth white, starlight, starbright, dark night, night, twinkle twinkle twinkle, Mr. Wonderful, Mr. G, H, I, J, K, over, over, over, letters are a girl’s best friend, help, help, help, please, help

WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM

M
ARILYN
M
ONROE

12305 Fifth Helena Drive

Brentwood, California

June 3, 1962

Dear Jackie,

Thank you for sending me a good angel. Thank you for saving my life.

Love, forever,

Marilyn

J
ACQUELINE
K
ENNEDY

THE WHITE HOUSE

June 7, 1962

Dear Marilyn,

I was delighted to learn from your last cable that you are feeling better.

I am sorry not to be able to write to you at great length this time, but am presently preparing for the summer vacation (am leaving for Europe on August 7 with Lee, and am taking a series of small trips before then).

Do take care of yourself and write to me once
Something’s Got to Give
is completed and you have time.

Love, as always,

Jackie

__________________________

Jackie wrote in her diary, “Have decided to distance myself from MM for a while. Not because of Jack—because I am convinced that is over. I put paid to it, and I’m not sorry I did. However, strangely enough, I still care about her and wish her well. I just need time before I forgive and, maybe, forget. After all, knowing Jack, she is probably merely one of hundreds. Sometimes I could just strangle him.”

M
ARILYN
M
ONROE

12305 Fifth Helena Drive

Brentwood

California

Jackie Kennedy

1095 North Ocean Boulevard

Palm Beach, Florida

July 9, 1962

Dear
Jackie,

I know you said you were getting ready for Europe and traveling, but when I phoned the compound, they said you would be back by now and I need to write you
so
badly.

My whole life has changed and I owe it all to you. I am happier than I have ever been, ever. Except for just one thing
—
knowing in my heart that I have not been honest with you, the kindest, best person I have ever known. Whenever I remember what I have done, everything is spoiled, feels dirty, and I don’t want to feel that way anymore. I want to be happy without any more shadows or any more guilt.

They say confession is good for the soul. Well, sometimes I wonder whether I even have one. I know I am an actress
—
and acting is telling lies, lies someone else writes for you that you are passing on
—
but I hate lying when I am not acting. I owe you the whole truth at last, because although I lost Mr. G, because of you, I found Mr.
X
and I am in heaven!

The only reason I can write this letter—apart from the reason I said—is that my whole world has changed. It is as if there has been an earthquake in my heart. Mr. G has finally been eklipsed [
sic
] by another man—Mr. X. X as in exciting, exhillerating [
sic
], exceptional, sexy, and extra special. I can’t promise never to see Mr. G again, but I don’t think I will ever see him again in the way in which I have always seen him.

All through the years, you never asked who Mr. G was. Nor did you try to find out. Many times, when you were kind and caring toward me, I longed to tell you the truth. But I knew that if I did, he’d kill me. But now I don’t care anymore about him. I just care about you, and not feeling guilty or dirty ever again in my life.

There is no easy way to say this. Or any easy time. I am telling you now, I think, because I believe that once you know how much in love I am with Mr. X, you will realize that you are safe. Safe from me. Safe because Mr. G’s real name is Jack Kennedy and I don’t love him anymore. Please don’t stop reading. In some ways, I hope that you suspected all along. You might have, which is probably why you suggested I sing “Happy Birthday” the way I sang it. You probably knew Jack would hate it. You must have guessed that he would despise me for it. But I didn’t. I had no idea. You see, I know the private Jack real well, but the public Jack is completely aliun [
sic
] to me.

Maybe, if I tell you how Jack and I ever happened—and remember, I promise from the very bottom of my heart that it won’t ever happen again—it won’t seem quite so bad, and then—so long as you forgive me—we can go on and still be friends like before.

This, as they say in the movies, is how the story began. I read somewhere that a man called Charles Bartlett first introduced you to Jack. Life is so strange. A man called Charles also first introduced me to Jack as well. My Charles was Charles Feldman, the agent whom we all had dinner with in 1954. Long before that, though, I had already met Jack at Charlie’s. I met him there in 1951, on May 15.

I nearly fainted when I read that you first met Jack just twelve days before I did, on May 3, 1951.

I read that that first night, you played charades with jack and beat him
—
he would have been impressed, but deep down, somewhere, probably didn’t really like it. But you were a debutante, a prizewinner
—
Vogue
’s Prix de Paris, I think
—
and rich and beautiful, so I suppose Jack decided to take it, and you.

I once read a Victorian novel where the author said something like that the good luck and the bad luck of life all depend on who you meet when. I agree with that. But I want to add something. It also depends on who you meet
where
—
and how. Because, looking back, if I had met Jack in another place, he might have thought of me differently and then things might have turned out differently as well.

In those days—1951—I was hanging around Charlie Feldman’s house. Charlie handled some big stars
—
in every which way … including Gene Teirney [
sic
]. Johnny Hyde used to take me to Charlie’s with him and because I was Johnny’s girl, Charlie treated me with respekt [
sic
]. I liked that.

But once Johnny died, Charlie was all over me like paper over a fly. I suppose I should have married Johnny
—
he asked me
—
but I didn’t love him. Everyone told me I was being real dumb
—
because I would have been a very rich widow. But I didn’t care. Still don’t. To me, money is like the tide, it comes in and then it goes out. You have it, and then you don’t. Then you do again.

That night at Charlie’s, the night I met Jack, I was feeling scared and alone. My husband, Jim, and I were over, I’d had a fling with Elia Kazan
—
most of the time, all he could do was talk about Arthur miller. Isn’t life funny, that I ended up marrying Arthur. …

I knew Charlie was going to make his move on me that night. I suppose you could say that in those days, I was easy. But that wouldn’t be right. I wasn’t easy. It’s just that sex was easy
—
for me, that is. But I still didn’t
really want to go to bed with Charlie. Sure, he was powerful and clever, but there was a coldness to him. I couldn’t imagine ever being able to love Charlie.

But I took one look at Jack and couldn’t imagine ever being able to love anyone else. Now, of course, I do—Mr. X. But looking back on how it all began with me and Jack, I see Jack as he was that first night. Even now, though, I still wish I hadn’t met him there, at Charlie’s, because I know he still sees me as I was then. No matter how famous I am, no matter how many men desire me, marry me, love me, no matter how many awards I win, how many acting lessons I take, to Jack, I will always be that easy little 24-year-old starlet whom he met that night at Charlie’s. Which is what that Victorian novelist I mentioned before meant. The bad luck of who you meet when. Or rather,
who
you are when you meet them.

My first impression of Jack was that he was very young and very thin. Just a boy, really. That night, he had a bag of fudge in his pocket, which he kept popping into his mouth. A long time later, he told me that he always gorged himself on fudge when he was bored. After that first night, he never ate fudge around me again.

The thing I most remember about Jack from that very first time is his eyes. When Jack focused those eyes on you, you really felt it. He had a special way of staring at you—his secret trick. Years later, he explained it to me—but I still can’t get it right—first he stared at your left eye, then your right. Each eye at a time, never together.

The first time he looked at me, I felt like he was raping me with his eyes. Not the kind of rape that hurts you. The other kind. When he looked at me like that—that very first night—I blushed from head to foot. A red flush. All over my body.

We had sex that same evening, at a bungalow he rented for us at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I am sure you don’t want to know any of the details. But Jack had magic on me. That night and always. Since then no one
else—not Joe, and not even Frank—ever had that kind of magic on me. Only Jack—and now Mr. X.

Jack was just a Congressman then. I didn’t know much about what he did. Just that he was a cute guy who set me on fire and that when I woke up in his arms, I felt safer, more special than I ever had before. I’ve had so many men, stronger, sexier, taller, and bigger than Jack. But no one ever reached into my heart, body, and soul like he did. Until Mr. X, that is.

Jack made me want to be good for him, to be special for him. He made me want to improve myself. So that summer, because of Jack—and because I wanted to—I took an art history class at UCLA. I also did a lot of reading: the classics, Freud. I was hoping Freud could give me a clue to solving the mystery of Jack’s magic over me, and break the spell, but there was nothing he wrote that explained it. If I had had a father, then Freud might have said that Jack had magic on me because he reminded me of him. But I didn’t. So Jack couldn’t. Nor was he the father whom I dreamed of having. Gable was that. If anything, Jack reminded me of myself.

In march 1952, when the calendar came out with me photographed in the nude on red velvet, I was petrified that he would despise me for it. But he didn’t. He just laughed and asked me to send him some copies. Then he said, “Don’t deny you did it. Tell them how you re an orphan, that you were broke. Be Cinderella. Everyone loves Cinderella, Marilyn. Cinderella sells. I remembered that. I remember everything Jack ever said to me, because when I am with him I am like a great big sponge. So when the press asked me why I’d posed for the calendar, I used Jack’s concept. I gave them a Cinderella story, just like Jack said, and it worked.

The day after the calendar came out, I met Joe. I really went out with Joe only as a stunt, to kill any negative publicity that might have arisen from the calendar. More than that, I hoped that by dating someone as famous as Joe, I might make Jack forget how he first saw me and even make
him jealous. It did a bit, but not enough to make him want to marry me. By that time, I knew that the higher Jack climbed in politics, the less chance there would be of him marrying a mere actress. I did think, though, that if I could one day do some theater, which, of course, I eventually did, I might make a suitable wife for Jack. I did want to marry him, but he didn’t want to marry me, so I married Joe instead, for want of being able to marry Jack. A rebound marriage. I tried to be happy with Joe, to be a good wife to him, but he wasn’t Jack. He didn’t talk about politics or books or ideas. He just watched TV and played ball.

When I read about you and Jack getting engaged, I felt as if I could die. He didn’t even warn me. I bought every newspaper and magazine featuring articles about you. I wanted to know all about you and what he saw in you. Seeing your picture made me want to die. I think I would have killed myself, only my career was on such a high. Just two days after the engagement announcement, Jane Russell and I did our footprints in the cement at Grauman’s, and
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
was released three weeks afterwards. The studio loved me in it, I was doing great, but not in the way I wanted. I wanted Jack.

He called and invited me to your wedding. He said he wanted me to come because his father had invited Marion Daveis [
sic
], and he wanted to win points over him by inviting me, because I was an even bigger star than she ever was. Typical of Jack, so set on competing with his father that he forgot all about me and how I would feel, standing there at your wedding, watching him promise to be faithful and to love you forever. It would have been hell for me. When the invitation arrived, I was surprised to see that it came from Jack’s father’s office, and not from Jack’s. Then Jack explained that, at the last minute, he was afraid you might suspect something, so he made his father invite me instead. He said that he thought the invitation might have the dual effect of making you think I was his father’s mistress as well. At first, that hurt me, nearly as much as the fact that he was getting married,
because I felt as if he was throwing me away. Then I thought about it more and realized that it was a compliment, apart from which it showed that Jack still wanted to carry on with me, even though he was marrying you. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have cared so much what you thought. Anyway, even though I pretended to be mad at him for insinuating that about his father and me, inside, I wouldn’t have cared if Jack said I was fucking King Kong, just as long as he still wanted me.

Jack had some nerve, though. He told me he really wanted me to come to the wedding, but for once. I told him exactly what I thought of him. No way. Of course, I turned the invitation down. Now and again, though, I fantasised [
sic
] about coming to the wedding and when they asked if there was anyone present who knew any reason why the marriage shouldn’t take place, shouting out, “Yes, me! I love him and he loves me.” But of course I didn’t do that.

Instead, I sent you that wedding present. Part of me, the good part, the part that I want to be me
—
all of me
—
really did want to wish you and Jack luck. But another part of me
—
the dark part
—
the person within me that scares and terrifies me, wanted to put a curse on your marriage to Jack. Like the bad witch in
Sleeping Beauty
.