The best evidence on Marilyn’s relations with Robert Kennedy comes from firsthand contemporary witnesses. Dr Greenson’s daughter, Joan, who was very friendly with Marilyn in her last months, recalled sharing ‘girlie talk’ with her. Most of it concerned Joan’s love life, but in early 1962 Marilyn was bubbling with excitement about a ‘new man in her life.’
‘She told me,’ said Joan Greenson, ‘that she was seeing somebody, but she didn’t want to burden me with the responsibility of knowing who it was, because he was well known. So she said she was going to call him “the General.” We both laughed. It wasn’t so abstract that one couldn’t figure it out, or have a good idea what was happening.’
Joan Greenson knew nothing of the actual use of the title ‘General,’ and her guess was that Marilyn was referring to the President. A Life magazine profile, published at this exact period, shows that, in the Justice Department, Attorney General Robert Kennedy was addressed as just that — ‘General.’
Dr Greenson himself struggled for years to stick to the letter of professional ethics regarding what he had learned of Marilyn’s love life. The psychiatrist did so in the face of much scandalmongering, and usually fended off reporters altogether. In 1973, however, outraged by unsupported innuendo in the book on Marilyn by Norman Mailer, Greenson talked to writer Maurice Zolotow. ‘Marilyn,’ Dr Greenson now said, ‘did not have any important emotional involvement with Robert Kennedy or any other man at this time.’
Perhaps Greenson, a liberal who kept a Kennedy silver dollar on his desk, was simply trying to bury the rumors. Immediately after Marilyn’s death, in private interviews with psychiatrists of the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center, Dr Greenson said something quite different.
Dr Robert Litman, one of two Suicide Prevention Team members, recalled that Greenson was terribly upset, to the extent that Litman felt as much a bereavement counselor as a formal questioner. He had studied under Greenson, respected him greatly, and ‘felt it right not to talk about this until after Dr Greenson’s death.’
Marilyn’s psychiatrist died in 1979, and Dr Litman made available reports and original notes. Referring to early 1962, Litman wrote:
Around this time, Marilyn started to date some ‘very important men.’ Greenson had very considerable concern that she was being used in these relationships. … However, it seemed so gratifying to her to be associated with such powerful and important men, that he could not declare himself to be against it. … He told her to be sure she was doing it for something that she felt was valuable and not just because she felt she had to do it.
Dr Litman said that Greenson spoke to him of ‘close relationships with extremely important men in government,’ that the relationships were ‘sexual,’ and that the men concerned were ‘at the highest level.’ Dr Litman said that while Dr Greenson did not actually name the Kennedys, he had ‘no real doubt’ whom he meant by ‘important men in government.’ Litman also felt Dr Greenson had not been ‘totally candid,’ even with him.
Greenson also told another member of the Suicide Prevention Team, Dr Norman Tabachnick, about ‘two important men’ in Marilyn’s life, and Tabachnick had no doubt the reference was to the Kennedy brothers. The Suicide Prevention Team was commissioned by Los Angeles Coroner Theodore Curphey, who declared that it would question ‘all persons with whom Marilyn had recently been associated.’ The head of the Team, Dr Norman Farberow, said neither Kennedy brother was questioned. He added: ‘I’m sure discretion entered into it.’
There were others Marilyn had talked to, apart from her psychiatrist. Henry Rosenfeld, her friend in New York, learned that she and Robert had become close, although he was convinced that, for Marilyn, the important affair was with John Kennedy. Ralph Roberts, Marilyn’s masseur, had the same impression.
From the evidence, it does appear that the affairs with the brothers overlapped at certain stages. This is a bewildering notion, but not incompatible with Kennedy legend. According to family lore, it was not unheard of for the males in the dynasty to compete for the same woman. In the case of Marilyn, it may have been not so much a matter of brothers competing as of an unbalanced woman imagining she could play one Kennedy off against another.
In her last months Marilyn told Anne Karger, mother of Fred, Marilyn’s great love of years earlier, that she was having an affair with Robert. Joe DiMaggio never talked publicly about Marilyn, but told his friend Harry Hall, who spent the days after Marilyn’s death with DiMaggio, that he knew of an affair with Robert Kennedy. DiMaggio, said Hall, was ‘angry about it, very angry.’
The Lawford home at Santa Monica was one of a string of beachfront houses owned by wealthy people. The neighbors were fascinated by the comings and goings at the Lawfords during the presidency, and some had special knowledge. Lynn Sherman, daughter of Harry, a well-known maker of Western movies, lived next door to the Lawfords. She became aware that Marilyn was a regular visitor from watching volleyball games on the beach.
Sherman recalled, ‘She would go out to join in, and just drop. It happened more than once. The combination of sun and pills was just too much, and they’d have to carry her into the house.’ Lynn Sherman believed there was an affair with Robert Kennedy. ‘Only fools draw conclusions when they don’t really know what was going on,’ she said, ‘but there were many, many rendezvous there. The official car used to drive up, and you knew Robert Kennedy was in town, and then the help would come in and say, ‘Marilyn’s arrived.’ She’d be wearing, maybe, a scarf over her head, and pants. Sometimes I’d notice Bobby and Marilyn go out through the patio to the beach to walk. From my balcony, it was pretty obvious they were there together on many occasions — there was no doubt in my mind.’
Sherman said her belief in an affair was confirmed after Marilyn’s death by Robert’s sister Pat, who would drop in for a drink. ‘It was casual,’ said Sherman. ‘She was complaining about Peter, and said, “But we all go through it — look what Ethel’s been going through.”’
Another neighbor, then Mrs Sherry James, talked to Peter Lawford about Marilyn’s death. His version was that ‘Marilyn had been passed from him to Jack, and from Jack to Bobby.’ Lawford was probably gilding the lily — all the evidence is that he pursued Marilyn, but she always turned him down.
Of the people at the beach, the Lawfords were perhaps closest to Mr and Mrs Peter Dye. Marjorie Dye, an heiress to the Merriweather Post fortune, did not respond to interview requests. Her former husband, however, did talk to me.
Peter Dye met Marilyn at the beach, and remembered her as a sad figure, ‘half-doped a lot of the time.’ Once, as she lounged on the cushions at the beach house, Dye noticed blood spreading across Marilyn’s white pants. As in the past, she seemed oblivious to it. One night at dinner, when a guest picked on Marilyn for some mistake in grammar, she left the table in tears.
Dye came to know the Kennedys well, and saw Marilyn with Robert Kennedy on several occasions at the Lawford house. His view was that ‘there was certainly an affair. She was star-struck over him, staring at him half the time with her eyes fluttering. I hate the word “macho,” but Kennedy was playing a sort of macho role. He was never animated, never cracked a smile. She was all over him. I think she was turned on by the idea of mental genius. She liked that type, instead of being pushed around like a piece of meat. She was trying to get away from that.’
Marilyn’s studio maid, Hazel Washington, remembered calls from Robert Kennedy. So does the New York maid, Lena Pepitone. ‘I know Bobby used to phone her many times,’ said Pepitone, ‘but they were very secretive. He would only say, “May I speak to Marilyn”; then she would close the bedroom door and speak for maybe one hour. I knew it was him because she told me once, and after that I knew the voice.’
Where did the couple meet during the last months, other than the Lawford house? Eunice Murray, Marilyn’s frequent companion at the new house in Brentwood, had previously spoken of only one Kennedy visit to Marilyn at home, a fleeting afternoon visit to ‘see her kitche
n.’ In one interview, she raised the figure to ‘maybe two or three times,’ but said — on that occasion — that there was nothing furtive about the visits.
Murray’s son-in-law, Norman Jeffries, was employed by Marilyn in 1962 to help with the remodeling of her house. Murray proved oddly reluctant to assist me in reaching Jeffries, but a researcher located him. There was indeed secrecy about the Robert Kennedy visit that he witnessed.
‘It was funny,’ said Norman Jeffries, ‘because Eunice and I were there with Marilyn, and we were to leave. She and I were to clear out before he came, and that’s what we did.’ In fact, Jeffries was still outside the house when Robert Kennedy arrived alone, driving a convertible.
On the West Coast, Marilyn and Kennedy may sometimes have been prudent enough to meet at a secret location. Police sources, and interviews with security officers of General Telephone, suggest Marilyn used an apartment in Culver City, in the southwest section of Los Angeles. Three officers recalled investigations in the area after Marilyn’s death.
On the East Coast, the maid, Lena Pepitone, said there were no Kennedy visits to the Manhattan apartment. She did assert that Marilyn quietly visited Washington during 1961, and that the trip involved the Kennedys.
Far too many people for safety knew about Marilyn’s secret relations with the Kennedys, but the meetings continued. Meanwhile, perhaps to fill the lonely gaps that so worried her psychiatrist, Marilyn embarked on a flurry of activity.
36
IN FEBRUARY 1962, ON vacation in Florida, Arthur Miller’s father, Isadore, received a telegram:
ARRIVING EASTERN AIRLINES FLIGHT 605 AT 9:05 TONIGHT. HAVE RESERVATIONS AT FONTAINE-BLEAU. LOVE YOU. MARILYN.
That night the old man and the actress dined at the Club Gigi, watched a bad floor show, and walked back to the hotel together. There Marilyn broke the news that Arthur was getting married again, to Inge Morath.
The playwright’s father was taken aback. He said later, ‘Marilyn wanted to make me feel right. She wanted me to protect her, but she also protected me.’ Later that night Miller found $200 in his coat pocket. Marilyn, who had always tried to look after him, had been hiding her own pain.
In January she had been jolted by the news of Frank Sinatra’s engagement to Juliet Prowse. Now Arthur Miller’s impending remarriage reduced her to virtual collapse. She shut herself away from the world, and refused to answer the telephone. Seven months later the new Mrs Miller would bear a child, a joy that had eluded Marilyn. Perhaps she knew the birth was coming, and was all the more upset.
Marilyn was now involved in preparations for Something’s Got to Give, the last film Twentieth Century-Fox was demanding under her existing contract, and one she would not complete. Henry Weinstein, producer of the film and a friend of the Greenson family, had a frightening glimpse into Marilyn’s true condition.
One morning, about the time she learned of the new Miller marriage, Marilyn failed to turn up for an 8:00 A.M. costume conference. Weinstein telephoned her, heard a thick-tongued, rambling voice, and said he would come over at once. Marilyn had murmured vaguely, ‘There’s only one bed. Where will you sleep?’ She was flat out in a barbiturate coma by the time Weinstein arrived. A doctor was called, the often-pumped stomach was pumped once more, and Marilyn recovered.
There was a conference at Twentieth Century-Fox. One executive said the film should be called off, because Marilyn was clearly in no condition to work. ‘If she’d had a heart attack,’ he said, ‘we’d cancel. What’s the difference if she’s liable to kill herself any day with an overdose?’
‘Ah,’ a colleague replied, ‘if she’d had a heart attack we’d never get insurance for the production. We don’t have that problem. Medically, she’s perfectly fit.’
This ruthless view prevailed. Something’s Got to Give, aptly named, was to continue. First, though, on Dr Greenson’s recommendation, Marilyn had time for a break. She went to Florida, saw Arthur Miller’s father and Joe DiMaggio, and then, on February 20, sped off to Mexico.
Hairdresser George Masters found himself sitting in an airplane toilet with the world’s most famous star on his knee. Marilyn had insisted on retreating there to have her hair and makeup fixed for the arrival in Mexico City. The trip had been intended as a private visit, but the secret was out.
At the Hilton Hotel, where Frank Sinatra had arranged accommodation, a quiet expedition turned into a state of siege. Armed guards prowled the corridors, and the press bayed for interviews. They got their way a couple of days later at a riotous press conference. Photographers fell over themselves for angles that would measure up to their readers’ fantasies. One picture, not used at the time, came as close to pornography as any known photograph of Marilyn. It proved once and for all that Marilyn preferred not to wear panties. Marilyn, looking gaunt, drank champagne throughout the press conference.
Tribute once paid, the reporters allowed Marilyn a few days of peace. She traveled outside Mexico City to the Toluca market and the mountain resort of Taxco. Accompanied by Eunice Murray, her Los Angeles companion, Marilyn bought things for the new house: a table, silver-framed mirrors, and paintings. She also made new friends.
Old Connecticut neighbors had given Marilyn an introduction to a couple who could show her around Mexico — Fred Vanderbilt Field and his Mexican wife. Field, born into the hugely wealthy Vanderbilt family, has been called ‘America’s foremost silver-spoon Communist.’ He and his wife, part of a colony of left-wingers living in virtual exile in Mexico, took to Marilyn at once. They found her ‘beautiful beyond measure — warm, attractive, bright, and witty; curious about things, people, and ideas — also incredibly complicated.’
By Fred Field’s lights, Marilyn’s politics were ‘excellent — she told us of her strong feelings about civil rights, for black equality, as well as her admiration for what was being done in China, her anger at redbaiting and McCarthyism and her hatred of J. Edgar Hoover.’
Marilyn confided in the Fields a good deal. She spoke of the excitement of knowing Robert Kennedy and of her trust in Frank Sinatra. Most of all, though, she spoke of past failures and hopes for the future.
‘She talked a great deal about her marriage with Arthur Miller,’ said Field, ‘in terms of the things she’d lost, the marriage that had not worked, and the loss of her babies. She said she wanted to quit Hollywood and find some guy — a combination of Miller and Joe DiMaggio, as far as I could make out — someone who would be decent to her but also her intellectual leader and stimulant. She wanted to live in the country and change her life completely. She spoke a lot of her intellectual shortcomings, her inability to keep up with people she admired. She talked of her age, the fact that she would soon be thirty-six, and of the need to get going.’
Field saw that Marilyn drank heavily. He recalled, ‘My impression was that, sexually, Marilyn did a fair amount of one-night stands, and apparently got some release from that sort of thing.’
Field noted, with alarm, Marilyn’s speedy involvement with one man in particular. This was José Bolaños, a Mexican scriptwriter ten years her junior.
Bolaños, a slim young man with obvious good looks, a little too obvious, began a courtship that was more a bombardment. He started by sending flowers on a silver platter (he said it was the family plate) to Pat Newcomb, Marilyn’s press assistant. Newcomb, mildly impressed, introduced Bolaños to Marilyn, so that she could ‘go out and have a good time.’
Fred Field, arriving the next morning, saw at once that the Mexican had stayed the night. Later, when Marilyn traveled to Taxco, Bolaños followed. He arrived in the middle of the night, recruited not one but several mariachi bands, and mounted an almighty serenade outside Marilyn’s hotel. In spite of being warned off by Field, Marilyn was to see more of him.
Bolaños, son of a middle-class family, was known in the film world. He counted himself a friend of the great director, Luis Buñuel, and had written the script for the highly praised La Cucaracha, when barely into his twenties. His career, though,
was now in the doldrums.
Interviewed twenty years later, Bolaños was still rhapsodizing about Marilyn. He says he had an affair with her that lasted till her death, five months after their meeting, and that he gave her a sexual satisfaction she had rarely known in previous relationships. He also claimed that at the time she died Marilyn was planning to marry him. His lawyer and friend, Jorge Barragan, had said as much in 1962 within days of Marilyn’s death. Those close to Marilyn paint a contradictory picture.
According to the New York maid, Lena Pepitone, Marilyn talked about Bolaños and said that he did want to marry her. Photographs taken shortly after the Mexico visit show Bolaños dancing with Marilyn. She looks ecstatic, but witnesses said she was very drunk that night. Others, including Pat Newcomb, Eunice Murray, and hairdresser George Masters, confirmed that — as he himself said — he later followed up by traveling to Los Angeles.
Was the Bolaños relationship just Marilyn’s sexual swan song? Whatever his motives, Marilyn’s mind was now a jumble of confusion and regret.
Before leaving Mexico, Marilyn visited the National Institute for the Protection of Children, which provided for thousands of orphans and deprived youngsters. She had intended to make a donation of $1,000, but then, on impulse, tore up the check and wrote a new one for $10,000.
Some reports indicate Marilyn made an application to adopt a Mexican child during her visit. Certainly she would now keep harking back to her own yearning for motherhood, a factor that will shortly take on a grim significance.
At mid-morning on March 2, when Marilyn was due to fly home, she could not be roused. Her hairdresser, George Masters, recalled, ‘I had to carry her. I remember lifting her up out of the bed, and carrying her out of the room. I think she had taken too many pills again.’ She appeared at the airport in dark glasses and with her hair awry, stumbling. One newspaper reported tartly that her breath smelled of alcohol, that the visit to Mexico had ended up as a drinking marathon.