At this moment, Normalyn did not know exactly why she felt so sad. Even the iced tea had become only slightly flavored water, its sweetness gone, gone with its lemony tang.
Mildred took another sip of her sherry. Revived, she said excitedly, “And then I made Marilyn Monroe come to me— here! It happened when Spyros—”
Thirteen
—Skouras, president of 20th Century-Fox, generously tried to save Marilyn Monroe from herself.
She had managed on her own. At the very brink, she had turned Mildred’s accusing revelation about her mother’s still being alive into “the best news possible,” which would enable her to care for Gladys “in the most luxurious private sanitarium available.” She converted into loving publicity the supposed wake during which she explained the existence of nude photographs. As the strap of her dress slipped accidentally from her shoulder, she sighed sadly to the male reporters. “Is the naked body pornographic?” No, no! they agreed.
She married one of the country’s beloved athlete heroes.
Still, she sought disasters, as if to prove she could survive them. In freezing weather and with a fever, she wore a tiny dress to entertain thirteen thousand screaming Marines in Korea; a thin-lipped officer with a pencil-darkened moustache forbade her to sing Gershwin’s “Do It Again”— “too suggestive.” She was filmed in New York on Lexington Avenue with her white skirt billowing over panties and radiant legs while a thousand fans hollered, “Higher!”
Mildred scolded: “Having affronted patriotic servicemen with her lewdness, she extended her display to the streets of New York. Her husband turned away in patriotic shame!”
Then it all ganged up on the movie star, just as Mildred Meadows had known it would. With no regard to finances—paid little by the studio—Monroe was overdrawn; she divorced the athlete; with no instincts for business, she formed her own shaky production company; psychologically frail from her childhood, she came to rely on tranquilizers; groggy from pills, she drank. She fled to New York to be a “real actress” and became associated with a studio known for its “left-wing roots.” Then! She announced she would marry a playwright facing a citation for contempt of Congress by refusing to provide the House Committee on Un-American Activities the demanded names of “fellow travelers.” Without powerful support, Monroe would be undone by her “leftish” association.
“Let the broad sink,” Zanuck advised Skouras. But Zanuck was intending to resign from 20th Century-Fox and Skouras had a four-picture contract with Monroe’s production company. She must be saved! Spyros turned to Mildred Meadows for help—“because you are the king of queens,” he tried to flatter in his quaint mode of speaking. Mildred promised him she would “guide” the rebellious star back into the fold.
“I hope you are pretty right like as usual, Mildred,” Skouras blessed.
Mildred prepared for a monumental “first.” She would initiate a meeting with the actress who had not come to her. She would not invite, she would summon. She sent a note: “Monroe! I will expect you at my home—” She signified a date, informed that Skouras would be there—and, to ensure Monroe’s presence, added a peremptory P.S.: “This concerns grave secret dangers to your prospective husband.”
“She will not come, so high-stronged and mighty, that sexy child,” said Spyros. Mildred edged him away from the tall leather chair reserved for Zanuck.
“She will come,” Mildred said. “Because of him.” Armed with a goblet of her best sherry, she would command.
Spyros jumped! Chimes had sounded, the butler was answering. Spyros peeked out the window. “Bad news. She has come with another cute woman!”
“A dark-haired woman,” Mildred knew. “But of course!”
Then the two magnificent women were there, the blonde star and her dark-haired companion. Monroe wore an orange-swirled dress, as if burnished by friendly fire. Enid wore a hat with a veil so thin it seemed meant only to accentuate the highlights of her face, expose superb reddened lips.
Even years later Mildred would cherish that spectacle of beauty.
The three women greeted each other with brief words. Monroe could not keep her sensual, wistful smile from her face, even at this time of confrontation.
Spyros shook her hand vigorously. “Marilyn,” he enthused, “the more beautiful you are, the older you get.”
Enid withdrew from the man’s extended hand. Casually, she took a silver lighter out of her purse; it caught a pin of reflected light tossed by the figure of a silver swan mounted on a crystal ashtray.
Meadows was direct: “Marilyn Monroe!” she issued. “Spyros has tried to counsel you. So have concerned others. That writer you intend to marry is refusing to speak out to the patriots. If he does not, you will be besmirched by the association.”
“And I have a contract on you with four movies,” Spyros reminded. “So it is not a question of what is best for the country and the studios but for you and me and Mildred in this beautiful country. Just look at her garden!”
Enid brought a tinted cigarette to her lips. About to touch it with the silver lighter, she stopped in that attitude.
Marilyn crossed her legs; she wore no stockings.
Mildred said, “Monroe! You will be ruined in the eyes of a saddened America.”
“Your note said you wanted to tell me about ‘secret dangers,’” Marilyn reminded. “That’s the only reason I came.”
Mildred stood up angrily.
“My God, you are so small!” Marilyn gasped.
“Don’t you be a rude cutie to darling Mildred!” Spyros protested.
Mildred launched a new plan. “The dear child isn’t being rude, Spyros. She’s just being honest. All children are honest.” She stood before Marilyn. “My dear, oh, my dear, dear child, that man cannot love you if he persists in taking a position that will allow you to be destroyed. I know you seek only love from him, dear child! Ask him to testify. Give him the opportunity he wants, to prove his love. He wants you to ask”—inspiration did not fail her—“as a child asks of a loving father.”
The dark-haired woman ground her unlit cigarette into the ashtray on which the silver swan was poised.
“I think th-th-that I—” Monroe began to stutter.
Mildred had won! She had converted the star into the needful orphan she knew Monroe had been.
Mildred had to move fast: “At this point only expert guidance will save you and him.”
“Will you p-p-provide it?” Marilyn asked softly.
“Of course I will,” Mildred said to her vanquished, beautiful trophy.
Click! Click! Click! Enid snapped the lighter.
The reflected sliver of light pricked Mildred’s eyes.
Monroe stood up. “I am not a needful child, Mildred! And I sure as hell won’t tell him to testify to fascist bastards!”
Spyros lost control: “We’ll see you in court, blondie!” he screamed at Monroe. “You’ll never be heard from again! We’ll break you! We’ll—”
“—destroy you,” Mildred pronounced her sentence.
Enid said almost lightly to her, “Oh, you can’t destroy Marilyn Monroe. There’s only one person in the world who can do that.” Smiling, she faced the star, as if reminding her. “We both know who that person is.” She raised the thin veil from her face. “Don’t we?”
* * *
Mildred Meadows studied Normalyn as if to relocate herself in the present, or to connect the past to now.
Normalyn retreated from the penetrating stare.
No, dearheart, face her!
Normalyn did.
Outside, lush vines were about to surrender their violence to twilight, colors fading. Normalyn heard a destitute breeze captured briefly in the garden. She despised this old woman and her tainted memories. Yet she was learning from them. Enid clicked her lighter for attention—yes, to assert her strong presence, as she had that night on the blackened beach. But between the two women, the clicking was a signal, a reminder. . . . Too, even within Meadows’ spotted ac
count, Normalyn was discovering another Enid, a young woman she was increasingly admiring—determined, brave.
“Did Enid mean only Monroe could destroy Monroe?” Mildred Meadows still pondered the distant words. “Or that only she could destroy her? Or was she referring to someone else, someone they both knew—the subject of the altercation Crawford overheard?”
Normalyn shook her head. Those were questions she, too, had stored.
Dotting her lips with sherry, Mildred breathed into the listening room: “And then I learned about—”
* * *
—the letter!
J. Edgar Hoover called Mildred. “Exciting news!” There were three people he trusted: his constant male companion in the Bureau; the wealthy Cardinal Spellman, whom he visited clandestinely for late-night candlelit suppers; and Mildred Meadows.
Mildred did not like the man, but he was a trove of destructive information. She invited him to dinner to hear full details of his “exciting news.” Because he could be petulant about giving offered information if he became displeased, she had her cook prepare his favorite dinner: Hungarian goulash and lime pie flown in from the Florida Keys. She detested both dishes. So for her, the cook fixed a stroganoff, with a dash more than the usual paprika to approximate the color of the goulash, and a light lime-and-lemon mousse.
Tonight Edgar was acting especially coy. He could become annoyingly childish under Mildred’s aura of authority. He had had a powerful mother who would reward him only after he had performed certain boyish flirtations for her.
“The news, Edgar!”
With elaborate pretense of having lost what he was looking for—he searched every pocket of his suit—Edgar finally handed Mildred a letter, an exact copy of a letter.
On plain paper, and unsigned, it was written in a distinctive, clear script and addressed to Jack Warner, production chief of Warner Brothers Studio, where shooting on a film version of John F. Kennedy’s PT-boat incident during World War II was about to begin. In cool, precise language, the letter asserted that soon the President would be exposed—with authentication—as a man of “vast immorality, insatiable in his lust for women.” It provided the initials—with further clues—of women involved, including some of the most famous stars in Hollywood. It identified places of assignations—the Carlyle Hotel, the Beverly Hills Hotel—designating secret entrances. The letter went on to sweep into the “wave of immorality” the rest of the Kennedys, including the patriarch. “The scandal will kill your studio,” the letter warned. In its last paragraph it revealed its purpose: “For far too long the Kennedys have been a menace to the Republic of the United States. The scandal will stem the tide of Socialism they are allowing to flood our shores.”
Mildred felt an icy excitement. “Jack Warner turned this over to you?” If Edgar turned coy, she would—
“Yes.” Edgar heard the urgency in Mildred’s voice.
“But letters like this turn up frequently in Hollywood,” Mildred had to observe.
“No, not like this one!” Edgar told her his “personal” investigation into the matter indicated that the writer was an “exambassador,” a powerful man high in Beverly Hills society. There were verifying fingerprints. And—Edgar took two quick bites of the lime pie to underscore the gravity of the linking information—he himself had “documented evidence of the reckless sexual liaisons involving Mr. President.”
Mildred read aloud this sentence in the letter: “For far too long the Kennedys have been a menace to the Republic of the United States.” Slowly, she nodded. Yes! After John, Robert Kennedy would inherit the White House, and after him would come Edward—all much worse than that socialistic monster Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who turned out to be only one!
“I’ll leave this with you”—Edgar nodded toward the letter—“if I can have the rest of the pie.”
Edgar gave her an odd look then, one she had not seen before—yes, somewhat mischievous, the way he looked at his most despicably childish—but there had been a slight squint to his eyes, as if with the powerful letter he had given her he was finally making himself her equal!
No matter his fantasies, Mildred had more important matters to consider. When Edgar left, she sat in her grand living room and evaluated the matter. Her eyes scanned the letter again. Among the women indicated y initials, Marilyn Monroe was not present. Only instinct—and mere breaths of gossip—had led her to expect— . . . No, only to hope that she might be there.
Mildred Meadows knew that everyone who is intensely loved is intensely hated. The Kennedys were hated by opposing factions. But Mildred did not clutter her mind with political nuances. She knew that was important. She was not impressed by symbols, but she knew their power. The Kennedys had come to represent, as David Lange had so earnestly told her, “all that is socially responsible, socially just, socially moral.” Precisely! A socialistic Camelot!
For her move, timing had to be exact. She watched and waited.
Monroe walked off the set of Let’s Make Love and flew to New York to sing “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy before fifteen thousand cheering Democrats at Madison Square Garden. In a sigh of a dress, she looked nude, splashed with sequins, glowing like the only firefly of winter. She turned the inane song into a whispered seduction. Then she sang new words to “Thanks for the Memory,” a tribute to the president’s having confronted the venerable steel corporations!
In a late-night call, Edgar told Mildred that Marilyn Monroe was one of “Kennedy’s women”—smuggled in to him through a secret passageway in the Carlyle Hotel! . . . Another night, another call: Marilyn Monroe had been “passed on” to “the unassailable moralist. . . .” Edgar emphasized the gravity by withholding the name for seconds: “Mr. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy!”
“Is it all true?” Mildred had to know.
“Still only rumors,” Edgar admitted, “even about a pregnancy,” he tantalized. “I’m sure you will find out.”
More was needed!—a firm connection, and an ally of impeccable credentials for unbiased credibility beyond Hollywood, someone who would defuse any skepticism that might intrude. David Lange, Mildred chose.
In his early years as a journalist, Lange had worked briefly for Mildred—“out of necessity.” He had rebelled, began to write about “true democracy,” won literary prizes, became a champion of John F. Kennedy, worked with devotion to see him elected. Who is more avenging than a bloodied idealist?
Mildred Meadows challenged David Lange’s “staunch morality” by showing him the letter Edgar had given her. “A clear fraud,” he laughed. He emphasized his rejection by informing her that that very evening he was finally “really meeting” his “greater hero,” Robert Kennedy, at dinner in the home of Peter Lawford. “Your precious letter contains only lies, Mildred.”
David Lange walked out on Mildred. And Mildred waited.
Then another anonymous letter arrived. This one was addressed to Mildred Meadows! It named Marilyn Monroe as “one of the women in John Kennedy’s stable.” It stated that now the movie star was “much more than casually involved” with the President’s brother, “Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General of the United States.” It challenged boldly: “Ask Monroe.”
When she showed him that letter, David Lange believed Mildred.
Now! Mildred would proceed to undo the Kennedys, save the country, and—most important of all—force Marilyn Monroe to seek her help. Mildred had decided: In deference to Monroe’s beauty, she would give her an option: turn to her for guidance or be destroyed with the Kennedys.
In her purling limousine with smoked windows, Mildred Meadows was driven to the star’s home in Brentwood, a small Spanish-style house, not at all extraordinary—Monroe never acquired the opulent wealth of far lesser stars. But the house, in a quiet cul-de-sac in Brentwood, had a garden, a swimming pool, greenery surrounding it all. The star was proud of it because it was, finally, something she owned.
Presidents, generals, and queens themselves declare war—and so did
Mildred Meadows. She rang the lighted doorbell on Monroe’s door. Shadows suddenly appeared at windows quickly darkened. They were avoiding her! Pushing away a branch that had threatened to smear her makeup, Mildred positioned herself on the lawn. Poised, aware of good light and accenting shadows, she shouted exact words at the house: “Monroe! Unless you open that door in thirty seconds, I will destroy you and the two brothers!”
The door was opened by—
Mark Poe!
The leftist Mildred had exiled from Hollywood! Befriended by Monroe! Holland was extending her villainous influence! “What do you want?” the man said arrogantly, calling her a despicable name.
Another voice behind him said, “Why are you here, Mildred?”
It was Enid.
Inside the house and against a sheet of light at a back window, the unmistakable outline of Monroe appeared.
Mildred thrust her words in: “There is a letter about to be released expressing outrage over immorality involving the President and his brother!”
“That does not concern us, Mildred,” Enid said.
She didn’t know! “Ask Monroe whether that concerns her!” Mildred demanded.
Enid spun about in the direction of the star. “Does it?” “Yes!”
“Liar!”
In these thrilling moments, Mildred knew Enid would be learning for the first time of Monroe’s reckless association! She knew now where to direct her wedge. “They abused your beauty, Monroe,” Mildred said in genuine outrage. “They passed you between them. You’re nothing to either of them!”
“He loves m-m-me.”
Mildred had conquered. She had made the star stutter. Now she had to keep Enid in abeyance with new information. She had to rely on time, the impetus of the charged situation she was in control of. “Are you pregnant, Monroe!” Mildred fired.