The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

I thank him for the time he gave in setting straight some of the myths about Marilyn. Mr. Haspiel was not only a fan of Marilyn’s, he became a close friend of hers. In fact, if I had to recommend any of the many books that have been published about Marilyn over the last forty years, I would wholeheartedly recommend Haspiel’s two books, Young Marilyn: Becoming the Legend and Marilyn Monroe: The Ultimate Look at the Legend. They’re both revelatory not only because they are so personal in scope but because the many photographs of James as a youngster with the stunning Marilyn in her prime are absolutely priceless. I was truly inspired by James’s devotion to Marilyn and by the way he brought her to life in his books. No doubt, every author’s vision of a subject is different, and so I am therefore not sure how James will feel about my “take” on his greatest star—but I have so loved his. Mr. Haspiel was interviewed on March 17, 1998, and again in April 2008.

I also have to thank my very good friend of many years, Charles Casillo. Charles is another “ultimate” Marilyn Monroe fan who understands her character and personality so well. He also brought her to life in a different way, a fictional telling of her story called The Marilyn Diaries. It’s a terrific book and I would recommend it as well. I want to thank Charles for setting me straight on so many details about Marilyn’s life. To show you how long Charles and I have been thinking about Marilyn’s life and career, he and I actually interviewed Kennedy hairdresser Mickey Song more than ten years ago—he touched up Marilyn’s hair for her “Happy Birthday” performance at Madison Square Garden in 1962. I had completely forgotten that we collaborated on that effort until I found the tape recording of the interview while researching this book. Whereas I, apparently, have a bad memory for such things—thank goodness for tape recorders!—Charles does not. He remembers virtually everything having to do with Marilyn Monroe, and for that I thank him. This is a much better book because of him.

Maryanne Reed allowed me access to her complete collection of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, most of which was culled from the files of the newspaper Hollywood Citizen-News and the Woman’s Home Companion, both of which are now defunct. I am so grateful to her. This material was invaluable to me in that it provided many leads and also included the unpublished notes and interviews of reporters who were covering Marilyn for the News and Companion in the 1950s. I listened to and utilized in this work thirty-five previously unpublished taped interviews and conversations with Marilyn intimates such as Jim Dougherty, Ida Bolender, Wayne Bolender, and costars such as Jane Russell, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall, all of which Ms Reed generously had transferred from reel-to-reel format to cassette for my convenience.

Also, Maryanne Reed has on file many documents associated with Inez Melson’s relationship with Gladys Baker and Marilyn Monroe. This includes correspondence between Ms. Baker and Ms. Melson, as well as rare published interviews such as one that appeared with Melson in The Listener (London) on August 30, 1979. Acquired through a private purchaser, they became key to my research. Importantly, Ms. Reed also obtained from a private source tapes of interviews conducted with Eleanor “BeBe” Goddard that were made in or around January 1991. She also provided me with documents relating to Emmeline Snively, including a rare interview with her that was published in the Los Angeles Daily News on February 4, 1954. Working with Maryanne was a real pleasure and I am eternally grateful to her for everything she did for me while I was working on The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe.

GENERAL RESEARCH

Over the course of years I have devoted to The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, a great number of people went out of their way to assist me, literally hundreds of relations, entertainment journalists, socialites, lawyers, celebrities, show business executives and former executives, associates, and friends as well as foes, classmates, teachers, neighbors, newspersons, and archivists. However, at the very beginning of this project, I sat down with my researchers and investigators and posed the very important question: What is there about Marilyn Monroe that has not been reported in about a hundred other books about her? It took us some time to answer that question, and we had a few false starts over the years—as my publisher well knows! However, it was the relationship between Marilyn and her mother, Gladys Baker, that began to most fascinate me as we continued our research, and I soon realized that it was one of the stories I most wanted to tell on these pages—because it had never before been told. I must thank my amazing researcher Michael Stevens, who uncovered much of the information on the Rock Haven Sanitarium and of Gladys Baker’s time there. What a wonderful job he did for me on this book! He dedicated himself to Ms. Baker’s memory and was truly a champion of hers during this entire process. Together, we went on an amazing fact-finding journey, and I thank him so much for the experience. I’ll never forget a moment of it. Also, he obtained from a private collector more than twenty-five files from Rock Haven regarding Gladys’s treatment there, most of which were invaluable to my research.

Also important, I must acknowledge all of the fine people at Julien’s Auctions for making available to me so many of the letters and notes from Gladys Baker that were utilized in this book and, I might proudly add, for the first time in any Marilyn Monroe biography. Also, my researchers obtained a treasure trove of material—including correspondence from Gladys Baker, Berniece Baker, BeBe Goddard, Arthur Miller, Joe DiMaggio, Dr. Ralph Greenson, and, of course, Marilyn Monroe—from the following auction houses: Bonham’s, Butterfields, Christie’s, Hunt Auctions, and Sotheby’s.

I’ve had many investigators and researchers over the years, but none who have been as consistent as Cathy Griffin. Cathy is also a fine journalist in her own right. It would be easy with a subject as popular as this one to simply reinterview those people who have told their stories to others and hope for an occasional new angle. However, Cathy always manages to locate people who have new, previously untold stories—such as the story of Charles Stanley Gifford Jr., the man Marilyn believed to be her half brother. Gifford broke his silence for the first time on these pages, and I thank him for his interview of May 9, 2008. How Cathy ever locates people like him, I’ll never know, but I’m very glad she does. This particular work represents our seventh book together. I thank her for her assistance over the years, her tenacity, and, most of all, her friendship.

Thank you, also, to Jane Maxwell, a terrific pop culture historian who allowed me to have access to all of her notes and files concerning Natasha Lytess. Her assistance was invaluable. She also gave me access to all of the documents that were culled from her research using “The Milton Greene Papers.”

Also, I would like to thank Juliette Burgonde, Cloe Basiline, Maxime Rhiette, Suzalie Rose, and especially Mary Whitaker in London, who helped with the UK research.

Thanks to Samuel Elliot for helping us with all of the Bolender family history. What a tangled web that was to sort through, and I could not have done it without Mr. Elliot.

Of course, I reviewed every one of Marilyn Monroe’s films, as well as all of the made-for-television movies and miniseries about her and, obviously, scores of documentaries. I would not have had access to all of this material had it not been for the efforts of Nick Scotti in the United Kingdom. I definitely owe him a debt of gratitude for procuring all of this important research material for me. Also, I reviewed—and it took months, I might add—the vast 20th Century-Fox collection at UCLA, which contains detailed letters from executives about all of Monroe’s movies at the studio, legal and production files pertaining to same, as well as daily production reports. This material was also important to my research in all areas of this book.

Thanks also to the staffs of the Hans Tasiemka Archives in London and the Special Collections Library of the University of California in Los Angeles.

As always, Marybeth Evans in London did a terrific job at the Manchester Central Library reviewing reams of documents for me and pointing me to just the ones I needed for this book.

Thanks also to Suzalie Rose, who did research for me in libraries in Paris. She and Carl Mathers spent so much time thinking about Marilyn and coming up with new ways to tell her story.

I also have to thank the fine folks at Photofest for some of the terrific photographs that are found in this book. I go to Photofest first whenever I begin the process of selecting pictures to illustrate my books. They always come through for me, and I thank them.

Bernie Abramson, who was a personal photographer for President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, had photographs of Marilyn with Peter Lawford, Pat Kennedy Lawford, and Frank Sinatra that he’d taken and that I had never before seen. I am so grateful to him for allowing us to publish them here, for the very first time in any Marilyn Monroe biography.

I want to thank all of the dedicated people at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their assistance on this and all of my books. I must also thank James Pinkston for all of the time he spent at the Academy Library for me.