The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

otherwise associated with him were also interviewed for this book and requested that I preserve their anonymity. Moreover, I had two independent and invaluable sources in the Greenson family who asked for anonymity as well.

Additionally, I obtained through a private purchaser more than fifty letters written by Greenson not found in the UCLA collection.

Also extremely helpful to me where Greenson is concerned was the paper “Unfree Associations: Inside Psychoanalytical Institutes” by Douglas Kirsner. I also referred to “Interview with Leo Rangell, M.D.,” from the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Bulletin, Special Issue honoring Leo Rangell, M.D., Winter 1988.

Dr. Greenson’s deposition to the Estate of Marilyn Monroe was vital to my research and can be found in the UCLA collection.

Also important to my research was the Anna Freud Collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. It is here that one can find many of the letters Freud wrote to her friend Greenson, in response to his correspondence. Those missives not found in Greenson’s UCLA collection are inevitably found in Freud’s Library of Congress collection.

I interviewed Dr. Milton Wexler in 1999. The reason I tracked him down was simply this: He is mentioned in passing on page 107 of Eunice Murray’s book Marilyn: The Last Months. Indeed, in that book, he is simply referred to as “a Doctor Wexler [who was] on call for Dr. Greenson’s patients.” According to Murray, Greenson was in Switzerland the week after Monroe’s birthday when she became unglued. Wexler was summoned. “When he came out to visit Marilyn,” wrote Murray (via her ghostwriter Rose Shade), “he took one look at the formidable array of sedatives on her bedside table and swept them all into his black bag. To him, they must have seemed a dangerous arsenal.” That’s the most that had ever been published about Dr. Wexler—not even his first name!—and thus I found it intriguing. When I began work on Sinatra: A Complete Life in 1994, I hired a private investigator to track down the mysterious Dr. Wexler. He was unsuccessful. Then, five years later, we tried again when I was researching Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot. This time, persistence paid off—but past the deadline for that book, unfortunately. Finally, in this work, The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, the full scope of Dr. Wexler’s participation in Dr. Greenson’s treatment of and diagnosis of Marilyn Monroe can be placed in its proper context.

I also interviewed Dr. Hyman Engelberg—Marilyn Monroe’s physician—for Sinatra: A Complete Life in 1996 and then again for Jackie, Ethel, Joan in 2000. Comments from those interviews were utilized in this book as well. Moreover, I obtained from a private source notes, correspondence, and other material relating to his work with Dr. Greenson. I also referred to his comments found in “Report to the District Attorney on the Death of Marilyn Monroe by Ronald H. Carroll, Assistant District Attorney; Alan B. Tomich, Investigator.”

I also consulted “Tribute to Marianne Kris” by Edward A. Gargen, New York Times; and “In Memoriam: Marianne Kriss” by Henry Nunberg, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Vol. 1. I referred to Dr. Kriss’s obituary in the New York Times, November 25, 1980. Additionally, I consulted a number of letters written to Dr. Kris by Dr. Greenson concerning his opinion of and treatment of Marilyn Monroe.

Barbara Miller relayed her memories of Dr. Marianne Kris’s relationship with Marilyn when I interviewed her on March 29, 2007, and August 11, 2007. I so value her help, and that of her wonderful family, too.

I interviewed Peter Lawford twice in October 1981 when I was working for a magazine in Los Angeles called SOUL. It was a black entertainment publication and Lawford was at the time taping a voice-over spot for the sitcom The Jeffersons. Truly, it’s impossible to imagine the strange ways a reporter and a celebrity’s paths can cross in this town! Though I only spent two full afternoons with him—maybe ten hours at most—and exchanged a number of telephone calls, I still found Lawford to be extremely charming and erudite. I also have never believed any of the quotes attributed to him after his death concerning Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys. While interviewing Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin for my biography of Frank Sinatra, I learned that both found it very difficult to imagine Peter ever implicating the Kennedys in Marilyn’s death —especially if it was true (and it’s not, as I have explained in this book’s text). He was just no such teller of tales, despite the way he has been portrayed since his passing. In fact, in a deathbed interview he gave to the Los Angeles Times on September 29, 1985, he was very clear that even if all of the rumors were true—and he maintained that they were not—he would certainly not be the one to confirm them. Some very skilled and respected reporters over the years decided that he was just covering for the Kennedys with that interview. Every reporter is entitled to his opinion, of course. I choose to take Mr. Lawford at his word—his words while he was alive, that is, rather than what he was purported to have said after he was no longer around to confirm or deny. I hope I am able to do justice to his true relationship to Marilyn and the Kennedys in this book, as well as that of his wife, Pat, to Marilyn. A bit more opinion here, if I may: Peter Lawford was a great guy. I liked him very much. I’m happy that I knew him, even for just a sliver of time.

Peter’s comment regarding Marilyn Monroe having said, just before she died, “Say goodbye to… the president,” etc., is from his official statement to the Los Angeles Police Department in its continuing investigation into Monroe’s death, October 16, 1975.

Pat Brennan met Pat Kennedy Lawford in 1954 and remained friends with her through the 1960s and 1970s. I am eternally grateful for the many hours she spent with me discussing Pat and Marilyn on April 12, 2007, April 15, 2007, April 28, 2007, and June 1, 2007. The subject of their friendship has fascinated me for many years since it has never been fully explored in any biography of Miss Monroe. It’s only because of Ms. Brennan that I was able to write about that relationship as I have. This wonderful woman passed away very suddenly in the spring of 2008. Truly, I had never been more saddened about the death of anyone connected to one of my books. I only hope she is somewhere “out there” right now, happy with the way that she, Pat, and Marilyn are portrayed in these pages.

Diane Stevens, assistant to John Springer, was first interviewed by me for my Elizabeth Taylor book on October 2, 2006, because Springer handled Taylor’s publicity concerns. Because her boss also handled Marilyn Monroe, I interviewed her again on April 15, 2007, August 1, 2007, and September 11, 2007, for The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe. Special thanks also to John Springer’s son, Gary, for his time—on both books. He was interviewed by Cathy Griffin on April 11, 2006, and also on May 1, 2008. Also, my thanks to Rose Marie Armocida, who was the personal secretary to John Springer. She was interviewed by Cathy Griffin on June 1, 2006.

I had the opportunity to interview Yves Montand in the spring of 1989 while in Paris. He was very open about his affair with Marilyn Monroe, and at the time was working with a writer on his memoir (which was eventually published and called You See, I Haven’t Forgotten). He was charming and accessible and I’m happy to be able to draw from that interview in this book.

I thank my friend Bruce Ebner for transcripts of interviews he did with Allan “Whitey” Snyder, Marilyn’s very good friend and makeup artist, and Ralph Roberts, Marilyn’s friend and masseur. These transcripts were very invaluable to the research for this section of the book, as well as many others. (Incidentally, Roberts was interviewed on March 2, 1992.)

I referred to the New York World-Telegram’s report of Marilyn’s stay at Payne Whitney, February 10, 1961.

The letter from Marilyn to Dr. Ralph Greenson regarding her stay at Payne Whitney is found in the Ralph Greenson Collection at the UCLA library.

The letter Marilyn wrote to the Strasbergs from Payne Whitney was printed in an abbreviated version in the Daily Mirror, August 5, 1981. The version used in this text is the letter in its entirety.

Marilyn’s “stand-in” Evelyn Moriarty was interviewed by Cathy Griffin on May 2, 1997, and again on June 1, 2007.

Memos from Jack Entratter to his staff at the Sands Hotel are from the Sands Hotel Papers found in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. These papers include many interoffice memos (some of which were utilized in this work) as well as newspaper clippings, photographs, negatives, brochures, press releases, audiotapes, news clips, interview transcriptions, and correspondence, all of it stored in forty-nine boxes. The papers were donated to the James R. Dickinson Library of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in December 1980 by the Sands Hotel through the office of Al Guzman, director of publicity and advertising. The collection comprises essentially the files of Al