The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

was some actor that once said that kissing me was like kissing Hitler. Well, I think that’s his problem. If I have to do intimate love scenes with somebody who really has these kinds of feelings toward me, then my fantasy can come into play. In other words, out with him, in with my fantasy. He was never there.”

^* Pat’s humor is legendary in Kennedy circles. Here’s a funny story from Ted Kennedy’s 1980 presidential campaign: A frazzled campaign worker called Pat one day and said that he needed her immediately at a political gathering, if she could possibly make it—in an hour. “But I haven’t done my hair yet,” Pat exclaimed. “And I don’t have any makeup on. And I just have this old dress. I’m a total wreck. Why, it’s just impossible! I just can’t do it!” When the frantic campaign worker continued to press her by saying no one else was available, Pat relented. “Okay, fine, then,” she said. “I’ll just come as Eunice.”

^* Lee Strasberg’s second wife, Anna, was his sole beneficiary when he died in 1982. He married Anna—forty years his junior—in 1967, a year after his first wife, Paula, died. Today, Anna Strasberg holds the bulk of Marilyn’s estate, which, according to Forbes magazine’s most recent list of income generated by dead celebrities, ranks Marilyn at number eight, with $8 million accumulated in royalties and merchandising in 2007. It should be noted, though, that when Marilyn died, she did not die a wealthy woman. Millions accumulated for her estate after her death as a result of merchandising of her name, as well as money generated from her films. Strasberg—who guards the estate with famous determination—says she was “acquainted” with Marilyn before Marilyn’s death. (Most accounts have it that the two met at least once.) “Anna thinks about and handles” Ms. Monroe’s image “from the moment she wakes up,” says William Wegner, her attorney. “My husband, Lee, was her teacher, her mentor, but most of all Marilyn’s friend,” Anna Strasberg has said. “I am not only protecting her legacy and image, I am honoring my husband’s wishes.”

^* Casillo cites an interesting comment from her, made shortly before her death, to Life magazine’s Richard Merryman: “Sometimes I’m invited places to kind of brighten up a dinner table like a musician who’ll play the piano after dinner, and I know [I’m] not really invited for myself. You’re just an ornament.”

^* Later Marilyn recalled in a letter to Dr. Ralph Greenson, “There were screaming women in their cells—I mean they screamed out when life was unbearable for them, I guess—and at times like this I felt an available psychiatrist should have talked to them, perhaps to alleviate even temporarily their misery and pain. I think they (the doctors) might learn something, even—but they are interested only in something they studied in their books. Maybe from some life-suffering human being they could discover more.”

^* Despite all of the confusion in her life, Marilyn always managed to be kind to her fans. Also, despite all of the upset in her life, she still managed to keep her sense of humor. Here’s a good story: Back in 1960, the first-ever biography of Marilyn Monroe was published by Harcourt, Brace and Company, written by Maurice Zolotow. She wasn’t happy with it—just on principle; she probably didn’t read it. Her friend and longtime fan James Haspiel had Zolotow sign a copy of the book to him. Afterward, he wanted nothing more than to have Marilyn sign it as well. Therefore, when he felt the time was right—in June 1961—he asked her if she would do so. She frowned, then said she would sign it—and that it would be “the only copy of this book I will ever sign.” She opened to the page Zolotow had signed. It said, “To Jim Haspiel—who could have written a better book on MM—Sincerely, Maurice Zolotow.” Then she took a pen and scrawled right below it, “That’s right! Marilyn Monroe xoxo.”

^* In February 1962, Frank Sinatra would announce his intention to marry the dancer Juliet Prowse. While promoting his third memoir, Why Me? Sammy Davis Jr. said that the engagement was Frank’s way of putting distance between himself and Marilyn. “Marilyn was a sweetheart, but Frank had his hands full with her,” Sammy recalled. “Next thing I knew, I get a call from him telling me he’s involved with Juliet and going to marry her. I know it had to do with Marilyn in some way; him trying to break from her.”

^* Perhaps Marilyn Monroe historian Charles Casillo best put these events into perspective: “Clearly, Michael Selsman showed poor judgment in bringing Carol Lynley to Marilyn’s house uninvited. Imagine! Bringing a beautiful younger blonde actress (from the same studio) to a private meeting to discuss publicity photographs with Marilyn Monroe? And Carol was pregnant, to boot! He knew that Marilyn had been unable to have children. Bad call. Bad judgment. Also, maybe it wasn’t so outrageous that Marilyn destroyed the negatives by cutting them into tiny pieces. With any other star, it would have sufficed to simply cross them out with a red grease pencil. With Marilyn, any scrap of her was valuable and would eventually be exploited. No one understood that better than Marilyn herself. Look at what happened after she scratched out the photos she disliked taken by Bert Stern on the negative. Soon after she died, he released them—all scratched and crossed out! And years after that, they were digitally retouched so that her mark of disapproval was erased forever.”

^* A classic Newcomb/Murray story is this one: Eunice Murray, in the last months of Marilyn’s life, said to her, “Pat Newcomb is going all over town telling everybody she’s your best friend.” In her peculiar genius, Marilyn retorted, “Eunice, if she were my best friend, she wouldn’t have to tell anybody.” Of course, as interesting as that story is, it does come via Eunice Murray, and there was definitely no love lost between her and Pat.

^* Jacobs says that his boss, Frank Sinatra, never indulged in dalliances at Pat’s home, “because he had too much respect for her… more, I guess, than her own brother.”

^* On her revised script for Something’s Got to Give (dated February 12, 1962), Marilyn recognized that the story was still not a good one. She wrote on the title page, “We’ve got a dog here—so we’ve got to look for impacts in a different way, or as Mr. [Nunnally] Johnson says, the situation.” On page 12, she noted, “The only people on earth I get on well with is [sic] men so let’s have some fun with this opening scene.” And on page 23, she commented on Cyd Charisse’s character, “Let’s remember she is frigid—We all know what Kinsey found out about most females.”

^* Nunziata Lisi, a friend of Jackie’s sister Lee Radziwill, recalled, “Lee told me that there wasn’t a big fight between Jackie and JFK over the matter of Marilyn at Madison Square Garden. She just made a quiet decision that if he wasn’t going to care about her feelings—if he didn’t care that she would be humiliated— then, fine. She just wasn’t going to go and there would be nothing he could do to persuade her otherwise. She told Lee, ‘Life is too short to worry about Marilyn Monroe.’ She would take the children to the Glen Ora retreat, a couple hours outside of Washington, where she enjoyed riding her horses.”

^* Marilyn Monroe historian James Haspiel recounts this story: “[The actress] Sheree North told me that when she was at 20th Century-Fox one day, she ran into Allen ‘Whitey’ Snyder, who was pacing outside of a closed door, very frustrated. She asked him what was wrong. He said, ‘Marilyn is in there and she won’t let me in. She’s making up her own face.’ I’m not saying Whitey never made up her face. Of course, he did. But there were times when all he needed to do was make a touch-up. She—Marilyn—was the real master of that look.”

^* Because of the nature of his service to Marilyn Monroe, this doctor asked for anonymity. Therefore, we are using a pseudonym to protect his identity.

^* Frank Mankiewicz was the son of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who cowrote Citizen Kane with Orson Welles. They both won Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay for the 1941 film.

^* Of course, Elizabeth Taylor had just been paid a million for only one film—