The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Cleopatra—but that was an unprecedented deal in the business. Considering that Marilyn was only compensated $100,000 for Something’s Got to Give, this new contract was quite amazing and also one of the biggest in show business up until that time. Beyond its obvious financial reward, it marked a big personal win for her, too. That she and Fox were able to come to these terms despite everything that had occurred on the set of her most recent film suggests that the studio had finally begun to understand just how valuable a property Marilyn was to them—at whatever financial inconvenience it may have been when she worked on a movie.

^* “At the side of her bed was a lot of Seconal, which I had never given her,” said Dr. Engelberg. “Also, her liver showed that she had a lot of chloral hydrate. I never gave her chloral hydrate and I don’t think any doctor in the United States gave it to her. She must have bought it in Tijuana.

^* While Marilyn may have had certain projects in the offing, the fact remains that she was still in financial straits at the end of her life. In a letter dated June 25, 1962, her attorney, Mickey Rudin, warned her, “I feel obligated to caution you on your expenditures since at the rate you have been making those expenditures, you will spend the $13,000 in a very short period of time and we will then have to consider where to borrow additional monies.” As stated earlier in this text, Marilyn always had financial problems.