As we have seen, Marilyn had been the unwanted love child of a woman who had gone insane. She’d spent her childhood being passed from foster home to foster home, never knowing what it felt like to belong, to be loved. Despite her fame, she never had much money; she always lived beyond her means. Privately, she longed to know the comfort and protection of a real family. In stark contrast, Patricia Kennedy Lawford—“Pat”—was the sixth of Joe and Rose Kennedy’s nine children, a member of the closely bound and influential Kennedy family. Her privileged background allowed her to live an affluent lifestyle, educated in the finest convent schools and graduating from Rosemont College, a private women’s liberal arts school in Pennsylvania. She traveled the world over and wanted for nothing, always under the protective and watchful eye of her wealthy family.
Pat, who was thirty-six when she and Marilyn became friends, was outgoing and friendly. She wouldn’t have been considered beautiful, but she was arresting just the same. She had a resolute-looking face that was a bit longish, with deep blue eyes, a sharp nose, and, of course, that toothy Kennedy smile. She was athletic, again like her relatives, her tall, slender body moving with easy grace as she tossed the pigskin about with her brothers. Always eager to forge an identity separate and apart from her famous family, she was a TV producer for a while before having her children. She had loved being in show business and wished it could have continued, but a Kennedy woman’s first responsibility was always to family, not career. Still, Pat was a very independent person. In fact, she was known in the family as “the Hollywood Kennedy,” the least politically motivated of the Kennedy sisters, the one who—as Jeanne Martin, Dean’s widow, put it—“loved a good time, loved show business, was a lot of fun and well liked by the stars she had met through her husband: Judy Garland, Jackie Cooper, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Martha Raye, Jimmy Durante, and dozens of others. You could depend on Pat. She was an absolutely fabulous person. She could be a great friend. She was, to Marilyn.” (Note: Pat was godmother to Jeanne and Dean’s daughter, Gina Caroline.)
When Peter Lawford first introduced Marilyn to Pat, two words came to mind: Grace Goddard. “She reminds me of my Aunt Grace so much I can’t even believe it,” Marilyn said at the time. “She has the exact same personality. When she laughs, it’s Grace’s laugh.” Any similarity Pat had with Grace may have been one of the reasons Marilyn felt so close to her so quickly. Definitely, Pat had Grace’s energy. She was always busy, always moving—always on the go and excited about going there. She was also wisecracking and had a sarcastic sense of humor. For those to whom the memory of Pat Kennedy doesn’t strike an image, think Jane Russell in
Pat had met her husband, the British actor Peter Lawford, in 1949 in London. They married in 1954. By this time, Pat was thirty and had a personal fortune of $10 million. Peter, at thirty-one, was worth about $100,000 and was accused by some Kennedy loyalists of being a gold digger. Kennedy patriarch Joe certainly did not approve of him. “If there’s anything I’d hate more for a son-in-law than an actor, it’s a
Though Pat loved Peter, the marriage was troubled almost from the start, partly because of Peter’s personal demons, his drinking habits, and, later, his obsession with trying to fit in with Frank Sinatra’s notorious Rat Pack, but also because he never felt that he fit in the Kennedy fold, either. Whereas the husbands of Pat’s sisters, Eunice and Jean, both became involved in the Kennedys’ financial empire, Peter never did; he simply wasn’t interested. It may sound absurd in retrospect, but the fact that he couldn’t play football made things worse for him with the family. After all, he was unable to participate in the family’s greatest free-time ritual. “Never played in my life,” he said in 1981, “and that was bad news to the Kennedys. I was an outcast from the start.”
Immediately after they married, Peter began seeing other women—even during Pat’s pregnancies. However, Pat was accustomed to the idea of the philandering husband; her father and brothers had long ago exposed her to the notion of the unfaithful spouse, and of course, her mother, Rose, had endured a roaming husband in Joe. Pat did, too, but she was angry about it, not collected. She didn’t even try to fake it. Much like her sister-in-law, Jackie, she felt that the best she could do was to make sure her husband didn’t think she was a complete idiot, and then go about the business of making a good life for herself. She took it a step further. She insisted that she and Peter have separate bedrooms. She decided early on that she’d just as soon not sleep next to someone she knew was having sex with someone else. An oft-told “inside story” among Marilyn’s and Pat’s friends was that shortly after they met, Marilyn was at the house having lunch when Peter walked into the room. Pat took a sandwich from a platter in the middle of the table and handed it to Peter. “Ham and cheese,” she said. Then, in the next breath and very nonchalantly, “And that little brunette you were [expletive deleted] last night? I want her out of the picture. She called the house. And that’s where I draw the line. You got it?” She met Peter’s stunned expression with a stern one of her own. He just nodded and left the room, embarrassed. Then Pat went back to her conversation with Marilyn as if the scene had never happened. Later, Marilyn said, “She’s probably the strongest, most confident woman I have ever met. I wish I had her balls.”
In the spring of 1960, these two very different women—Marilyn and Pat—became close friends. It was an ironic meeting in the sense that Marilyn had dated Peter for a short time back in 1950. Peter was crazy about her, Marilyn not so much him. In some ways, the friendship between Marilyn and Pat made sense, though. Pat was drawn to the glamour and glitz that was all Marilyn’s, whereas Marilyn had always longed for the security and financial stability enjoyed by Pat. In other ways, the friendship seemed surprising. For instance, Pat was puritanical. While Pat was rather plain and ordinary in appearance, Marilyn was… well,
“I don’t know when it happened exactly, but I know that Pat started to become very, I don’t know what the word is for it, really—infatuated, I guess, with the idea of knowing Marilyn Monroe,” says Pat Brennan, who met Pat in 1954 and remained friends with her through the 1960s and 1970s. “I think it’s safe to say that she was starstruck by her. Suddenly, everything was ‘I just spoke to Marilyn and she said that…’ It was as if she had a best friend overnight. I found it strange.
“I remember calling Pat once in the spring of 1960 and she said, ‘I’d like for you to speak to someone here.’ The next thing I knew, I was hearing this breathy voice on the other end of the phone. Marilyn. ‘Pat says you are her dear friend,’ she told me. ‘Well, I am, too. Maybe we’ll meet one day.’ I said, ‘Fine, let’s do.’ Finally Pat came back on the line. ‘So what do you think of
Very quickly, the two women became close. Pat’s son Christopher recalled of his mom and Marilyn, “[Marilyn] had a quiet voice and she would smile at me and head out to walk on the sand with my mom. My mother told me Marilyn was like her ‘little sister.’ It surprised her that Marilyn was so open with her. My mom didn’t come from an environment where emotions and feelings were openly shared. Marilyn Monroe trusted my mother’s love for her.”
As they got to know each other, they began to share details of each other’s life while commiserating about their joys and sadnesses. For instance, Pat had three children—Christopher, Sydney, and Victoria. In a year, she would have a fourth, Robin. Marilyn, of course, desperately longed for children. Sometimes the stories Pat told Marilyn about her family would leave her with her mouth wide open, such as this one:
“After Peter and I had Christopher, Peter was very unhappy because the baby cried all the time and the house smelled like shit,” Pat told Marilyn in front of other friends.
“Oh, well, I guess that’s what happens when you have a baby,” Marilyn said. “So what did you do?”
