called herself a “nurse,” but who had no medical training whatsoever. She had a very stern face and hard features. In fact, Marilyn hadn’t had anyone in her life like this since Ida Bolender. The difference between the two, though, was that Ida had great warmth beneath the cold exterior whereas Eunice didn’t, or at least not that anyone was ever able to discern. Because she had “homemaking skills,” she was installed as Marilyn’s companion—sometimes she spent the night, sometimes not—much to the dismay of almost every person who knew Marilyn, it’s safe to say. It seemed to Marilyn’s friends and associates that there was nothing Marilyn could do during her private time at home that wasn’t immediately brought to Dr. Greenson’s attention by Murray. Indeed, in their view, he had a new spy in the household. Even Marilyn’s publicist and friend Pat Newcomb, not usually one to make waves and who went along with practically every decision made on Marilyn’s behalf, was suspicious of Eunice Murray. Saying she was frightened of her, she didn’t even want to be around the woman. “She keeps giving me that fishy stare,” Pat told John Springer, “and I don’t like it one bit.” * In Greenson’s defense, however, he believed strongly that Marilyn needed to be monitored as much as possible. He didn’t care if people thought he was spying on her via Eunice Murray, as long as he knew what his patient was up to every moment of every day.
“I heard that she [Murray] was constantly on the telephone, whispering information to him,” said Diane Stevens, who came to Los Angeles with John Springer for business meetings at that time. “Marilyn couldn’t have guests over without Greenson knowing who they were, how long they stayed, and what they wanted. This woman was always peering around corners, taking mental notes, and then reporting back to the doctor. I met her once. I had to drop some paperwork at Marilyn’s house and when I did, this woman came to the door. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded to know. ‘Why haven’t I seen you around here before? What business do you have here?’ Oh my God, I was horrified by her attitude. I thought to myself, she’s a housekeeper. What right does she have to talk to anyone like this? So I said, ‘Who are
At the end of 1961, Dr. Greenson wrote in his notes of what he called “a severe depressive reaction” to something that had happened in Marilyn’s life. He wasn’t clear as to what had transpired. “She had talked about retiring from the movie industry, killing herself, etc.” Certainly it’s not good news when a psychiatrist becomes so used to hearing a patient’s threats to commit suicide that he adds “etc.” to his notes about it, suggesting that he’s heard it all before. “I had to place nurses in her apartment day and night,” he wrote, “and keep strict control over the medication since I felt she was potentially suicidal. Marilyn fought with these nurses, so that after a few weeks it was impossible to keep any of them.”
After hearing her voice on the telephone, Joe DiMaggio decided that he’d better fly to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with Marilyn. She was happy to see him. As difficult as he was at times, she knew he loved her and she felt safe in his arms. “Joe was there maybe thirty minutes when he figured out that things had gotten much worse with her,” said his friend the sportswriter Stacy Edwards. “Let me put it to you this way. He took one look at that Mrs. Murray and knew she was trouble. From what he told me, he said to her, ‘I don’t want you knowing anything about me or my business. You work for Marilyn, but you are not her friend. And you are not my friend. If it were up to me, you wouldn’t even exist.’ He was very direct with her. I’m sure she had a lot to tell Greenson about him.”
Joe wanted to make certain that Christmas Day would be happy for Marilyn. To that end, he had purchased a large tree and had decorated it for her. He was as solicitous and as romantic as he could be, doing whatever he could think of to make the day festive. He purchased gifts and even had them wrapped at the store. “He told me it was a great day,” recalled Stacy Edwards. “He said she seemed okay, not too manic. I’m pretty sure the housekeeper wasn’t there, though I don’t know where she was—or where he sent her, I should say. Everything was going well… until that night, anyway.”
Earlier in the day, Marilyn announced that they were having dinner with… the Greensons. Joe hadn’t met the doctor, but already he wasn’t a fan. However, he was anxious to spend time with him and come to his own conclusions. It didn’t take long for him to make a determination, though. Joe had always thought that Natasha Lytess had too much influence on Marilyn, and he certainly felt the same way about Lee and Paula Strasberg. However, that night—after just thirty minutes of watching his ex-wife act as if Ralph Greenson was her long-lost father and Greenson’s family was the one she’d never known—Joe DiMaggio would say that he had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “You know what it’s like when you’re in a car with someone and they run a red light and you know you’re gonna crash but you’re not driving so there’s nothing you can do about it?” he asked Stacy Edwards. “That’s how I felt that night. I felt like Marilyn was about to crash, but I was no longer in the driver’s seat anymore… and there was nothing I could do about it.”
Joe wasn’t the only one worried about Marilyn. Others who were not aware of her disease had no frame of reference for her strange behavior. “ ‘She’s not well.’ ‘She’s acting strangely.’ ‘What’s wrong with her?’ That’s all I kept hearing by the beginning of 1962,” said Diane Stevens from John Springer’s office.
“Pat Newcomb and a young publicist named Michael Selsman were mostly handling her from the Arthur P. Jacobs Company by this time. She was paying them $250 a week, I think, which was $50 more than she’d been paying John Springer’s firm. Every now and then we still had to field a press request, and it wasn’t easy. She had become difficult and argumentative. Once you got her there, she was okay. But getting her there was hell. She’d have an appointment to do an interview and just not show up. It had been her custom to be late, but to not show up was not her. Then, she was saying the strangest things. For instance, she said that the reason she bought her new house was because it reminded her of the orphanages in which she was raised. After spending the better part of the last decade bemoaning the orphanages she was sent to—and I believe it was just one, by the way—to now suddenly start making that statement seemed more than odd. The word was out that she was sick, a drug addict. I was scared.”
PART EIGHT
One thing is certain, anytime Marilyn had the opportunity to be around the Kennedys, she took advantage of it. She was much more politically minded than people knew. What follows is a remarkable letter she wrote to journalist Lester Markel, a
