The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

she continued to slip deeper into the darkest recesses of her mind, she placed the production of Something’s Got to Give in even greater jeopardy. It was impossible for her to begin rehearsals and camera tests for the film. She was constantly late, if she showed up at all. She always had an excuse, as she would for absences during the entire production, whether it was a cold, a sinus infection, or some other malady. All of it was true—she was a very sick woman. But she was also scared to death of George Cukor, and that didn’t help matters either. Moreover, it was thought by most observers that Paula Strasberg, Marilyn’s acting coach (who was being paid $5,000 a week), had become very intrusive. Sidney Guilaroff, who styled Marilyn’s hair for the film as he had for many others, put it this way: “Dressed all in black, including a black gypsy scarf and thick stockings, Paula haunted the set—sometimes directing Marilyn with hand signals behind Cukor’s back. Marilyn was so dependent upon her that she could barely read a line without Strasberg’s specific brand of coaching.”

Harvey Bernstein once recalled a meeting he had with Marilyn at her home to discuss the script. She answered the door in hair curlers. There was no furniture in her living room, just a chair on which he sat while she sat on the floor. “Many of her ideas [for the script] were good for her and not so good for the story,” he recalled. “But if I hinted at this, her face would go blank for a second, as though the current had been turned off, and when it was turned on again, she would continue as though I had said nothing.… Sometimes she would refer to herself in the third person, like Caesar. ‘Remember you’ve got Marilyn Monroe, you’ve got to use her,’ she told me.… I left feeling like a deckhand on a ship with no one at the helm and the water ahead full of rocks.” ^*

The last thing executives at 20th Century-Fox would approve of was Marilyn taking more time off to fly to New York City to sing for the president. Even though she had earlier been given permission, Peter Levathes reversed his position based on her poor attendance on the set of the film. He didn’t want her to be distracted. In fact, the studio threatened to sue her if she took off for New York (and actually would file suit against her). When Bobby Kennedy heard of the possibility of a lawsuit against Marilyn, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He called Levathes to appeal to him that Marilyn’s appearance for the president was very im portant and would mean a lot to JFK. Levathes stood firm that he would not approve it. Annoyed, Bobby went over Levathes’s head to his boss, Milton Gould. Gould has recalled that Bobby told him, “ ‘The president wants it, and I want it.’ He was very abusive. I was surprised at his total lack of class. I told him we were very much behind in our schedule and would not release her. He called me a ‘no-good Jew bastard,’ which I didn’t appreciate. Then he slammed down the phone. I have to say I was surprised that they wanted her so badly that he was willing to humiliate himself like that.”

As it would happen, it didn’t matter to Marilyn whether or not the studio approved of her going to New York. She’d made up her mind that she was going, and that was the end of it. Her priority was to be in New York with the Kennedy brothers. Twentieth Century-Fox could wait. At some point during this time, she apparently became melancholy about President Kennedy, because she painted a single red rose in watercolor on a sheet of paper. Then, in blue ink, she signed at the bottom left, “Happy Birthday Pres. Kennedy from Marilyn Monroe.” She additionally signed and inscribed below the first signature, in black ink, this time mysteriously signing her name twice, reading in full: “Happy Birthday June 1, 1962/My Best Wishes/Marilyn/Marilyn.” Of course, June 1, 1962, would be her last birthday, her thirty-sixth. (Decades later in 2005, this artwork would sell for $78,000 in a Julien’s auction of Marilyn’s possessions.)

Marilyn left Los Angeles for New York on May 17, telling the media, “I told the studio six weeks ago that I was going. I consider it an honor to appear before the President of the United States.” The cast and crew of Something’s Got to Give were stunned by her decision. “It was very surprising,” recalled her stand-in, Evelyn Moriarty. “We all just felt like things couldn’t get much worse. It was all so unpredictable and awful. But she did have permission, even if they took it away from her.”

Dean Martin’s manager, Mort Viner, said, “That was poor form on her part. It showed where her priorities were, anyway, didn’t it? But Dean told me, ‘Hey, you can’t blame her, Mort. Look, if Jackie Kennedy had asked me to fly cross country and sing Happy Birthday to her, I woulda gone.’ ”

New research now establishes, however, that perhaps the decision wasn’t as easy for Marilyn as previously believed. She was conflicted, and she turned to her friend Pat Lawford for advice. According to people who knew Pat well, Pat told her that she now believed her brothers were being unfair to Marilyn, and maybe even trying to make a fool of her. This was likely not easy for Pat to admit. After all, she was a loyal Kennedy and almost always supported her brothers. However, as Marilyn’s friend, she may have felt compelled to tell her how she truly felt about the matter. It’s a testament to her, actually, that she was able to put aside her feelings of betrayal by Marilyn in order to help her friend achieve some clarity over the situation.

“She was worried about her,” said a Kennedy family member. “She knew her brothers. She loved them, but she knew them well. She didn’t think Marilyn could handle them. However, Marilyn thought that maybe if she went to New York, it would show the family that she was being supportive. She was putting her career on the line to do it, too. I mean, she was risking everything. There wasn’t much Pat could say to that, I guess. It was a tough situation for everyone.”

It also should be noted here that Marilyn no longer felt compelled to confide in her half sister, Berniece. Marilyn loved Berniece but had always felt that she had her own life and problems and was not necessarily a person she could turn to in times of trouble. What was Berniece to do on the other side of the country when Marilyn was in crisis mode? As a demonstration of the superficial nature of their relationship at this time, when the two talked about the upcoming Madison Square Garden appearance, Marilyn told her that her only apprehension was that she didn’t feel she was up to the task of singing in public. She said that she felt her voice was not up to her standards. She didn’t invite Berniece to the show, and apparently Berniece didn’t ask to go.

“Happy Birthday, Mr. President”

Backstage at Madison Square Garden in New York City on May 19, 1962, Marilyn Monroe was extremely anxious, and with good reason. No doubt the gravity of the situation finally hit her. She was about to honor someone who had just rejected her, and he was the president of the United States. She had left Los Angeles against the wishes of her bosses at Fox, risking her starring role in a movie. Complexities most people could never imagine, yet this was Marilyn’s life, for better or worse (and, lately, it would seem, mostly for worse).

Earlier in the month, producer Richard Adler expressed concern over what Marilyn might decide to wear to such an important, televised event. She told him not to fret. She said she planned to wear a sophisticated black satin dress with a high neckline that had already been designed for her by couturier Norman Norell. However, she secretly had other plans. She asked designer Jean Louis to design a dress “that only Marilyn Monroe could wear,” and that’s exactly what he did. “Marilyn had a totally charming way of boldly displaying her body and remaining elegant at the same time,” he later recalled. “So, I designed an apparently nude dress—the nudest dress—relieved only by sequins and beading.” Incidentally, the gown was not lined, and Marilyn did not wear undergarments—of course! She was actually stitched into the dress by its designer. (This is the gown that sold at auction in 2007 for $1.27 million.)

After she was introduced by Peter Lawford, he took her ermine stole from her and Marilyn went on to breathlessly sing “Happy Birthday” to the president. “She handled the lyrics well enough,” said producer Richard Adler, “but you couldn’t hear them anyway. For the crowd was yelling and screaming for her. It was like a mass seduction.” Most people with even a passing interest in Marilyn Monroe have seen footage of Marilyn singing “Happy Birthday” on this evening. Less seen was the rest of her number, a special tribute to JFK written by Adler and performed by Monroe to the melody of “Thanks for the Memories.” Afterward, Marilyn had the audience join her for another round of “Happy Birthday.”

“I was honored when they asked me to appear,” Marilyn later told Richard Merryman of Life. “There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing Happy Birthday—like if I had been wearing a slip, I would have thought it was showing, or something. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, what if no sound comes out…’ I remember when I turned to the microphone, I looked all the way up and back and I thought, ‘That’s where I’d be—way up there under one of those rafters, close to the ceiling, after I paid my $2 to come into the place.’”