Page 70 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

Studio head Skouras worries that the situation is escalating, but Marilyn’s charms soften Khrushchev. He takes her hand and says, “You’re a very lovely young lady,” as he looks her slowly up and down.

Khrushchev looked at me like a man looks on a woman,Marilyn thinks, but politely replies, “My husband, Arthur Miller, sends you his greeting.”

Skouras leads the premier along to Sound Stage 8, where a costumed Sinatra explainsCan-Can: “This is a movie about a lot of pretty girls—and the fellows who like pretty girls.”

Khrushchev seems to be enjoying himself until Shirley MacLaine starts to dance. The leader’s reaction to the can-can is not unlike Joe DiMaggio’s when he watched Marilyn dance inThere’s No Business Like Show Business, here on the Fox lot.

“There are moments in this dance that cannot be considered quite decent,” the Soviet premier says, amplifying that it was “immoral and tasteless. This is a pornographic film and won’t be allowed in Russia.”

“From an entertainer’s point of view, what did you think of the show today?” a reporter asks Marilyn afterward.

“Very interesting afternoon,” she says.

“What did you find most interesting?”

“Most everything.”

“What did you think of the ad libs?” the reporter presses.

“Interesting. Very interesting.”

CHAPTER 47

GEORGE CUKOR WILL be leading Marilyn’s next production,Let’s Make Love.

Cukor, celebrated as an actors’ director, discovered Katharine Hepburn and directed James Stewart to a Best Actor Oscar for 1940’sThe Philadelphia Story. But no one wants to work with Marilyn. Cukor can’t convince either Stewart, or Cary Grant, or Rock Hudson, or Gregory Peck, or any other top actor to play opposite the increasingly unreliable Marilyn.

Her top choice is Yves Montand, a thirty-eight-year-old Frenchman whose career was launched by the beloved Parisian singer Edith Piaf, and whose recent singing tour of the United States caught Marilyn’s attention. Arthur Miller is also well acquainted with Yves Montand and his wife Simone Signoret, the leftist, educated, well-read co-stars of the French production of Miller’s play,The Crucible. Signoret’s latest film,Room at the Top,premiered the same week asSome Like It Hot.

Marilyn overrules the studio’s objections—that Montand has never appeared in a Hollywood film and will need to learnEnglish to play this role—and Montand is eventually cast as her leading man.

In a press conference announcing that rehearsals for the musical comedy will begin in January 1960, Marilyn declares: “Next to my husband and Marlon Brando, I think Yves Montand is the most attractive man I’ve ever met!”

On January 2, 1960, Senator Jack Kennedy speaks from the US Senate Caucus Room in Washington, DC.

“I am announcing today my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States … I have developed an image of America as fulfilling a noble and historic role as the defender of freedom in a time of maximum peril—and of the American people as confident, courageous and persevering. It is with this image that I begin this campaign.”

Photographers pose the new candidate next to his beautiful wife, Jackie. Their bright smiles create a portrait of the perfect marriage.

The breaking news takes Marilyn by surprise.

Los Angeles is a long way from Dr. Kris and her New York couch, so an emergency stand-in is called to Marilyn’s bedside at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Like Kris, Dr. Ralph Greenson is a friend of the Freud family. Born Romeo Samuel Greenschpoon in Brooklyn, New York, he graduated from Columbia University, earned his medical degree at the University of Bern in Switzerland, and is now a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine.

Dr. Greenson comes personally recommended. Among hiscelebrity clientele is Frank Sinatra. The singer’s lawyer, Mickey Rudin, also represents Marilyn, and is married to Greenson’s sister, Elizabeth Greenschpoon.

When Dr. Greenson arrives, already briefed on Marilyn’s liaisons with Kennedy, she is immediately comforted by the presence of this new doctor who’s so very understanding, compassionate, and well-versed in all her problems—almost as if he knows her already.

In slurred, halting words, Marilyn makes a confession. She’s taken some pills. She swallowed a few with a large glass of water, though she’s not sure which ones or how many.

Dr. Greenson examines the labels on the bottles at her bedside, gently shaking each one to gauge its contents.How can one person be allowed so many prescriptions?he wonders.

“Stupid doctors,” he mutters. “Stupid, stupid doctors.” Supplying a patient, no matter how famous, with whatever she thinks she needs only puts her in danger.

For hours, Greenson listens to his new patient’s ramblings. Marilyn describes her husband as a man who is “cold and unfeeling and doesn’t love her.” Of Jack Kennedy, she speaks animatedly. She envisions running away with the senator as the new Mrs. Kennedy.

America’s most famous actress with a man who could be America’s next president? Why not? She married America’s greatest living sportsman, and then America’s greatest living writer.

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