Page 78 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

CHAPTER 54

MARILYN RETURNS TO CALIFORNIA and moves into a West Hollywood triplex, two apartments off of a main house. She takes one apartment. The other apartment’s tenant is Frank Sinatra, who’s been using the place as a getaway since he and Ava Gardner divorced in 1957.

With Marilyn also newly single, the old friends begin a casual affair. Sinatra’s been busier than ever with his music career in the aftermath of another divorce, this one professional. He’s left Capitol, his longtime record label, to establish his own label, Reprise, where he records Reprise’s first album,Ring-a-Ding-Ding!It’s released on May 7, 1961.

Rat-Packer Dean Martin’s forty-fourth birthday is June 7. Sinatra decides to throw him a party at the Sands in Las Vegas. It’s the perfect venue to showcase the twelve songs off the new album.

Sinatra’s press agent has issued a memo: “Under no circumstances is any backstage photographer permitted to photograph Mr. Sinatra and Miss Monroe together at the cocktailreception to follow the performance on June 7th.” Hotel staff receive their own strict instructions not to disturb the VIP guests “by telephone call or visitors before 2 pm.”

Marilyn and Pat Kennedy Lawford, eight months pregnant with a fourth child due in early July, spend the day having manicures, pedicures, and massages. Marilyn chooses the same black lace dress that she wore to meet Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev on the Fox lot.

She starts drinking champagne at noon. By the time Sinatra takes the stage, she is already drunk. Marilyn steps into the Copa Room and takes her seat at a stage-side table alongside two famous couples. As Elizabeth Taylor and her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher, as well as birthday boy Dean Martin and his second wife, Jeanne, enjoy the show, Marilyn edges closer and closer to the stage, hooking her arm over the edge and gazing up at Frank.

It’s only been three months since she was released from Columbia-Presbyterian.

“From a distance, it was wow, she’s a knockout. But close up it was … oh no, she’s knocked out. She didn’t look well, and she also acted very strangely. She seemed a little crazy to me,” says one of the photographers.

“Frank Sinatra, ‘The Voice,’ swung into the Sands hotel last night and the affair lasted until all hours and ended with the ‘Clan’—Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop—singing 44th birthday greetings to Dean Martin,” United Press International reports on June 8. “The Maitre D’ said 2000 persons were turned away.”

“Dearest Marilyn,” Clark Gable’s widow, Kay, writes. “How about our little ‘carbon copy lover boy’—I am certain you have seen his press pictures. Just exactly like Clark …”

Clark Gable’s son was born on March 20, 1961. In Encino, California, Marilyn is among the invited guests at the June 11 christening of ten-week-old John Clark Gable. She climbs the steps to St. Cyril’s Church dressed in a black suit, her hair covered by a sheer scarf patterned with black hearts.

Her attire might be more fitting for a funeral than a christening, but an air of tragedy lingers over today’s happy occasion.

I feel certain his dearest father is watching his every move from heaven.

CHAPTER 55

ON JUNE 28, Marilyn is back in New York—and admitted to another hospital.

The doctors assess her condition. She’s poorly nourished, her skin is dehydrated, her hair is unwashed, and she has seemingly long since abandoned the practice of one ounce of Chanel No. 5 in every bath. The nausea and chronic pain in her side are symptoms of a diseased gallbladder. She’s wheeled into surgery to have the organ removed.

On July 11, Marilyn is well enough to be discharged.

“How are you, Marilyn?” the assembled crowd shouts at her, upping the intensity as they push closer. “Give us a smile, Marilyn!” “Feel any better?” “Are you remarrying Joe DiMaggio?” “Did Arthur Miller visit you?”

Pat Newcomb fights her way through the throng to get Marilyn into the waiting car.

Marilyn is frightened by the jostling of the crowd. “I thought they were going to pull me to pieces!” she exclaims as she falls back into her seat, tentatively holding her abdomen. Her surgicalwound has started to bleed; it’s still raw and hasn’t yet formed a protective scar.

Fox has been patient, but Marilyn still owes the studio two films on her 1955 contract.

In December 1961, the studio pitches herSomething’s Got to Give,a zany comedy inspired by the 1940 Cary Grant and Irene Dunne pictureMy Favorite Wife. Marilyn would earn her contractual rate of $100,000 and reprise Dunne’s role as Ellen Wagstaff Arden, aka Eve, a wife rescued after years stranded on an island. George Cukor, who directed Marilyn inLet’s Make Love,agrees to lead the production, which will co-star Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse.

It’s the kind of light fare that meets Dr. Greenson’s approval. Marilyn books daily appointments, staying at the doctor’s office for at least an hour and sometimes two, so she can review with him everything she’s written in her little red book.

Greenson begins to cancel sessions with his other clients in favor of spending more time with Marilyn. He has been collecting newspaper cuttings about her. He has boxes of them, piles of photographs. There are well-thumbed interviews and posters from her films.

Marilyn’s friends are skeptical of the doctor. There’s “something sinister about Ralph Greenson,” her makeup artist, Whitey Snyder, thinks. He worries that the doctor exerts “enormous influence over her.”

A knock sounds on Marilyn’s apartment door. She answers, barefoot, in a red kimono, her unbrushed hair falling over her face. In front of her is a short middle-aged woman with cropped gray hair, in a sensible white shirt and winged spectacles.

“Good day to you,” the woman says, with a tight smile. “My name is Eunice Murray. Dr. Greenson said you’d be expecting me.”

Marilyn hadn’t exactly been expecting Mrs. Murray, whom Dr. Greenson has hired to be her new housekeeper. But “it wasn’t hard to understand,” says Pat Kennedy Lawford. “Eunice was simply Greenson’s spy, sent down to report back on everything Marilyn did.”

“How can I put it?” asks Marilyn’s hairdresser George Masters. “She was terrifically jealous of Marilyn, separating her from her friends. She was a divisive person.”

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