Page 1 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

Prologue

ONE

Los Angeles, California

August 5, 1962

HOUSEKEEPER EUNICE MURRAY wakes suddenly, fear lodged in the pit of her stomach. It’s the middle of the night. She is worried, unsettled without knowing why.

It could be the stifling heat, or the cheap bedsheets that need changing. She gets out of bed, fumbling for her padded pink slippers and matching terry cloth dressing gown.

Opening her bedroom door, the housekeeper shuffles out into the vaulted hall of the home where she lives and works. The Spanish Colonial–style hacienda is tucked away at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, a wooded cul-de-sac in Brentwood.

It belongs to her employer, movie star Marilyn Monroe.

Boxes are everywhere, half unpacked, the sideboard and spare chairs piled with papers and movie scripts. Unhung framed pictures sit on the floor, turned toward the wall to protect the glassed-in images.

The house is a relatively recent purchase, made on the advice of Marilyn’s psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson.

“Marilyn, you need to put down some roots,” he’d advised her. “Get yourself a house of your own.”

It’s true that after a childhood that included stints in eleven foster homes, two years in an orphanage, and a mother locked up in a mental asylum, Marilyn has always felt deprived of a real home.

So she had bought this house. But even after six months, she still hasn’t really moved in, hasn’t found the time to arrange things in the main house, much less the big backyard, the swimming pool, and the citrus grove. Half her furniture is still on order.

Mrs. Murray crosses the corridor to Marilyn’s bedroom. The door is shut, but the telephone cord wedged under the door attracts her attention. It’s the white telephone.

Marilyn has two lines. The white telephone is for personal calls. Marilyn often telephones her friends in the evenings, one after another. She lies in bed, cracks open a Nembutal capsule, adds a chloral hydrate tablet, drinks a champagne chaser, then gives them all a call. How she keeps track of what she says to whom, Mrs. Murray has no idea.

The other telephone, the pink one, is her general line, and it often rings during the night. Marilyn usually muffles the pink telephone and leaves it in the next room, smothering it under some cushions so it doesn’t wake her. She’s a light sleeper. An insomniac who’s obsessed with sleep.

It’s been over ten years since Marilyn has gone to bed without sedation. Barbiturates. Nembutal. Powerful drugs. Sometimes they make her forgetful. When she can’t remember ifshe’s taken the pills, she rolls over in bed, cracks open another bottle, and pops some more.

Mrs. Murray looks at the telephone cord again. Lamplight seeps out from the crack between the carpet and the door. She puts her ear to the door and listens. The silence concerns her. No giggles. No breathy whispers. Something isn’t right.

She tries the door handle, but the door is locked. That’s unexpected. Marilyn is fearful of locked doors. Her bedroom door is only locked when she’s with a gentleman friend. Tonight she went to bed alone.

Eunice tries again, but she can’t get the door opened. Starting to panic, she runs into the next room, throws the cushions off the pink telephone, and dials Dr. Greenson.

She knows the number by heart. Not only has Ralph Greenson been Marilyn’s personal psychiatrist for the past two years, he’s also the person who first hired Mrs. Murray to work with Marilyn. He treats Marilyn at home because she is too famous to visit his clinic. He lives nearby and was over to the house earlier that day.

The phone rings and rings.

“Come on!” begs Mrs. Murray, pulling her dressing gown tighter around her. “Pick up! Pick up …”

“Hello?” Dr. Greenson answers sleepily.

“It’s Marilyn,” she blurts. “Her door is locked. I can’t raise her.”

“Eunice?”

“Please …”

“I’m on my way.”

Marilyn’s bedroom overlooks the front lawn. Mrs. Murray hurries through the living room and out the front door. Along the way, she grabs a metal poker from the fireplace.

Outside on the lawn, she stops in front of Marilyn’s bedroom. Her light is on, but the curtains are drawn. One window is slightly ajar. Standing on her tiptoes, Mrs. Murray pushes the poker through the crack and jabs at the top of the curtains, edging one aside along the rail, exposing an eerie scene.

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