Page 77 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn

P.S. forgive the spelling—and theres nothing to write on here. I’m on the dangerous floor its like a cell. can you imagine—cement blocks they put me in her because they lied to me about calling my doctor and Joe and they had the bathroom door locked so I broke the glass and out side of that I havnt done anything that is uncooperative

But her message goes unanswered; no help comes.

The press gets a tip that Marilyn Monroe’s been admitted to a clinic. The doctors deny that she’s schizophrenic like her mother. One says that she is “psychiatrically disconnected in an acute way because she works too hard.”

Eventually, she is allowed one telephone call. Only one person is strong enough to get her out of this situation.

Joe DiMaggio.

DiMaggio is in Florida. He has signed on as a spring training instructor with the Yankees, who are practicing at Huggins-Stengel Field in St. Petersburg. He catches the next flight to New York and comes directly to Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic.

“I want my wife,” DiMaggio demands, with all the might of a former professional athlete.

Behind the reception desk, the staff quakes at his forcefulness.

“I want my wife,” he repeats. “And if you do not release her to me, I will take this place apart—piece of wood, by piece … of … wood.”

Out of loyalty, guilt, love, or perhaps a mixture of all three, Marilyn’s second husband has never remarried.

According to one friend, “He carried a torch for Marilyn that was bigger than the Statue of Liberty.” Another echoes, “He deeply loved that woman.”

Marilyn is released. She leaves the hospital via the service entrance in the basement and straight into Dr. Kris’s waiting car.

DiMaggio is waiting at Marilyn’s apartment, where he and a furious Marilyn hear the doctor’s regretful confession.

“I did a terrible thing,” Kris says. “I really didn’t mean to, but I did.”

Marilyn refuses to accept any apology. She eliminates Dr. Kris from her life.

CHAPTER 53

“ALL’S WELL WITH THE WORLD, men, so fear not, fear not,” reports theNew York Journal-American. For the past three weeks, Marilyn Monroe has been in a private room at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, recovering from the disastrous time she endured at the Payne Whitney. “Marilyn’s face still has the ethereal rose-petal texture, the smile’s as delicately soft as ever, the figure—ah yes—the figure—and best of all they’ve untied the knots in her nerves.”

Joe DiMaggio visited Marilyn daily and filled her hospital room with bouquets of roses. While hospitalized, she gets word that her former mother-in-law, Augusta Miller, has suddenly passed away, and after she’s discharged on March 6, 1961, Marilyn makes sure to attend the funeral on March 8. She sits with the family, holding hands with Isidore.

Afterward, she accepts DiMaggio’s invitation to visit him in Florida. He’s attentive and kind, and in his off-hours fromcoaching the Yankees through spring training, they have quiet dinners and look for shells on the beach.

DiMaggio does everything he can to prevent Marilyn from slipping back into the dungeons of loneliness and misery, and she is grateful. But she just can’t help herself.

At the White House, Jack Kennedy has informed the switchboard that if a “Miss Green” calls, she is to be put straight through. Almost as soon as Marilyn leaves the hospital, she’s on the telephone whispering and giggling to “The Prez.”

Marilyn has never lost her anxiety about sounding unintelligent. Though obviously smart—and well-read these days, despite her early lack of education—she prepares pertinent questions to ask Kennedy during their phone conversations: What went wrong during the Bay of Pigs invasion on April 17? Should the US have withheld air support? And why is Castro such a bad, bad man?

She jots down everything the president tells her in the little red book she uses as a memory aid. CIA counterintelligence knows all about what they call Marilyn’s Book of Secrets. Given the heightened threat of nuclear war, they deem it a matter of concern.

At FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, J. Edgar Hoover sits at his desk, staring at Marilyn Monroe’s “105” file. The designation indicates that its contents are political. The file is further flagged “SM-C” for “Security Matter-Communist.” He sighs and pushes the pages across his desk. How is he going to solve the Marilyn Monroe Problem?

After her recuperation in Florida, Marilyn decides she is strong and well enough to return to Hollywood and the California sunshine.

New York holds too many painful memories of padded cells and straitjackets, and besides, it is more Arthur Miller’s town. According to Dr. Greenson, her relationship with Miller is at the heart of all her problems.

“As a great intellect and playwright, he was too big a challenge for her” is Greenson’s opinion. “In trying to win Miller’s respect, she had become obsessed with the ‘serious dramatic actress’ goal. This was false, it wasn’t her.” He tells her that “she should continue her acting lessons, and gradually improve her skills, but the movies she should concentrate on now were those that came most naturally to her—comedies, musicals, ‘fun’ movies, nothing too serious.”

Greenson advises, “Above all, you have to be yourself.”

“Whoever that is,” Marilyn replies.

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