Page 79 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

Joe DiMaggio turns up on December 23 with a Christmas tree, lights, and presents. He fills Marilyn’s refrigerator with her favorite champagne and caviar.

Four weeks pass. The pine needles have long since dropped, the lights are broken, and the ornaments are hanging limply from the bent branches. Mrs. Murray keeps suggesting they tidy up and take down the tree, but Marilyn won’t have it. She wants to keep a little bit of DiMaggio in the apartment.

Reliable, kind Joe. He spent Christmas Day eating turkey at the Greensons’, despite his innate dislike of strangers and Dr. Greenson’s evident dislike of him.

Also, extremely generous Joe. He’s offered to help her buy a home of her own. Her first.

A movie star as famous as Marilyn would be expected to buy a home as chic and glamorous as the Lawfords’ beach house in Santa Monica. But what Marilyn craves is privacy.

Mrs. Murray finds a listing for 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood. The property at the end of a cul-de-sac is a single-story home with a tiny guest house, high white walls, and a lush garden. With pretty floor tiles, it looks and feels like a Spanish hacienda, just like the Greensons’ nearby house.

“And look, Marilyn,” says Mrs. Murray as they tour the grounds around the “cute little Mexican-style house with eight rooms,” with Dr. Greenson walking behind, nodding his approval. “A swimming pool!”

Everything Mrs. Murray says to Marilyn has a patronizing edge, a tone exacerbated by their chosen forms of address. To Marilyn, the housekeeper is “Mrs. Murray,” yet Mrs. Murray calls her employer only by her first name.

“Oh, an actual swimming pool, Mrs. Murray!” enthuses Marilyn. “What do you think, Maf?” she asks the little dog in her arms. The white Maltese that she sometimes calls a poodle was a present from Frank Sinatra. Marilyn named him Maf, short for Mafia, as a little joke between the two of them. “Imagine how athletic I would be if I swam every morning.”

They walk the garden, taking in the abundant planting and the beautiful fruit trees, before returning to the porch at the front of the house.

“Cursum Perficio,” she says slowly, reading out the letters in the tilework. “Cursum Perficio—what does that mean?”

“It’s Latin,” says Dr. Greenson. “It means ‘I complete the race,’ or journey’s end, the end of the road. Something like that.”

“The end of the road?” Marilyn asks, wrinkling her nose. “As in your final resting place?”

“Or ‘welcome,’” chips in Mrs. Murray. “As in, you’ve reached the end of your journey. You’re here.”

“I am here,” agrees Marilyn. “I like it! Let’s buy it!”

The house costs $77,500. Marilyn might be the world’s most famous movie star, but she hasn’t got that level of cash at her disposal. Generous Joe lends her the money for the down payment, as promised. It’s now February. She’ll pay him back in April, as soon as she starts shootingSomething’s Got to Give.

On February 12, Fox sends over the latest version of Nunnally Johnson’s script, bound in blue paper and stamped with the studio’s corporate logo. Using pen and pencil, Marilyn marks up the script with her notes on blocking and dialogue.

Marilyn plays Ellen Arden. But her character’s entrance strikes her as under-written. “The only people on earth I get on well with are men,” she notes in the margin of page 12, “so let’s have some fun with this opening scene.”

In the script, Nick Arden (Dean Martin) has married Bianca (Cyd Charisse), believing his first wife, Ellen, died in a shipwreck years earlier. Once Ellen returns, very much alive, Bianca questions Ellen’s sanity, calling her “psychosomatic.”

“Would she come right out with this sort of thing?” Marilyn questions on page 7. “Gives away what she will be saying later … No! She is not a Nut but a cold Hard dame.”

With notes on 32 of its 108 pages, Marilyn returns the script for rewrites.

Screenwriter Budd Schulberg, who won an Oscar forOn the Waterfront,is also struggling with a different Fox script—the adaptation ofThe Enemy Within,Bobby Kennedy’s account of corruption within the Teamsters.

How does one write honestly about the attorney general, brother of the president, without compromising the script? How does one write honestly about labor racketeering without being considered anti-labor?

It’s been a year since theNew York Timesannounced:ATTORNEY GENERAL ROBERT KENNEDY’S BOOK SOLD TO FOX STUDIO, naming the author as a producer on the film.

The attorney general is highly involved with the script, conferring frequently with Schulberg.

Isn’t it exciting that the president’s brother has a reason to be on the Fox lot? Maybe the president, too?

CHAPTER 56

“ARRIVING EASTERN AIRLINES FLIGHT 505 at 9:05 tonight,” the telegram to Isidore Miller reads. “Have reservations at Fontainebleau. Love you. Marilyn.”

On February 17, 1962, Marilyn is en route to Florida to visit two of her favorite exes: Joe DiMaggio, who’s there as a spring training coach helping the Bronx Bombers prepare to defend their 1961 World Series title, and Isidore Miller, her beloved former father-in-law, whom she still calls “Dad.”

Miller waits for her at the Miami International Airport, clutching the telegram with the details of her arrival. Over dinner and a show at the Hotel Fontainebleau’s Club Gigi, Marilyn gently points out, “You know, Arthur’s getting married tonight.”

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