Page 89 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

If Marilyn has it in her to cultivate a healthy garden, what does she need with Dr. Engelberg and the “youth shots” Dr. Greenson has instructed him to administer nightly at 6 p.m.?

DiMaggio wants to know what’s in the shots, but Marilyn doesn’t know or care. They perk her up, make her more talkative, keep her going until about midnight, even when she’s tired or fearful.

As of Monday, June 11,Something’s Got to Giveis canceled.

“Dear George,” Marilyn telegrams director Cukor, “please forgive me, it was not my doing. I had so looked forward to working with you.”

CHAPTER 63

THE STALEMATE BETWEEN Fox and Marilyn stretches for sixteen days.

On Thursday, June 28, Marilyn receives an important guest—Fox’s chief of production, Peter Levathes.

Marilyn has arranged every detail, from caviar-and-cocktail refreshments down to a costume reminiscent of the executive look she devised when she founded Marilyn Monroe Productions, Inc., in 1955.

She’s had help from top stylists, some of her closest friends in Hollywood. Norman Norell, who designed the dress she wore to marry Arthur Miller and the emerald-green gown she wore last year to pick up her Golden Globe trophy, makes a beige dress in a tailored style. Makeup artist Whitey Snyder and hairstylist Sydney Guilaroff create a sleek yet serious look, accessorized with horn-rimmed glasses.

Although Levathes was quoted days earlier as questioning Marilyn’s mental state—“Miss Monroe is not just being temperamental, she’s mentally ill, perhaps seriously”—thosewords were part of a calculated smear campaign from the studio rather than a legitimate sentiment.

Today, he is nothing but complimentary of the “astute businesswoman.”

“You couldn’t have had a better meeting with an actress,” Levathes says. “She had a kind of renewed interest in the project that was infectious. I was finally confident that the picture would be made. In fact, I even authorized a new rewrite of the script incorporating Marilyn’s ideas.”

By the end of the month, Marilyn is negotiating for a seven-figure, two-picture contract in the realm of what Elizabeth Taylor commands.

Exactly what prompted the studio’s reversal is unclear. But Marilyn suspects that someone she fondly calls “the General” is watching out for her.

That would be Bobby Kennedy—US attorney general and producer of the Fox propertyThe Enemy Within,based on his 1960 book of the same name.

Bobby’s been spending a lot of time in LA recently. It’s a notable event when the attorney general arrives in his official car at his sister and brother-in-law’s Santa Monica beach house.

And when the Lawfords throw dinner parties, they always invite Marilyn.

“Then the help would come in and say, ‘Marilyn’s arrived,’” one of their neighbors remarks. “Sometimes I’d notice Bobby and Marilyn go out through the patio to the beach to walk.”

One night during one of these parties, Bobby’s bodyguardcautions a young parking attendant. “You have eyes but you can’t see, you have ears but you can’t hear, and you have a mouth but you can’t speak. You’re gonna see a lot of things, but you have to keep quiet.”

Marilyn could use that caution herself. She tells dozens of friends about her burgeoning relationship with the president’s brother.

According to a friend, “It wasn’t a physical attraction for her. It was more mental. Because she was depicted as a dumb blonde. You always want what you don’t have, and Bobby was a bright guy. That’s what turned her on.”

“I like him,” Marilyn tells her masseur Ralph Roberts, “but not physically.”

Bobby on the other hand is dazzled by Marilyn. His interest in her is validating, especially after Jack’s rejection. But she desperately wants him to take her seriously.

She even starts taking notes on their conversations in her little red diary, she tells her friend Bob Slatzer, because “Bobby liked to talk about political things. He got mad at me one day because he said I didn’t remember anything he told me.”

“I think she made those notes when he was talking on the telephone, in the hope of having something to talk to him about later,” another friend says. “It probably never occurred to Bobby that she was listening to his conversations.”

CHAPTER 64

THERE’S RENEWED INTEREST in the star who challenged 20th Century-Fox not once but twice. Photographers and reporters clamor for access.

Photographer Bert Stern has been in Rome on the set ofCleopatra,shooting Elizabeth Taylor in a pleated Fortuny dress and a gold serpent belt to promote the Fox film inVogue.

The magazine next sends Stern to Los Angeles to photograph Marilyn for its August issue, her first-ever appearance in the fashion magazine.

“You’re beautiful” is Stern’s opening line upon Marilyn’s arrival in Suite 261 in the Hotel Bel-Air, only five hours late.

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