Page 92 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

It details information passed along by an unnamed source claiming that Marilyn had information about political matters overheard while she was at Peter Lawford’s residence with one of the Kennedy brothers a few days earlier.

The only Kennedy brother who’s recently been in Los Angeles is Bobby. And the most likely informant to the Mexican FBI is Marilyn’s lover José Bolaños.

“She was very pleased, as she had asked the President a lot of socially significant questions concerning the morality of atomic testing,” the report notes. “Subject’s views are very positively and concisely leftist; however, if she is being actively used by the Communist Party, it is not generalknowledge among those working with the movement in Los Angeles.”

The FBI is already alarmed to know of Marilyn’s continued connection to suspected agent Frederick Vanderbilt Field, who is currently staying with his wife Nieves in Marilyn’s New York apartment at 444 East 57th Street. Field writes Marilyn a letter thanking her and calling her apartment “the key to the success of the whole expedition.”

“We hope you are winning your battles in Hollywood,” he writes. “We kind of figure being who and what you are you will come out on top.”

But Marilyn isn’t feeling victorious.

Days after the FBI report, Bobby stops taking her calls.

The sudden cold shoulder—so reminiscent of what happened recently with Jack—leaves Marilyn furious.

“He should face me and tell me why,” she rants to friends. “Or tell me on the phone. I don’t care. I just want to knowwhy.”

When Marilyn can’t get through to the attorney general, she turns to his sister for help.

“Forget it,” Pat Lawford tells her. “Bobby’s still just a little boy. But you have to remember he’s a little boy with a wife and seven kids.” Not only that, but a staunch Catholic who’d been named “Father of the Year” just two years earlier. There’s simply no way he’s ever going to sacrifice his career and reputation to leave his wife for Marilyn.

But Marilyn is deeply hurt and can’t let it go.

“He owes me an explanation!” she complains to her friend Bob Slatzer. “I want to know what happened, and I want Bobby to tell me himself!”

She continues unsuccessfully trying to reach him: on his private number, at the Justice Department, and even at home in Hickory Hill. If Bobby Kennedy keeps ignoring her, she tells Slatzer, “I might just hold a press conference. I’ve certainly got a lot to say!”

CHAPTER 66

MY GOD, WHAT a beautiful woman,thinks Buddy Greco. On Saturday, July 28, the pianist is at the Cal Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe. He’s sitting outside Frank Sinatra’s bungalow when a limousine pulls up and “this gorgeous woman in dark glasses steps out.”

It’s Marilyn, of course, though Greco doesn’t immediately recognize her.

She’s dressed head-to-toe in green: a lime-green long-sleeved silk jersey Pucci blouse with a boat neck, green shoes, green trousers, and a green headscarf.

“Before I realized who it was, I thought: ‘My God, what a beautiful woman. No taste in clothes, but what a beautiful woman!’” Greco laughs.

He’s met Marilyn only briefly, so he’s delighted to see her again. She greets him with a big hug around the neck. She and Greco, along with Peter and Pat Lawford, are guests of Sinatra. A number of Sinatra’s other Hollywood friends and Mob associates, like Sam Giancana, are there that weekendtoo. Greco will be performing his rendition of “The Lady Is a Tramp,” his big 1960 hit, in Sinatra’s Celebrity Room.

Both Sinatra and the Lawfords, aware of what’s been going on with the Kennedys, hope that getting Marilyn out of Los Angeles will distract her.

Over the last few weeks, Marilyn has become deeply depressed and withdrawn. She’s seen few people except Mrs. Murray and her doctors—Dr. Greenson, whom she’s seen twenty-eight times in the last thirty-five days—and Dr. Engelberg, whom she’s seen thirteen times.

After she and Dean Martin finishSomething’s Got to Give,Sinatra might co-star with Marilyn on her next film,What a Way to Go!,which has been written specifically for her. So why not celebrate in advance?

But it’s far from the “magical weekend” that Greco describes having.

Shortly after the pianist walks off stage Saturday night to join Sinatra at his red velveteen booth in the lounge, Greco spots an unsteady Marilyn standing in the doorway, “still in the same green outfit she’d worn all day.”

But the “smart, funny, intelligent, fragile” woman he’d spent time with earlier in the day has disappeared.

In her place is a clearly intoxicated, defiant, and angry woman.

“Who the fuck are they all staring at?” Greco hears her say.

This is not the star we’re used to seeing,he thinks.

Sinatra is quick to react. He calls over his bodyguard, former USC football star Ed Pucci, to escort Marilyn out. Pucci takes no chances, scooping up the tiny blonde and carrying her away.

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