Life Among the Cannibals: The Life and Times of Marilyn Monroe 1962 - 2003

By David Marshall

Special 20th Anniversary Edition
When Marilyn Monroe died in October 2003, she left behind the first volume of her memoirs (1926 to 1962), award-winning performances, and the memories of a thirty-five-year marriage. Now, after two and a half years of intensive research, (including interviews with noted figures such as Jane Fonda and Hilary Clinton, as well as Marilyn’s children, friends, and co-workers), a detailed accounting of the second half of this incredible life can be told. Utilizing exclusive access to her personal papers granted by her family, Life Among the Cannibals 1962-2003 chronicles not only Monroe’s response to the war and assassinations of the Sixties, her encounters with the likes of Janis Joplin, Pat Nixon, and Mikhail Gorbachev, but traces her evolution from sex symbol to Hollywood’s Conscience. Above all, now in a special 20th Anniversary Edition, Life Among the Cannibals puts an end to the innuendo and speculation surrounding the life and career of one of the 20th century’s most beloved figures.

“Instead of mourning what was lost, Marshall celebrates what should have been. With this highly entertaining book, Marshall gives Marilyn Monroe the second act she surely deserved.”
Author Tara Hanks

“David’s book is absolutely terrific and well deserves a space on your bookshelves. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
Biographer Michelle Morgan

“David Marshall has given us all a wonderful gift; a joyful chance to see what SHOULD have been, what COULD have been, as Marilyn makes her way through the rest of the 2Oth century, gaining the personal happiness and respect she always yearned for, forging friendships with some of the most influential figures of our time - and always remaining our beloved Marilyn.”
Online Reviewer Mickey52

Cover Photograph of Suzie Kennedy by Chris Bissell

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781663255204

David Marshall

The coauthors of this book are colleagues from a San Diego architectural firm that specializes in historic preservation. David Marshall, AIA, is an architect and postcard collector. Eileen Magno, MA, is a historian and writer. Both natives of San Diego, they have a lifelong love of the region and its quirky history. The images inside, most never before published, are all from Marshall's personal collection. New arrivals and longtime San Diegans are sure to find the stories and pictures in this book, well . . . unforgettable.

Book preview

Chapter One

In 1956 when Marilyn had returned to her hometown after winning her fight with 20th Century-Fox, a reporter had cattily asked, after eyeing Monroe’s high-necked outfit, if this was a New Marilyn. The actress had studied the female reporter and then simply replied, I’m the same person but it’s a different suit. So it came as no surprise that when she emerged from Santa Monica Hospital on the morning of September 20, 1962, she was once again written up as the New Marilyn.

This new Marilyn may not have been apparent to the hordes of press and well-wishers awaiting her in front of the hospital. She had gathered her trio of experts, the three who had created the Marilyn magic for her most successful movies, and the result was stunning. Her makeup was flawless thanks to Whitey Snyder, her choice of dress, a pale green Pucci, brought from her home by Marjorie Plecher, a perfect choice between casual and glamorous. Only her hair had presented real problems for Agnes Flanagan. Years of harsh chemicals utilized to create the Pillow White coloring and a nearly two-month convalescence had left her own trademark locks thin and lifeless; one of the wigs she had used in The Misfits was brought in as a substitute.

While she may have appeared as the well-known and well-loved star, Marilyn Monroe was far from the woman who had been brought into the emergency ward in early August. She did not raise her hand to wave to the cameras or purse her lips to toss a kiss, nor did she stop to banter with the press. On reflection, the lack of one of her famously witty, off the cuff retorts seemed more than enough evidence that this was indeed a new Marilyn Monroe.

With Joe DiMaggio at one side and Pat Newcomb on the other, Marilyn pressed her way through the crowds of television and print reporters until she had reached the cordoned off area across from the hospital entrance where loyal fans were being held back by several Santa Monica police officers. Many of these fans had held vigil for the nearly seven weeks of her hospital stay and it was these people that she meant to acknowledge. Moving slowly along the edge of the crowd shaking hands and whispering her appreciation, Marilyn Monroe appeared more like a politician working the voters than a movie star making an appearance.

Finally, she raised her hand just once to wave goodbye and then calmly made her way to the waiting car. Rudy Kautzsky of Carey Limousines, another employee who was also considered a personal friend, awaited her curbside, holding open the door of the black Lincoln town car. His wide grin made the papers that evening as photographers caught his pleasure at the swift peck on the cheek Marilyn offered in greeting before sliding inside. It would be the last the public would see of the star for nearly three months.

The last Marilyn public appearance had been in June, on her thirty-sixth birthday, when she had appeared at Chavez Ravine before a stadium crowd of over 51,000 as part of a Muscular Dystrophy Association benefit. And although her name had been in the news plenty since then, thanks to her having been fired by her movie studio, the headlines of Sunday, August 5, had shocked the world to its core: the great sex symbol of our times lay comatose, near death in a Santa Monica hospital. For the next six days newspaper sales would skyrocket as every citizen on the planet clamored for the latest update on their favorite movie star. Columnists chided Hollywood for its churlish treatment of the vulnerable girl who had wiggled her way into the public’s heart, while prestigious names such as Ayn Rand, James Baldwin and Truman Capote added their condemnations of the dream factory company town. Many fingers pointed to those who had loved her in the past and then moved on -- with Arthur Miller assigned a firm position at the front of the line. Dorothy Kilgallen hinted at a Washington connection. Walter Winchell, himself nearly forgotten, regained a bit of his career momentum when he surfaced with a series of articles chastising Hollywood, the fickle American public and, of course, the communists.

All of the columnists, fan magazines and editorials seemed to agree: Marilyn’s career and likely her life were at an end. Somehow, we’d all trampled on this frail national treasure, taken a chunk out of her just like she’d said in the recent LIFE magazine interview. America was to blame. Hollywood was to blame. All of us were to blame, for our sins, our most grievous sins. We’d held the elusive gift close to our hearts, but we hadn’t realized her true worth, and now, like a vengeful Charlton Heston railing at us from the darkening skies, God was going to take her home and leave us all down here alone, wallowing in our guilt.

Of course, the one person the papers never mentioned as a possible guilty party was Marilyn herself. Somehow, by so nearly leaving us, everyone who hadn’t realized it before was suddenly aware of just how much they loved her, just how diminished we would all be if she had succeeded in her death wish. The question is not why Marilyn decided to swallow an entire bottle of Nembutal in the early evening hours of August 4, 1962, but why we didn’t realize just how much she meant to us. In more ways than one, we had thought of her as a thing, something we called Movie Star or Sex Symbol but very rarely thought of as a living, breathing human being. That’s the trouble, she had said just that week in the LIFE interview. A sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate being a thing. But who knew she hated it enough to want to kill herself?

We were all aware of the rags to riches story, her Cinderella rise from the wrong side of the tracks to the pinnacle of American fame. We knew the foster child/pitiful waif beginnings. And we’d all read about her recent troubles. The bad press from the studio. Her director quoted as saying he believed she was, quite literally, insane. Her being fired, the movie shelved. Were we any kinder than those who knew her? Should we have sent a note, tried to find her phone number and called her just to say hi, tell her we were thinking of her?

When Marilyn Monroe was rolled into the emergency room at Santa Monica Hospital that Saturday night, most of her friends and acquaintances were unaware that anything made that particular night different from any other. The one person who was possibly the closest to her that summer, her publicist and friend Patricia Newcomb, was home in bed, sick with the bronchitis that had plagued her throughout the weekend.

The others who were a part of her inner circle would become aware that something serious had taken place at 12305 5th Helena as the night wore on, but at the time of Marilyn’s overdose all of them were otherwise occupied. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, and his wife Hildi were dining out, as was Marilyn’s confidante and masseur, Ralph Roberts. Her personal physician, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, was in the midst of a personal crisis as his marital problems had come to a head that very day. Her lawyer, Milton Mickey Rudin, was at a cocktail party, and Arthur Jacobs, Pat Newcomb’s boss, was attending a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Pat Lawford, sister of the President, had flown to the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port the previous weekend while her husband Peter was entertaining a small group of friends at their Santa Monica beach house. As so many newspapers would note in the days to come, Marilyn Monroe, the most sought after and desired woman in the world, was alone and without a date on Saturday night.

Speculation still rages on the whereabouts of one Monroe friend, then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. While he and his family continued to insist until his death in 1968 and beyond that he and his wife were in Gilroy, California, many researchers have placed him at Marilyn’s Brentwood home for at least a portion of that Saturday afternoon. Marilyn, at least publicly, never stated who other than Ms. Newcomb and Dr. Greenson may have visited her that day. Still, the woman who was known as her companion and housekeeper, Mrs. Eunice Murray, has gone on record stating to documentary filmmakers that the Attorney General did appear at Marilyn’s house that afternoon.

The odd thing is that although several of Marilyn’s friends and acquaintances quote her as talking about both the President and the Attorney General that summer as good friends, powerful men that she had ready access to, once she emerged from her hospitalization, she rarely publicly mentioned them again. Yet as far back as 1961, when Marilyn was sitting down to a series of quiet conversations with journalist W.J. Weatherby, she was quite candid about her relationship with the 35th President of the United States, leaving one to think that he had a far more influential hand in her early 1960s career choices than had been assumed.

As of August 11, when Marilyn Monroe surfaced from her drug-induced coma, she never again dropped either the President’s or the Attorney General’s names. It was as if she had never sang Happy Birthday that memorable May 1962 evening, had never spoken of the Kennedy family to Weatherby, Greenson or any of her other close associates. Whatever had taken place that fateful Saturday at the beginning of August 1962, whatever had brought on the considerable overdose, (estimated to have been an entire bottle of 25 Nembutal tablets, enough, as one doctor was quoted as stating anonymously at the time, to kill a good-sized horse), was never discussed. She never elaborated on the events of that day and no mention of the cause of that overdose, undeniably intentional, can be found in the many notes and jotted memories she left behind when she died forty-one years later. Like so many other episodes in Marilyn’s multi-faceted life and career, the overdose was put behind her. She survived and moved on, never to look back.

In an era that preceded the many sudden deaths of rising political stars, the near-death experience of Marilyn Monroe was one that took the country and the world by surprise. Later, after the deaths of Martin Luther King, both Jack and Bobby Kennedy, of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and countless civil rights workers, learning that a favored celebrity was on the brink of death would be accepted by the public at large in a sort of numbed resignation. In August of 1962 however, the very idea that someone as famous, as talented, as beautiful as Marilyn Monroe could suddenly be gone was not a concept easily grasped. By this point the young girl with the checkered childhood, the wrong side of the tracks gal who had gone on to fame and fortune, was much more than a mere movie star. In an age before the term Superstar had been coined, Marilyn Monroe was held as a national treasure, someone each of her fawning public considered a part of their lives, a part of their families. That this sheer adulation had not been fully understood by Marilyn herself was soon apparent by her unfeigned surprise upon awakening to find that an entire nation had been waiting for her to resurface. When told that there had been a vigil outside the Santa Monica Hospital since the early hours of Sunday, August 5, Marilyn was quoted as simply saying, My God, aren’t they hungry?

For those six days, when it was uncertain if the beloved star of Some Like It Hot, Bus Stop, and The Seven Year Itch would live to face another camera, Marilyn remained in the national headlines, each newspaper trying to outdo one another in milking the story for all the sales possible. Her publicist, Patricia Newcomb, as was her job, took the brunt of the thousands of questions posed over the following days with seemingly every newspaper in the world calling for answers. The ex-husbands, Jim Dougherty, Joe DiMaggio, and Arthur Miller were sought out for their reactions to the news, each stoically replying with a terse No comment. Directors, producers, co-stars and stand-ins were all sought out for their take on what had gone wrong, the reactions ranging from the universal belief that the overdose had to have been an accident to Jane Russell’s ominous reply that the entire situation was dirty pool. Even the man whom Marilyn had invited to be her escort to the 1962 Golden Globes Awards, Mexican screenwriter Jose Bolanos, was tracked down just in case he might have something new to toss into the fray. He didn’t.

The one place the press was absolutely not welcomed was in Room 238, Santa Monica Hospital. Reprising his role of savior, Joe DiMaggio had stepped in to protect his ex-wife’s privacy and, as he had during her earlier hospitalization the year before, (at both the Payne Whitney and Columbia Presbyterian Hospitals where Marilyn had been staying for nearly a month of intense psychiatric treatment), he had grilled the hospital staff on not only his ex-wife’s health and care but had appointed himself as the keeper of the gate, dictating who among the many who tried to visit would gain entrance. This list of the acceptable originally seemed to have been pared down to those who were in some way or another on Marilyn’s payroll and has been repeatedly attacked as unfair by many of those who were kept away. In his defense, Marilyn would later try to mend fences and assuage injured egos by stressing that Joe had only been trying to do what he felt best for her peace of mind.

Yet at the time it was hard to understand why so many who obviously had Marilyn’s best wishes at heart were turned away. Those barred from visiting Marilyn, even after she had awakened from her coma, included some of the biggest names of the day: Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter and Patricia Lawford, Mitzi Gaynor, Truman Capote, and Shirley MacLaine. Ironically, one man did make it inside before she awoke – Joe’s one-time friend, columnist Walter Winchell. Once Marilyn was made aware of The List, as well as who had been allowed in to view her as she was still in a coma, she made her ire well known. Nurses reported hearing Marilyn shouting furiously at poor Joe once she learned that Winchell and photographer Lawrence Schiller had been allowed into her private room. It was the only confrontation any hospital personnel were to witness. In Joe’s defense, any possible photographs taken of the comatose Monroe were destroyed when DiMaggio demanded the film to Schiller’s camera.

After Marilyn regained consciousness, those who did gain entrance, (Eunice Murray, Lee and Paula Strasberg, Dr. Greenson and family, Ralph Roberts, Patricia Newcomb, and Allan Whitey Snyder), reported to the press ensconced outside the hospital entrance that Marilyn seemed alert and well-rested, ready to take on the rigors of her career. 20th Century-Fox announced on the day of Marilyn’s release that her previously shelved film, Something’s Got To Give, would recommence as soon as their star was fully recuperated. Reading those press releases some forty years later it is hard to believe their optimistic tone. While Marilyn Monroe had survived a massive overdose, the spokesperson for her studio makes it sound as if she would be back on her feet and before the cameras within a matter of days. The return, if it did indeed happen, would take considerably longer.

Questions about who else might have visited Marilyn while still in Santa Monica Hospital have continued to surface over the years, especially after author Anthony Summers’ The Hidden Lives of Marilyn Monroe reached publication in 1985. While Marilyn made no mention of the 1962 overdose or her hospital stay in the first volume of her memoirs and steadfastly refused to discuss the events leading up to her near fatal overdose in any interview, Summers seems to have come up with ample evidence pointing to the President of the United States having visited the film star in her room on August 11, 1962.

On the night of Marilyn’s overdose, the President, his wife and children, and all of the Kennedy siblings, (with the exception of Robert), were at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. One familiar photo shows the charismatic President, First Lady and their children posed on the front porch of their Hyannis home, proving that even if sunburned and windblown, there had never been a First Family quite as photogenic as the Kennedys. We know from the President’s appointment calendar as well as contemporary newspaper accounts that JFK was back in Washington, DC on Monday, August 6, when he attended the National High School Symphony Orchestra concert on the White House South Lawn. The following day he presented the President’s Distinguished Civilian Service Awards at a ceremony in the Rose Garden.

Then, on August 8, the First Lady and daughter Caroline left for Ravello, Italy, marking the beginning of a twenty-three-day absence from the White House. On Friday, August 10, as Marilyn was showing signs of regaining consciousness, the President traveled to Brunswick, Maine where he gave a short speech at the Festival for Charity at the U.S. Naval Air Station. The President’s appointment calendar then has him flying that afternoon to Johns Island, Maine, where he is listed as spending the weekend at the home of Gene Tunney. It is not until Monday, August 13, that the President was back behind his desk in the Oval Office where he signed the Work Hours Standards Act of 1962 into law.

Did the President spend the weekend at the home of Gene Tunney as his host has since insisted? There are those who doubt this, likening Tunney’s subsequent statements to those of John Bates who insists on the Attorney General’s presence at his Gilroy, California home the previous weekend. Yet, just as there are several witnesses placing Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles on Saturday, August 4, an equal number of witnesses place John Kennedy in Santa Monica on Saturday, August 11.

But, whether the President of the United States was on hand to welcome back Marilyn Monroe from a comatose state or not, is basically unanswerable and certainly, at this late date, unprovable. The verification of various tabloids or biographers is not mine to decide. For deciphering these speculations, I will yield to investigative reporters such as Mr. Summers. For those interested, and there are many, I refer you to Summers’ 1985 book, The Hidden Lives of Marilyn Monroe.

There are other questions regarding the Presidents movements that weekend besides his presence at Santa Monica Hospital. One would be the documented reports of his weekend sailing with Gene Tunney and a host of other New Frontiersmen. Photos of the President on board a yacht along with sister and brother-in-law Pat and Peter Lawford, Paul Red Fay, James Reed, and Charles Spaulding appeared in Monday morning’s newspapers, captioned as having been taken on Saturday afternoon. But were they? With no proof to say otherwise, it is entirely possible that these photos could have been taken the afternoon of the 12th rather than the 11th. The mystery remains, as does the previous weekend’s whereabouts of the Attorney General, unsolved. In both cases it comes down to a matter of whom to believe.

Ironically, it is once again Lawford neighbor Ward Woods who provides the most compelling evidence that JFK was indeed in Santa Monica in the early hours of August 11, 1962. I had stayed up quite late that night, Woods informed Summers in his 1982 interview. "Then just after the Tonight Show, Hugh Downs had taken over for Jack Paar. I was on my way to the kitchen and heard a commotion out front. Not a commotion, but cars -- more than would be usual that time of night. I saw several Secret Agents in front of the Lawford home and then there he was, Jack Kennedy. I didn’t think that much of it. It wasn’t the first time the President had visited. But the next morning I remember thinking it was odd after all, as I remembered both Peter and Pat were out of town."

Marilyn Monroe was taken, comatose, to Santa Monica Hospital in the early evening hours of August 4. She would remain in a coma for the following six days, surfacing shortly before 2:00 AM on August 11. Regardless, if the President were in town or in at the home of Gene Tunney, one thing is certain: he, like most everyone else, would always remember where he was when he first heard the news.

Chapter Two

In 1962 the press did not concentrate on the personal trials of the famous quite as heavily as they do now. Stars did not make regular confessions of their past drug dependencies nor was the phrase clean and sober in common use. While Marilyn had to contend with movie magazines like Modern Screen, there was no National Enquirer or Globe, no Hard Copy or E! True Hollywood Story. Had this been 1992 rather than 1962, Marilyn’s story of overcoming her prescription drug addictions would have been amply covered in either an Oprah Winfrey or Barbara Walters interview. As it was, the public never truly grasped the metamorphous the seven weeks of medical supervision had brought about. In Marilyn’s own words, Even I couldn’t quite figure how long I’d been hooked. All I know is it felt like three million years.

As had been arranged before Marilyn’s overdose, her housekeeper Mrs. Murray had left for her vacation in Europe and was traveling for an undetermined length of time. In her place, Florence Thomas came out from New York and was there to welcome Marilyn home when Rudy’s limo pulled through the gates at 12305 5th Helena. So was her dog, Maf, eagerly yipping as Marilyn stepped out onto her bricked courtyard for the first time in 46 days. She seemed to have finally arrived right where she wanted to be -- in her very own home. Sleeping late without the aid of prescription drugs, be it Nembutal or Chloral Hydrate, eating whatever she felt like, letting her roots grow out -- for once it seemed that Marilyn Monroe had actually taken some time to herself, gladly stepping off the never-ending treadmill of Hollywood survival. For what may have been the very first time, with Florence to tend to her and Joe to keep her quiet company, Marilyn avoided the constant requests for interviews and concentrated on simply taking care of herself.

Plans that had been made prior to her hospitalization were either postponed or never followed through on. For example, the Jean Louis designed gown Marilyn had had specially made for the September 6 Washington premiere of Irving Berlin’s new musical, Mr. President, remained in her closet. Meetings to discuss future projects were rescheduled for when Miss Monroe is fully recuperated. The idea of starring in a musical remake of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn with Frank Sinatra was placed on a back burner, never to reach fruition.

Of course, she was a new Marilyn. How could she have come through seven weeks of hospitalization, let alone a ten-day coma, and not have changed? Although she did not date it, one of the notes left me discussed her frustration with most everything in her life and her growing impatience with people, (and corporations), who refused to change. The corporation that frustrated her the most, of course, was her own studio, 20th Century-Fox. While the studio had released a statement assuring everyone that they would not pressure Marilyn to return to the cameras until she was fully recuperated, within days of her release from Santa Monica Hospital her presence was requested at the Executive Building on the Fox lot.

After numerous anxious calls, the studio was told that Miss Monroe would meet to discuss her contract and the resumption of Something’s Got to Give on Monday, October 1, 1962. Rallying the supportive energies of publicist Pat Newcomb, hairdresser Agnes Flanagan, and makeup man Whitey Snyder, Marilyn squared her shoulders and stepped back into the business of being Marilyn, the role that had brought her international fame if not critical acclaim.

The question now was if she were fully recuperated. Was she ready to go back to the pressures of carrying a movie, meeting deadlines, memorizing lines, and delving into her supposedly fragile psyche to pull something out of herself that was unique and extraordinary, as John Huston was quoted as saying of Marilyn’s talent. By all accounts, Marilyn felt she was. But what about the opinion of her psychiatrist, the man she had been seeing on a nearly daily basis for over two years, Dr. Ralph Greenson?

In his biography of Marilyn, author Donald Spoto hints that not all might have been well in that particular doctor-patient relationship. According to Spoto, Marilyn had already made it known to her friends that she was growing leery of Greenson, feeling that his motives might be more for the advancement of his own career than helping her through her numerous problems. On one hand, Dr. Greenson, with the help of Dr. Engelberg, had nearly weaned Marilyn off her prescription drug dependencies prior to her overdose. Yet, on the other hand, Greenson had also somehow found his way onto 20th Century-Fox’s payroll, assuring the studio that he alone could make their troublesome star do whatever he requested. Like so much of the reporting of Monroe’s earlier years, the Greenson relationship is fraught with inconsistencies and contradictions in how it has been written up. Some of Marilyn’s inner circle have her growing steadily rebellious under Greenson’s restrictions, (especially his telling her who among her friends she could and could not see, chief among them Joe DiMaggio and Ralph Roberts). Still, there are letters in Marilyn’s hand praising Greenson as the man who had saved her from her demons.

While Marilyn and Jane Fonda initially met during the filming of Some Like It Hot, it would not be until nearly a decade later that the two would meet again and begin a friendship that would last throughout the remainder of Marilyn’s life. When I was able to meet up with her in her adopted hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, Ms. Fonda was more than happy to think back to what Marilyn might have said about her former psychiatrist.

"Marilyn, as you know, was a very private person. It would take a great deal for her to ever say anything bad about anyone. The way she always respectfully referred to her ex-husbands tells you a lot -- ‘Mr. DiMaggio,’ ‘Mr. Miller.’ Even after After the Fall, Marilyn never had a thing to say against Miller publicly. I think the same would apply in how she would speak of Greenson. Personally, I’m very back and forth on the man. Not from what she said about him but from what I’ve read. I’ve come up against more than a few characters like that in my life. You think they’re there to help you, but then you see how they have worked their way into your life and it’s all to their advantage."

When asked if Marilyn ever spoke of her reasons for breaking off from Greenson’s influence, Fonda had to think back. To be honest with you, most of our conversations had to do with the here and now. There was so much going on -- the war, Biafra, the upheaval in our own country. There was a period however, when I was having some problems and even though I’d been seeing a shrink for far too long and had stopped, I was considering going back. It came up in conversation, this whole idea of psychiatry and the power a person in that position can hold over you. I remember Marilyn was very firm in her warning against getting back into it again. She had reached a point in her life that while she thought very highly of therapy, she had grown somewhat skeptical of individual psychiatrists, of the power one person could wield. She would eagerly encourage anyone to use therapy for specific problems, for learning more about themselves, but she was equally strong about expressing her opinion that too much dependency on any one person, be it a doctor or a lover, was detrimental to the individual’s growth. I have always felt that she was thinking back on Greenson and realizing just how much power he had held. How much power she had given him.

Whatever the rumors or the reasons, once Marilyn returned to Brentwood after her extended stay at Santa Monica Hospital, Dr. Greenson and Marilyn severed their professional relationship. This included his parting ways with Marilyn’s studio as well, for if he was no longer to be her therapist, how could he promise that she would do whatever he might ask?

When the new Marilyn stepped from the doors of Santa Monica Hospital in September 1962, it coincided with the dawn of a new Hollywood as well. In their last throes as the reigning troika of terror in the film capital, Sheilah Graham, Hedda Hopper, and Louella Parsons were all aware that the heyday of movie gossip was a thing of the past. While movie magazines such as Photoplay and Modern Screen would continue to publish for a few more years, the very readers they had targeted were simply growing up. Few readers believed in such arranged dates as Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood as easily as they had during Marilyn’s initial rise to stardom. And as the movie fans wised up, the three leading ladies of gossip saw their newspaper columns slowly lose the impact they had once enjoyed. By the autumn of 1962, Hedda Hopper was old hat and Louella was on her last legs. As for Graham, after having squeezed her affair with the dying F. Scott Fitzgerald dry, her career faltered after the failure of the 1959 Gregory Peck/Deborah Kerr movie based on her Beloved Infidel memoir of her relationship with the renowned alcoholic novelist.

While all three columnists had covered Marilyn’s near-death experience, speculating on the many rumors suggesting the reasons behind what they now took as a suicide attempt, most fans had turned to the straight news coverage rather than rely on the speculations of three aging women who, like Hollywood itself, had seen their glory days come and go. One columnist however, wrote lovingly of Marilyn’s recent experience and recuperation, longtime friend and fan, Sidney Skolsky. Unlike most other columnists, Skolsky stressed that the overdose, while tragic, was obviously an accident; Marilyn had forgotten how much she had already taken that night and simply took more, sending her over the edge into a coma. Although the majority of his Motion Picture exclusive, (November 1962), detailed Marilyn’s efforts to renegotiate her contract with 20th Century-Fox, there were several paragraphs focusing on where she saw her career going and her plans for the future. While not stating so outright, in retrospect the piece is filled with hints that Marilyn had already made up her mind that she would be taking a long, if not permanent, hiatus from acting. The article also touched on Marilyn’s decision to end her therapy with Dr. Greenson.

I have the highest respect for psychoanalysis, she is quoted in Skolsky’s article. I think that for a person to truly understand what makes them tick, why they make certain choices over others, therapy is an essential tool. I needed that help for an awful long time. But it’s like a crutch. Or a drug. A person can become dependent on therapy, on a specific therapist, just like they can any other addiction. I have the highest regard for Dr. Greenson but it’s time for me to go it alone. I have to be able to figure these things out for myself or else I’m just going to be following someone else’s suggestions about what is good or bad for me and I’ll never grow. That’s what I’m trying to do now.

Skolsky’s daughter, Steffi, was in a unique position to witness the transformation that Marilyn was undergoing. Friend and contemporary of the younger generation of actors just coming into their own in Hollywood like Susan Strasberg and Dennis Hopper, Steffi Skolsky also had the perspective of old Hollywood via her father’s connections and his personal relationship with so many of the stars he wrote about, especially Marilyn Monroe.

In the mid-1980s, Steffi let it be known that there had been more than a few times that her father had asked her to listen in on his phone conversations with the blonde actress. While others have contested her statement that she had listened in on a conversation her father had with Marilyn on the day of the overdose, there can be no denying that Marilyn considered Sidney a longtime friend and often confided things to him that she would discuss with no one else. And as the influential columnist’s daughter, Steffi was in a position to hear firsthand many of the things her father would not dare print.

As to the decision to end her relationship with Greenson, Steffi Skolsky says that the separation came about as a result of Marilyn’s sessions with a member of the psychiatric staff at Santa Monica Hospital. They basically told her that she would likely end up the victim of an overdose all over again unless she really took control of her life. That meant making her own decisions as to what was good or bad for her. Not just the drugs. They meant people. All the people who had such influence over her. Especially Greenson.

This idea of Marilyn taking control of her life and trying to trust her own instincts over the powerful Greenson is backed up by Ralph Roberts. In his unpublished manuscript, Mimosa, (named for the flower, not the drink), Roberts writes of visiting Marilyn at her home the week following her release and spending the afternoon out by the pool while Florence provided him with a pitcher of margaritas. Marilyn, the new Marilyn, drank only grapefruit juice.

Marilyn had gone through quite a transformation while at Santa Monica, Roberts writes. She looked wonderful, healthy, vibrant, even without makeup. But it was what was underneath that seemed to have changed the most. She no longer seemed unsure about even the most basic things as she had been before. Before it had always been what Arthur thought, what Greenson thought, what John Kennedy thought. Now there was none of that -- no blindly following what others felt were her best moves, which often resulted in moves that turned out to be more to their advantage than hers.

The first order of business was to remove herself from Greenson’s nearly overpowering influence, Roberts continued. She had, for once, made a decision and was not going to allow herself any second thoughts. ‘If I screw up, I want to be the one who screws up,’ she told me. ‘If the whole thing comes crashing down and falls apart, at least I’ll know who to blame. Maybe it’ll be good for me to screw up, you know? God knows there’s been enough crappy advice handed me over the years. Maybe that will be a good thing. To listen to myself for once.’

Ralph Greenson’s reaction to Marilyn’s newfound strength can only be guessed at. Not only was he losing his star client, he was losing his position at 20th Century-Fox. He was also losing the woman some have speculated he had fallen in love with. Whatever the underlying basis of the relationship, its dissolution had to have been a considerable blow both to Greenson’s ego as well as his reputation. Severing ties with the man who had basically been running her life for nearly two years had to have been extremely difficult for Marilyn as well. That she did stop seeing Greenson in itself says a great deal about the core changes that she was orchestrating in her life.

For years Marilyn had patterned her every move under the direction of one father figure after another. Johnny Hyde had shown her the path to stardom just as Arthur Miller had shown her the path to an intellectual aura that cloaked her sex symbol image. Yet by the time she fled Hollywood in pursuit of a more meaningful career and came under the influence of Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio, Marilyn was much more than a fledgling starlet, another sexy girl hoping to prove her talents as a dramatic actress. When the rigors of digging deep into her subconscious, excavating the pain of her youth for use in her acting assignments proved too much for her, Marilyn again turned to psychoanalysis. While in New York her therapist had been Dr. Marianne Kris, whose office was conveniently located in the same building as the Strasberg apartment. When it was time to return to Hollywood following the Miller divorce, it was Kris who recommended Dr. Greenson. Now, after near daily visits, after having been invited into the doctor’s family, after installing Greenson onto the payroll of her own studio, Marilyn had come to realize that the doctor wielded far too much power over her life.

She did however continue to rely on the advice of the many others who made their living being a part of the Monroe team -- Mickey Rudin, Inez Melson, Arthur Jacobs, and most importantly, Pat Newcomb. With Pat as her increasingly important partner in not only publicity decisions but career choices, it was now time to face the men of whom she had understandably come to trust the least: the executives of 20th Century-Fox.

After her well-publicized firing from the studio and the shelving of Something’s Got To Give, followed by her overdose and hospitalization, Marilyn and the studio had come to an agreement on the renegotiation of her contract. The filming of Something would be resumed with Marilyn returning at a far heftier salary, as well as the reinstatement of her final say on director, script and future projects. Although neither the renegotiation nor her rehiring had been announced to the press, it was well known within the film community that Marilyn had once again come out on top with her ongoing battles with the suits, the money men who made the final decisions for the deeply troubled studio. Prior to her firing, Something’s Got To Give was to be the last contractual obligation before Marilyn’s current contract with the studio expired. After her firing a series of intense meetings had taken place and just weeks before her hospitalization, Marilyn had emerged, once again triumphant. The contract, however, had not actually been signed. As of August 4, 1962, it sat on the desk of Marilyn’s lawyer, Milton Mickey Rudin.

Now that she was out of the hospital and her recuperation was assumed complete, the studio was eager to get the cameras rolling and hopefully get the movie in the can for a possible Christmas release. Marilyn had other plans.

When she, Pat Newcomb, and Mickey Rudin met in the executive offices of 20th Century-Fox, all was solicitous smiles, hopes for her good health, praises for her staggering good looks, and appreciation of the hardships her hospitalization had to have caused her. After a good half hour of praising the talents and physical attributes of their most famous star, the meeting was called to order, and everyone got down to business. It was then that Marilyn dropped her bombshell: She had come to the realization that for her own well being and mental health, it was time she stepped away from acting all together. She would complete Something’s Got To Give, but she would not be signing a new contract.

Plans for future projects already lined up dropped with a dead thud in the middle of the conference table. Goodbye Charley, I Love Louisa, even the possibility of re-teaming with Billy Wilder for his just purchased film rights to Irma La Duce -- all of these were now at a complete standstill. While many have since contemplated the idea that Marilyn’s firing had more to do with the fact that the studio was facing bankruptcy over the long over schedule and excesses of Cleopatra than any delays Marilyn might have created on Something’s Got To Give, the financial facts remained -- Fox was counting on Monroe to pull its ass out of the fire.

But, if she were to complete this last film, regardless of how much the studio wanted her to provide her unique box office magic for more, the studio would still have to agree to her own terms, terms laid down in her 1955 contract giving her director and script approval. If she were to complete this last film, it would be as she visualized the movie -- not George Cukor. The much lauded women’s director had made his opinion of Monroe more than apparent, first on the set and then to the press when he had said he thought her, literally, insane.

First term: Cukor out.

Second term: The script.

Throughout the already long ordeal of bringing the remake of My Favorite Wife (1940) to the screen as a light bedroom farce starring Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin, the major bone of contention had been the lackluster script. While the original film had bubbled with witty sarcasm and quick quips flying back and forth between stars Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, the script penned for the remake had none of the Nick and Nora Charles repartee that had made the original so much fun. Granted, Dean Martin was perfectly cast, as was, obviously, Marilyn, but with the exception of Wally Cox and Phil Silvers, the rest of the cast, i.e., Cyd Charisse, had little to do other than appear bitchy and bored. The entire script was, in most all of the players’ opinion, just that -- boring.

Jean Negulesco had stepped up to the plate to try and bring a bit of wit to the screenplay as had several others. Yet by the time the production had been shut down, the lackluster dialog had remained intact, leaving behind gifted performances by both Marilyn and Martin, wonderful sets, fabulous costumes, and little else. The way Marilyn saw it, and presented her case to the executive board, they could either go forward with a pretty if mind-numbingly silly movie or they could take those wonderful visuals and back them up with a great script, something the audience and the critics would remember -- like Some Like It Hot or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Monroe was good but she had to have more than a great body and beautiful features if the studio hoped to recoup their already substantial losses.

And so the studio that had just months before pulled the plug on both her movie and career acquiesced to Monroe’s terms. It had to have rankled considerably but these were, as Marilyn herself was glad to point out, businessmen. It came down to a simple column of debits and credits. The studio was facing certain bankruptcy what with Liz Taylor carrying on openly in an adulterous affair, the way over budget, way over schedule costume epic seemingly stretching on longer than Cleopatra’s original reign. Now that the Catholic Church had decided to enter into the fray by condemning both Taylor and her movie, the studio was literally facing ruin. All other productions had been shut down. The back lot and additional acres had been sold off to developers, (thus a city was born: Century City). Even the studio’s nurseries of exotic plants had been rented out and every stick of furniture, from prop to office, had been auctioned off to the highest bidder. As to Monroe, undeniably the studio’s biggest asset, she could either be sued, (and have the studio painted as the meanest son of a bitch since Simon Legree), or simply raise their hands in supplication and pray for the best. And her best, as well they knew, could be very, very good.

It was now October. Marilyn had yet to decide if she were fully recovered. As the studio had already made headlines by swearing that they would wait until she was ready, Marilyn now announced that she needed additional time off. She would be back in town by the beginning of November; for now she was heading back east to her preferred New York. While there she would be doing far more than catching up on her bed rest. There was a director to be found and, possibly more important, a writer.

Chapter Three

While most of America was aware of the deadpan comedy duo Nichols and May via their appearances on The Steve Allen Show or their comedy albums, it had been two years since their An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May opened on Broadway and a full year since they had announced the end of their partnership. Yet by the time Marilyn arrived back in New York in October 1962, she had fixated on the idea that the only people who could save her were the now kaput comedy team.

Wally Cox is the one who turned her on to Elaine and me. We’d met, briefly, the night of the JFK birthday bash at a party at the Krims but that night had been so insane, I’ve a feeling that she hadn’t really remembered—although my meeting Marilyn Monroe, especially in that dress, was a memory I’d been rehashing ever since. But once Wally talked us up, that was it for Marilyn. No one else would do. This is how Mike Nichols would later remember their initial professional pairing.

Marilyn came across in her movies and in photographs as this sort of peaches and cream babe in the woods, Nichols ruminated. But I tell you, once she had made up her mind, it didn’t matter what the obstacles were. Somehow, she had decided that Elaine and I were the only possible solution to her problems. As far as she was concerned, we were now cast in the role of saviors. Nothing could dissuade her that we might have alternative career plans.

Ask Jim Dougherty. Ask Joe DiMaggio. Hell, ask Darryl Zanuck. Once Marilyn Monroe had reached a decision, once she set her mind to a specific task, nothing was likely to stop her until she had reached her goal. So it was that for three weeks that October, Marilyn set out to seduce, cajole, and convince Mike Nichols and Elaine May that they had no other choice than to bring their talents west and find their future in motion pictures.

For the woman far too many had dismissed as dim-witted in real life as the dumb blondes she often portrayed on screen, Marilyn Monroe knew her business. Whitey Snyder had been amazed at the amount of expertise the young model he’d met in 1947 already had when it came to makeup. Milton Greene had been amazed with her knowledge of photography and lighting. Her acting talents, stretching from slapstick to tragedy, might have been heightened by years of acting coaches but the raw talent was there from the first moment she stepped on a soundstage. By 1962 Marilyn Monroe knew every aspect of her profession -- from revenues earned and points shared, from key grip to camera dolly, from pre-packaged publicity to the careful shepherding of seemingly independent reporters in asking the correct questions and shading the interviews with the overall tone that she alone had selected. That she recognized talent when she saw it, and more importantly, was tenacious in getting what she had decided was right, should not have been a surprise. But it was. It always was.

I’d been reading about her for years. Who hadn’t? Elaine May asked. "And even though there’d been lots of write ups about how sharp she was, all this crap about reading Joyce and Proust and everything, I just figured you know, ‘Yeah, right.’ The way I saw it, the reason she was so good in those dumb blonde bits was that it wasn’t that far of a stretch. Was I wrong! That woman really knew her stuff. And crafty too. I mean, Mike and I’d broken up over a year before Marilyn pulled us back together. I had plans. I had a life. We were off on our own paths, future nailed. Only Marilyn, she somehow could convince you that if you didn’t grab hold of the opportunity she was handing you, couple years down the line you’d be living in some trailer park out in Encino picking lice off your kid’s head."

May shook her head and smiled. I’d thought of maybe writing a few movies, you know. In the future. Way in the future. But Marilyn, she thought anyone who waited for the future to come around was simply wasting their time. And hers. For screenwriter May, (A New Leaf, Heaven Can Wait, Tootsie and Primary Colors among others), the future was right here, right now but it took Marilyn Monroe to point that out.

Mike Nichols was equally impressed. So, she somehow convinces us that we’re the only people on the planet that can save her, right? Plus, this is going to absolutely make us both. Big time! Overlooking the fact that we’d already done our own show on Broadway, had been a major hit on TV, and had our own comedy albums. Still, to pass up this opportunity, we’d be certifiable, right?

What impressed both even more was Marilyn’s drive. "Now remember, this was after the overdose. She’d been in a coma for God’s sake. Two months in a hospital. But she’d promised the guys at Twentieth that she’d have a script ready to roll in little over three weeks. So, there were these long, I mean long sessions up at her place on 57th. Get there late morning and by three or four the next morning, Elaine and I’d be dying. I mean falling asleep in our chairs. But not Marilyn. And she was clean. I know that for a fact. Not one pill. And yet here we’d be dying, and she’d be shaking us awake to run through that last scene one more time, always urging us to try to make it just a little bit better, a little sharper, a little tighter. The woman was a damned genius."

On Monday evening, October 22, President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation from the Oval Office, announcing what we would later come to realize was the closest the world had ever come to total nuclear annihilation. Although the phrase Cuban Missile Crisis had yet to be coined, for the next several days the entire world concentrated on that small island nation some ninety miles off the Florida coast. And while a sense of suspended panic fell over the planet, the three continued to work on the revised script of Something’s Got To Give.

Talk about surreal, Elaine May remembered. Here’s Jack Kennedy telling us that in all likelihood we’re all going to get blown to smithereens in a matter of days and we’re trying to be funny. Try writing a Dean Martin/Marilyn Monroe bedroom farce while the President’s telling you Armageddon has arrived.

The thing I remember about that whole experience was something that didn’t really sink in until later, Mike Nichols added. "Over the panic of feeling that the end of the world was suddenly very, very real, what I remember most was how personal Marilyn took it. I can remember her talking that night, you know, chastising