The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Kennedy Style

It was late January 1962. “You have just got to meet him,” Pat Kennedy Lawford told Marilyn Monroe. “You’ll never know anyone quite like my brother.” She was taking about her brother, Bobby, now attorney general of the United States.

One thing is certain, anytime Marilyn had the opportunity to be around the Kennedys, she took advantage of it. She was much more politically minded than people knew. What follows is a remarkable letter she wrote to journalist Lester Markel, a New York Times editor she had met and with whom she enjoyed lively discussions about politics. It was written before JFK won his party’s nomination for president:

Lester dear,

Here I am still in bed. I’ve been lying here—thinking even of you. About our political conversation the other day: I take it all back that there isn’t anybody. What about Rockefeller? First of all, he is a Republican, like the New York Times and secondly, and most interesting, he’s more liberal than many of the Democrats. Maybe he could be developed? At this time, however, Humphrey might be the only one. But who knows since it’s rather hard to find out anything about him. (I have no particular paper in mind!) Of course, Stevenson might have made it if he had been able to talk to people other than professors. Of course, there hasn’t been anyone like Nixon before because the rest of them at least had souls. Ideally, Justice William Douglas would be the best President, but he has been divorced so he couldn’t make it—but I’ve got an idea—how about Douglas for President and Kennedy for Vice-president, then the Catholics who wouldn’t have voted would vote because of Kennedy so it wouldn’t matter if he [Douglas] is so divorced! Then Stevenson could be secretary of state.

It’s true I am in your building quite frequently to see my wonderful doctor [here she is referring to her psychiatrist, Dr. Marianne Kris] as your spies have already reported. I didn’t want you to get a glimpse of me though until I was wearing my Somali leopard. I want you to think of me as a predatory animal.

Love and kisses,

Marilyn

PS Slogan for late ’60

“Nix on Nixon”

“Over the hump with Humphrey” (?)

“Stymied with Symington”

“Back to Boston by Xmas—Kennedy”

Back to Boston by Christmas? It doesn’t sound as if Marilyn—a registered Democrat—had much confidence that JFK could win the election. She was well-read and knowledgeable enough to have an opinion, though, and could definitely hold her own in any political conversation. As they got to know one another, she and Pat also had lengthy discussions about civil rights, a subject about which Marilyn had become quite passionate. She identified with the underdog, and began to realize that Pat and her dynastic family shared those ideals. When the two would discuss coverage of world events in the press, Marilyn always took the position that important stories that made the country look bad—such as certain riots taking place in urban areas—were not given enough prominent space. “Sometimes I think the government is running the media,” she told Pat in front of friends. “I don’t trust anything I read these days.” Pat was certainly not ashamed to have Marilyn Monroe mixing with her peers because she viewed her as a woman of substance. Pat especially enjoyed having her visit when her siblings were present because she also knew that Marilyn never really had a family. Therefore, it gave her pleasure and satisfaction to share hers with her new friend.

Of course, as is well known, the Kennedys were a raucous bunch totally devoted to each other. It seems that when they weren’t running the country, they were having a good time at Peter and Pat’s. One writer once opined, “The problem with the Kennedys is that they have no problems.” Of course, history has shown us that this wasn’t the case—but it certainly seemed like it to the outside world back in 1961. “You’re a Kennedy now,” Pat told Marilyn shortly after having met her. Pat didn’t throw around the designation easily, either. For instance, when JFK won the Democratic nomination, all of the Kennedys were to join him onstage at the convention in Los Angeles at the Coliseum. When Peter Lawford started to walk out with the rest of them, his wife, Pat, stopped him. “You’re not actually a Kennedy,” she told him, “so I think it’s not right.” JFK overheard what was going on and stopped his sister. “He’s married to you so that makes him a Kennedy, don’t you think?” he asked her. She shrugged. “Besides, he’s a good-looking movie star,” he added with a wink at Peter. “So we can certainly use him up there.” Poor Peter had even taken the citizenship test just to become an American so he could cast his vote for JFK. If Pat still didn’t think of him—her own husband—as a Kennedy, she must have really taken to Marilyn to have awarded her with the appellation. Of course, Marilyn loved being around the Kennedys—the joyous laughter, the intense rivalry, the crazy drama that informed everything they ever did… the many children, more than she could count… and all of the dogs. The Lawfords always had at least a half dozen dogs running around the property, chasing and yapping at whichever team of Kennedys was playing touch football on the beach. Because Pat was deathly allergic to the animals, she kept her distance. Peter pretty much ignored them. In his view, they were just part of the grand scenery that surrounded him. However, Marilyn took to the pets and made sure they were bathed and well fed whenever she was around. “Why, they’re just like little people,” she would tell Pat. “Oh yeah?” Pat would shoot back. “Well, little people don’t shit on my white carpets, now do they?”

Parties at Pat and Peter’s home at 625 Palisades Beach Road in Malibu (now Pacific Coast Highway) were practically legendary at this time. Originally built by Louis B. Mayer in 1926, it was quite a showplace, an enormous marble and stucco Mediterranean-Spanish structure. It was built on thirty-foot pilings to prevent it from being swept away in a tidal wave—not that there has ever been one in Santa Monica. The walls were a foot thick to ensure that the house remained cool in the summer. Its best feature was its large, curving living room with windows facing the ocean and wrought-iron balconies onto which French doors opened. There were thirteen onyx and marble bathrooms, but just four bedrooms. Of course, it also had the standard-issue fifty-foot pool, always heated and glistening. It was easily accessible from the street—with no gate or any kind of security entryway, it sat right off the highway.

Behind the main house was Sorrento Beach, popular for its volleyball tournaments. The surf pounded this coastline day and night, the rising tides littering it with brown seaweed. The Lawford children often brought the slimy plants into the house and played with them in their bedrooms, much to the fastidious Pat’s dismay. The neighbors on one side of the Lawfords’ property were the actor Jeffrey Hunter and his family. On the other, there was a vacant lot. It was all that remained after the home that once stood there was demolished. Pat joked to Marilyn that she had the house blown to smithereens when she learned that a family of Republicans had purchased it. Or, at least Marilyn thought Pat was joking.

Matthew Fox was a friend of Jeffrey Hunter’s son, Steele. The two boys were eight in 1961. “These parties, man, you’ve never seen anything like them,” recalled Fox. “The Kennedys had style. I mean, those people knew how to throw a party, let me tell you. Sometimes they would have afternoon barbecues, which I loved. If I had a sleepover with Steele, I would wander over there the next day just to snoop around. Once, I saw Angie Dickinson baking in the sun in a bikini that was so revealing I think it was the first time I ever got a boner. I’d always see Mrs. Lawford—Pat—tossing a football around with her brother, the president. Bobby would be there. Teddy. Judy Garland would be there, doing the twist on the sand in her bare feet, just about as drunk as she could be. And there’d be Frank Sinatra with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis with Peter, walking on the beach, chain-smoking like mad and tossing their cigarette butts into the ocean as if to say, ‘Screw Mother Nature. As far as we’re concerned, the whole world is our ashtray.’

“And Marilyn. I think from 1961 on, she was there a lot. I remember I would just see this shock of blonde hair from a distance and I’d run over to stare at her up close.”

Fox remembered Marilyn as “the most beautiful woman, no, goddess, I have ever seen,” as she stood on the beach, always shielding her eyes against the spray and the sand. He recalls her walking on the hot sand with Pat’s dogs and stopping to admire the deep blue ocean so flecked with whitecaps. Sometimes she would toss a ball into the water and then squeal with delight as one of the animals retrieved it and returned it to her.

“Once, I walked out to the beach with my little Brownie camera and asked if I could take a picture of her,” continued Matthew Fox. “She said, ‘Oh no! Not today. I don’t have my makeup on and I don’t even look like Marilyn Monroe. Come back tomorrow and I’ll be all ready for you.’ So the next day I went back with my camera. She was made up as if getting ready to make a movie—heavy mascara, red lipstick, big hair teased out to there—the whole Marilyn bit. I said, ‘Wow, just look at you!’ And she said, ‘I did all of this just for you, Matty, so let’s take that picture now, shall we?’ And we did. I shot a few pictures and then Pat took a picture of the two of us together. Afterward, Marilyn kissed me on the forehead and said, ‘You come back in about twenty years and we’ll be better friends, okay?’ Then she winked at me and walked back into the house. And I thought, ‘Oh my God. I am in love with Marilyn Monroe.’ Even then, I knew that most people in the world didn’t have these kinds of experiences.”