The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn’s Surprise Visit to Pat

Pat Kennedy Lawford had never before had a surprise visit from Marilyn, but on April 8, a couple of weeks after Marilyn’s weekend with her brother Jack, she showed up unannounced. “Marilyn was cheery and upbeat,” recalls a friend of Lawford’s who was present. “She was wearing an orange silk blouse and black slacks and a matching black scarf with cat-eye sunglasses. I thought she looked absolutely marvelous. I know she told Pat that she had been trying to call but her phone was busy.”

Pat may have suspected that there was a reason for Marilyn’s visit. Earlier, her brother-in-law Bobby called to ask her a series of cryptic questions about Marilyn. Had she seen her? What had she been talking about? Did she mention Jack? Of course, Pat wanted to know what the interrogation was really about. Bobby then told her that Marilyn had been calling the public number to the White House. Since that phone was mainly a message center for the executive branch, not a reliable way to actually speak to the president, Marilyn never got through. JFK, however, did hear about her numerous calls. “Pat was immediately suspicious,” says Pat Brennan. “She asked Bobby why Marilyn would be trying to call Jack. He didn’t have much of an answer. She knew something had happened, and she anticipated the worst. She made a few calls and it didn’t take her long to find out what had happened in Palm Springs. She wasn’t happy about it, I can tell you that much.”

According to a friend of Pat’s who was present that day, Marilyn “bounced onto the beach,” while Pat was on the sand winning an intensely competitive game of volleyball, leaping and flailing about without peer on her team. She stopped playing and walked over to Marilyn to embrace her. After a few minutes of small talk with Pat remaining uncharacteristically quiet, Marilyn brought up the subject of her brother, Jack. She said that Pat had been right, her brother did have a powerful presence. Pat just stared at Marilyn.

The full details of this tense conversation between Marilyn and Pat remain unknown because the two went into the house, alone. What is known—because Pat later disclosed it—is that Marilyn finally asked Pat for her brother’s direct phone number at the White House. Pat refused to give it to her, explaining that the only number she had for him in Washington was his personal number, or as she called it, “his family number.”

Marilyn backed off the topic a few times, but always returned to it. This obsession about Jack’s number frustrated Pat, who later said she had “never seen Marilyn so hyper and manic.” Finally, when Marilyn asked if Pat thought her brother was happily married, Pat reached her breaking point. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” she said, grabbing a pen and paper. “I don’t want to have anything to do with this.” She wrote down a number and handed the paper to Marilyn. After taking it, Marilyn asked Pat if she were angry at her. Without specifically addressing what she now knew happened in Palm Springs between her friend and her brother, Pat was still able to be painfully clear. According to what she later recalled, Pat said, “I can get past it. You and I will be able to continue our friendship. But my family? My sisters and my sisters-in-law? I don’t know… I just don’t know.”

It’s not known if Marilyn used the number she got from Pat Kennedy Lawford to call President Kennedy’s private residence. However, something did occur at this same time that suggests that she may have done so, for it was in the spring of 1962 that Kennedy dispatched his attorney general, Bobby Kennedy, to inform Marilyn that she was not to call the White House. Also, he was told to make it clear that the relationship—or whatever it was she thought she had with him—was over, and that she should move on with her life. Bobby gave Marilyn the message.