The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Final Curtain

She is at peace and at rest now and may our God bless her and help her always. I… gave her Christian Science treatments for approximately a year… wanted her to be happy and joyous…

— Gladys Baker Eley on the death of her daughter, Marilyn Monroe, in a previously unpublished letter, circa 1962

August 4, 1962. While there’s no way to know with certainty what Marilyn Monroe’s state of mind was on this day, she had every reason to at least be happier. Just a few days earlier, on August 1, she had signed a one-million-dollar contract with Fox for two pictures. Moreover, her attorney, Mickey Rudin, also settled the conflict with the studio over Something’s Got to Give. The movie was back on track and would begin filming again in October. ^*

Yet despite the bright possibilities that may have lain ahead, by most verifiable accounts, this Saturday had not been a good one for Marilyn Monroe. She was experiencing extreme emotional highs and lows, and her contact with others during her depressive moments would leave many baffled by just why she was in such a state. Since most all of the principal players have contradicted each other, it may be impossible to establish who came and went from the Monroe household that day, and at what time. It is known that at some point, Dr. Greenson was called to the house by Eunice Murray. When he arrived, he found Marilyn in a drugged, depressed condition. A day earlier, Marilyn had filled a prescription (by Dr. Engelberg) for twenty-four—some have said twenty-five, but he said twenty-four—Nembutal, and it was believed that she had taken more than necessary. At another point, while Greenson was with Marilyn, Peter Lawford called. Marilyn said that she wished to talk to Bobby, but Peter was known to try and steer Marilyn away from that topic.

“Yes, I think she was fixated on Bobby that day,” Peter Lawford would say years later. “I’m not sure why. One thing led to another, one obsession to another you might say until, I think, she had worked herself into a deep despondency over the Kennedys.” Lawford continued with this observation. “The Kennedys may have been the subject of her great sadness,” he said, “but the thing about Marilyn is this: While it may have been the Kennedys in that moment, in the one before it, it may have been Something’s Got to Give, and in the moment after, Joe [DiMaggio]. Or maybe all three at the same time. There was no way to account for her mood swings… for her deep depressions. You can’t blame the Kennedys. They were just a facet of a much bigger problem.”

Marilyn had heard that Bobby was in San Francisco that weekend, scheduled to give an address the following Monday to the California Bar Association. When she called Pat Kennedy Lawford, she was told that Bobby and his wife, Ethel, were staying at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. It turns out, however, that they were staying at the ranch of John Bates, president of the Bar Association, some sixty miles south of the city. It’s unclear whether or not Pat was also attempting to shift Marilyn’s focus off of the Kennedys. The closest of Marilyn’s friends, the ones privy to her obsessions and their consequences, knew it was crucial to deflect her attention from the Kennedy brothers whenever possible.

At approximately 7 p.m. on August 4, Dr. Ralph Greenson left Marilyn’s home, requesting that Eunice spend the night there to keep an eye on his patient. Around the time of Greenson’s departure, Peter called to invite Marilyn to a dinner party at his home. She declined, which wasn’t unusual for Marilyn—she had been known to take to her room on nights like this one, when she was attempting to endure one of her many emotional plunges. Marilyn brought a telephone into her bedroom and closed the door. It appears that the rest of this evening, indeed the rest of Marilyn’s life, would be spent alone in this room, thus destroying any hope of detailing precisely what transpired that night within those four walls.

So, then, how did Marilyn most likely spend her last hours? She was undoubtedly becoming more and more affected by drugs. Whether they were the ones provided her by Dr. Engelberg or ones she took herself, the barbiturates that entered Marilyn’s body that night were of a massive volume.

If she had taken these willfully, she either intended to kill herself or had become so desperate to quiet her mind that she tossed reason aside and experimented with higher doses and possibly different delivery methods. It might be reasonable to assume that Marilyn, a woman who had administered numerous enemas to herself in the past, may have used this mode to ingest some of her dissolved Nembutal capsules. Yet, no matter how these drugs entered her system, Marilyn’s consciousness had to have been growing increasingly compromised throughout that night.

It seems that she continued making telephone calls—but the number of calls is up for debate as well. Some people’s claims that they had spoken to Marilyn on this night have been viewed with skepticism, the theory being that they had an interest in being remembered as a part of the mystique of the events that followed.

Later that fateful night, Peter called again. This time, he could sense Marilyn wasn’t well. According to Peter, it was during this call that she said, “Say goodbye to Pat. Say goodbye to the president, and say goodbye to yourself because you’re such a nice guy.” Obviously, this was distressing and would seem to indicate that she was thinking about taking her life. Alarmed, Peter called Marilyn yet again; the line was engaged. He mentioned to his business partner, Milton Ebbins, that he was worried about her. He wanted to go to the house, but Ebbins was afraid that Marilyn had overdosed again and didn’t want Peter—the president’s brother-in-law—to be the one to find her. Ebbins called Marilyn’s attorney, Mickey Rudin, who then rang the house at 9 p.m. He spoke to Eunice, who told him that Marilyn was fine, but whether or not Murray was able to confirm this (or even had an interest in doing so) is unknown.

The conflicting accounts of Marilyn’s passing occur after this time frame. The most oft-told version is this one, the events and timings based on official statements by Eunice Murray and Dr. Greenson.

At around 2 a.m., Eunice Murray called Dr. Greenson, alarmed because Marilyn’s door was locked and she couldn’t get into the bedroom. Greenson showed up five minutes later and went around to Marilyn’s window. He saw the actress on her bed, frozen and lifeless. Breaking the glass, he let himself into the room. Once inside, he realized that she was dead, lying facedown, holding her telephone in her right hand with numerous open bottles of pills on her nightstand.

With the passing of the years, many murder theories developed. Some involve Marilyn being killed by Bobby Kennedy, or at the orders of Bobby. Some implicate Peter Lawford. Some the FBI. Dr. Greenson. Eunice Murray. The Mafia. Of course, it’s very easy to pin murders on dead people and intelligence agencies. It has to be noted here that the mystique of Marilyn’s death would become a lifelong obsession for some, and the conspiracy theories born of it would serve an important purpose for these individuals. The belief that Marilyn had fallen victim to any one of a number of dastardly plans provides a macabre solace for those who felt her loss most deeply. The possibility that her death was at another’s hands, or that its details will never be fully known, makes it a mystery virtually without a chance of being solved. If the way Marilyn met her end is unknown, in an odd way that keeps her alive—there’s still more she has to reveal. In fact, debates about the circumstances surrounding that evening may never end, and whether or not they choose to admit it, that’s just how many people want it.

Are there suspicious circumstances around Marilyn’s death? Absolutely. For instance, the doctors and Murray waited almost two hours to contact the authorities. Why? No one has ever sufficiently answered that question. More intriguingly, Eunice would later say that there was no lock on Marilyn’s door. If that’s the case, then the entire story of how she was found seems to fall apart. There was very little drug residue found in Marilyn’s stomach—and what was found wasn’t properly analyzed. Also, there was some discoloration in her lower intestine. Do these facts support the theory that maybe she was given a lethal enema by… someone? Not really. Marilyn was a drug addict. It is a medical fact that an addict’s stomach becomes accustomed to the drugs of choice and that they easily pass into the intestines. Many addicts die without a trace of pills in their stomachs. Also, an empty stomach does not preclude the possibility that pills were ingested over a number of hours, and the high levels of barbiturates found in Marilyn’s liver testify to this. Perhaps if the autopsy had been more thorough, though, who knows what might have been concluded? Certainly, if she died today, with current science, there would be no mystery.

So, as always… the question remains: Suicide or murder?

All the byzantine theories of Marilyn’s death share one common denominator: They involve an often frightened, vulnerable, unstable woman who had been spiraling deeper and deeper into her own mental illness. She was in a state of confusion, panic, and despair, and had been off and on for most of her life. If she had been a stable woman who had never overdosed in her lifetime, then, yes, one might legitimately question the circumstances of her death. However, this was a woman who over the years had overdosed more times than people in her circle could even recall—sometimes, it seemed, intentionally, sometimes maybe not. She could have died on any number of those occasions were it not for people like Natasha Lytess, Arthur Miller, Susan Strasberg, and the others who found and revived her. In fact, she overdosed twice just in the month before her death—at Cal-Neva and then at her home—and was saved both times. However, that night of August 4, tragically enough, no one came to her aid. Perhaps the only real question about her death is whether or not it was intentional. ^*

It’s been argued that Marilyn’s upcoming prospects were so promising, she couldn’t possibly have taken her own life. She supposedly had too much to live for. However, what was probably going on inside her mind had little correlation to those factors. When we consider her last moments on earth we need to focus on an unwell brain, not simply the enticing rewards of a movie star’s existence. Marilyn’s day-to-day happiness was not affected by a desire for more fame, more wealth, more success. To believe that her will to live could have been reclaimed by finishing Something’s Got to Give or even by a million-dollar contract with Fox is absurd. To do so is to greatly underestimate the formidable opponent she faced—her own mental illness. To accept this unfortunate truth doesn’t negate all that this woman was in her lifetime—it just forces one to accept that Marilyn’s story isn’t simply one of glamour and fame. In fact, it may not even be a story about “Marilyn Monroe” at all. ^*

This is the story of a girl named Norma Jeane Mortensen. She thrived despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles and almost impossible odds. She created and became a woman more fascinating than even she believed possible. And in the face of her own failing mind, she battled to keep that creation alive—not for her, but for us. Indeed, Marilyn Monroe did exist. Even though the woman inside her was at times doubtful of that fact, we knew it better than she did. She spent so much of her energy, her own will, projecting an image of impossible beauty and ultimate joy. Yet, as the end neared, her experience of who she truly was drifted farther and farther from that ideal—until she found it impossible to pretend anymore. Her choice, as awful as it may have been, was this: Admit to the world that Marilyn Monroe had become nothing more than smoke and mirrors, or die.

On August 5, 1962, Marilyn Monroe gave the world all she had left to give—the knowledge that she was, and always would be… ours.