Their Last Suppers: Legends of History and Their Final Meals (23 page)

Because social workers were forced to take her away from her mother at the age of 9 and she was put into her first orphanage, no one could have envisaged the career this determined little girl was about to embark on. Living with various foster parents through the 1930s, she always harbored the same dream, like so many California girls, of becoming a star in nearby Hollywood.

From an early age she realized the power she had over men, and in 1942, at the age of only 17, she married neighbor James Dougherty, the first of a series of tortured relationships with men. This became her longest affair and lasted until September 13, 1946, by which time she had decided that “Norma Jean” was not going to open the gates of Hollywood for her, so she changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.

Working as a cocktail waitress around movie lots, she used her sexuality to gain access to meetings with the movers and shakers at 20th Century Fox, and gradually her walk-on roles and bit parts became even bigger, particularly after she had a torrid affair with Stavros, the main financial power behind the studio itself.

French movie actor Yves Montand entered her life next, blatantly trying to use the up-and-coming starlet to position himself in the American movie industry.

“The World’s Greatest Athlete,” baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, then walked down the aisle with her in January 1953, but the divorce went through less than 18 months later as Marilyn, determined to make it to the top, would not allow him to pull her away from what he considered the evil decadence of Hollywood. However, DiMaggio’s feelings for her were the most sincere. Of all the men in her life, he was the only one to attend her funeral years later. He had truly loved her.

Playwright Arthur Miller became her next husband in June 1956, and another turbulent relationship ebbed and flowed for the next 4 years. Yet again, Marilyn’s obsessions with her movie career and deep distrust of men placed intolerable pressures on the marriage, causing yet another breakdown.

When a fling with Frank Sinatra failed as he left her for dancer Juliet Prowse, Marilyn entered the last years of her life in 1962 at her new home on Fifth Helena Drive. Finally at the top of her profession as a movie star, she was firmly in the sights of the world’s most powerful man, John F. Kennedy, the president of the United States.

From childhood Marilyn had lived in almost forty different homes and had toured many Hollywood palaces looking for a special place where she could retreat from the world before falling
in love with her humble home in Brentwood. There, surrounded by its high wall and privacy, she could retreat from the demands made on her by an ever more aggressive press and movie studio. Looked after by her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, Marilyn often disappeared for days into her own private world, using the phone as her contact with the outside before sweeping into the studio to film her latest picture,
Something’s Got to Give
, with her co-star, Dean Martin, a movie widely tipped to be a blockbuster.

Marilyn’s routine was always the same, spending hours on the phone in the evening, sipping her favorite drink, Dom Perignon 1953, before slipping on a bra, earmuffs, and eye patches and settling down to sleep in her dark, heavily draped bedroom.

However, earlier that year she had caught the eye of President Kennedy, a man lauded at the time for his perfect marriage and the new sense of dignity and morality he had brought to the White House. Many years later the illusion was shattered, and he was revealed as a lothario who had nude swimming pool parties in the White House, raucous cocktail parties on Air Force One, and a marriage of convenience with wife Jackie Kennedy, who was reportedly paid $1 million by his father, Joe, to stay with him and create the illusion of “Camelot,” the promised land. The man who built the walls around him and hid the potential scandals from the public was his brother Bobby, who often used the full power of his position as attorney general to bury incriminating documents and details of all the Kennedy indiscretions, particularly his own, for decades.

Long-distance flirting on the phone with Marilyn by the president turned into a clandestine affair in which she would often appear at his secret penthouse in New York on 57th Street.

With a major convention coming up in Madison Square Garden, the president had cajoled Marilyn for weeks to sing “Happy Birthday” to him at the end of the conference, despite the frantic urgings of his own staff to distance himself from this obvious liability.

Marilyn accepted and had a special see-through gown prepared, and she often shocked everyone on the set of her movie by frequently calling JFK on his personal number at all times of the day and night in front of any number of people. The popular
press of the day refused to believe that their perfect president could be involved in anything untoward, and they ignored the obvious signs of what would have been the scoop of the century.

Hearing that Marilyn was coming to New York for the event, Jackie Kennedy gave JFK an ultimatum: “If she comes, I don’t.” Jackie spent the weekend horseback riding in Virginia.

Seeing their movie and its budget come under pressure as Marilyn drove full tilt into her “secret” relationship, the executives at Fox demanded she not go to New York, saying if she did she would be in breach of contract and would be fired.

A worried Marilyn called JFK, and he said, “Don’t worry, Bobby will fix it.” Within hours his brother, the attorney general of the United States, was on the phone to Fox executives to elicit the release of their sex symbol for a 2-minute song for the president 3,000 miles away.

Believing the matter had been dealt with, Marilyn went to New York on May 17 and stunned the nation by singing “Happy Birthday” in a breathless voice, wearing the specially designed see-through dress. The president couldn’t keep his eyes, and later his hands, off her at his 57th Street hideaway, where she met his brother Bobby for the first time. This was their last time together, however; on returning to the Fox studios, Marilyn found that her private access number to JFK was greeted with a “disconnected” message, and no amount of screaming at the White House switchboard could get her put through. Yet again, another man had turned his back on her.

The Kennedys’ brother-in-law, Peter Lawford, lived near Marilyn, and she quickly turned to him for help in finding out why she had been shunted aside. Receiving little help from Law-ford, she turned to “Mr. Fix-It,” as Bobby was called, knowing he had been instructed by the president to get rid of her, because JFK was now fixated on Mafia call girl Judith Exner. Bobby’s attempts to placate Marilyn led to a torrid affair between them as Marilyn found the intellectual charms of Bobby even more attractive than the brother who had so cruelly dumped her.

Once again, thinking she’d found love, Marilyn told anyone who wanted to listen about her newfound happiness. And once again she was devastated as Bobby, under the instructions of his
mother, Rose Kennedy, was told to clean up his act and support his brother Teddy, who was running for senator in Massachusetts. Bobby Kennedy quickly disappeared from her world with all the coldness of his brother. Yet again the private phone number she had been given to his desk in the Justice Department answered, “You have reached a nonworking number at the Justice Department. Please hang up and try again.”

This was the last straw for Marilyn. Realizing how the brothers had used her, she was incandescent with rage. She really believed that Bobby loved her, not realizing that with the Kennedy family, politics was their only mistress. Repeated attempts to get him to confront her face to face, if only just to end it, failed as the power of the U.S. government erected a wall of silence around both brothers.

On Saturday, August 4, 1962, Bobby finally agreed to see her, and with Peter Lawford he took a helicopter to the Fox lot in Hollywood and drove to her home in Brentwood, where she had a Mexican buffet prepared for their meeting.

Marilyn got no warmth from the now stony attorney general, and as he left she was already calling her publicist to arrange a press conference for Monday morning, when she would “finally reveal the dirt on the Kennedy brothers,” a meeting she would never attend.

At 5 a.m. the next morning the Los Angeles police were notified that Marilyn Monroe had been found dead. Rushing to the house, they were eventually informed by Eunice Murray and analyst Ralph Greenson that Marilyn had died around midnight.

The nude Marilyn, with her arms by her side and legs perfectly straight, was lying face-down on her bed with the lights on, something she never did. When police asked about the delay in calling them, Greenson said, “We had to call the studio publicity department first.”

Interestingly, all her personal files were gone from the house, and the police noted that Murray was calmly doing her third load of laundry in the laundry room at 5 a.m. A hasty autopsy showed Marilyn had died from an overdose, but later tests revealed that her kidneys were untouched by the huge amount of drugs she would have had to consume. Her telephone records for the previous
days had disappeared; according to the telephone company, “men in black suits with shiny shoes” had taken them.

Marilyn Monroe died at the age of 36. She’d entered the world denied by one man, her father, and exited it deserted by another.

MENUS

As Marilyn tried to woo back Bobby Kennedy on the night of her death, she had a Mexican buffet delivered to her Brentwood home.

• Blanch and peel tomatoes; chop fine with the cucumber, green peppers, and spring onions.
  
• Chop the garlic, add to the vinegar and oil, and whisk together.
  
• Add all the other ingredients and chill overnight.
  

This unusual and delicious recipe is always a hit. It’s a great way to introduce your family to Mexican cuisine. You must start this recipe early in the day to let the coating on the chicken chill and set.

• Place the chicken breasts between two sheets of waxed paper and gently pound until they are ¼ inch thick. Be careful not to make holes or weak spots in the chicken.
  
• Mash together the avocado, butter, and garlic and place 2 tbsp in the center of each flattened chicken breast. Fold the chicken over to enclose stuffing. Dust the filled chicken bundles with flour, then dip in milk. Drain, then dip in beaten egg, then into the crumbs. Dip again into egg, then again into crumbs. This part gets messy, but it’s crucial that the chicken be thickly coated with breadcrumbs. Chill in the refrigerator for 5 to 6 hours.
  
• Place enough oil in a heavy skillet to reach ½ inch thickness. Fry chicken in oil until golden on each side, about 3 to 4 minutes. Remove.
  

This wonderful, colorful dip is very popular and really looks beautiful. It became widely known in the 1980s. When you spread the different dips on the platter, make each new layer slightly smaller than the one beneath, so all the different colors and textures show. Substitute your favorite refrigerated dips for any of the layers to make it even easier.

• In a medium bowl, mix beans and 1 cup salsa and spread evenly on a 12-inch round platter. Top with 2 cups sour cream.
  
• Mash avocados with lime juice, garlic, and 2 tbsp sour cream. Spread over sour cream on platter.
  
• Top with remaining 1 cup salsa.
  
• Sprinkle with lettuce, then tomatoes and cheese.
  
• Refrigerate 2 hours to blend flavors, then serve with tortilla chips and vegetables.