The Private Life of Marilyn Monroe

I first rang the bell of Marilyn Monroe's New York apartment on an October day in 1957. I was applying for the job as her personal maid and seamstress, and my heart was pounding. I expected the famous blonde sex goddess to greet me, so I was caught off guard when the door swung open and I saw only a trim, silver-haired woman in her late 50s, dressed in gray.

"We've been waiting for you." The lady did not bother to introduce herself. I soon learned that she was May Reis, Marilyn's private secretary and manager of the household.

She looked over two reference letters I had brought. She asked me very little and told me even less. I worried that someone else had already gotten the job and that she was simply going through the motions, but before I had completely given up hope, a figure stumbled through the office doorway. It was Marilyn. Totally nude.

"Ex-cuse me," she squealed. It was an apology I was to hear a thousand times. Marilyn simply didn't like to wear clothes around the house.

"I'm Lena Pepitone, the girl from the employment agency." Marilyn's hands and legs relaxed. She stood and stared at me in a daze.

"Come with me." Marilyn took my hand and led me into the living room. She kept looking at me, and I looked just as hard. She was anything but what I had expected. Her blonde hair, which appeared unwashed, was a mess. Without make-up, she was pale and tired-looking. Her celebrated figure seemed more overweight than voluptuous. I was astonished by the way she smelled. She needed a bath. Badly. Still, she was pretty.

Sprawled on a white couch, she brought to mind a deluxe prostitute on the morning after a busy night in a plush bordello, the kind my brothers used to whisper about when we were growing up in Naples. She seemed bored.

The large living room where we sat reminded me of a hotel. There was a white piano, some nondescript white sofas and wall-to-wall white carpeting marred by many stains. The view of the buildings across the street was gloomy. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors were everywhere. Even the dining alcove at the rear of the living room had a table with a mirrored top.

No sooner had Marilyn and I sat down than she took a long slug from a bloody mary. "What's your name again? I'm sorry," she said with a sheepish grin.

"Lena Pepitone."

"Gee, you're Italian. I love Italians," she swooned. "I was married to an Italian guy."

"Right. Joe DiMaggio. I know."

"We're going to be good friends," she said softly.

She was right.

The next morning, I followed May through the foyer and into the bedroom wing of the apartment. "Is Lena here?" The unmistakable voice came from the first bedroom off the long corridor, with its wall-to-wall carpeting that matched the living-room rug, stains included.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was amazed to see that Marilyn's room was tiny. The bed had no headboard. The only other furniture was a rickety gray night stand with a lamp, a small matching bureau, a little record player on the floor and a black telephone by the bed, also on the floor. There were no paintings in the cramped, square room, only mirrors covering the entire wall behind the big bed and the wall to the left of the bed, where the closets were. Inside one closet door was a huge photograph of DiMaggio. There were only two windows in the room, both covered with heavy draperies.

Marilyn was sprawled nude on top of the disarrayed white sheets. A gray-satin quilt had fallen onto the floor at the foot of the bed. She rolled around, wrapping, then unwrapping herself in the jumble of sheets. She seemed to be trying to get up but couldn't. With her black sleeping mask, she looked like a naked, female Lone Ranger.

"Lena," she said sweetly, "could you get me my bloody mary?"

"I think it's coming with your breakfast."

"Now," she pleaded. "Could I have it now?" I went back into the kitchen and took the cocktail off the breakfast tray the cook, Hattie, was preparing to take in.

"Can't wait, huh?" Hattie asked. I shrugged.

"Oh, thanks," Marilyn said. She had taken off the mask and was sitting up. She quickly gulped the drink down. Soon Hattie came in with the breakfast tray and placed it on the bed. Marilyn wolfed down her meal, scattering toast crumbs all over the sheets.

When I made an effort to open the draperies, Marilyn shrieked, "No! Don't!" Instead, she switched on the lamp on the night stand. "That's better. I can't stand light this early." There was no clock in the room, so I glanced at my watch. It was 11:30.

After Marilyn finished her breakfast, she flopped back onto the mattress. I was afraid she was going back to sleep. "Well, what can I do for you today?" I really asked it just to keep her awake.

Marilyn made a face, then grabbed a pillow and buried her head in it. Then she slowly rolled over and out of bed. The short walk to her large closet was a major effort. She pulled out a white-linen dress, sleeveless, clingy and cut low in the front. "Can you let this out? It's too tight. I'll show you." As she struggled to fit into the dress, she sensed my amazement that she was trying it on without underwear.

"It might be better if...."

"I never wear anything underneath," she said.

"Nothing?"

"Why? Who needs it?"

I checked the seams of the dress and its lining to see how much there was to let out. As I got closer to Marilyn, my senses immediately told me that she was a day dirtier and more unkempt than when I had left her.

I finished my measurements. There was barely enough material in the dress to cover Marilyn's backside. She wriggled out of the dress, then stood admiring herself in the mirror. She cupped her breasts with her hands, pushing them up to check their firmness. She turned several full, slow circles, using both of her wall mirrors to scrutinize every angle.

"You have a beautiful figure," I complimented her. I had the feeling she was looking for praise.

"Thank you," she replied sincerely. "My ass is way too big."

"It's sexy," I answered, and we both laughed.

"I like you," Marilyn said.

"Listen, let me fix you a bath," I suggested. "That'll wake you up."

"No! I don't want a bath! Champagne! That's what I need," she said, as if struck by a brain storm. "Would you get it for me in the kitchen? Just ask Hattie. She knows. Thanks a lot."

Hattie gave me a knowing wink when I conveyed Marilyn's request. She opened the refrigerator to reveal a dozen small bottles of Piper-Heidsieck. She also showed me a cabinet stocked with many more of the same. There were enough for a month at least.

And my next couple of months with Marilyn were very much the same as my first day. I rarely saw her playwright husband, Arthur Miller. Marilyn's life was incredibly monotonous. Her doctors' appointments (I later learned these were appointments with psychiatrists) and her acting lessons were virtually all she had to look forward to. She spent most of her time in her little bedroom, sleeping, looking at herself in the mirrors, drinking bloody marys or champagne and talking on the phone, which seemed to be her greatest pleasure.

"That was Billy Wilder." Or "That was Laurence Olivier." Or "That was Montgomery Clift," I remember her saying excitedly.

But the calls she enjoyed the most--and talked the longest on--came from DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra. A call from either one could keep her smiling for hours. Aside from the phone, however, Marilyn had few interests. I never saw her read a book or a newspaper.

Marilyn owned four mink coats, in brown and white, a lot of scarves--but, of course, no underwear at all. In the bathroom vanity, she stored bottles and bottles of her favorite perfume, Chanel No. 5, along with the more expensive Joy. But rarely did she ever perfume herself, let alone bathe or shower. In fact, her small bathroom didn't even have a shower curtain. Mr. Miller used a separate bathroom adjacent to the bedroom on the other side of the hall.

For someone who didn't like the tub, Marilyn spent an unusual amount of time in the bathroom. I often wondered what she could be doing in there for so long, especially since the mirrors in the bedroom were so much better for admiring herself, which she liked to do. One day, thinking Marilyn was out, I went into her bathroom to straighten up and I found her perched on the toilet, legs up, performing an elaborate ceremony with a bottle of some chemical and two toothbrushes. She was bleaching her pubic hair blonde. She shrieked with embarrassment so loudly that May came in through the other bathroom door, which led to her office. May's eyes bulged out, but she discreetly exited when she saw that Marilyn was all right.

I, on the other hand, was so embarrassed that I was unable to move. Both Marilyn and I were beet red. She started laughing uncontrollably. "Now you know my secret," she roared. "You know, it has to match my hair." I had always assumed that Marilyn was a natural blonde, and naturally blonde all over. Now I knew better. "With all my white dresses and all, it just wouldn't look nice to be dark down there. You could see through, you know," she said.

"Is that safe, what you're doing?"

"It's a pain in the ass," she laughed again. "It burns and sometimes I get these infections. But what else can I do?"

Two days later, I found Marilyn in bed with a big ice bag between her legs. "What's the matter?" I asked.

"It got all swollen from the bleach," she whined. She pushed the ice bag closer to herself. A high price, I thought, for being a blonde sex goddess.

When Marilyn went to the doctor's or to The Actors Studio, she couldn't have cared less about her appearance. But on the few occasions when she did go out on the town, to premieres and the like, she became incredibly concerned about looking her best.

The preparations would begin early in the morning with the arrival of Kenneth, her hairdresser. He always brought a newspaper to read, because Marilyn invariably kept him waiting for an hour.

Eventually, Marilyn would get up, run a comb through her hair and splash some water on her face, put on her white robe and come out to greet Kenneth. I was surprised that she wasn't ashamed to look so sloppy in front of such an important beauty expert. "Hi," she would say, giving him a big kiss and smiling alluringly. She fidgeted with her robe, teasingly flashing it open and shut to distract Kenneth from the annoyance he must have felt for having been kept waiting. He simply steered Marilyn back toward the bathroom for a long-needed shampoo.

While Marilyn sat under her hair drier, sipping Piper-Heidsieck, Kenneth finished reading his paper. The real fireworks began with the styling sessions. Sometimes, Kenneth would be there for hours, trying one approach after another. At each new vision she saw in her mirrors, she would scream, "I hate it, I hate it."

Once Marilyn was finally pleased with her hair, she turned to greet her make-up girl, who had driven in from Long Island in rush-hour traffic, only to be kept waiting for hours. The make-up sessions were equally agonizing. There were endless discussions over shades of lipstick and eye shadow, false eyelashes, rouge and powder. Later in the day, after the hair and face were "perfect," it was my turn to help Marilyn select clothes for the evening. More than once, she became so frustrated that she began weeping, decided not to go out at all, took some sleeping pills and passed out.

With few friends, fewer outside interests and no movies then in the works, Marilyn had very little to do. So, like many bored people, she ate.

When she was depressed, she sat against the pillows on her bed and ate alone. She gnawed the meat off her lamb chops, and then unthinkingly dropped the greasy bones onto the bedclothes. Sometimes she even wiped her hands on the sheets before picking up her glass of champagne. After these meals, of course, the sheets had to be changed. When Marilyn had her period, I changed them several times a day. She didn't like sanitary napkins any more than she liked bathtubs.

She liked Italian food. In fact, she loved it. Gradually, my specialties became part of her daily diet, and she even devoured cold leftovers with gusto. "Don't throw anything away," she always said. What I cooked, she would eat in bed more often than not.

"The Romans used to eat like you do," I said.

I tried to teach Marilyn to eat spaghetti with a fork and a spoon. "It's neater," I explained, showing her the Italian way of twirling the fork against the bowl of the spoon. She refused to try.

"I'm not Italian," she said, teasing me as she dribbled unruly strands of pasta all over her body. Once, she wrapped two long, loose noodles around her breasts. "Look at me," she howled, puffing her chest out. "This is my idea of wearing a bra."

Whatever and whenever she ate, etiquette never concerned Marilyn. Among her unpleasant habits were incessant belching and farting. I later learned that she suffered from a bad gall bladder, which may have caused her digestive troubles. However, when she was aware of it, she found her noisemaking hilarious.

One night, she said that she had a craving for Italian food. I had never stayed late before, and I was excited that this would be my first chance to see Mr. and Mrs. Miller together.

I prepared a simple meal of spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce, chicken cacciatore and salad, then I set the dining-room table. I got out a split of champagne for Marilyn, white wine for Arthur Miller, and I called Marilyn to dinner. I felt very awkward about disturbing Miller in his study. His formality was unpleasant; it put me on edge.

Marilyn entered the dining room wearing a white-terrycloth robe, which, to her, was dressing for dinner. They sat at the table and ate without speaking for the longest time. Marilyn looked at her husband admiringly and longingly, as if she were dying for attention. However, he just ate quietly and did not look at her. Finally, she broke the silence. "Arthur" (I never heard Marilyn call her husband Darling, Sweetheart or anything other than his first name), "you said something about going to a movie tonight. I'd love it if we could go somewhere."

"Maybe later," he answered coolly. He explained that he had some work to finish. If he did, they could go out. Marilyn seemed excited by the mere possibility. After they finished dinner, with no further conversation, Miller thanked me for the meal, returned to his study and closed the door.

Marilyn jumped up from the table and pulled me after her into her room. I hadn't seen her this excited before.

"I think we're going out!" she exclaimed. "Help me find something beautiful to wear." We picked out, without any difficulty, a white-silk blouse and matching slacks. She began to look, for once, like the Marilyn of my fantasies. She even took the bobby pins out of her hair and combed it until the blonde mane was rich and luxurious. She went into her bathroom and actually put on make-up, bright-red lipstick, mascara, rouge. At last I saw the famous image so many fans dreamed about.

"You look wonderful," I said.

"Oh, I hope so." She raced back through the living room and knocked on Miller's forbidding door. She came out quickly, with some of her radiance gone. "It's still maybe," she moaned; "he's not finished."

Every time she heard a noise in the hall, she looked up anxiously, hoping it was Miller. After an hour, she went again to the study. This time, she walked very slowly. I sensed she knew what his answer would be. Marilyn tapped quietly on the study door, then went in. In a second, she came out, sobbing to herself. Her make-up was running all over her cheeks. Back in her room, she ripped her blouse off and hurled it across the room. "Shit. My life is shit," she wept. "I can't go anywhere. I'm a prisoner in this house." Kicking off her slacks, she fell onto the bed, weeping uncontrollably.

I had no idea what to do.

"Why do you stay in New York instead of returning to Hollywood?" I asked her after one such outburst.

"Arthur. He's why I stay in New York. He was going to make my life different, a lot better," she would often cry in despair. Evidently, the "better" hadn't happened, and she was very frustrated by it. Frequently, she told me Miller was the key to the existence she wanted to have.

Miller seemed a very distant husband. Marilyn maintained the greatest respect for him and his work. She always warned people to hush if they were chatting too loudly near his study. If there were ever any guests--agents, lawyers and the like--she would take them into her bedroom to entertain them. "Arthur's writing," she'd whisper solemnly. "He needs total quiet."

As for Marilyn and Arthur themselves, their only real contact seemed to occur late at night, after I left. Whenever they ate together, there was little discussion, only longing looks on Marilyn's part. "I wish he'd say more to me," she once confided. "He makes me think I'm stupid. I'm afraid to bring things up, because maybe they are stupid. Gee, he almost scares me sometimes."

I wondered when Marilyn and Arthur had the opportunity to have any time to be romantic. He was always up well before she was. He had his own bathroom, kept his clothes in a separate hall closet and virtually lived in his study. He rarely ventured into her bedroom during the day. He would usually have lunch alone, walked the dog by himself and seemed to have more fun talking business with May, about future projects for Marilyn, than talking with Marilyn herself.

Nevertheless, after some dinners, Marilyn would cuddle up to Miller, which always brought a big, boyish grin to his usually stern face.

And on certain mornings, when I went in to change Marilyn's sheets, she would greet me with the biggest grin. "Wow!" she once exclaimed, eyes glazed with a dreamy happiness, as she stretched and arched her back sensuously. "Don't change these, please," she said, rubbing her head along the sheets as if they were silk. "I want to lie on these all day."

"Didn't you sleep?" I asked naively.

"Who said nights were for sleep?" she winked. I knew she had enjoyed herself.

Evidently, one night did produce the desired result. In late summer of 1958, when Marilyn was in Hollywood making Some Like It Hot, her first movie in over a year, she found out she was pregnant. I remember her calling me long distance, squealing like a little girl. She asked me to start thinking about names, said that she wanted me to make certain baby clothes and that she knew it would be a girl.

But when Marilyn returned from the Some Like It Hot filming, her high spirits had vanished. She began to panic that the baby Wouldn't be all right. She tried to avoid her normal routine of champagne and sleeping pills. Yet without these, she was terribly nervous. Normally, she would have paced about her bedroom, staring at herself in the mirrors, but this, too, she felt would disturb her baby.

Something did go wrong. One morning, Marilyn began screaming with intense pain. "I'm going to lose her," she shrieked. By noon, she was so hysterical that we all knew this was not a typical depression. Miller rushed with Marilyn to the Polyclinic Hospital on Manhattan's West Side, near the theater district. I could hardly work, I was so worried about what might happen. Later that evening, Miller returned with the bad news. He was always serious and very composed, but this one time I sensed that he was fighting hard to avoid breaking down. He told me that Marilyn had lost their baby.

And then once Marilyn was home, frequently, I would go into her room and find pages of different scripts scattered all over the bed and floor, sometimes in shreds. "I can't learn this," she would be screaming. "I can't act. It won't work." Once I saw her rip the pages out of a script and hurl them above her head, like a snowstorm. Then she started to weep so hard that only a heavy serving of champagne could calm her. On nights like these, I would begin staying on with her, often until after midnight. During these late evenings, with everyone gone and Miller in his study, Marilyn really started to talk to me.

I learned that she'd had a miserable childhood--that she'd been shifted from foster home to foster home. Marilyn claimed to me that when she was 15, she'd had a child by one of her foster fathers. She was sobbing out of control when she told me that. The baby had been taken from her against her will. (Marilyn must have used up an entire box of Kleenex that night. She just threw the wet tissues all over the bed and onto the floor.) She grabbed a bottle of sleeping pills by her bed and popped one into her mouth, washing it down with champagne.

When the pill began to take effect and she quieted down a bit, Marilyn insisted on talking some more. She told me that in 1942, right after she lost her baby, she'd been married for a short time--to Jim Dougherty, literally the boy next door. "I was sixteen, he was twenty-one and already had lots of girlfriends his age. I kind of looked up to him at that time, you know, especially because he had a car." Dougherty joined the merchant marine--shipped out--and the marriage virtually ended, then, although the divorce came later. Marilyn, alone in Los Angeles, started going to bars by herself in the afternoon. "That helped kill time. I didn't have anything to look forward to. I liked drinking."

Men had tried to pick Marilyn up before, she said, but she had always refused on the grounds that she was a married woman. "It was fun, when they tried to pick me up," Marilyn confessed. "Most of them weren't so hot, though. All the good men seemed to be off fighting somewhere."

Yet at one particular bar, there were (continued on page 132)Marilyn Monroe(continued from page 124) other compensations. One person, a middle-aged man who told her he worked in the film business, just wouldn't give up. He offered Marilyn $15 to leave with him. "At first I was shocked," she said. "I hadn't been around enough to know what was going on. He had a suit on, so I didn't think he could hurt me. When I started thinking about a new dress I wanted and couldn't afford, well ... I was pretty drunk, too ... so I said OK. I still wasn't sure what he wanted to do." Marilyn described how they went to the hotel where the man was staying. He asked her to take off her clothes. "I thought that was a pretty good deal for fifteen dollars."

According to Marilyn, she went back to that bar and others like it fairly often. For her, it was an easy way to pick up extra money. Further, she said she got a kick out of seeing how excited the men would get when she took off her clothes. "They would tell me that I was beautiful, wonderful, you name it. They all acted the same way." It made her feel that she had a special power over men. "I didn't have to say a word. Just take my dress off."

One of the men Marilyn met this way told her he was a Hollywood agent. "These bars were full of agents," she said. "Or at least guys who claimed they were. A lot of the girls who hung out in them hoped they would break into movies that way." This agent was nicer than most, she said. "He really liked me, I think. We met a few times. He told me that I was special and that I had the looks to be in movies. He said that if I did this, what I was doing, with the right men, I might be able to be in pictures. I laughed at him and told him I couldn't act. And he said neither could so-and-so or so-and-so. He named some of the big actresses then. I thought about it after he left. You know, I decided, maybe he was right." She laughed.

Marilyn laughed whenever I asked her about breaking into show business and her first contract with 20th Century-Fox.

"What did you do in your screen test?" I asked her one evening. "What part did you play?"

"Part? I didn't say a word. Blonde hair and breasts, that's how I got started." Once, suddenly, she got on her knees on the bed and looked at her chest in the mirror. She held up her breasts. "They were better then, firmer," she moaned, and drank some more champagne. Then she ran her fingers through her hair, greasy from days of neglect. She made another face, as if she were not at all happy with the way she looked. She said that for her test, she had dyed her hair a brighter shade of blonde. "The blonder the better. Men have this weakness for blonde hair. It's true! I couldn't act. The reason I got ahead is that I was lucky and met the right men."

And the right men liked her. She told me how all the top bosses would make it a point to "inspect" all the new starlets who had come onto the lot. "The worst thing a girl could do was say no to these guys. She'd be finished," she said.

Marilyn described how all the starlets would put themselves on review at special parties given at two big night clubs. These private affairs were usually given the night before the opening of a major singer or some other name act. "Everybody in Hollywood was there to check over the new girls," Marilyn said. "We had our choice. We could be picked up by some handsome young actor and have a little fun. Or we could go off with some old bigwig and make a few dollars; or, if we were really lucky, we could get him to help us find a part. Most of us always tried to find an old guy. I got to be known pretty quick. They considered me a hot number back then," she laughed.

To give me more of an idea of what Hollywood life was like, Marilyn told me all about Joe Schenck, one of the studio's founders. He was a bald, bear-like man of about 70, with a huge nose and a huge cigar. He had been married to silent-movie star Norma Talmadge, who had left him for George Jessel. He had a $1,000,000 yacht and a reputation around Hollywood as a man who could buy any woman he wanted.

"He had me come over to his house," she said. "It was a mansion. I had never been anyplace like that. He had the greatest food, too. That's when I learned about champagne. What I liked was hearing about all the stars I had seen in the movies. Joe knew them all. He seemed to have this thing about breasts. After dinner, he told me to take my clothes off and he would tell me Hollywood stories. I would just listen to those wonderful tales about John Barrymore, Charlie Chaplin, Valentino, everybody, and Mr. Schenck would play with my breasts. He didn't want to do much else, since he was getting old, but sometimes he asked me to kiss him--down there." Marilyn grimaced, pointing to her privates. "I never want to have to do that anymore," she blurted out, with what seemed to be intense, pent-up disgust. "It would seem like hours, and nothing would happen, but I was afraid to stop. I felt like gagging, but if I did, I thought he'd get insulted. Sometimes, he'd just fall asleep. If he stayed awake, he'd pat my head, like a puppy, and thank me. All the other girls thought I really had it made. At least the food was good."

All Marilyn's efforts for Schenck seemed to have been in vain. Fox dropped her from her contract after her first year. Despite Schenck's former power, he had recently gone to prison in connection with labor racketeering in the film business. Even though he had been pardoned, the cloud of gangland connections still hung over his head.

"I kept thinking all he had to do was make one call for me, but he wouldn't push. 'It'll happen,' was all he said." Still, he kept having her drop by for storytelling sessions and told her to be patient. "I didn't have anywhere else to go. I didn't have a job. Joe was my only hope."

Her hoping eventually paid off. After several frustrating months of unemployment, during which she supported herself by modeling and bar-hopping, Marilyn was introduced by Schenck to Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia Pictures. "Joe was like Clark Gable by comparison. Mr. Cohn wasn't even the kind who said hello first. He just told you to get in bed. For him, women were slaves."

Cohn did put Marilyn's name up in lights, though, giving her second billing in a movie called Ladies of the Chorus. "I kept driving past the theater with my name on the marquee. Marilyn Monroe! Wow! Was I excited!"

After that picture, however, Cohn and Columbia dropped Marilyn. She told me how, after more anxious waiting, she got a bit part in a Marx Brothers movie, Love Happy. "No acting, just sex again. I had to wiggle across a room. I practiced jiggling my backside for a week. Groucho loved it. His eyes popped out. I remember he made this joke offscreen. He said, 'Young lady, I think you're a case of arrested development. With your development, somebody's bound to get arrested.' "

Despite this spotty progress, Marilyn was beginning to panic. She needed a new sponsor who would give her the crucial push. She got it with Johnny Hyde, who she proudly said was the most important agent in Hollywood.

"He told me he had discovered Lana Turner and now he was discovering me, and that I'd go even further. That made me dizzy." Again, sex entered the picture. Hyde was dapper and well dressed (continued on page 196)Marilyn Monroe(continued from page 132) but tiny, only five feet tall. "He had the best clothes in town," Marilyn said, "but they were like doll's clothes." When they made love, she told me, he'd get upset if she didn't put on a display of ecstasy. "I didn't mind doing it," Marilyn shrugged. "But nothing seemed to excite me. It wasn't him. It was me. But he took it personally and I had to act like it was the thrill of my life. At first, I was kind of embarrassed 'cause Johnny was so short, but everyone looked up to him, all the stars."

And Hyde got Marilyn her two most important roles to date. They were small roles, Marilyn playing the kept woman of a crooked lawyer in The Asphalt Jungle and another kept woman--to a vicious drama critic--in All About Eve. "I started as a dumb blonde whore," she complained. "I'll end as one."

Hyde died of a heart attack when he was in his 50s. Marilyn cried when she spoke about him. "He used to say that I was the only one who could save his life, but I thought he was joking. And then I decided I did love him, but it was too late. I hated myself. Jesus, he was my friend. I could have saved him. I killed him. I killed him!" Marilyn started screaming and tearing her hair out, which she did whenever she got extremely upset. Her feeling that she had caused someone's death would surface again several years later when Clark Gable died of a heart attack after making The Misfits with her.

•

Yves Montand was in New York during the fall of 1959, doing a one-man song-and-dance show on Broadway. With him was his wife, Simone Signoret, who the next spring would win an Oscar for her role in Room at the Top. The Montands had starred several years before in a Paris production of Miller's play The Crucible. Like Miller, they had been accused of being Communists and were given a hard time by the State Department when they wanted to visit America. After being rejected several times, they were granted visas so that Montand could do his show. Miller was eager to entertain them when they arrived in New York.

I'll never forget Marilyn's look when they came through the door. Montand looked quite a bit like DiMaggio, and I could sense that Marilyn saw this. Yves could speak very little English, so Simone would do a lot of translating for him. Marilyn barely spoke at all. She just stared at Yves and smiled, and he kept smiling back. The four ate, drank and had such a good time that I couldn't understand why the Millers didn't have guests up more often.

The next day, Marilyn was on the phone for hours, asking everyone she knew about Montand. The question she kept asking was, How did he end up marrying Simone Signoret? "She's not pretty," Marilyn would say. "And she's older than he is. What did she do to get him?" Through her calls, Marilyn found out that Montand had gotten his big break as a cabaret performer because of a love affair with the great singer Edith Piaf. She was also older and not beautiful. Through Piaf, Montand became a real singing star in France. She also helped him get into movies.

"I bet he married Simone so she'd help him become a big movie star," Marilyn said. "That had to be it. For his career." Then she paused. "Well, I can't blame him. I mean, it's so hard in movies. You've gotta have connections. Anyway, she's really nice. I can tell he looks up to her. She's lucky." She wished aloud that she could do a movie with him. "If he would only learn English, he'd be perfect."

Once all the American stars began to turn down Let's Make Love, Marilyn decided that Montand should do it. She told Miller and her other advisors, who said his English would be an impossible problem. "He's learning real fast," Marilyn said. Montand had returned to the apartment alone several times and had told Marilyn about his poor childhood--how his father had worked in a factory, how he himself had had to quit school at 11 to get a job, how he had worked in a spaghetti factory and as a hairdresser, how he had got started singing in rough Marseilles cafés, doing the songs of Maurice Chevalier and imitations of Donald Duck. Marilyn was entranced.

Miller was usually around when Montand was there and would sometimes help translate for him and Marilyn. Frequently, he would return to his study to write while the two others drank champagne and chatted away while sitting on the couch next to each other. Sometimes Marilyn and Montand would hold hands while they talked, but they always let go whenever they heard the study door open.

Marilyn spent days on the phone pushing for Montand, and eventually he got the role. As soon as she learned that he had the part, she began rehearsing her song-and-dance numbers with an intense determination. She'd stay up half the night, struggling to learn the words of the songs. She would use the living room as her stage and sometimes trip over tables or run into the sofa and bruise her legs. She would put on a black leotard and black-net stockings and sing and dance for hours until she got things exactly right. Miller looked exhausted; he stayed locked up in his study or took his dog on long walks to get away.

Aside from Montand, the most exciting thing that happened to Marilyn in the months before she started Let's Make Love was meeting Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev when he visited Hollywood. This was a publicity stunt dreamed up by 20th Century-Fox. I believe Marilyn even had to be told who Khrushchev was. The studio kept insisting. They told Marilyn that in Russia America meant two things. Coca-Cola and Marilyn Monroe. She loved hearing that and agreed to meet him. "I guess there's not much sex in Russia," she laughed.

Marilyn's main memory of Khrushchev was that he was "fat and ugly and had warts on his face and he growled. Who would want to be a Communist with a president like that?" she joked, adding, "I could tell Khrushchev liked me. He squeezed my hand so long and so hard that I thought he would break it. I guess it was better than having to kiss him."

In the early part of 1960, when Marilyn went back to Hollywood, this time with Miller, to make Let's Make Love, they stayed, as usual, at the Beverly Hills Hotel. In the suite next door were Yves and Simone. It was the first time Marilyn really enjoyed making a movie. "It's Yves," she told me on the telephone.

Their relationship grew even closer when Miller left for a few weeks to go to Ireland to visit John Huston, to work on the screenplay for The Misfits, which would be Marilyn's next movie. I asked her if she were going to be lonesome all by herself. "All by myself? Are you kidding? I've got Yves and Simone right next door."

Then Simone won the Academy Award as best actress and Yves appeared at the ceremonies. "She's got the Oscar. She's got Yves. She's smart. They respect her. She's got everything. What have I got?"

Then Simone had to return to Europe to begin production on a new film. Miller had come back, but he, too, decided to leave to spend some time with his children.

Marilyn and Yves quickly began their affair. "But what about Mr. Miller?" I asked, when she told me about it.

Marilyn said she wasn't sure. She felt hurt that he had left her alone in Hollywood. "I don't think I'm the woman for him," she said without emotion. "Arthur needs an intellectual, somebody he can talk to. He needs someone like Simone." She broke into a big grin. "And Yves needs me."

Yves was due to fly back to France via (continued on page 206)Marilyn Monroe(continued from page 196) New York in a few days. Marilyn had a rendezvous all planned for when he changed planes. She booked a room, under another name, naturally, at a hotel near Idlewild Airport. She ordered flowers and several big bottles of champagne. She even took two baths the day of his arrival, one in the morning and another that night before she left for the airport in her limousine.

The next day, when I came to work, Marilyn was nearly hysterical as she described how all her plans had been fouled up. "Everyone will know," she moaned. Yves hadn't wanted any part of going to the hotel with her. He had wanted to get back to Paris, and to Simone, as soon as possible. "He tried to be nice," Marilyn sobbed. "He kissed me and all. But he said that the idea of his leaving Simone was ... ridiculous. He told me what a 'nice time' he had had. The last thing he said was that Arthur and I should come visit him and Simone in France. Wouldn't that be something? Now, you know they're gonna be sitting in Paris and laughing their heads off at me."

At least Marilyn didn't have much time to sit around and mope. She was scheduled to begin making Miller's film, The Misfits, right away. Actually, one of her last fights with Miller, and probably the worst, was about his script for The Misfits. One afternoon, she came back into the bedroom screaming, and threw a champagne bottle against the wall, smashing it into a million slivers. "He said it's his movie. I don't think he even wants me in it," she barked, slamming the closet door open and shut. I thought she was going to break it off.

She stormed through the living room and began pounding on the study door, which was locked. Miller refused to come out. "I'm your wife. I'm your wife," Marilyn kept screaming. "It's not your movie, it's ours. You wrote it, but you said you wrote it for me. Now you say it's all yours. You lied. You lied." There was still no answer from Miller.

Marilyn kicked over some tables, banged down the keys of the piano and grabbed another champagne bottle. When she returned to her room, I heard a terrible crash. She had thrown the bottle at the mirror behind her bed. Her sheets were covered with glass and she kept slamming her body against the closet door. I grabbed her and held her tight for the longest while, so she wouldn't hurt herself. Miller did not sleep in the apartment that night or any other night before they left for Nevada in the summer of 1960.

As she usually did when she was upset, Marilyn began eating too much. She was getting fat. "I don't care," she snapped, when I tried to keep her from stuffing herself. "Who do I need to look good for? Who?"

"Clark Gable," I replied.

She stopped eating. She was dissatisfied with many things about her next film, but starring with Clark Gable was a fantasy of hers that dated back to her childhood, when she would pretend he was her long-lost father. Actually, it was the presence of Gable and of her friend Montgomery Clift that made Marilyn go ahead with The Misfits.

The first thing she didn't like was her role, as a divorced woman who moves in with a cowboy, Clark Gable. "I'm not just a dumb blonde this time, I'm a crazy dumb blonde. Which is worse? And to think, Arthur did this to me." Marilyn blamed Miller for all she didn't like about the movie. "He was supposed to be writing this for me. He could have written me anything and he comes up with this."

On one take, Marilyn told me, she was so electrified by Gable's kisses that she let the sheets drop and he accidentally placed his hand on her breast. "I got goose bumps all over," Marilyn exclaimed. "That kiss ... that touch ... oh!"

Marilyn told me she slept perfectly that night, without one pill. She dreamed about doing even more with Gable. "But that was a dream. He treated me like I was his little girl. Sometimes he'd pinch me and say, 'Get to work, Beautiful,' or, 'Why are sexy women so late?' Other times, he'd give me a little squeeze on my ass and call me Chubby or Fatso. I always wanted to reach out and throw my arms around him, but I was too scared. I mean, you just can't go up and kiss Clark Gable. But once, after a really good scene, he kissed me on the lips and said, 'Thanks.' I'll never forget it."

If Gable represented Marilyn's father, she saw her other co-star, Montgomery Clift, as her son, or maybe her baby brother. "If they think I've got troubles, they should look at Monty. He's more messed up than anybody," she would say. Clift, who was one of Hollywood's best and best-looking young actors, had been horribly disfigured in an automobile wreck. Marilyn said he never got over it. He drank and took drugs all the time. Marilyn felt very protective toward him. He was the only big name in the cast who was on Marilyn's "side," as she described her conflict with Miller. (Huston, Eli Wallach and all the assistant directors, cameramen, et al., were on "Arthur's side." Gable seemed to be above all this.) "With all that stuff about me and Yves in the papers, no wonder they all feel sorry for Arthur. It makes me look like a tramp. And Arthur looks so hurt, too; God, I don't blame them for hating me. I know he'd never hurt me--he'd do anything. But we're wrong, the two of us--this marriage is wrong. And it's impossible to explain it to the others here. It's none of their damn business. So they just keep thinking it's all my fault, that I'm a mean bitch. Lena, you know I'm not."

Marilyn called me, in tears, one day when Clift had been injured during a rodeo scene. "He's so frail and sick, Lena. I hope he'll be all right ... fast. He's the only friend, the only star friend I've got. If he's out sick, I won't have anybody. I'm so scared." Luckily, Clift recovered and was good company for Marilyn. "We try to figure out for each other what to do and take to fall asleep. He can't sleep, either," she said. "Monty's just like me."

She often thought that she might be in love with him. "He needs me. He needs someone. I'd love to help him. Oh, but he's so impossible." Monty, as she called him, would come over to the New York apartment when he was in town, usually dressed in shabby clothes that looked as if he had slept in them for days.

Like a concerned mother, Marilyn didn't think Monty was eating right. She'd always have me prepare a big steak for him and the minute he arrived, she'd lead him to the dining-room table, where a feast had been set out. He pushed everything aside. All he wanted was caviar and straight vodka, which he drank like water. Sometimes he'd take a pill and wash it down with vodka. Marilyn begged him to eat, but he simply shook his head. Seeming to be in a trance, he just drank, stared and mumbled a few words to Marilyn. They would talk about how terrible Hollywood was. They talked about their psychiatrists. Now Monty was going to play one--Freud. That amused them. "I wish I could play one, too. God, you and I know more about them than anybody." However, Marilyn warned Monty about working again with John Huston.

"He's a mean bastard. He'll use you," she said. "Maybe it's just with me, but I'd be careful."

They would also talk about drugs. The only time Monty showed any enthusiasm at all was when he'd describe some new painkiller or sleeping pill a doctor had recommended. Marilyn would always nag him to write down the name. She would invariably call her own doctor to ask about the pill the minute Monty had left.

"He needs a woman to love him," Marilyn announced one day. "Just like I need someone." Marilyn told me the stories she had heard that Monty was a homosexual. She didn't want to believe them at all. The notion of a man sleeping with another man struck Marilyn as incredibly weird. "Why would he do that? He could have any girl in the world." Besides, she knew Monty was good friends with Elizabeth Taylor, whom he never discussed with Marilyn and whom Marilyn was too proud to ask about. Nevertheless, she kept regarding Elizabeth as her chief rival and sometimes couldn't hide her jealousy of her. The $1,000,000 Elizabeth was getting for Cleopatra annoyed Marilyn. Then Marilyn brought up a new way in which she was competing with Elizabeth, and losing. "I bet Monty sleeps with her. I bet he does," Marilyn declared. "Why her?"

Suddenly, Marilyn decided that if Elizabeth Taylor could sleep with Montgomery Clift, why couldn't she? She liked him more than anyone else in show business and wanted him to feel the same way about her. Seducing him became a big challenge for her. On the day he was going to come over, Marilyn had her hair and nails done and picked out a very sexy outfit. Normally, all she wore was her white robe, and looked as sloppy as Monty. Today would be different.

She selected a pair of white pants with a matching white-silk blouse. Both were skintight and revealed every contour of her body. She even wore matching white high heels and drenched herself with Joy, on her arms, her thighs, her stomach, behind her knees. Monty did a slight double take when he walked through the door. "You've got company," he apologized, thinking he had come on the wrong day.

"Only you," Marilyn whispered softly. Monty seemed confused. Instead of sitting at the dining-room table, Marilyn lured Monty to the couch, where she fed him caviar with a spoon. She was sitting nearly on top of him, but he didn't make a move, not even when she sighed and lay down on the couch with her head in his lap. He just kept drinking and mumbling occasionally, as usual. Because Marilyn was so shy, this was absolutely as far as she could go. She told me later that she didn't have the nerve to kiss him.

Realizing that the couch was a dead end, Marilyn soon got up to pour some champagne. Then, holding her glass, she walked back and forth in front of Monty, who was still slouching on the couch. Her steps were very self-conscious, her hips swaying in the most alluring way. The light streaming through the windows was certainly to her advantage, showing off her spectacular figure. As I came in with a caviar refill, Marilyn gave me a hopeless shrug. Then, without notice, Monty stood up and walked over to her. I watched from the hallway, hoping that she had achieved her purpose. Her big smile told me she thought the same.

But instead of sweeping Marilyn into his arms, Monty pulled back his hand to give her a teasing swat on her backside. "You've got the most incredible ass," he said, and pecked her cheek. "Listen, I've got to go. See you." As he closed the door behind him, Marilyn fell back on the couch and started giggling.

"I give up, Lena. I tried. Boy, I tried. You know, I kinda doubt that he does anything with Elizabeth Taylor, either. I think I was wrong about that. He's a mess ... but I still love him."

Marilyn didn't take it personally. She went back to her bedroom and stripped off her clothes. Then she put on a Sinatra record, lay on the bed and daydreamed away the rest of the afternoon.

Even though she struck out with Monty Clift, Marilyn began to be impressed with the idea that she was Hollywood's Queen of Sex. She kept on her diet, took better care of her hair and skin, and never stopped looking in the mirror. "I look pretty good for an old lady in her thirties, don't I, Lena?" she would ask me constantly, while strutting nude before her mirrors. She did, indeed.

Marilyn even began sending down for copies of Playboy. She'd open the centerfold, look at some girl in her late teens or early 20s, then look at herself. "I'm better," she'd say. "Hmm ... not bad, even if I have to say so.... What do you think?" She always needed encouragement. Sometimes she would talk about appearing in Playboy. She was worried that she had been out of sight for too long and about the bad publicity her hospital stays might have gotten her. "If I were in Playboy, that would sure make everyone know I'm still around."

•

One afternoon in December 1960, quite a while after Miller had moved out, Marilyn decided to go out shopping. New York was aglow for the Christmas season. People were buying gifts for friends and family. And Marilyn was all alone; the divorce would be final in another month. She came back to the apartment, empty-handed and crying. There was no tree, no gifts, no cards. The place was cold and lonely. I felt sorrier for her than ever.

I made Marilyn a big Italian dinner to cheer her up. When I returned to her room, she hadn't eaten a thing. She just stared at the food. "Take it away, please," she said. About 7:30, I went back to see how she was. Something told me that I had better watch her closely. My instincts were correct. The draperies to one of the bedroom windows had been pulled apart, which was almost never done. Furthermore, the window was wide open. Marilyn was standing before it with her white robe on. She normally never wore anything in the bedroom, except maybe when there were guests. The only time she even went near the window was to wave good night to me. This was more than strange. Both of her hands grasped the outside molding. It looked as if she might jump.

I ran over and surprised her by grabbing her around the waist. She turned around and fell into my arms. "Lena, no. Let me die. I want to die. I deserve to die. What have I got to live for?"

"Are you crazy?" I said, closing the window and draperies.

"I can't live anymore. What have I done with my life? Who do I have? It's Christmas!"

I had been through this sort of thing with Marilyn once before, about a year earlier. Miller had been away in Connecticut and Marilyn had gone out to dinner with some people visiting from Hollywood. She had given me the night off. When I arrived the next morning at eight, I found her unconscious on her bedroom rug, her face caked with the remains of her dinner, which she had thrown up. Unable to wake her, I called the doctor, a fat, friendly man, who came immediately, pumped Marilyn's stomach and put her in bed. When May arrived, she called Miller in from Connecticut. He rushed back, very concerned. Once Marilyn was awake, she smiled weakly and asked, with all innocence, "What did I do? Oh, am I hungry!" I made her some spaghetti and, after eating it all in an instant, she told me what had happened. She had gotten all dressed up to go out (I had helped her) but found herself very depressed when no one noticed her at the restaurant. Also, her companions barely complimented her. She was so unhappy she was unable to fall asleep. First, one sleeping pill, then two, then three, but nothing worked. "I got so mad about not dozing off that I just gulped a whole handful. I don't know how many. That knocked me out for sure. But I didn't mean to kill myself. Jesus, I'm not that far gone."

•

Marilyn's self-confidence suffered another serious setback in the summer of 1961. For a long time, she had been having problems with her digestion. I had thought all her burping came from the champagne bubbles. Instead, it was her gall bladder. She went into surgery to have it removed. Although the operation was a success, the scar on the right side of her stomach seemed to shatter her whole view of herself. Her white, creamy skin had never had a blemish before, and now there was this nasty-looking gash.

In addition to the scar, Marilyn began to see a lot of other things she had never noticed before. First, her breasts. She used to take pride in how firm they were. Now she decided that they were getting flabby. She discovered tiny stretch marks there and on her backside, probably from the gaining and losing of so much weight. Her face was beginning to show an occasional line. "I'm getting crow's-feet!" she gasped. For the first time, she could sense that she was growing older. It terrified her.

On one trip from Hollywood, Marilyn returned with a bagful of brassieres. This was truly something new. The bras weren't ordinary ones. They were really just straps with the cups cut out. When I asked her why she had bought them, she explained that she was worried about her breasts' beginning to sag. She hoped these would hold them up, and since they were so skimpy, they were as close to wearing nothing as she could get. After about a week, she threw them all away.

She had also purchased a large number of black and red lace panties. They never got worn, either. Instead, she threw them into a drawer, "for a special occasion." Marilyn had bought lots of new clothes during this period. Because she had lost weight, she fretted that she didn't look "sexy" enough. So she wore everything tighter and tighter.

•

On her 35th birthday, in April of 1962, Marilyn told me, "Lena, this year things are going to be better. I can feel it. This is gonna be my year."

At first, it seemed that she was right, that the year ahead was going to be hers. A couple of months after her birthday, she told me that she thought Frank Sinatra was going to marry her. He hadn't asked her, but her intuition was usually right. "He's almost ready," she announced in triumph.

Things got worse when Marilyn found out that Sinatra was going out with Juliet Prowse, a stunning dancer from South Africa who was only in her 20s. His apparent preference for a younger woman drove Marilyn into a terrible bout of insecurity. Without him, she saw herself as a has-been. She now began criticizing all the young, blonde "imitation Marilyns" whom Hollywood was grooming, she feared, to replace her. She was particularly harsh about Jayne Mansfield, who she believed had had an operation to enlarge her breasts. "At least I'm real," Marilyn said. But getting older clearly terrified her. She told me that she had nightmares about being a little old lady, all alone in an asylum, locked in a cell. "I started with nothing. I'm going to end up with nothing," she wept.

In the middle of May, Marilyn sang Happy Birthday to President Kennedy at a huge celebration the Democratic Party was having at Madison Square Garden. The Kennedy family was another subject of rumors, which Marilyn denied. It was, and has been, frequently whispered that she was having an affair with President Kennedy, or his brother Bobby, or both. Marilyn didn't get mad at these rumors, though. She just laughed. The Kennedys, whom she had met through Sinatra's friend Peter Lawford, were "cute," she said. She liked them because they were funny and smart. But I remember her insisting, "They're not my type. They're boys."

Marilyn knew very little about politics, and cared less. Because she didn't read the paper or listen to the radio, she never knew the Bay of Pigs invasion had occurred. I remember telling her what a wonderful President John Kennedy was. All she could say was, "Well, he doesn't look like a President."

She got to know the Kennedys far better at parties that Lawford gave. Sinatra and his friends such as Lawford, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. had been very active in helping Kennedy get elected and he, in turn, was a close friend of theirs. The Kennedys seemed to enjoy the movie world and their base in Hollywood was Lawford's house. Lawford's was also one of the only places Marilyn ever visited out in California.

She spoke much more about John Kennedy than about Bobby. If he didn't look like her idea of a President, he didn't act like one, either. At least around Marilyn. He was always telling her dirty jokes, pinching her and squeezing her, she said. "That big tease," she laughed affectionately. She told me that President Kennedy was always putting his hand on her thigh. One night, under the dinner table, he kept going. But when he discovered she wasn't wearing any panties, he pulled back and turned red. "He hadn't counted on going that far," Marilyn grinned.

Marilyn couldn't figure out why the fun-loving President would be married to the woman she called "the statue." "I bet he doesn't put his hand up her dress," she smiled. "I bet no one does."

Marilyn had other idols in her life who meant more to her. She often listened to Sinatra tunes while standing dreamily in front of DiMaggio's picture. One day, I went into her room to hang up some clothes, but I couldn't get anywhere near the door of the big walk-in closet. In the closet doorway stood Marilyn, naked, as usual, even though the morning was cool and damp. One of her favorite records, All of Me, was playing on the record player near the bed and she swayed gently in time with Sinatra's voice. She seemed to be looking at DiMaggio's picture, but her eyes had the faraway expression I had seen in them many times when Marilyn had been unhappy. Not wanting to disturb her private thoughts, I turned to walk out of the room.

"Don't go," Marilyn said, taking me by surprise.

Sinatra and DiMaggio had once been close friends, but Sinatra evidently said some things to DiMaggio that made him crazy with jealousy. "I'm not sure exactly what Frankie told him," Marilyn said. "He was lots better friends with Joe then than he was with me. Frankie probably just wanted to tease Joe and figured Joe wouldn't take it too seriously. But Joe couldn't stand it when anyone laughed at him, so he probably let Frankie have it but good. That was it for their friendship."

After her divorce from DiMaggio was finalized in 1954, Marilyn had gone to live at Sinatra's house until she could settle on a new place of her own. "Frankie and I had gotten to know each other a lot better," she said. Unlike DiMaggio, Sinatra never discouraged Marilyn in her screen ambitions. In fact, he used all his influence to help her. "It wasn't really anything," Marilyn said of the relationship, "but it drove Joe crazy, plain crazy."

•

Marilyn had believed that massages were a great way to keep her weight down. Accordingly, after Miller had moved out, she employed a tall, dark, good-looking man to give her massages. He wasn't muscular, the way I thought masseurs were supposed to be, though Marilyn assured me, "He has the best hands in the world."

Her massage routine was an odd one. The man would come about six in the morning and would be finishing up about the time I arrived for work. The exercise would take place on a table in Miller's old study, which was now Marilyn's "gym." Like Miller, Marilyn began keeping the doors closed. When I came in, I would hear crazy giggling and screeching, from both Marilyn and the masseur.

I noticed that she always had taken a bath before these sessions and had drenched herself with perfume. She would emerge from the study hot, sweaty and naked, though she never bathed afterward. She just went to bed and slept till lunchtime. Then she awoke with the biggest appetite. "If you get massages, you'll never need another sleeping pill," she laughed. "I'm so-o-o relaxed." The masseur would usually have a cup of coffee before going home. He looked exhausted, yet he never lost his big smile.

Still another of Marilyn's male friends was her Italian chauffeur, who could have been a stand-in for Rudolph Valentino. Marilyn loved his dark costume and cap, and she referred to him as The Sheik. She would frequently invite him up for champagne and would ask him to take her for rides, even when she had nowhere to go. The chauffeur, whose name was Johnnie, worked for the limousine service that Marilyn used. Even while she was with Miller, she always insisted that the service assign Johnnie as her driver.

After Miller left, Marilyn used the limousine service less and less. The Sheik, however, continued his frequent visits. But now he came to see Marilyn as a friend, not an employee. Sometimes they'd lock themselves up in her room for the whole afternoon. Marilyn would usually dress up in a tight black cocktail dress, put on make-up for him and have a big tray of caviar and champagne set out for his enjoyment. Again, the squealing, laughing and other noises filled the house, but Marilyn never said anything about Johnnie to me. She just winked when he left and I winked back.

She could sit for hours, talking about movie stars and other men she knew, rating them on their sexiness and dreaming about what it might be like to be their girlfriend. When chatting about her early Hollywood days, she told me that she would have slept with almost anybody who asked her, regardless of what their looks were. The only real requirement was that they be "nice." "If it would make them happy, why not? It didn't hurt. I like to see men smile."

She did admit that she had preferences, though. At the top of the list were older men whom she could pretend were her father. They didn't have to be handsome, "just warm and strong like a father could be." When I asked her if she could sleep with any man in the world, whom she would choose, she didn't hesitate a second. "Clark Gable," she said, and then started to cry.

Aside from older men, Marilyn loved strong, dark Italians. She said that she liked men who took charge, told her what to do, dominated her. "That's why Frankie and Joe are so great. They're the boss. They run the show. I'm not very aggressive, but they sure are."

•

In the early summer of 1962, Marilyn was in a good mood. Her mind was less on former lovers or her career than on the new man in her life, José Bolanos, a Mexican screenwriter. She was besieged with proposals for plays, for Las Vegas shows, for night clubs, for movies. There was too much. She couldn't make up her mind.

She flew back to Los Angeles to be close to José, who, she said, flew up very often to be with her. She didn't want anyone to know very much, if anything, about their affair. Publicity, she felt, had ruined things with both DiMaggio and Miller. "José doesn't want to be part of a side show. He'd leave if he was. I know him." She said that in California they rarely went out and never to places where she'd be recognized. They would go to her house, his hotel or a drive-in restaurant or movie in some distant part of L.A., or to a beach at night. Anywhere to be alone, out of the public eye.

The privacy seemed to be effective. Near the end of July, Marilyn flew home to New York for a couple of days with exciting news. "He asked me to marry him. I can't believe it." I kissed her and congratulated her with all my heart. "I don't know what to say." Her big smile vanished, as she thought for a long while. "Well, we haven't really talked about what José thinks of my career, where he wants to live. Lena, he's even more jealous than Joe. He might want me to get out of movies, too. Wouldn't that be something? And what if I had to live in Mexico? What am I going to do? I love him."

Marilyn's trip to New York was taken up with some business meetings, clothes purchases and sleeping. "There's no other bed like this one. I just can't sleep the same out there. I'll be so happy to get back here for good."

I stayed with Marilyn late each night, making her different kinds of pasta and veal dishes. "You could starve to death out there," she said, wishing that I could be with her in California. She had a housekeeper, an older woman whom her psychiatrist had recommended, but Marilyn didn't feel at ease with her. "She's like a spy for him. Watches me all the time; I bet she reports on me. She's creepy," Marilyn said. "I could never be friends with her. Oh, it's so lonely out there. If it wasn't for José and the telephone...."

Marilyn didn't take a pill during her entire visit, though she did drink more champagne than usual. She was nervous, very nervous, about what to do about Bolanos. As she was going through her closets, she saw the picture of DiMaggio and suddenly began weeping. "If it could have only worked out.... Why, why didn't it? It's insane ... two people who love each other and won't get married. Maybe if I wait, Joe'll ... but if he doesn't, then José might leave ... and there I am again, with zero. And getting older every day." The champagne kept flowing. "Oh, this is so mixed up. I don't know."

I suggested that maybe if she told DiMaggio about José, Joe might finally give in. "Never!" she shouted. "He'd just get mad. I know what he'd say. He'd call José a gigolo or something awful. Joe doesn't think any man can love me except him. He's my best friend in the world. I don't want to lose him. I don't want to lose José. I don't want to lose anyone. Oh, help me, somebody," she cried, hugging her pillows to her chest.

"What about the psychiatrists?" I asked. "I thought they could help."

"No. They're just getting me more confused. Sometimes I think they're full of shit. You were right, Lena. I don't need a psychiatrist. I need a man."

"Give it time," I urged her. "He's not rushing you, is he?"

"Not really. But he's so moody, he could change his mind tomorrow. I never know what's with him. You're right. We can wait. If he loves me, he'll wait.... Won't he?"

"Sure," I said.

Marilyn may have been mixed up, but she certainly wasn't unhappy. When she left in her white-cotton pants and blouse, she looked like a beautiful girl in her mid-20s. Her hair was bouncy, her nails glowed, she even had the beginnings of a California tan from sitting around her pool. She had told me that her nude pictures were going to be in Playboy. [January 1964.] She loved it.

"I'll never be fat again," she laughed. "It doesn't pay." She gave me a long embrace while we waited for the elevator. "I'll probably be back sooner than you think ... with lots of good news, I hope. Wish me luck." I did, kissing her cheek. I kept thinking of how beautiful she was, how she had overcome all her depressions. Her career looked great. She was in love. She was in high spirits. The last flash of white into the elevator and a softly whispered "Bye" as the door slammed, that was it. I would never see Marilyn again.

"She had a special power over men. 'I didn't have to say a word. Just take my dress off.' "

"Marilyn started screaming and tearing her hair out, which she did whenever she got extremely upset."

"She stormed through the living room and pounded on the study door. Miller refused to come out."