Read The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story Online

Authors: Keith Badman

Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #Arts & Literature, #Actors & Entertainers, #Television Performers

The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story (69 page)

BOOK: The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story
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For six straight hours, Marilyn posed, paraded, smiled and laughed in front of the Deluxe colour CinemaScope cameras wearing a total of 7 different hairstyles and 15 different costumes.

19 May 1962, Madison Square Garden, New York. During a break in rehearsals for the JFK Gala, Marilyn sits and chats with one of the event’s co-organisers, the legendary English-born ‘party-planner’ Clive David. ‘She was the high-spot of the evening,’ he admitted. ‘The guest-list was incredible but she was the true highlight of the whole thing.’ (From the collection of Clive David.)

As a keepsake from the event, reproduced here for the very first time, Marilyn inscribed a wall-tile for David with the words, ‘To Clive love & kisses Marilyn Monroe’. An inscription by the Strasbergs (Lee and Paula) can be seen at the bottom of the image. (From the collection of Clive David.)

19 May 1962, Madison Square Garden, New York, 11.30 p.m. In front of 12,000 loyal Democratic Party members, Marilyn half-sang, half-talked an extremely sultry, sexually charged, super-slow rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ in a way that no one had ever heard it sung before. Before she did so, she thought to herself, ‘By God, I’ll sing this song if it’s the last thing I ever do.’

The original invoice for Marilyn’s world-famous dress she wore that night. (From the Keith Badman collection.)

19 May 1962, Upper East Side townhouse at 33 East 69th Street, New York, a private after-show gathering. In this world-famous picture, Marilyn, still wearing her legendary dress, stands in the library between John and Bobby Kennedy. In the palm of her left hand is her present for JFK, an 18ct, $5,000 gold Rolex ‘President’ watch (pictured above) inscribed with the words, ‘Jack, with love as always from Marilyn, May 19th, 1962.’ Tucked inside the timepiece’s box was a poem, which read, ‘Let lovers breathe their sighs / And roses bloom and music sound / Let passion burn on lips and eyes / And pleasures merry world go round / Let golden sunshine flood the sky / And let me love / Or let me die!’ This is the only known picture of the actress taken with either of the Kennedy brothers.

May 1962, Marilyn’s Exec-U-Car Inc. limousine hire invoice, covering the period 17 to 20 May 1962, the entire time she was in New York for JFK’s birthday gala. (From the Keith Badman collection.)

1 June 1962, Chavez Ravine Stadium, the home of the Los Angeles Angels baseball team. In front of a record-breaking 51,584 crowd, Marilyn blew kisses and made an appeal for donations for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Throughout the evening, with the wind blowing hard through the stadium, the actress fought hard to keep her hat attached to her head. The Angels’ smallest player, outfielder Albie Gregory Pearson is amongst those pictured alongside her. Besides being Marilyn’s 36th birthday, it was also her very last public performance.

4 August 1962, 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, Brentwood. At approximately 4 p.m. on the day of her death Marilyn received a delivery of, amongst other items, petunias, begonias, sedums, terracotta pots, a Mexican lime tree, a hanging begonia basket and some hummingbird feeding stands from Franks Nurseries & Flowers shop at 12424 Wilshire Boulevard. This is one of the actress’s receipts from the sale, made on 1 August. (From the Keith Badman collection.)

August 1962. Eunice Murray didn’t like being called Marilyn’s housekeeper. ‘I guess there’s no word in the dictionary to exactly describe what I was,’ she admitted. ‘I was her chauffeur, her cook, her real estate agent, her social secretary.’ In truth, she was a house-spy, sent by Dr Greenson, and never once did she let on to the actress she had a background as a psychiatric nurse. It was a vocation she had been employed in since 1951.

BOOK: The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story
12.96Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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