The actress, the model, The Escort, the Diva
Marilyn Monroe addiction and mental health issues
It’s thought Marilyn Monroe was initially prescribed strong painkillers for her endometriosis and barbiturates and other sedatives for her insomnia.
According to PBS, when she died, her bedside table was covered in bottles of medicines. She also drank heavily, especially champagne.
Some of the medication was for depression. Many have also tried to diagnose Monroe with a personality disorder, but if she was ever diagnosed with one to her face, she never made it public.
It seems fair to say that Monroe’s mental health had consistently been up and down, and she’d attempted suicide at least once in her life.
About a month after filing for divorce from Miller on January 21, 1961, Monroe signed herself into the Payne Whitney psychiatric ward
in New York, suffering from insomnia and needing to rest. But according to Vanity Fair, she was locked in a padded room and prevented from leaving
. Joe DiMaggio, with whom she’d recently reunited, eventually managed to force his way into the hospital and get her out
Marilyn Monroe the child she’d wanted
Despite her own dysfunctional upbringing, Marilyn Monroe longed to have a child once she married Miller in 1956.
Unfortunately, she was never able to carry a pregnancy to term. During their marriage, she had two miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy between September 1956 and December 1958.
Monroe worried that her alcohol and drug abuse could have caused the problems she experienced with pregnancy.
However, according to CNBC, she also had endometriosis, an extremely painful condition in which the lining of the uterus spreads into other parts of the reproductive system.
The BBC reports that some studies have found that endometriosis increases the risk of miscarriage.
That’s not to say Monroe had always been willing to put having a family before work. It’s rumored that Monroe chose to have several abortions throughout her life.
This would have been illegal — and therefore unregulated and potentially unsafe — but it wasn’t unusual. Hollywood studios had strict clauses about pregnancy and children (for their female stars.)
As Vanity Fair reports, famous actresses including Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Ava Gardner chose to have abortions rather than lose their careers and income
Marilyn Monroe stage fright
Despite her hard work and determination to make it in Hollywood, Marilyn Monroe suffered from terrible stage fright.
Don Murray, who starred opposite her in 1956’s Bus Stop, told Closer Weekly that Monroe got so nervous before every scene that she’d break out in a rash.
She struggled to learn lines and forgot technical requirements like hitting her mark, walking out of the light, or out of focus.
These problems meant that editors often had to patchwork together many takes to form a usable scene. She was frequently also late to set.
“I think it was a lack of confidence. For somebody who the camera loved, she was still terrified,” Murray told the LA Times.
Other collaborators had the same problem. Jack Lemmon, who co-starred alongside Monroe in 1959’s
Some Like It Hot, recalled that it took her over 28 takes to finish one simple scene.
But he also told an interviewer in 1998 that he never held this against her, and he knew that she could do scenes in one take because he’d seen her do it.
“It was not that she was not capable … she would cut because she didn’t feel right … an alarm clock went off in her brain and just said, ‘No,’ and she would stop,” he said.
JFK
The relationship between Marilyn Monroe and JFK, while certainly not Kennedy’s only affair (Kennedy joked with associates that he would get a headache
if he didn’t have sex every day), is hands down the most discussed of the president’s extramarital relationships, as Monroe and JFK were two of the biggest sex symbols of their time.
Because of this, it has become close to impossible to nail down the extent of their relationship, as well as Monroe’s relationship with Bobby Kennedy.
According to People, Monroe and JFK were introduced to each other in 1954 by actor Peter Lawford, who was married to Bobby’s and John’s sister at the time.
Monroe’s biographer, James Spada, said that Monroe and JFK had a relationship for a time, but after getting bored, Kennedy “passed her off” to Bobby Kennedy.
In May 1962, Monroe performed at a birthday celebration for JFK, which involved her singing a sultry version of “Happy Birthday.”
Honey reports that, understandably, Jackie Kennedy was “fuming,” though surprisingly not at Monroe but at her brother-in-law, who had arranged for the performance.
Four months after the performance, Monroe would die of a barbiturate overdose. While the coroner concluded it was a “probable suicide,” theories have emerged that John, Bobby, or someone in the government had Monroe killed.
Just two years after her death and a year after JFK’s assassination, Business Insider reports that the FBI contacted Bobby Kennedy about a book being made blaming him for Monroe’s death and revealing their alleged affair.
Marilyn Monroe high profile affairs.
It would be physically impossible for Marilyn Monroe to have slept with everyone who’s claimed an affair with her.
However, she did have several famous and doomed affairs.
Arthur Miller was married when he and Monroe started seeing each other in 1955.
While married to Miller, Monroe had a highly publicized affair with her co-star of the presciently titled Let’s Make Love, Yves Montand. Miller knew and apparently didn’t care,
and Montand’s wife, actress Simone Signoret — with whom Monroe had become friends — didn’t seem surprised.
Monroe reportedly also had an affair with Some Like It Hot co-star Tony Curtis — according to Curtis.
However, Vanity Fair reports that she probably didn’t spend a week with The Prince and the Showgirl crew member Colin Clark, as the film and his book My Week with Marilyn claims.
Monroe’s most famous affair may be one of the false facts about JFK you always thought were true. It’s believed that she and President John F. Kennedy did have an intimate encounter
— but only once, in March 1962, according to TIME. Monroe may also have had an affair with Kennedy’s brother and Attorney General, Robert “Bobby” Kennedy.
At some point, the brothers’ younger sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, wrote to Monroe: “Understand that you and Bobby are the new item!” Bobby had married Jean’s former college roommate, Ethel Skakel, in 1950, who apparently knew about his many affairs.
Marilyn Monroe’s Arthur Miller disappointing for both
Marilyn Monroe told reporters that she met her third husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller, on a movie set in 1951.
Although both felt an attraction, they didn’t act on it until 1955. Monroe had divorced DiMaggio, but Miller was still married.
In 1956, during his divorce, Miller was subpoenaed as part of the crazy true story of the Hollywood Blacklist.
Monroe was advised to leave him for the sake of her career, but she refused. On June 29, 1956 — eight days after his testimony — they married.
There were happy times, but Monroe ultimately needed more emotional support than Miller could give, and the glamour faded for him.
At one point, Monroe found a diary entry Miller had written saying he was “disappointed” and “embarrassed” by her.
Miller made his feelings on their relationship public in the screenplay of 1961’s The Misfits, which he wrote to give Monroe the chance to show her dramatic skills,
while also clearly basing her sweet but neurotic character, Roslyn, on her personality. The shoot was a disaster, and they divorced shortly after.
Miller didn’t attend Monroe’s funeral. In an unpublished essay started that day and reported in the Independent in 2018, he wrote that he didn’t want to be around the “false” people he knew would be there.
He told 60 Minutes in 1987, “She was a super-sensitive instrument, and that’s exciting to be around until it starts to self-destruct.
Marilyn Monroe stereotyped as a dumb blonde
The widely accepted version of Marilyn Monroe’s rags-to-riches story is that she took a few pretty photos and immediately became a movie star.
But Monroe worked hard to go from parachute factory to Hollywood icon.
As a model, Monroe studied her photos and asked photographers for feedback. For five years, she took every job she was offered without complaint, starting as an extra and climbing to bit parts.
At Fox, she deliberately befriended studio reporters, who were happy to give her a publicity boost.
She also made an effort to improve her limited formal education, reading challenging classic literature in her car and on set.
Monroe resented being typecast as the dumb blonde or seductress and wanted to prove that she could bring more to a movie than sex appeal.
She took many acting classes, first at the Actors Lab in LA and later, as Vanity Fair reports, with famous acting coach Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York, where classmates praised her performances.
In 1954, Monroe protested against the demeaning roles Fox kept sending her and its refusal to increase her salary even though she was the studio’s biggest star.
After walking out on her contract, Monroe became the second woman ever to found her own production studio, named after herself.
The rebellion worked: Fox raised her salary and gave her creative control
JFK Mistress Found Dead
Misfortune followed the Kennedy clan so closely that Senator Ted Kennedy wondered “whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys.”
Even their romantic partners weren’t safe. One of JFK’s mistresses, for instance, was mysteriously murdered. You might think we’re referring to his rumored paramour and naughty
“Happy Birthday” singer Marilyn Monroe, whose death was definitely mysterious — and according to some, a murder.
But here we’re discussing a lesser-known name, someone the public had no idea was romantically involved with JFK before he died. That someone was Mary Pinchot Meyer.
“A talented artist” with “bohemian leanings,” per Smithsonian, Meyer was Jackie Kennedy’s friend and the ex-wife of Cord Meyer, who ran the CIA’s clandestine operations.
She allegedly started sleeping with JFK after untying the knot with her husband. Their affair went on for years and appeared to be ongoing in JFK’s final days.
It’s believed that just weeks before his untimely demise Kennedy wrote Meyer a four-page love letter but never sent it. (That letter sold at auction for $89,000 in 2016.)
Nearly a year after Kennedy died, Meyer was shot dead not far from the Potomac River. One suspect — a wet and wounded man discovered in the nearby woods — stood trial but was acquitted. As of this writing her murder remains unsolved.
