Forty-three years after Marilyn Monroe's death, conspiracy theories are kept alive by fresh debate on tapes she allegedly made, writes Robert W Welkos in Los Angeles
It remains one of Hollywood's most compelling mysteries. On August 5th, 1962, the body of Marilyn Monroe was found in the bedroom of her Brentwood home. The 36-year-old star was naked and lying face down on her bed. An autopsy conducted by Dr Thomas Noguchi, then deputy medical examiner, concluded that death was due to acute barbiturate poisoning, and a psychiatric team tied to the investigation termed it a "probable suicide".
Yesterday, 43 years later, fans from around the world gathered, as they have for decades, near Monroe's crypt at Westwood Village Memorial Park to celebrate her life and mourn her death. John W Miner (86) mourns too. But there is bitterness and frustration as well for the former Los Angeles prosecutor, who was at her autopsy and was one of those looking into her death. He didn't believe that the actress took her life in 1962 and he doesn't believe it now, and Miner says he's heard secret tapes that Monroe made in the days before she died that prove the actress was anything but suicidal.
Whether or not Monroe died by her own hand has been debated and dissected by books, documentaries, conspiracy theorists and Hollywood and Washington insiders alike for years. Enough credence was given to the various reports to prompt the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office to re-examine the case in 1982. Miner, by then in private practice, was among those interviewed. The report notes that Miner told them of the tapes, but not that he had transcripts.
As head of the DA's medical-legal section when Monroe died, Miner had met with the actor's psychiatrist, Dr Ralph Greenson. During the interview, Miner says, Greenson played the Monroe tapes, but only on condition that the investigator never reveal their contents.
Miner took extensive notes and only broke the promise years after Greenson's death, when some Monroe biographers suggested that the psychiatrist be considered a suspect.
Miner's transcripts show Monroe obsessing about the Oscars, describing a sexual encounter with Joan Crawford, craving a father's love from Clark Gable, yearning to be taken seriously as an actress, and speaking candidly about why her marriages to baseball slugger Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller ended in divorce. At one point, she describes standing naked in front of her full-length mirror assessing the body that captivated the world, knowing that she is slipping into middle age, and commenting that "my breasts are beginning to sag a bit" but "my waist isn't bad" and her buttocks are still "the best".
"You are the only person who will ever know the most private, the most secret thoughts of Marilyn Monroe," she tells Greenson, according to Miner's transcript. "I have absolute confidence and trust you will never reveal to a living soul what I say to you."
Miner contends that anyone reading the transcripts would conclude that "there was no possible way this woman could have killed herself. She had very specific plans for her future. She knew exactly what she wanted to do."
Miner has shown the transcripts to several authors in recent years. In British author Matthew Smith's book Marilyn's Last Words: Her Secret Tapes and Mysterious Death, the excerpts cover the early portion of the tapes, which have Monroe musing on Freud and free association, orgasms, Gable and her agent, Johnny Hyde. Seymour Hersh included a short reference to the late President Kennedy in The Dark Side of Camelot. Smith and Hersh said in interviews this week that they found Miner credible. But to accept Miner's story, one must make a leap of faith - he is the only one still alive who claims to have heard the tapes. Greenson died in 1979, and Miner believes that he destroyed the tapes.
AT THE TIME of the recordings, Monroe had been living an unsettled life. There was the rumoured romance with Kennedy, fuelled by her appearance at a nationally televised birthday tribute on May 19th during which she sang the now-legendary "Happy Birthday, Mr. President". Studio bosses at 20th Century Fox had dropped her from the film Something's Got to Give because of chronic lateness and drug dependency.
According to Miner, Greenson's sole purpose in playing the tapes for him was to help establish her state of mind at the time of her death. Hollywood columnist James Bacon, now 91, who first met Monroe when she was an unknown in 1949 and would become a close friend, was at Monroe's house five days before she died.
"She was drinking champagne and straight vodka and occasionally popping a pill," Bacon said. "I said, 'Marilyn, the combination of pills and alcohol will kill you.' And she said, 'It hasn't killed me yet.' Then she took another drink and popped another pill. I know at night she took barbiturates." But Bacon added: "She wasn't the least bit depressed. She was talking about going to Mexico. She had a Mexican boyfriend at the time. This was the first house she ever owned. She was going to buy some furniture. She was in very good spirits that day - of course, the champagne and vodka helped."
While Monroe often came across on screen as a ditzy blonde, in her tapes she discusses Freud ("God, what a genius," she remarks. "He makes it so understandable") and James Joyce ("Joyce is an artist who could penetrate the souls of people, male or female"), and says she has read all of Shakespeare. She talks about her admiration for Gable, her co-star in The Misfits: "In the kissing scenes, I kissed him with real affection. I didn't want to go to bed with him, but I wanted him to know how much I liked and appreciated him."
Her love for DiMaggio was undimmed. "But Joe couldn't stay married to Marilyn Monroe, the famous movie star," she says. "Joe has an image in his stubborn Italian head of a traditional Italian wife . . . Doctor, you know that's not me." It was different with Miller. "He couldn't give me the attention, warmth and affection I need. It's not in his nature. Arthur never credited me with much intelligence. He couldn't share his intellectual life with me. As bed partners, we were so-so." Of her one-night affair with Joan Crawford, she said, "Next time I saw Crawford, she wanted another round. I told her straight out I didn't much enjoy doing it with a woman. After I turned her down, she became spiteful."
Monroe heaps praise on JFK, but there is no suggestion that the two were ever lovers. "This man is going to change our country," she says, adding, " . . . he will transform America today like FDR did in the '30s." As for the president's brother, Bobby Kennedy, the US attorney general at the time, "As you see, there is no room in my life for him. I guess I don't have the courage to face up to it and hurt him. I want someone else to tell him it's over. I tried to get the president to do it, but I couldn't reach him."
MINER SAID HE would like to see a "re-autopsy" conducted to clear up medical questions that he noticed in the original.
"The autopsy clearly shows that the barbiturates that entered her body came in through the large intestine," he said. "We know that because there is no indication . . . that the capsules were swallowed." He believes that had Monroe swallowed 30 or more capsules, "she would have absorbed enough to kill her before it was all dissolved". He also discounts the possibility that she was given a "hot shot" injection of the drugs since neither he nor Noguchi could find any sign of needle marks on her body.
It is Miner's theory that the actor took or was given chloral hydrate to render her unconscious - possibly in a soft drink - and someone then dissolved Nembutal (pentobarbital, usually prescribed for insomnia and anxiety) in water and administered the lethal solution by enema. But Dr Boyd G Stephens, who was then chief medical examiner-coroner for the city andcounty of San Francisco, had said the amount of Nembutal in the liver was about twice as much as in the blood. If Monroe had an enema containing the drugs, says Ronald H "Mike" Carroll, the former prosecutor who conducted the 1982 review of Monroe's death, it would have gotten into her system rapidly and "you wouldn't expect it to have that ratio in the liver". The review concluded that "the cumulative evidence available to us fails to support any theory of criminal conduct relating to her death".
In her own words:
On Clark Gable, her co-star on The Misfits He was so nice to me and I didn't deserve it. I was having problems with (husband) Arthur (Miller) and being sick and I held up the shooting a lot. Clark protected me from (director John) Huston, who kept giving me a bad time.
On Frank Sinatra What a wonderful friend he is to me. I love Frank and he loves me. It is not the marrying kind of love. It is better because marriage can't destroy it. How well I know. Marriage destroyed my relationship with two wonderful men.
On former husband Joe DiMaggio I love him and always will. But Joe couldn't stay married to Marilyn Monroe, the famous movie star. Joe has an image in his stubborn Italian head of a traditional Italian wife. She would have to be faithful, do what he tells her, devote all of herself to him. Doctor, you know that's not me. But we didn't end our love for each other. Anytime I need him, Joe is there.
On former husband Arthur Miller It's different with Arthur. Marrying him was my mistake, not his. He couldn't give me the attention, warmth and affection I need. It's not in his nature . . . Arthur never credited me with much intelligence. He couldn't share his intellectual life with me. As bed partners, we were so-so. He was not that much interested; me faking with exceptional performances to get him more interested.
On her body My breasts are beginning to sag a bit . . . My waist isn't bad. My ass is what it should be, the best there is. Legs, knees and ankles still shapely. And my feet are not too big.
On her acting ambitions I'll take a year of day and night study of Shakespeare with Lee Strasberg . . . He said I could do Shakespeare. I am going to do Juliet first. Don't laugh. With what make-up, costume and camera can do, my acting will create a Juliet who is 14, an innocent virgin, but whose budding womanhood is fantastically sexy. Romeo and Juliet will actually (have sexual intercourse) and have real orgasms . . .
On JFK Marilyn Monroe is a soldier. Her commander-in-chief is the greatest and most powerful man in the world. The first duty of a soldier is to obey her commander in chief . . . This man is going to change our country. No child will go hungry.
No person will sleep in the street and get his meals from garbage cans. People who can't afford it will get good medical care . . . No, I'm not talking Utopia - that's an illusion, but he will transform America today like FDR did in the '30s.
- Excerpts from John W Miner's transcripts of tapes that Marilyn Monroe is said to have made for her psychiatrist, Dr Ralph Greenson, in the days before her death in 1962