Marilyn and Her Monsters

For all the millions of words she has inspired, Marilyn Monroe remains something of a mystery. Now a sensational archive of the actress’s own writing—diaries, poems, and letters—is being published. With exclusive excerpts from the book, Fragments, the author enters the mind of a legend: the scars of sexual abuse; the pain of psychotherapy; the betrayal by her third husband, Arthur Miller; the constant specter of hereditary madness; and the fierce determination to master her art.      http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2010/11/marilyn-monroe-201011

By Sam Kashner

MONROE DOCTRINE
A dream record by Marilyn Monroe from 1955, when she lived at the Waldorf-Astoria, in Manhattan. Photograph, right, from Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

Excerpted from Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters by Marilyn Monroe, edited by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment, to be published October 12th by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC (US), HarperCollins (Canada and UK); © 2010 by LSAS International, Inc.

She was always late for class, usually arriving just before they closed the doors. The teacher was strict about not entering in the middle of an exercise or, God forbid, in the middle of a scene. Slipping in without makeup, her luminous hair hidden under a scarf, she tried to make herself inconspicuous. She usually took a seat in the back of one of the dingy rooms in the Malin Studios, on 46th Street, smack in the middle of the theater district. When she raised her hand to speak, it was in a tiny wisp of a voice. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself, but it was hard for the other students not to know that the most famous movie star in the world was in their acting class. A few blocks away, above Loew’s State Theater, at 45th and Broadway, there was the other Marilyn—the one everyone knew—52 feet tall, in that infamous billboard advertising Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch, a hot blast from the subway grating causing her white dress to billow up around her thighs, her face an explosion of joy.
When it was her turn to do an acting exercise focusing on sense memory, Marilyn took the floor in front of a small group of students. She was asked to remember a moment in her life, to recall the clothes she was wearing, to evoke the sights and smells of that memory. She described how she had felt about being alone in a room, years before, when an unnamed man walked in. Suddenly, her acting teacher admonished her, “Don’t do that. Just tell us what you hear. Don’t tell us how you feel.” Marilyn began to cry. Another student, an actress named Kay Leyder, recalled, “As she described her clothes … what she heard … the words that were said to her … she began crying, sobbing, until at the end of it she was really devastated.” Was this the real Marilyn Monroe: an insecure, shy, 29-year-old woman?

A handwriting expert takes a magnifying glass to Marilyn’s script, scrutinizing its deeper meaning.

Now an extraordinary archive of Marilyn’s poems, letters, notes, recipes, and diary entries has surfaced that delves deep into her psyche and private life. These artifacts shed light on, among other things, her sometimes devastating journey through psychoanalysis; her three marriages, to merchant marine James Dougherty, Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio, and playwright Arthur Miller; and the mystery surrounding her tragic death at the age of 36.
Marilyn left the archive, along with all her personal effects, to her acting teacher Lee Strasberg, but it would take a decade for her estate to be settled. Strasberg died in February 1982, outliving his most famous student by 20 years, and in October 1999 his third wife and widow, Anna Mizrahi Strasberg, auctioned off many of Marilyn’s possessions at Christie’s, netting over $13.4 million, but the Strasbergs continue to license her image, which brings in millions more a year. The main beneficiary is the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, on 15th Street off Union Square, in New York City. It is, you might say, the house that Marilyn built.
Several years after inheriting the collection, Anna Strasberg found two boxes containing the current archive, and she arranged for the contents to be published this fall around the world—in the U.S. as Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The archive is a sensational discovery for Marilyn’s biographers and for her fans, who still want to rescue her from the taint of suicide, from the accusations of tawdriness, from the layers of misconceptions and distortions written about her over the years. Now at last we have an unfiltered look inside her mind.

“I picked up a chair and slammed it ...against the glass. It took a lot of banging. I went over with the glass concealed in my hand and sat.”

“Complete Subjection, Humiliation, Alonement”

Marilyn began taking private lessons with celebrated acting teacher Lee Strasberg in March 1955, encouraged by the acclaimed theater and movie director Elia Kazan, with whom she had had an affair. “Kazan said I was the gayest girl he ever knew,” she wrote to her analyst Dr. Ralph Greenson in the last and perhaps the most important letter found in this archive, “and believe me he has known many. But he loved me for one year and once rocked me to sleep one night when I was in great anguish. He also suggested that I go into analysis and later wanted me to work with his teacher, Lee Strasberg.”
She was living at the Gladstone Hotel, on 52nd Street off Park Avenue, when she began working with Strasberg and embarked upon the psychoanalysis that was de rigueur for taking classes at the Actors Studio. Founded in 1947 by Kazan and directors Cheryl Crawford and Robert Lewis, it was the holy temple of the Method—acting exercises and scenes that focused on sense memories and “private moments” dredged from the actor’s life. Throughout the late 1940s and through much of the 1950s and 1960s, the Actors Studio was the most revered laboratory for stage actors in America. Its membership (one was not officially a “student” but a “member”) included a roster of the most compelling actors of the day: Marlon Brando, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Julie Harris, Martin Landau, Dennis Hopper, Patricia Neal, Paul Newman, Eli Wallach, Ben Gazzara, Rip Torn, Kim Stanley, Anne Bancroft, Shelley Winters, Sidney Poitier, Joanne Woodward—who all brought those techniques into film.
Strasberg, born in 1901 in Austria-Hungary and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, was a genius at analyzing an actor’s performance and a stern and often cold taskmaster. Short, bespectacled, and intense, he wasn’t, recalled Ellen Burstyn, “one for small talk.” For Marilyn, who grew up shunted from one foster family to another, not knowing who her father was, he became a beloved paternal figure, autocratic yet nurturing, and his acceptance of her as a private student bolstered her confidence and gave her the training to improve her acting, and turned her from a movie star (and punch line) into a true artist. But years later Kazan observed, “The more naïve and self-doubting the actors, the more total was Lee’s power over them. The more famous and the more successful these actors, the headier the taste of power for Lee. He found his perfect victim-devotee in Marilyn Monroe.”
Most important, this archive, far more deeply than the Inez Melson collection, made public in V.F. in October 2008, reveals a woman in search of herself, undergoing the harrowing experience of psychoanalysis for the first time, at the urging of Strasberg. The key players include Strasberg himself, her three psychiatrists—Dr. Margaret Hohenberg, Dr. Marianne Kris, and Dr. Ralph Greenson—and her third husband, Arthur Miller, whom she confesses to loving body and soul, but by whom she ultimately felt betrayed. These poems, musings, dreams, and correspondence also touch on her great fear of displeasing others, her chronic lateness, and three of the biggest traumas of her shortened life: one buried in her past, and two that took place a few years after she began studying with Strasberg. But they also reveal her growth both as an artist and a woman as she manages to cope with memories and disappointments that threatened to overwhelm her.
In a five-and-a-half-page typed document, Marilyn looked back on her early marriage to James Dougherty, an intelligent, attractive man five years her senior. They married on June 19, 1942, when she was just 16, and in this document she describes her feelings of loneliness and insecurity in that hastily agreed-to union, which was less of a love match than a way to keep Marilyn—then Norma Jeane Baker—out of the orphanage when her caretakers at the time, Grace and Erwin “Doc” Goddard, moved away from California. (There has also been speculation that Grace wanted to remove Norma Jeane from her husband’s too appreciative eye.)
Marilyn was not technically orphaned, as her mother, Gladys Monroe Baker, outlived her famous daughter, but because Gladys was a schizophrenic who spent years in and out of psychiatric hospitals, Marilyn was virtually abandoned, raised by various foster families and by Grace Goddard, a close friend of her mother’s. There were nearly two years when Marilyn was parked in an orphanage. Dougherty liked the idea of rescuing the shy, pretty girl, who left high school to marry him. Not surprisingly, the union failed, and they divorced on September 13, 1946.

“My relationship with him was basically insecure from the first night I spent alone with him,” she wrote in this long, undated, somewhat rambling memoir of that marriage, probably written by hand after undergoing analysis and later typed by her personal assistant, May Reis; the archivists suggest it was written when Norma Jeane was 17 and still married to Dougherty, but the emphasis on self-analysis seems to place it later in her life. It’s an intriguing document, peppered with misspellings, weaving the past with the present, at times reliving scenes from the marriage and her jealousy of Dougherty, at times stepping back and analyzing her emotional state of mind. She wrote,

I was greatly attracted to him as one of the [“only” is crossed out] few young men I had no sexual repulsion for besides which it gave me a false sense of security to feel that he was endowed with more overwelming qualities which I did not possess—on paper it all begins to sound terribly logical but the secret midnight meetings the fugetive glance stolen in others company the sharing of the ocean, moon & stars and air aloneness made it a romantic adventure which a young, rather shy girl who didn’t always give that impression because of her desire to belong & develope can thrive on—I had always felt a need to live up to that expectation of my elders.

Her memory of that marriage revolves around her fear that Dougherty preferred a former girlfriend, probably Doris Ingram, a Santa Barbara beauty queen, which triggered Marilyn’s sense of unworthiness and vulnerability to men:

Finding myself ofhandedly stood up snubbed my first feeling was not of anger—but the numb pain of rejection & hurt at the destruction of some sort of edealistic image of true love.
My first impulse then was one of complete subjection humiliation, alonement to the male counterpart. (all this thought & writting has made my hands tremble …

She then wonders if this exercise in memory and self-analysis is in fact good for her, writing:

For someone like me its wrong to go through thorough self analisis—I do it enough in thought generalities enough.
Its not to much fun to know yourself to well or think you do—everyone needs a little conciet to carry them through & past the falls.

“Best Finest Surgeon—Strasberg to Cut Me Open”

Included in the archive are several black “Record” notebooks—the slim, narrow, leather-bound diaries then favored by writers. The earliest of these notebooks begins with the words “Alone!!!!!!! I am alone I am always alone no matter what” in a slender, cursive script that leans dangerously forward, as if about to fall off a cliff.
Marilyn apparently began recording her thoughts around 1951. Two years prior, broke and desperate, she had posed nude for photographer Tom Kelley, for a calendar series. After she signed a new contract with Fox, in December 1950, and the calendar photos surfaced, Marilyn deflected criticism by saying she had taken the job because “I was hungry.” The public forgave her. She possessed a quality that seemed to trigger rescue fantasies in men and women alike, even before the sad details of her fractured childhood were completely known. In part, Marilyn knew that to cast herself as an orphan stirred up pity and empathy.
By Christmas of 1954, she was living in New York City. She had already appeared in Niagara and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, where she perfected her signature character, the vulnerable, “dumb,” sensual blonde, and, in How to Marry a Millionaire, with brilliant success. After that, Monroe’s fame was such that she supplanted in popularity the ultimate World War II pinup girl, Betty Grable, who shortly left Fox and bequeathed the largest dressing room on the lot to Marilyn. She had married Joe DiMaggio in January of that year, entertained troops in Korea, and filmed The Seven Year Itch. But the movie’s famous billboard displeased the puritanical “Yankee Clipper,” and the two filed for divorce in October, just nine months after marrying.
Encouraged by Strasberg, Marilyn began seeing Dr. Margaret Hohenberg as often as five times a week, first at Marilyn’s rooms at the Gladstone Hotel, then at Dr. Hohenberg’s office, at 155 East 93rd Street. The psychiatrist, an acquaintance of Strasberg’s, was a Brünnhilde type, a 57-year-old Hungarian immigrant complete with tightly wound braids and a Valkyrian bosom. Strasberg strongly believed that Marilyn needed to open up her unconscious and root through her troubled childhood, all in the service of her art. Between her sessions with Strasberg and with Dr. Hohenberg, she began recording some of those raked-up memories, including a devastating incident of sexual abuse. Described around 1955, in an Italian notebook whose pages are lined and numbered in green, this memory fully emerges, with the humiliating aftermath of being punished by her great-aunt Ida Martin, a strict, evangelical Christian paid by Grace Goddard to look after Norma Jeane for several months from 1937 to 1938. (Could this have been the sense-memory exercise that left her weeping in Strasberg’s acting class?) Marilyn wrote,

Ida—I have still
been obeying her—
it’s not only harmful
for me to do so
but unrealality because
life starts from Now

And later:

working (doing my tasks that I
have set for myself)
On the stage—I will
not be punished for it
or be whipped
or be threatened
or not be loved
or sent to hell to burn with bad people
feeling that I am also bad.
or be afraid of my [genitals] being
or ashamed
exposed known and seen—
so what
or ashamed of my
sensitive feelings—

In April of 1955, Marilyn moved from the Gladstone to a three-room suite on the 27th floor of the Waldorf-Astoria, where she began writing down some of her memories and dreams on the hotel’s handsome Art Deco stationery. In a kind of stream-of-consciousness prose poem, she recounts a nightmare in which Strasberg is operating on her, with Dr. Hohenberg assisting:

Best finest surgeon—Strasberg
to cut me open which I don’t mind since Dr. H
has prepared me—given me anaesthetic
and has also diagnosed the case and
agrees with what has to be done—
an operation—to bring myself back to
life and to cure me of this terrible dis-ease
whatever the hell it is—

The most terrifying part of the dream is what her surgeons find when they open her up:

and there is absolutely nothing there—
Strasberg is
deeply disappointed but more even—
academically amazed
that he had made such a mistake. He
thought there was going
to be so much—more than he had ever
dreamed possible …
instead there was absolutely nothing—
devoid of
every human living feeling thing—
the only thing
that came out was so finely cut sawdust—like out of a raggedy ann doll—and the sawdust
spills
all over the floor & table and Dr. H is
puzzled
because suddenly she realizes that this is a
new type case. The patient … existing
of complete emptiness
Strasberg’s dreams & hopes for theater
are fallen.
Dr. H’s dreams and hopes for a permanent
psychiatric cure
is given up—Arthur is disappointed—
let down +

One of her greatest fears—disappointing those she cares about—is manifest here. The Arthur she refers to is, of course, Arthur Miller. She had met him years earlier in Hollywood, through Kazan.
Marilyn was re-introduced to the acclaimed playwright at the producer Charles Feldman’s home. Feldman had produced The Seven Year Itch, a huge success, and Marilyn had returned to Hollywood in February of 1956 to begin work on Bus Stop, directed by Josh Logan. She was instantly smitten by the Pulitzer Prize—winning author of All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and A View from the Bridge, who was still married to his first wife, Mary Slattery, at the time. Miller possessed those traits she most admired: intellectual and artistic achievement, high seriousness. They wed in a civil ceremony on June 29, 1956, Marilyn having converted to Judaism. Two days later, Lee Strasberg acted as her father, giving the bride away in an intimate Jewish wedding.
At first, she was deliriously happy, moving back to New York with her new husband to take up residence in her dazzlingly white apartment at 2 Sutton Place, to which she had moved after leaving the Waldorf-Astoria, and then on to 444 East 57th Street, in an apartment with a book-lined living room, complete with fireplace and piano. In the Italian, green, engraved diary, she wrote,

I am so concerned
about protecting Arthur
I love him—and he is the
only person—human being I have
ever known that I could love not only
as a man to which I am attracted to
practically
out of my senses about—but he [is] the only
person … that I trust as
muchas myself—because when I do trust my-
self (about certain things) I do fully

Marilyn writes of her early sexual abuse: “I will not be punished for it or be whipped or be threatened or not be loved or sent to hell to burn.”

They were probably happiest in the summer of 1957, spent in a rented house in Amagansett, on Long Island, where they swam and took long walks on the beach. She looks especially radiant in photographs from this era, when she happily entered into Miller’s world—for example, attending a luncheon given by the novelist Carson McCullers for the writer Isak Dinesen. Marilyn was gay and witty in this company, easily holding her own—her vitality and innocence reminded Dinesen of a wild lion cub. She became friends with writer Truman Capote and met some of her literary heroes, such as poet Carl Sandburg and novelist Saul Bellow, with whom she dined at the Ambassador Hotel on the occasion of the Chicago premiere of Some Like It Hot. Bellow was bowled over by her.
Several photographs taken of Marilyn earlier in her life—the ones she especially liked—show her reading. Eve Arnold photographed her for Esquire magazine in a playground in Amagansett reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. Alfred Eisenstaedt photographed her, for Life, at home, dressed in white slacks and a black top, curled up on her sofa, reading, in front of a shelf of books—her personal library, which would grow to 400 volumes. In another photograph, she’s on a pulled-out sofa bed reading the poetry of Heinrich Heine.
If some photographers thought it was funny to pose the world’s most famously voluptuous “dumb blonde” with a book—James Joyce! Heinrich Heine!—it wasn’t a joke to her. In these newly discovered diary entries and poems, Marilyn reveals a young woman for whom writing and poetry were lifelines, the ways and means to discover who she was and to sort through her often tumultuous emotional life. And books were a refuge and a companion for Marilyn during her bouts of insomnia.
In one of the handful of sweet and affecting poems included in this archive, Marilyn, still in the first flush of her love for Miller and imagining what he might have been like as a young boy, wrote a poem about him:

my love sleeps besides me—
in the faint light—I see his manly jaw
give way—and the mouth of his
boyhood returns
with a softness softer
its sensitiveness trembling
in stillness
his eyes must have look out
wonderously from the cave of the little
boy—when the things he did not understand—
he forgot

The poem then turns dark, a premonition, perhaps, of how the marriage would end:

but will he look like this when he is dead
oh unbearable fact inevitable
yet sooner would I rather his love die
than/or him?

“Ah Peace I Need You—Even a Peaceful Monster”

But after she and Miller traveled to England for four months for the filming of The Prince and the Showgirl, with Laurence Olivier, things began to sour. They moved into a magnificent manor called Parkside House, in Surrey, outside of London. On paper, it was an idyll: here she was producing a film directed by and starring one of the most respected actors of his generation, and living in a grand country house with the man she most loved. She couldn’t have felt more fulfilled and vindicated as an artist, until a chance discovery undermined her fragile confidence in herself and her trust in her husband. It was at Parkside House that Marilyn stumbled upon a diary entry of Miller’s in which he complained that he was “disappointed” in her, and sometimes embarrassed by her in front of his friends.
Marilyn was devastated. One of her greatest fears—that of disappointing those she loved—had come true. His betrayal confirmed what she’d “always been deeply terrified” of: “To really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really,” as she wrote in another “Record” journal entry.
After this discovery, Marilyn found it so difficult to work that she flew in Dr. Hohenberg from New York. She was having trouble sleeping, relying on barbiturates. On Parkside House stationery, she wrote one night after Miller had gone to bed:

on the screen of pitch blackness
comes/reappears the shapes of monsters
my most steadfast companions …
and the world is sleeping
ah peace I need you—even a
peaceful monster.

In the summer of 1957, the couple bought a country house in Roxbury, Connecticut, near where Miller had lived with his first wife. Any love that remained seemed to go out of the marriage. Nonetheless, she had accompanied her husband to Washington, D.C., in the spring and stood by his side as he faced down the House Un-American Activities Committee by refusing to name former Communist Party members. Many believe that Monroe’s popularity saved him from being destroyed by HUAC’s witch hunt, which blacklisted many show-business people and ruined their lives.
That winter Miller worked on adapting one of his short stories for the screen, “The Misfits,” while Marilyn grappled with her feelings of disappointment and loss:

Starting tomorrow I will take care of myself for that’s all I really have and as I see it now have ever had. Roxbury—I’ve tried to imagine spring all winter—it’s here and I still feel hopeless. I think I hate it here because there is no love here anymore…
In every spring the green [of the ancient maples] is too sharp—though the delicacy in their form is sweet and uncertain—it puts up a good struggle in the wind—trembling all the while… I think I am very lonely—my mind jumps. I see myself in the mirror now, brow furrowed—if I lean close I’ll see—what I don’t want to know—tension, sadness, disappointment, my [“blue” is crossed out] eyes dulled, cheeks flushed with capillaries that look like rivers on maps—hair lying like snakes. The mouth makes me the sadd[est], next to my dead eyes…
When one wants to stay alone as my love (Arthur) indicates the other must stay apart.

In 1958, Marilyn moved back to Los Angeles to begin work in Some Like It Hot, which—despite her chronic lateness and other difficulties on the set—would turn out to be her greatest and most successful comedy. She began recording her musings and poems in a red spiral Livewire notebook, poems that took a dark turn. Here’s one such fragment, written under the ironic heading “After one year of analysis”:

Help help
Help
I feel life coming closer
when all I want
Is to die.
Scream—
You began and ended in air
but where was the middle?

Marilyn had left Dr. Hohenberg in the spring of 1957, after she’d fired Milton Greene from her production company. (Greene had also been a patient of Dr. Hohenberg’s.) She began analysis with a new psychiatrist, Dr. Marianne Kris, a Viennese woman who was approved by Strasberg. Marilyn would remain Dr. Kris’s patient until 1961, and she continued to write down memories and fragments of self-analysis to show to her new psychotherapist. One such note was written two days after the 10th birthday of Arthur Miller’s daughter Jane, from his first marriage. Marilyn had grown close to Jane and her brother Bobby. Perhaps thinking about her stepdaughter triggered this brief memory of her mother, whose confinement in a mental hospital led Marilyn to fear that she too would end up institutionalized:

“I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really.”

For Kris
Sept. 9
—Remember, somehow, how—
Mother always tried to
get me to “go out” as
though she felt I
were too unadventurous.
She wanted me even
to show a cruelty
toward woman. This
in my teens. In return,
I showed her that I
was faithful to her.

In 1960, Marilyn remained in Hollywood to star in Let’s Make Love, with French heartthrob Yves Montand. Feeling shut out of her husband’s affections and esteem, she had an affair with her co-star, causing something of a feeding frenzy in the press. On the recommendation of Dr. Kris, she started analysis in Los Angeles with Dr. Ralph Greenson, a prominent psychiatrist and strict Freudian analyst who treated many celebrities, among them Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and pianist Oscar Levant. Just as she had with the Strasbergs, Marilyn became a kind of surrogate daughter to Greenson, and he often took her into his home as part of an unorthodox form of therapy—or, perhaps, because he too had become infatuated with her. He saw her every day, sometimes in sessions that lasted five hours. The treatment, often called adoption therapy, is very much discredited today.

Miller completed his screenplay for The Misfits, with the central role of a wounded young woman, who falls in love with a much older man, based, not surprisingly, on Marilyn. In July of 1960, filming began in the Nevada desert, under John Huston’s direction, with Marilyn, Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, and Eli Wallach in key roles. Miller was on location, watching as his wife began to unravel in the blistering heat. On the set he met and fell in love with a photographic archivist on the film, Inge Morath, who would become his third wife. On November 11, 1960, Marilyn and Arthur Miller’s separation was announced to the press.
Three months later, back in New York, emotionally exhausted and under Dr. Kris’s care, Marilyn was committed to Payne Whitney’s psychiatric ward. What was supposed to have been a prescribed rest cure for the overwrought and insomniac actress turned out to be the most harrowing three days of her life.
Kris had driven Marilyn to the sprawling, white-brick New York Hospital—Weill Cornell Medical Center, overlooking the East River at 68th Street. Swathed in a fur coat and using the name Faye Miller, she signed the papers to admit herself, but she quickly found she was being escorted not to a place where she could rest but to a padded room in a locked psychiatric ward. The more she sobbed and begged to be let out, banging on the steel doors, the more the psychiatric staff believed she was indeed psychotic. She was threatened with a straitjacket, and her clothes and purse were taken from her. She was given a forced bath and put into a hospital gown.
On March 1 and 2, 1961, Marilyn wrote an extraordinary, six-page letter to Dr. Greenson vividly describing her ordeal: “There was no empathy at Payne-Whitney—it had a very bad effect—they asked me after putting me in a ‘cell’ (I mean cement blocks and all) for very disturbed depressed patients (except I felt I was in some kind of prison for a crime I hadn’t committed. The inhumanity there I found archaic … everything was under lock and key … the doors have windows so patients can be visible all the time, also, the violence and markings still remain on the walls from former patients.)”

“Peter He Might Harm Me, Poison Me”

A psychiatrist came in and gave her a physical exam, “including examining the breast for lumps.” She objected, telling him that she’d had a complete physical less than a month before, but that didn’t deter him. After being unable to make a phone call, she felt imprisoned, and so she turned to her actor’s training to find a way out: “I got the idea from a movie I made once called ‘Don’t Bother to Knock,’ ” she wrote to Greenson—an early film in which she had played a disturbed teenage babysitter.

I picked up a light-weight chair and slammed it … against the glass intentionally. It took a lot of banging to get even a small piece of glass—so I went over with the glass concealed in my hand and sat quietly on the bed waiting for them to come in. They did, and I said to them “if you are going to treat me like a nut I’ll act like a nut.”

She threatened to harm herself with the glass if they didn’t let her out, but cutting herself was “the furthest thing from my mind at that moment since you know Dr. Greenson I’m an actress and would never intentionally mark or mar myself, I’m just that vain. Remember when I tried to do away with myself I did it very carefully with ten seconal and ten tuonal and swallowed them with relief (that’s how I felt at the time.)”
When she refused to cooperate with the staff, “two hefty men and two hefty women” picked her up by all fours and carried her in the elevator to the seventh floor of the hospital. (“I must say that at least they had the decency to carry me face down.… I just wept quietly all the way there,” she wrote.)
She was ordered to take another bath—her second since arriving—and then the head administrator came in to question her. “He told me I was a very, very sick girl and had been a very, very sick girl for many years.”
Dr. Kris, who had promised to see her the day after her confinement, failed to show up, and neither Lee Strasberg nor his wife, Paula, to whom she finally managed to write, could get her released, as they were not family. It was Joe DiMaggio who rescued her, swooping in against the objections of the doctors and nurses and removing her from the ward. (He and Marilyn had had something of a reconciliation that Christmas, when DiMaggio sent her “a forest-full of poinsettias.”)
It should be noted that this is one of the few letters that have already seen the light of day. It was quoted almost in its entirety in Donald Spoto’s Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, published in 1993. Spoto says he got it from the estate of May Reis—Marilyn’s personal assistant from the 1950s until her death—who had typed the letter and kept a copy. Nonetheless, it is fascinating to be able to read the facsimile of this long-sought-after document and to see some of the elements left out of Spoto’s book, such as an intriguing postscript that reads:

Someone when I mentioned his name you used to frown with your moustache and look up at the ceiling. Guess who? He has been (secretly) a very tender friend. I know you won’t believe this but you must trust me with my instincts. It was sort of a fling on the wing. I had never done that before but now I have—but he is very unselfish in bed.
From Yves [Montand] I have heard nothing—but I don’t mind since I have such a strong, tender, wonderful memory.
I am almost weeping.

In November 1961, Marilyn met John F. Kennedy at the Santa Monica home of actor Peter Lawford, the president’s brother-in-law. The following year, in February, she bought her first home, in fashionable Brentwood. She began filming her last movie, Something’s Got to Give, directed by George Cukor, in April of 1962. The now famous outtakes from the unfinished film—Marilyn rising naked and un-shy from a swimming pool—show her fit and radiant, at the top of her game. Her chronic lateness and absences from the set, however—something even Strasberg couldn’t cure her of—caused her to be fired from the picture, which was never completed. Four months later, on August 5, 1962, she would be found dead from a drug overdose in her Brentwood home, an apparent suicide.
Even with the revelations and unexpected pleasures of this soon-to-be-published archive, the deep mystery of her death remains. For those who believe that Marilyn’s death was indeed a suicide, there are many indications of her emotional fragility and a description of a past suicide attempt. “Oh Paula,” she wrote in an undated note to Paula Strasberg, “I wish I knew why I am so anguished. I think maybe I’m crazy like all the other members of my family were, when I was sick I was sure I was. I’m so glad you are with me here!”
For those who believe she died of an accidental overdose, mixing prescribed barbiturates with alcohol, the archive contains evidence of her optimism, her feeling that she has come to rely on herself and will solve her problems through work and her capable, businesslike plans for the future.

And for conspiracy theorists who have always suspected foul play, there is an intriguing note to the effect that Marilyn might have distrusted and even feared J.F.K.’s brother-in-law Peter Lawford, who was the last person to speak to her on the phone. In the handsome, green, engraved Italian diary, probably dating to around 1956, she had appended this fearful note to a short list of people she loved and trusted:

the feeling of violence I’ve had lately
about being afraid
of Peter he might
harm me,
poison me, etc.
why—strange look in his eyes—strange
behavior
in fact now I think I know
why he’s been here so long
because I have a need to
be frighten[ed]—and nothing really
in my personal relationships
(and dealings) lately
have been frightening me—except
for him—I felt very uneasy at different
times with him—the real reason
I was afraid of him—is because I believe
him to be homosexual—not in the
way I love & respect and admire [Jack]
who I feel feels I have talent
and wouldn’t be jealous
of me because I wouldn’t
really want to
be me

whereas Peter wants
to be a woman—and
would like to be me—I think

Marilyn and Lawford, the British actor and bon vivant, had first met in Hollywood in the 1950s. “Jack” is probably Jack Cole, the dancer-choreographer who befriended and coached Marilyn on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and There’s No Business Like Show Business. (She would not meet “Jack” Kennedy until five years later.)
If this archive doesn’t quite solve the enigma of Marilyn Monroe’s death, it does go deeper than we have ever been into the mystery of her life. As Lee Strasberg noted in his eloquent eulogy, “In her eyes and mine, her career was just beginning. The dream of her talent, which she had nurtured as a child, was not a mirage.”

FROM THE ARCHIVE

For these related stories, visit VF.COM/ARCHIVE

Discovery of Marilyn’s secret papers (Sam Kashner, October 2008)

Marilyn and acting teacher Lee Strasberg (Patricia Bosworth, June 2003)

Arthur Miller on anti-Semitism (October 2001)

Arthur Miller’s forgotten son (Suzanna Andrews, September 2007)

Interview with Miller (James Kaplan, November 1991)

Documents excerpted from Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters, by Marilyn Monroe, edited by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment, to be published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, L.L.C. (U.S.), HarperCollins (Canada and U.K.); © 2010 by LSAS International, Inc.

The Writing on the Wall

Poring over the previously unseen diaries of Marilyn Monroe means searching for hidden meaning, even in her penmanship: in the world of handwriting science, fat, loopy t’s and squat, cursive d’s can signify a whole host of mental demons. VF.com spoke with an expert in the science, who analyzed Monroe’s words without knowing they were hers. A graphological investigation.

By Jaime Lalinde

In the November issue, Vanity Fair published a previously unseen archive of Marilyn Monroe’s private writings. With narrative by contributing editor Sam Kashner, these notebooks cover the most tumultuous years—from around 1951 to 1961—of the young actress’s life. As Kashner points out, “[w]e have had Warhol’s Marilyn, Mailer’s Marilyn, Joyce Carol Oates’s fictionalized Marilyn, now finally we have Marilyn’s Marilyn.” Through the pages of Marilyn’s diaries, we see the whole arc of her tragic life: the transition from starlet to icon, her pursuit of true artistry beyond the “dumb blonde” she was pigeonholed as, and the troubled thoughts that followed her, from childhood, through three marriages, and, ultimately, to her final days. It is clear that the experience of writing was cathartic for her, providing a momentary grasp on the whirlwind of emotions that accompanied her life.
In the interests of science, VF.com had a professional graphologist (handwriting expert), Sheila Kurtz, examine a few of the documents found in the archive. And in the interests of good science, we declined to tell her whom she was analyzing—which did not prevent her from guessing that it was either Lindsay Lohan or Lady Gaga, the subjects of our last two covers.
This entry is from the first black “Record” notebook, which Marilyn kept around 1951, the year she would film Love Nest—a line from the script of which she jotted down on page 146. Not yet the star she would grow to be, Marilyn was finally beginning to appear in the credits of her onscreen roles.

Handwriting Sample One

Enlarge letter.

page 146

Pardon me
are you the janitors wife
page 147
caught a Greyhound
Bus from Monterey to Salinas. On the
Bus I was the person
woman with about
sixty Italian fishermen
and I’ve never met
sixty such charming gentlemen—they
were wonderful. Some
company was sending them
downstate where their boats
and (they hoped) fish were
waiting for them. Some
could hardly speak english
not only do I love Greeks
[illegible] I love Italians.
they’re warm, lusty and friendly
as hell—I’d love to go to
Italy someday.

Handwriting Analysis

There is a texture and flow that indicates a person who moves quickly once she gets over the stalling and decides to get going.
Goals are set uniformly high, to the point the writer must stretch to accomplish them, and some are set ultra-high, where it will require every ounce of energy and intelligence the writer can muster to reach them.
Much confusion (signaled by the intermingling of the lines of writing from one line to the one above or below) is evident. The contemporary concept of multi-tasking is probably poisonous to this person, who would be far better off and more effective by methodically doing one task at a time and finishing it before going on to the next task.
There are upper loops that signal a mystical, philosophical turn of mind. There are also lower loops (in the y’s and g’s), some full, some semi-formed, that signal the writer has a creative imagination that may concoct good ideas but at times fails to bring them to fruition.
The m’s and n’s are rounded at the top and indicate a methodical way of thinking that puts one fact after another in order to come to a conclusion. There are also signs of modest analytical skills and the ability to research and to investigate.
There is a soupçon of sarcasm (pointed, daggerish t-bars) and signs that the writer takes things out on herself because the writer believes she is a perpetual screwup.
The loops of the lowercase e forms are muddy or closed, an indication that the writer restricts the uptake of new ideas unless they are driven with force and repetition into the psyche.
There are indications, too, in the blotched and scratched-out scribbles in the text that the writer may at times not know the actual truth from the fictions created in the writer’s own mind.
Under high magnification, there are small, fuzzy congestion points visible inside the ink lines of the writing itself. These blots usually indicate that a full physical checkup with a medical doctor may be wise.
The fat loops of the lowercase d’s and t’s signal that the writer is extremely sensitive to destructive criticism, perhaps because the writer truly cares what others think, sometimes without knowing exactly why she cares.

Meta-critic

“The contemporary concept of multi-tasking is probably poisonous to this person”:
Marilyn wrote in a later entry,
“learn—lines logically
—I can’t do more than
one thing at a time
make map tonight.”
“The writer may at times not know the actual truth from the fictions created in the writer’s own mind”: In a later entry, Marilyn wrote,
“I haven’t had Faith in Life
meaning Reality—what
ever it is
or happens
There is nothing to
hold on to—but reality
to realize the present
whatever it may be
—because that’s how it
is and it’s much better”
“A full physical checkup with a medical doctor may be wise”: Marilyn actually suffered from severe endometriosis (a condition in which uterine issue grows outside the uterus) her entire life, which may have contributed to her miscarriages and to an ectopic pregnancy later in life.
“The writer truly cares what others think. The writer believes she is a perpetual screwup”: Later in this notebook, Marilyn wrote,
“Fear of giving me the lines new
maybe I won’t be able to learn them
maybe I’ll make mistakes
people will think I’m no good or laugh or belittle me or think I can’t act.”
In another entry:
“I’m not very bright I guess.
No just dumb/if I had
Any brains I wouldn’t be
On crummy train with this
Crummy girl’s band”

Handwriting Sample Two

Enlarge letter.

page 2 life starts from now
trust in the
Ida—I have still
faith in the simple
Been obeying her—
it’s not only harmful
for me to do so
but unrealality [sic] because
in my work—I don’t
want to obey her any longer
and I can do my work as fully
as I wish since as a small child
intact first desire was to be an actress
I have
I will not be punished
And I spent years
Play acting until I had jobs
Or trying to hide it
enjoying myself as fully
as I wish or want to
I will be as sensitive as
I am—without being ashamed of it
page 5 trust in the
faith in the simple
objects and tasks—(sense
memory—outside and inside
objects)
I haven’t had Faith in Life
meaning Reality—what
ever it is
or happens
There is nothing to
hold on to—but reality
to realize the present
whatever it may be
—because that’s how it
is and it’s much better

In another of the black leather “Record” notebooks, which dates to around 1955, Marilyn writes this prose poem that begins with a mention of her aunt Ida Martin, a stern authoritarian with whom she lived for a year in 1938, during a particularly difficult period of her childhood.
In 1955, shortly after moving to New York City, Marilyn began taking acting lessons from famed teacher Lee Strasberg. At Strasberg’s school, the Actors Studio, regular psychotherapy was required of all of his pupils. As a student at the Actors Studio, one was taught to act by invoking strong memories that would mimic the emotions the actor was trying to convey. This piece of prose may have been an attempt by Marilyn to harness the traumas of her youth.

Handwriting Analysis

Confusion of ideas and the counter-productive consequences of putting off actions are the most significant indications in this handwriting. The t-bars (the horizontal line in the letter t) that stop short of crossing through the t-stem (the vertical line in the letter t) are the signs of procrastination.
The slant of the writing is slightly to the right, an indication that the writer keeps emotions pretty much under control (thinks first, then acts) while appearing essentially friendly and outgoing to others. However, there are also signals of excessive worry and a repression of unverbalized fears.
The extra-tall t-stems indicate personal pride taken to the extreme of vanity. At the time this sample was written, the writer may well have experienced apparent success but “on the inside” felt keenly the pains of confusion and insecurity and used self-conceit and self-admiration as a way to cover up the pain.
The writer’s goals are inconsistent—from apple-pie-in-the-sky to easily picked up off the ground. (The placement of the t-bars on the t-stem indicates where goals are set.)
The writer is defiant to people who give her/him orders.
There is an indication in the paleness and light-handedness of the writing that the writer may not wish to expend the energy required to bring a complicated dream into reality.

Meta-critic

“Counter-productive consequences of putting off actions”: Marilyn was famously known for being late to set. She was fired from the final film she worked on, Something’s Got to Give, in part because of her serial tardiness and frequent absence.
“There are also signals of excessive worry and a repression of unverbalized fears”: Marilyn explores a recurrent fear throughout these journals, her dread of disappointing the ones she loved. From her therapist, Dr. Hohenberg, to Strasberg, to Miller, Marilyn—apprehensive about letting people in—depended on the approval of those she kept close to her. Marilyn recorded a terrifying dream of hers:
“they cut me open—Strasberg with Hohenberg’s ass[istance]
and there is absolutely nothing there—Strasberg is
deeply disappointed but more even—academically amazed
that he had made such a mistake. He thought there was going
to be so much more—more than he had ever dreamed possible in
almost anyone but
instead there was absolutely nothing.”
“The extra-tall t-stems indicate personal pride taken to the extreme of vanity”: In a letter written to her therapist, Marilyn says,
“I would never intentionally mark or mar myself, I’m just that vain. Remember when I tried to do away with myself I did it very carefully with ten Seconol and ten Tuinol and swallowed them with relief (that’s how I felt at the time).”              http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2010/11/marilyn-monroe-handwriting-analysis-201011

Was Phenergan Marilyn Monroe’s Silent Killer, and Was She a Victim of Psychological Abuse, Medical Malpractice and Wrongful Death? New Possible Theories Regarding the Death of Marilyn Monroe

Phenergan prescription, written the day before Marilyn Monroe's death, to help her sleep. Credits: Courtesy of the Collection of Ted Stampfer.

• 
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Was Phenergan Marilyn Monroe’s Silent Killer, and Was She a Victim of Psychological Abuse, Medical Malpractice and Wrongful Death? New Possible Theories Regarding the Death of Marilyn Monroe

An Exclusive Story For TheAlternativePress.com By Jennifer Jean Miller

Thursday, August 2, 2012 • 12:00am            http://thealternativepress.com/articles/was-phenergan-marilyn-monroes-silent-killer-and

NEWTON, NJ – I consider the start of my career as a Marilyn Monroe researcher and scholar started at the tender age of nine, when I first read a book about her.
However, her iconic face was so familiar to me before I pored over my first sentence in Norman Mailer’s book.
Since then, my fascination and commitment to preserving and protecting her legacy has not waned.
I own a collection of original and unpublished photographs and negatives, as well as a few small items that once belonged to Marilyn Monroe.
My work has involved collaborations with others, including German collector, Ted Stampfer, who I have known for over five years.
Knowing my research for a book project I had planned about Marilyn, Ted had the foresight that some of his items might be helpful to me in my research.
One of his items brought my research to a screeching halt, and shifted my path.
When I was 17 years old, I vowed to write something to “set the record straight”, in terms of putting to rest the rumors of Marilyn’s life, and death.
I firmly believe what I have recently discovered, as well the research of another very significant person who was interviewed for this story, will accomplish that.
What is most amazing to me, however, is how everything has come full-circle in terms of my work with the life of Marilyn Monroe.
In it I have learned, serendipitous events occur, ones that we do not realize at the time, are a part of the fabric in which our own lives are woven.
My Introduction to Phenergan
It was at the beginning of 2012, the year marking the 50^th anniversary of Marilyn’s death, when I received an item of Ted Stampfer's.
I unwrapped a delicate slip of paper, gently cloaked in tissue paper, and my heart skipped a beat.
“What the heck is this?” I asked myself aloud, my mouth dropping open.
It turned out to be a prescription written for Marilyn Monroe the day before she died, on August 3, 1962.
I felt as if I held a small piece of history in the palm of my hand.
The circumstances surrounding Marilyn Monroe’s mysterious and untimely death have been a topic of conversation since her passing was reported to the Los Angeles Police Department on August 5, 1962. The theories and rumors have not stopped flying since.
Suicide? Probable suicide? Murder by the mob, and/or John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy have also been thrown out there.
Her death was coined a “probable suicide” following the autopsy.
I personally have always been suspicious of the cause of her death yet, have never bought into the sensationalist theories, especially having to do with the Kennedys. That focus was brought about by a random cast of characters such as the late Bob Slatzer, a journalist who helped to spin several books and numerous documentaries on the subject, falsely claiming to even have been married to Marilyn Monroe for three days.
The Slatzer story was nothing more than tabloid fodder; and he was one in a long line of individuals who claimed to have been closely affiliated with Marilyn Monroe, when he in fact never was.
I was always distrustful of those who I thought were the strongest suspects with the most to gain: members of the “cast” verified closest to her in those final days and hours; most especially her housekeeper Eunice Murray, her psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenson, and her internist Dr. Hyman Engelberg.
On the day Marilyn Monroe died, these three were present at the death scene in her bedroom when police arrived, and their behaviors were erratic, including first calling the police more than an hour after Dr. Engelberg pronounced her dead.
Others slated for monetary gain included Marilyn’s psychiatrist, Dr. Marianne Kris, and her acting coach Lee Strasberg, both named in her will.
Lee Strasberg was a specified residuary beneficiary of the estate of Marilyn Monroe per her last will, executed in January 1961.
Her will in itself is questionable most especially, because of research I have discovered, which points to it possibly not having been executed on the date it was supposedly executed on.
I am not the first person to question the validity of Marilyn Monroe’s will.
Marilyn was scheduled for an appointment to draw up a new will, which was set to take place the week following her death in August 1962.
Marilyn Monroe’s secretary Inez Melson for one, believed circumstances regarding her will were shady, as well as Marilyn’s own half-sister, Berniece Miracle, who discussed this in her book, “My Sister Marilyn”.
Another very controversial player in the whole production, yet someone who never met Marilyn Monroe, is Anna Strasberg, the second wife of acting coach Lee Strasberg, who is also his widow (he died in 1982).
The right of publicity for Marilyn Monroe has been challenged in court, with judges ruling that it died with her in 1962. And in the eyes of many, including mine, Anna Strasberg hijacked Marilyn Monroe’s name, in spite of court orders, and has continued to pocket millions of dollars on her lifetime work. Click here to read an article on the topic from The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel.
When Marilyn Monroe died, her financial records showed she was in monetary crisis, facing several lawsuits, and literally cash poor.
How then, could Marilyn’s legacy have reaped millions of dollars annually posthumously, considering the economic state she was in?
Eunice Murray, Dr. Ralph Greenson, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, Lee and Paula Strasberg, Dr. Marianne Kris, the Anna Freud Centre, and also Anna Strasberg have all had something fiscally to gain from Marilyn Monroe’s death, based on several technicalities.
To them, she has become a platinum blonde commodity, worth more dead than alive.
I once challenged Dr. Greenson’s great niece in an online forum, after she asked why the controversy between her uncle and Marilyn Monroe was not put to rest.
“Why is he still-why are WE still constantly being berated? He's dead, she's dead. People still won't leave this alone!” Greenson’s great-niece exclaimed.
“People won't leave this alone because we care about Marilyn and want to know what happened to her,” I wrote back in reply. “Thanks to the lack of honesty and integrity in part to your great uncle, Eunice Murray and Dr. Engelberg on 8/5/62 we will never completely know the answers. Sorry, that's why we won't leave it alone.”
Prescription number 20857 was for Phenergan (known by its generic name of Promethazine), 25 milligrams, and 25 tablets, signed off by Hyman Engelberg, MD, Marilyn Monroe’s internist. He pronounced Marilyn Monroe dead in her home at around 3:50am on August 5, 1962, in Dr. Greenson’s and Eunice Murray’s presence, then called the police nearly an hour later to alert them she had “committed suicide”.
I was now holding prescription number 20857 in my hand, and felt as if this living document was speaking to me about the death of Marilyn Monroe.
It is very well known that on the day Marilyn Monroe was found dead, an empty bottle of Nembutal, also known as Pentobarbital, was found on her nightstand. Nembutal has always been to blame for her death.
The Nembutal prescription (number 20588) was filled, along with Phenergan, on August 3, 1962 at the Vincente Pharmacy, for 25 pills.
Books about Marilyn Monroe have documented Phenergan too, yet always noted it as an “anti-histamine”.
What immediately set the bells and whistles off in my head about Marilyn Monroe’s Phenergan prescription, however was one word noted on the prescription for its purpose: “sleep”.
To date, I have found no research where Phenergan has been considered as a factor in her death, as an investigative journalist I strongly believe Phenergan precipitated the death of Marilyn Monroe, and went so undetected as it did.
Having experiences already in writing articles about drug interactions in the celebrity realm (click here to read one of these articles), handling this slip of paper triggered something in me, and I immediately went to work researching it.
Yet, Phenergan is also a sedative, mild anesthetic, and anti-emetic (anti-nausea) drug. The U.S. National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institute of Health, posts a warning about this drug at the top of its webpage (click here to view), especially for children, due to its effect on respiration. Phenergan can cause breathing to slow or stop, and can cause death. It also warns of side effects for all ages, especially if already on sleeping pills.
My concern once I learned of Phenergan was the sedative effect. Marilyn was already on a sedative, Nembutal, a barbiturate depressing her central nervous system.
Her body previously developed a strong tolerance to Nembutal though, as well as Chloral Hydrate, another power sedative and hypnotic medication found in her autopsy report, and she was not acclimated to Phenergan.
Since she had not developed a tolerance to Phenergan, could it have been the one that tipped the scale in the direction of eternal slumber for Marilyn Monroe?
I spent many late nights researching, analyzing and dissecting this drug, in combination with the others. My preliminary research uncovered when combined with Nembutal, the two should be monitored closely, with a significant interaction, and tendency to increase sedation. Add that in with the Chloral Hydrate, then three drug interactions are found with similar effects.
Documentation of the drugs found on Marilyn Monroe’s nightstand showed one Phenergan pill was missing from the bottle at the time of her death, meaning she had ingested one after it was prescribed, and before she actually died a day later.
 I planned to explore the Phenergan possibility further.
However, little did I realize about 3,000 miles away, a parallel path was being explored about the life and death of Marilyn Monroe that went hand-in-hand with what I was working on, and would eventually intersect on the same avenue as mine.

Meeting The Marilyn Monroe Family
An important element, and person, was about to walk into the picture, who would further influence my course of research.
I was on a Facebook thread on a friend’s page, and saw a comment from a person who went by the identity of “Marilyn Monroe Family”.
“Who is that?” I asked myself.
I learned of a webpage that read, “Marilyn Monroe Family”, and was skeptical. I had seen others pretend they were relatives of Marilyn Monroe in my past, and challenged them.
Their webpage motto read, "We're not related to Anna Strasberg, Anna Freud, or Authentic Brands Group....We're just related to Marilyn Monroe..."
I immediately conducted my due diligence, and discovered the owner of the Marilyn Monroe Family Facebook Page, and website was an individual named Jason Kennedy (not related to JFK and RFK). Being an obsessive genealogist, and locating his family tree online, I discovered his bloodlines checked out on the Hogan side of the family, with his great-grandfather (William Marion Hogan) related to Marilyn Monroe’s grandmother (Della Mae Hogan) as siblings.
Jason Kennedy is Marilyn Monroe’s second cousin once removed.
Jason sent me a friend request after I posted my comments in reply to his, and we began an offline discussion about his cousin.
I soon learned he was on a similar quest for the truth as I was.
Marilyn Monroe Fans, and others have attacked Jason for posts he has written about Marilyn Monroe online, asking why it appears to be a sudden interest from his family 50 years after her death.
Jason himself was born several years following his cousin’s death, and, did not know his exact lineage to her until one year ago.
His investigation began innocently to learn more about his famous relative, and like me, he soon uncovered something more sinister behind the scenes.
Although Marilyn Monroe had family, her doctors, psychologists, and acting coaches isolated her from them, Jason said.
“Members of the Hogan Family, who lived in the Los Angeles area, had attempted to make contact with Marilyn Monroe after she was famous, and their efforts to connect with her were blocked,” Jason told me.
Jason’s grandmother spent time with Marilyn (who he often refers to by her given name of “Norma” in conversation), when the two were young.
“The ‘Surgeon Story’ is the smoking gun,” Jason wrote to me in our early correspondences.
I had no idea what the “Surgeon Story” was, and I was soon to learn. And learn how it was connected to what I was working on; and that in Jason Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe’s cousin, I had a parallel research partner.

“Best Finest Surgeon…Bring Me To Life..."
Jason sent me a message one evening.
“Can you please click on this special link, and check my research please?” he asked.
Although Marilyn Monroe’s relative, he was still learning the facts about his famous cousin. He was aware of my knowledge base, and asked for my opinion on what he had found.
I cautiously opened up what seemed like a secret passageway on the Marilyn Monroe Family webpage.
“How can you see into my eyes like open doors?” I heard the hauntingly resonant voice of Amy Lee of Evanescence sing in the song, “Bring Me To Life” as the page launched.
“Leading you down into my core where I’ve become so numb,” I heard it continue, and then saw a video of Marilyn Monroe appear. She was dressed in black, with her arms folded, and looking sadly into the camera lens, with the pleading words “Help Me” splattered above her head in blood-red lettering.
“Without a soul, my spirit’s sleeping somewhere cold,” flashed across in red in accompaniment with Amy Lee’s song. “Until you find it there and lead it back home.”
I began to read words across the webpage that were penned by Marilyn Monroe’s handwriting in 1955 on Waldorf-Astoria Stationery, a piece that ended up in the book, “Fragments”.
“Best finest surgeon-Strassberg (sic),” she wrote.
My eyes widened, and I began blinking rapidly as I read. I was confused at first, and then a sickening pit formed in my stomach. I covered my mouth with my hand, as I continued to read in horror.
“to (sic) cut me open which I don’t mind…”
Marilyn next referred to her psychiatrist, Dr. Margaret Hohenberg. She was under Hohenberg’s care when she moved to New York in 1955. Dr. Hohenberg was treating Marilyn Monroe and Milton Greene, her then-business partner, simultaneously. She was the first to prescribe the heavy sedatives to Marilyn, including Nembutal.
“Dr. H has prepared me – given me anesthetic and has also dyanosed (sic) the case and agrees with what has to be done –,” I continued to read.
“an (sic) operation – to bring myself back to life,” I read, which echoed eerily similar to the Amy Lee lyrics and song title.
“and (sic) to cure me of this terrible dis-ease (sic) what ever (sic) the hell it is -,” Marilyn wrote.
By this time, tears were streaming down my face, and I began shaking my head from side to side.
Marilyn Monroe’s pain was strong, and deeply evident from her testimony.
“What the hell did they do to her?” I asked Jason in reply via email.
I continued to read Marilyn’s writings about then-husband Arthur Miller, who was waiting to hear news about her operation’s success, about her mention of her friends Hedda and Norman [Rosten] (who were also beneficiaries in her will, and Norman Rosten strangely corresponded after Marilyn’s death with her California psychologist, Dr. Greenson), and Milton Greene, who she wrote passed the time listening to music and taking photos of “great paintings”.
“Strassberg (sic) cuts me open after Dr. H gives me Anisithea (sic) and trys (sic) in a medical way to comfort me – everything in the room is white infact (sic) I can’t even see anyone just white objects -,” Marilyn writes on the second page.
She continues to chronicle how Lee Strasberg cuts into her, and nothing is inside of her, only finely cut sawdust spills all over the floor, and table, as if it has fallen out of a Raggedy Ann Doll.
“Dr. H is pusseled (sic) because sudenly (sic) she realizes that this is a new type of case –,” Marilyn wrote. “The patient (puple (sic) or student – I started to write) existing of complete emptyness (sic). Strassbergs (sic) dreams & hopes for the theater are fallen. Dr. H’s – “ “ a permant (sic) phyicatricic (sic) cure is given up – Arthur – is disapointed (sic) – let down &.”

“Surgeon Story” Dissected
I sat there puzzled, stunned, quiet, and dismayed by what I had just read, uncertain how to digest it, and knowing something did not smell right.
“When I found the ‘Surgeon Story’, I knew I was done,” Jason told me during one of our first phone interviews, after having first corresponded by email and instant messages sporadically, and then regularly on the subject.
Online publications have referred to the “Surgeon Story” as a dream or nightmare. Even a musician, Annie Clark, was inspired to write a song with the lyrics, "Best, finest surgeon/Come cut me open”, because she believed Marilyn wrote the words due to her reverence of Lee Strasberg during her studies with him.
Jason, on the other hand, likened it to a very real time in the life of Marilyn Monroe, and her narrative of the experience, after being subject to mind-control techniques and drugs at the hands of Lee Strasberg and Dr. Margaret Hohenberg, when she underwent private sessions with the duo in 1955 to help release blocks in her acting techniques.
Their methodology consisted of having Marilyn Monroe delve into painful childhood memories, they told her, to make her into a great actress.
According to Jason’s research, the pair convinced Marilyn this was all a part of “helping” her. He said she was confused from the start as she documented the “Surgeon Story” details, correcting her own details of the story from “pupil” or “student”, to coining herself the “patient”.
"It was a mental operation," Jason said. "She wasn't physically cut, but mentally cut open."
He said it was used to break her down and change her behavior.
“This had nothing to do with acting,” Jason continued. “It was pure and simple extortion using mind control techniques. Also, ‘mind-control drugs’ were only one aspect of the process of mind-control. Sensory deprivation, dissociative anesthetic drugs, and psychic driving are part of an overall process of mind-control.”
Lee Strasberg often referred to himself as doctor, including in his 1965 book, "Strasberg At The Actor's Studio: Tape Recorded Sessions".
In later years in fact, after Marilyn Monroe’s services were discontinued with Dr. Hohenberg, she underwent psychotherapy with Dr. Marianne Kris, whose office was in the same building where the Strasberg Family resided.
Dr. Marianne Kris eventually wrongly incarcerated Marilyn Monroe in New York’s Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in solitary confinement in 1961, just after Marilyn Monroe’s last will and testament was executed. She was later released and transferred to another facility to rest and recuperate from her traumatic experience at Payne Whitney, after Joe DiMaggio, her ex-husband, stepped up to the plate to rescue her.
Jason described the “Surgeon Story” as a “1955 eye-witness account of criminal coercive financial extortion utilizing Sensory Deprivation (White Torture), and dissociative anesthetic drugs, that not only enhance the effects of Sensory Deprivation, but also to restrict movement while applying psychic driving techniques.”
As part of it her “treatment” Marilyn Monroe, according to the research uncovered by Jason, endured sessions with Lee Strasberg and Dr. Hohenberg to coerce her to turn over her personal funds, to help financially support Lee Strasberg’s theater, and the Anna Freud Centre.
Dr. Hohenberg and Dr. Kris were both Freudian doctors taking direct orders on psychiatric treatment of Marilyn Monroe from Dr. Anna Freud (as well as Marilyn Monroe having also met directly with Dr. Freud while she stayed in London).
Lee Strasberg’s legacy and theater, and the Anna Freud Centre have each financially benefitted from Marilyn Monroe’s will, now with Anna Strasberg at the helm, guiding the marketing end of the estate, and financially profiting off of a woman, Marilyn Monroe, who she never met.

Phenergan’s Tie to Sensory Deprivation and Other Mind Control Methodologies
Long before Anna Strasberg came into the picture however, several major players had a hold on Marilyn Monroe’s life from 1955 through her death in 1962: Lee and Paula Strasberg, Dr. Margaret Hohenberg, Arthur Miller, Milton Greene, Hedda and Norma Rosten, Dr. Marianne Kris, Eunice Murray, Dr. Ralph Greenson, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, and Dr. Anna Freud.
This cast of characters attempted to influence Marilyn Monroe, taking advantage of her pocketbook, her schedule, and her life, while lacing her up with mind-altering drugs.
Those who were genuinely concerned about her and attempted to reach her including Joe DiMaggio, her half-sister Berniece Miracle, and even Jason Kennedy’s family who knew her at that time, were shut out.
Marilyn Monroe was told to forget about her family, leave them behind, and change her name (she legally changed it to Marilyn Monroe in 1956 after years of using this name professionally).
In the 1950’s, the United States Government was funding and promoting mind-control experiments, and utilizing mind-altering drugs, Sensory Deprivation, and Psychic Driving techniques.
“The ‘Surgeon Story’ documents these techniques exactly,” Jason said.
In her account, Marilyn refers to the room, as well as all objects in the room, as being the color white. She also refers to being anesthetized, and the subliminal messages she received, Jason said, which pointed back to the attempts of those who controlled her life and destiny to sign over funds and control to them.
Many of the drugs found on Marilyn’s nightstand upon her death, or in her system, were used in mind-control experiments, such as Nembutal (13 mg percent found in her liver), and Chloral Hydrate (8 mg percent found in her blood), as well as Phenergan.
These drugs were used in “Truth Drug” experiments and also “sleep cocktails”. Drugs mixed together in cocktails included Seconal, Vemoral, Thorazine, Nembutal, and Phenergan.
The experiments with these prescription medications implemented “depatterning” with the drug or “sleep therapy”, combined with electro-shock therapy, and “psychic driving” or, messages repeated via tape recordings.
Nembutal, and Phenergan, were all found in Marilyn Monroe’s home after she died (she was prescribed Seconal previously, including the month before her death), as well as prescriptions for other sedatives, anti-anxiety medications, stimulants, and more.
Phenergan, which was prescribed for Marilyn Monroe on August 3, 1962, did not show up during the autopsy, and was not tested for.

A Pharmacist’s Perspective
In delving into the pharmacological questions, I consulted with a pharmacist for further advice about Phenergan, Nembutal, and Chloral Hydrate.
One of the pharmacists at Newton Pharmacy, who requested not to be named in this article, did comment on the three drugs in major question in this article.
The pharmacist said in this day and age, Phenergan is used mostly as an anti-nausea medication, for airsickness or seasickness.
“You don’t see it much for sedation,” the pharmacist commented.
The representative from Newton Pharmacy did note Phenergan presents a potential risk of stopping the heart, though less in adults, it has a black box warning for children, meaning it can cause life-threatening adverse effects.
The pharmacist agreed Phenergan, also known by the name Promethazine, could possibly, “send someone over the edge, especially if mixed with alcohol”.
“I wouldn’t rule it out,” the pharmacist said, and indicated while on Chloral Hydrate or barbiturates there could be what is known as an “additive effect”, meaning there is an increased risk of respiratory depression.
“All new drugs to a patient, if used for a short-term, might be more of a risk,” the pharmacist continued, noting if a person is not acclimated to a particular drug, it could cause issues for a patient ingesting it.
The pharmacist could not comment on Nembutal (Pentobarbital), also not commonly used now, except for animal sedation and euthanasia, as well as physician-assisted suicide, and some cases of capital punishment.
“It’s not widely used anymore,” said the pharmacist about Chloral Hydrate. “It’s a sleeping medication, it’s very severe."
Chloral Hydrate has a depressant effect, and it does put a person at risk of respiratory depression.
A modern-day victim of Chloral Hydrate (mixed with other drugs) was Anna Nicole Smith, who developed a tolerance to it.
Other known celebrities who succumbed to sleep drugs, and anesthetics were Michael Jackson, and Heath Ledger, who, like Marilyn Monroe was prescribed an anti-histamine for sleep.
“In this day and age, you have to be your own advocate,” the pharmacist concluded, about a patient’s role in their own care.
Patients on one hand, need to have an open and honest relationship with their doctors about the medications they are on.
On the other hand, doctors, the pharmacist said, really need to trust their patients, and must counsel the patients prior to prescribing medications, to alert them of the risks, and monitor their blood pressure, especially if prescribing narcotic medications.

A Dialogue About The Crime Scene With a Police Chief
On August 5, 1962 at approximately 4:35am, the Los Angeles Police Department received a phone call that Marilyn Monroe had died as a result of suicide.
As Marilyn Monroe’s body was wheeled to the morgue, Eunice Murray, Marilyn Monroe’s housekeeper, busily walked around her property, did laundry, spoke cheerfully to reporters and photographers, and ushered in various parties to the home.
Many have questioned her demeanor, as well as the conduct of the two doctors at the scene.
And also questioned how thorough the police investigation was into Marilyn Monroe’s death.
“Los Angeles back then and now has an excellent reputation,” said the Town of Newton Police Chief, Michael Richards, who had been a seasoned detective with the town’s department prior to becoming chief. “These agencies are at the cutting edge of doing things the right way.”
To the department’s disadvantage in 1962, as well as all police departments, Chief Richards said there were technological limitations, which modern-day police departments have access to now.
“One of the nice things is the improvement in technology, which gives closure to families [of the victims],” Chief Richards said.
Chief Richards discussed the disparity that exists between the police work involving the celebrity culture in the Los Angeles area of the country, versus any other town in the United States.
“There’s ‘our’ normal, and there’s ‘their’ normal,” he said. “If you’re a cop out there, you shouldn’t explain things away. If you’re fearful and unsafe don’t ignore that. If something is out of place, keep looking into it until something makes sense.”
When dealing with the famous, Chief Richards said it could hamper an investigation.
“This was a case where too many maybe had hands in this, and it probably made the investigation difficult,” he said.
Chief Richards shed some light on basic investigation techniques, and the importance of collecting information, verifying all facts, and interviewing witnesses minimally three to four times.

Conclusion To This Investigation
Based on evidence the writer and interviewer of this story, Jennifer Jean Miller, and interviewee Jason Kennedy, have discovered and come to their own conclusions in the death of Marilyn Monroe. They are:
Marilyn Monroe’s death was not suicide, or brought about by members of the mob or John or Robert Kennedy;
Marilyn Monroe’s death was a result of years of psychological abuse and control by those who had a hold in her life through the use of heavy sedatives;
These drugs were used to manipulate her into making certain decisions with her last will and testament (and prior wills). When she became discontent about the result of her last will, and planned to rewrite it (the week after she died), Miller and Kennedy believe the individuals mentioned in the story, who were around at the time of her death (and now also deceased), medicated her in the right way to precipitate her death;
The conclusion of the research shows Phenergan, which was not tested for, could have likely been the drug, which pushed Marilyn Monroe over the edge, and stopped her heart. It was prescribed for sleep a day prior to her death, she took one, and her body was not acclimated to it as it was to the other drugs;
The bottle of Nembutal (Pentobarbital), found on Marilyn Monroe’s nightstand was ingested over a period of time, and had already metastasized into her liver, which is where the major concentration was found during the autopsy. It had already set in and was not final blow in her death, though it contributed;
Phenergan was Marilyn Monroe’s “silent killer”, and pushed her over the edge, though it went undetected at the time of her autopsy, because it was not tested for;
She was a victim of psychological abuse, medical malpractice and wrongful death, with her doctors overprescribing a battery of medications, which counteracted each other and caused harm to her;
Marilyn Monroe documented the psychological abuse in the “Surgeon Story”, which she began to endure starting in 1955, when those who took charge of her life and finances ended up “dissecting” her personality and soul in such a way it eventually broke her down and led to her death;
Marilyn Monroe was under the influence of mind-altering drugs, administered to her by Lee Strasberg and Dr. Margaret Hohenberg, when she wrote the “Surgeon Story”. Not only is this based on her written testimony, it is also due to other factors, including the severe misspellings, and random thoughts jotted along with the story, as she crafted it, and;
Those who were responsible for the death of Marilyn Monroe were never prosecuted, and continued to profit off of her legacy until their own deaths. Today, her estate, which is managed by an outside agency and those who never knew Marilyn Monroe, continues to manage it in spite of court rulings, and Jennifer Jean Miller and Jason Kennedy advocate this should once again be challenged and re-evaluated in front of a judge as it was in 2007.

Editor’s Note: During the course of the investigation of this story, Jennifer Jean Miller, author of this story and Managing Editor of The Alternative Press of Sussex County and also a seasoned genealogist, has ironically learned with the help of Jason Kennedy, of her own distant blood relation and marital lineage to Marilyn Monroe.
Though her familial ties are still being researched, in light of this discovery and because of her past and current work on the subject of Marilyn Monroe, she has since become one of the founders of a newly formed media and entertainment company, which will produce works and projects focusing on the positive legacy of Marilyn Monroe, and investigate and reveal further details about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Marilyn Monroe.
Miller also gives grateful acknowledgements to Marilyn Monroe Collector Ted Stampfer for his permission to use the image of his Phenergan prescription, and for his contributions to this story.
The opinions expressed herein are the writer's alone, and do not reflect the opinions of TheAlternativePress.com.

Who owns Marilyn’s things?

Marilyn bequeathed her possessions to her acting mentor Lee Strasberg.  

At the fourth item on Marilyn’s Last Will and Testament, clause (d) states: 

(d) I give and bequeath all of my personal effects and clothing to LEE STRASBERG, or if he should predecease me, then to my Exector hereinafter named, it being my desire that he distribute these, in his sole discretion, among my friends, colleagues and those to whom I am devoted. 

See Will 

The Beneficiaries were: 

1. Bernice Miracle: $10,000
2. Norman and Hedda Rosten: $5,000 for the education of their daughter Patricia.
3. Xenia Chekhov: $2,500 a year
4. Gladys Baker: $5,000 a year (from $100,000 trust fund)
5. May Reis: $10,000 plus 25% of the balance (not to exceed $40,000)
6. Dr Marianne Kris: 25% of the balance (to be donated to the psychiatric institution of her choice)
7. Lee Strasberg: 50% of the balance (in addition to all of Marilyn’s personal effects and clothing)

As with all things ‘Marilyn’ there is no escaping controversy. 

After her death Marilyn’s Will was filed in New York Surrogate Court on 17^th August 1962 and in October that year the legality of the Will was first questioned.  

On 25^th October 1962, the Los Angeles Times reported that Marilyn Monroe’s Will was being contested by her long time business manager Inez Melson. Miss Melson, who was not a beneficiary of the Will claimed that Marilyn was under undue influence of either Lee Strasberg or Dr Marianne Kris at the time the Will was made. However, Judge S. Samuel DiFalco ruled against Melson’s accusations and admitted the Will into probate. 

The matter was not resolved with the judgement – further controversy raged – due to this and a reported lack of funds (although Marilyn’s Estate at this time was estimated at around $1 million) the first payment to a beneficiary wasn’t received until December 1971. 

Who were the people that inherited from Marilyn? 

1.      Bernice Miracle
Bernice was Marilyn’s half-sister and only known surviving sibling

2.    Norman & Hedda Rosten
Close friends of Marilyn and Arthur Miller  (Marilyn was introduced to them by the photographer Sam Shaw) Norman Rosten was a notable poet, novelist & playwright

3.   Xenia Chekhov
Was the wife of Michael Chekhov – actor, writer, director and acting coach. Marilyn was a student of Chekhov’s from around 1951 and held a deep respect the man and his work. Chekhov had died on September 30^th 1955.

4.   Gladys Baker
Marilyn’s mother, she out lived her famous daughter by 22 years when she died on March 11^th 1984 in Florida, USA.

5.    May Reis
May was Marilyn’s assistant and private secretary.

6.   Dr Marianne Kris
Marilyn’s New York Psychiatrist (see below)

7.    Lee Strasberg
Marilyn Monroe’s Mentor & tutor 

So why did Inez Melson feel Marilyn had been unduly influenced by Kris or Strasberg? 

Kris 

Marilyn had begun seeing Dr Kris in 1957 (see Influential People) and in 1961 Kris advised Marilyn that she should enter the Payne Whitney Hospital (Psychiatric Clinic) in New York for exhaustion. When Marilyn arrived she found herself locked in a ward against her will, which caused her to panic. Unable to get help from Kris or the Strasbergs, it was Joe DiMaggio that came to Marilyn’s rescue and freed her from the locked confines of the Payne Whitney.  

Feeling betrayed by her psychiatrist she immediately lost trust in Kris and this would seem to add weight to unsubstantiated claims that Marilyn was in fact going to change her Will before she died.  

Dr Kris allocated her inheritance to the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic London. 

Strasberg 

With the largest slice of inheritance from Marilyn’s Will Lee Strasberg benefited the most. He took the remainder of her Estate and probably most importantly, from both a financial and emotional/sentimental point of view – he gained from Marilyn’s possessions.  

Marilyn began associating with Lee and his wife Paula from around 1955, very quickly they became a colossal influence in Marilyn’s life, taking over almost every aspect of her very being (see Influential People)  

Many of Marilyn’s friends and colleagues watched this happen and felt very uncomfortable about it but were powerless to do anything about it. Whilst she was married to Arthur Miller, Miller had begun to voice these concerns to Marilyn.  

During the final year of her life there were signs that her faith in the Strasbergs’ was weakening and that she no longer wanted them to have the control. It has been said that she was in the process of dispensing with their services – this was seen as another indicator that Marilyn was intending to change her Will. 

Okay, what happened to Marilyn’s possessions that Strasberg inherited?   

Due to the controversy already discussed, it was several years before Strasberg received Marilyn’s possessions. On finally receiving Marilyn’s personal property, it was found that some of the boxes had suffered water damage whilst in storage. Lee Strasberg aired out the items, catalogued them and arranged for them to go into storage in a temperature controlled environment.  

With the exception of two letters, which he returned to their authors, during his lifetime Lee Strasberg never sold or gave away any of Marilyn’s personal effects – this totally contravened the instructions in Marilyn’s Will. It is clear that she did not intend for Lee Strasberg to keep her possessions, which included clothing, letters, documents, furniture, all her personal effects that she absolutely clearly stated, that she wanted distributed amongst her friends. 

On Lee Strasberg’s death in February 1982, his entire Estate, including Marilyn’s personal belongings, passed to a woman Marilyn Monroe had not even known! Lee Strasberg’s third wife, Anna Strasberg who was sole beneficiary of his Will. His second wife, Paula who was Marilyn’s acting coach had died on April 29^th, 1966. 

Initially, Anna Strasberg maintained that she held a policy of preserving Marilyn’s privacy and she refused any media access. However, she did donate a few of Marilyn’s items to be auctioned to benefit Aids’ and children’s charities and eventually authorised a display of one of Marilyn’s dresses at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  

Anna Strasberg employed CMG to handle Marilyn’s Estate and it is estimated that an annual income of well over $1 million dollars is generated each year from royalties, licensing and merchandising revenues.  

In 1999 Anna Strasberg, despite her maintaining that she wanted to preserve Marilyn’s privacy, commissioned Christies the Auctioneers to sell Marilyn possessions in the largest ever auction of its kind. http://www.lovingmarilyn.com/marilynthings.html