Read an excerpt from Chapter One . . .
DRAMA QUEEN
June 1, 2011
They say only the good die young and I guess it’s true because I’m still here. Today is my eighty fifth birthday. During these years I have lived three lives: Before Marilyn, Being Marilyn and After.
I created Marilyn Monroe and then men molded her: studios, agents, and husbands. Ever since the night I did not die, I have tried to leave her behind, but wherever I went, the creature followed. I tried to run. I tried changing my name, my country of residence, my hair color, body type, career and sexual preference. I went to college for coursework in Humanities and studied Russian Literature. But there was no escaping her. The character I created became my own personal monster and devoured me in the ‘50s, and even after she died I could no more be someone else than I could grow a penis, change my skin color, or stop being a movie star.
My so-called death scene is always described the same: My housekeeper, Eunice Murray, finds my wasted, naked body tangled in a sheet, wet from secretions better left unexplained. I am face down with one hand hanging over the telephone. This detail is discussed often; am I answering a call or making one and if I am calling, then whom?
But it did not happen that way. I cheated death. Eunice Murray administered an enema of chloral hydrate on the orders of my psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson. My psychiatrist wanted me dead because he could no longer contain me. Eunice Murray wanted me dead because I had fired her and this was her last day on the job. But they didn’t succeed, and the reported sightings of Marilyn Monroe still walking the earth are absolutely true. Because here’s what happened.
On the night of August 4, 1962, young Joey DiMaggio the third--that is the Yankee Clipper’s son -- on leave from Camp Pendleton where he served in the Marines -- arrived on the doorstep of Palm Drive, my home in Brentwood at 8PM. No sound announced his arrival; nothing in my world stirred. He was tall, like his father, but with a fuller face, so his nose was not quite so prominent. Probably the lamp over the doorbell cast a diligent spotlight over his jaw, creating a moody study in light and shadow, the kind of shot you might see in a noir film from the ‘40s. Joey was kinder than his father. He had a heart bigger than the new Yankee Stadium and he used to fill it with people not always the nicest kind. DiMaggio the father might have been the last American knight, but it was his son who saved my life.
Joey and I were close from the time he was ten, when Clipper Joe and I were courting the first time. We shared the same disease, which become evident in Joey by the time he was in his early teens. I can’t say he was like a child to me because that would demean the memory of his mother, Dorothy Olsen DiMaggio. I was a scandal to the DiMaggio family and this book is meant only to tell what really happened and to make amends where I can. So let’s say Joey was more like my nephew.
He had broken his engagement and wanted to talk. Joey had a key to every place I ever lived but I imagine before he let himself in that he stood for a few minutes at the doorway where the bougainvillea had lately blossomed in time for my birthday. Always around my birthday everywhere I make sure there is the sweet scent of hibiscus, bougainvillea, lilies and lilacs. I was a spring baby. No one could ever take that away from me.
My backyard was a perfumery because prior to my “death,” Joe D and I had planned to remarry on August 8, and I had arranged for a profusion of flowers and flowering shrubs to be planted around the garden. There were lilacs, bougainvillea, and hibiscus, of course, and yellow roses. I had overdone it really, but what didn’t I overdo? The colors and the fragrance gave me pleasure right up until the moment on that night in August when I lost consciousness and the third part of my life began: After Marilyn.
I suspect Joey debated whether or not to come in. The DiMaggios are a formal group, even today, a classic Italian family and good manners are inbred. But Joey was 20 years old and broken -hearted so he turned to me for comfort while I was dying in the bedroom from an overdose.
I was swimming around in a morbid, horrible darkness. What I remember is his khaki hat as he bent over me and laid his young man’s mouth over mine. “What are you doing?” I was struggling to say. It was a bad dream. It had to be, because here was my sweet Joey trying to kiss me, just like all of the men in Hollywood who had bought me then brought me down -- Zanuck, Wilder, Charlie Feldman, ARTHUR MILLER. And now Joey? No, please God, no. It must be that I was going stark raving mad. Just like my mother.
“Marilyn, breathe, please breathe.” I felt something inside me stir. I had died a couple of times before from a combination of Seconal, Nembutal, chloral hydrate and alcohol, so I knew about the lungs stopping and the brain not getting enough air.
“Marilyn?” The set had changed, and the actors. Now it was Deadpan Joe DiMaggio, the father, talking to me. I didn’t know where I was but there were lots of curtains, lights. In retrospect, of course, I know it as the Cedars Sinai emergency room. Somehow, yet again, I had managed not to die. The taste of charcoal informed me my stomach had been pumped. I didn’t remember attempting suicide so I figured it was probably a good thing that I hadn’t died. I was too stupefied to consider whether or not the overdose was accidental or attempted homicide.
Drugs and terror pulled me under the cover of unconsciousness again. My sleep was fitful. I was aware of movement. I felt something stir, or sensed something, and I tried to respond. Then my mind and body went dark.
Many days dragged by, some of them, thankfully, under the cover of unconsciousness. If you have never detoxed from barbiturates, then I will explain it simply as having your body serve as host to your own personal reptile and spider farm. Things crawled over me and under me and before my eyes. My nervous system felt like someone was playing screeching atonal tunes on it all night long. My ears rang and over the ringing there were voices. This was before the Beatles, the mass marketing of LSD, and peyote trips, so I had no frame of reference for what I was going through. I only knew that crazy people saw things; my mother heard voices and had been in a locked-down ward on and off much of the time that I could remember.
I could no longer imagine going on one more day with my life as I had been living it. I was finished. I did not know what that meant. I only knew I was lying on the floor of a room that seemed more like a bedroom than a hospital.
June 1, 2011
They say only the good die young and I guess it’s true because I’m still here. Today is my eighty fifth birthday. During these years I have lived three lives: Before Marilyn, Being Marilyn and After.
I created Marilyn Monroe and then men molded her: studios, agents, and husbands. Ever since the night I did not die, I have tried to leave her behind, but wherever I went, the creature followed. I tried to run. I tried changing my name, my country of residence, my hair color, body type, career and sexual preference. I went to college for coursework in Humanities and studied Russian Literature. But there was no escaping her. The character I created became my own personal monster and devoured me in the ‘50s, and even after she died I could no more be someone else than I could grow a penis, change my skin color, or stop being a movie star.
My so-called death scene is always described the same: My housekeeper, Eunice Murray, finds my wasted, naked body tangled in a sheet, wet from secretions better left unexplained. I am face down with one hand hanging over the telephone. This detail is discussed often; am I answering a call or making one and if I am calling, then whom?
But it did not happen that way. I cheated death. Eunice Murray administered an enema of chloral hydrate on the orders of my psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson. My psychiatrist wanted me dead because he could no longer contain me. Eunice Murray wanted me dead because I had fired her and this was her last day on the job. But they didn’t succeed, and the reported sightings of Marilyn Monroe still walking the earth are absolutely true. Because here’s what happened.
On the night of August 4, 1962, young Joey DiMaggio the third--that is the Yankee Clipper’s son -- on leave from Camp Pendleton where he served in the Marines -- arrived on the doorstep of Palm Drive, my home in Brentwood at 8PM. No sound announced his arrival; nothing in my world stirred. He was tall, like his father, but with a fuller face, so his nose was not quite so prominent. Probably the lamp over the doorbell cast a diligent spotlight over his jaw, creating a moody study in light and shadow, the kind of shot you might see in a noir film from the ‘40s. Joey was kinder than his father. He had a heart bigger than the new Yankee Stadium and he used to fill it with people not always the nicest kind. DiMaggio the father might have been the last American knight, but it was his son who saved my life.
Joey and I were close from the time he was ten, when Clipper Joe and I were courting the first time. We shared the same disease, which become evident in Joey by the time he was in his early teens. I can’t say he was like a child to me because that would demean the memory of his mother, Dorothy Olsen DiMaggio. I was a scandal to the DiMaggio family and this book is meant only to tell what really happened and to make amends where I can. So let’s say Joey was more like my nephew.
He had broken his engagement and wanted to talk. Joey had a key to every place I ever lived but I imagine before he let himself in that he stood for a few minutes at the doorway where the bougainvillea had lately blossomed in time for my birthday. Always around my birthday everywhere I make sure there is the sweet scent of hibiscus, bougainvillea, lilies and lilacs. I was a spring baby. No one could ever take that away from me.
My backyard was a perfumery because prior to my “death,” Joe D and I had planned to remarry on August 8, and I had arranged for a profusion of flowers and flowering shrubs to be planted around the garden. There were lilacs, bougainvillea, and hibiscus, of course, and yellow roses. I had overdone it really, but what didn’t I overdo? The colors and the fragrance gave me pleasure right up until the moment on that night in August when I lost consciousness and the third part of my life began: After Marilyn.
I suspect Joey debated whether or not to come in. The DiMaggios are a formal group, even today, a classic Italian family and good manners are inbred. But Joey was 20 years old and broken -hearted so he turned to me for comfort while I was dying in the bedroom from an overdose.
I was swimming around in a morbid, horrible darkness. What I remember is his khaki hat as he bent over me and laid his young man’s mouth over mine. “What are you doing?” I was struggling to say. It was a bad dream. It had to be, because here was my sweet Joey trying to kiss me, just like all of the men in Hollywood who had bought me then brought me down -- Zanuck, Wilder, Charlie Feldman, ARTHUR MILLER. And now Joey? No, please God, no. It must be that I was going stark raving mad. Just like my mother.
“Marilyn, breathe, please breathe.” I felt something inside me stir. I had died a couple of times before from a combination of Seconal, Nembutal, chloral hydrate and alcohol, so I knew about the lungs stopping and the brain not getting enough air.
“Marilyn?” The set had changed, and the actors. Now it was Deadpan Joe DiMaggio, the father, talking to me. I didn’t know where I was but there were lots of curtains, lights. In retrospect, of course, I know it as the Cedars Sinai emergency room. Somehow, yet again, I had managed not to die. The taste of charcoal informed me my stomach had been pumped. I didn’t remember attempting suicide so I figured it was probably a good thing that I hadn’t died. I was too stupefied to consider whether or not the overdose was accidental or attempted homicide.
Drugs and terror pulled me under the cover of unconsciousness again. My sleep was fitful. I was aware of movement. I felt something stir, or sensed something, and I tried to respond. Then my mind and body went dark.
Many days dragged by, some of them, thankfully, under the cover of unconsciousness. If you have never detoxed from barbiturates, then I will explain it simply as having your body serve as host to your own personal reptile and spider farm. Things crawled over me and under me and before my eyes. My nervous system felt like someone was playing screeching atonal tunes on it all night long. My ears rang and over the ringing there were voices. This was before the Beatles, the mass marketing of LSD, and peyote trips, so I had no frame of reference for what I was going through. I only knew that crazy people saw things; my mother heard voices and had been in a locked-down ward on and off much of the time that I could remember.
I could no longer imagine going on one more day with my life as I had been living it. I was finished. I did not know what that meant. I only knew I was lying on the floor of a room that seemed more like a bedroom than a hospital.
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