The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe
A Fictitious True Crime Bombshell Thriller
In late November, during an Internet search, I stumbled upon a hyperlink to an article entitled “Marilyn Monroe Was Treading Very Dangerous Waters Before Her Death According to Bombshell[1] New Probe.” The words new and probe piqued my curiosity. I clicked the hyperlink. Unfortunately, the website NationalEnquirer.com and the article materialized on my monitor. I am not a fan of tabloid and checkbook journalism or the sensationalism offered by the National Enquirer, and I do not own a subscription to the publisher’s scandal sheet. Even so, due to my curiosity, I read the article.
Written by Jack Robbins, the article announced that James Patterson, bestselling mystery writer, would soon publish a new true crime thriller that revisits the life and death of the Hollywood icon, Marilyn Monroe. I went immediately to Amazon and purchased the book, Kindle Edition. I paid nearly $14, including tax. Into my Kindle Cloud Library, on November the 30th, Amazon electronically deposited this new MM book, this new book that featured a new probe into MM’s life and death, a true crime thriller. What could a new probe, sixty-three years after the fact, possibly reveal?
Before I read James Patterson’s new thriller, I scanned the complete text for footnotes or endnotes. There are none. I don’t mean to imply that the absence of footnotes or endnotes, their absence from a book that has been advertised and sold as a real person’s life story, necessarily means the book is an inferior one, a bad biography. Still, I feared that the absence of supporting data or supplementary facts in the form of footnotes or endnotes would yield a suspicious and a flawed result. Still, I hoped to find a copious amount of source notes. Patterson did not provide any source notes, either. He only included an enumerative bibliography of sorts, remarkable because of its brevity. The author thanked the books that he had employed as sources. Why did he feel the need to thank those books? I found that slightly peculiar.
During my decade-long investigation of MM’s life and death, I realized early in my journey of reading and evaluating book after book written about her, that an author’s sources are a matter of paramount importance. In fact, the importance of credible and honest sources cannot be overstated. I am familiar with all the books listed in Patterson’s bibliography, and I have read several of those books more than once. Notably, Joyce Carol Oates’ book, Blonde, published twenty-five years ago in 2000, appeared first on Patterson’s list.
At the beginning of my journey into the realm of MM, I read about 75% of Oates’ ugly literary effort before dropping it into a trash can. Most certainly, Blonde is a troublesome source of factual and truthful information regarding MM’s life and death because the publication is literally a novel. On page n7 of Oates’ grotesque publication, the 2000 print version, the author declared that her literary effort regarding MM is a work of fiction and also noted that the characters portrayed in her apocryphal effort have some counterparts in the life and times of Marilyn Monroe; but the characterizations and incidents presented [in Blonde] are totally the products of the author’s imagination. Accordingly, Blonde should be read solely as a work of fiction, not as a biography of Marilyn Monroe. The preceding declaration also appears on page vi in the 2009 Kindle Edition within the section entitled “Copyright.” On page vii of the same Kindle Edition, Oates also noted: Biographical facts regarding Marilyn Monroe should be sought not in Blonde, which is not intended as a historical document, but in biographies of the subject.
On page iv of Patterson’s true crime thriller, the famous and bestselling mystery writer offered a declaration similar to the declarations offered by Oates: This book is a work of fiction, he declared, then added. In order to give a sense of the times, real events and names of real people and places appear in the book, but the characters and events in this book are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. I presume, giving his readers a sense of the times was far more important to Patterson than giving them a sense of the facts, the actual facts, possibly even some shadow of the truth. Well, at least I give Patterson modulated kudos for his stab at the elusive heart of honesty, although he intentionally missed the target. I began to question the value of proceeding.
In Patterson’s bibliography, he listed perhaps an equally or even more troubling source than Blonde, the get-RFK political pamphlet published by a Kennedy hater, Frank Capell, in 1964, The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe. Capell’s publication offered opinion and conjecture and innuendo along with cleverly worded insinuations romantically linking Robert Kennedy to MM and her death. Capell wrote: If Marilyn’s death were really murder dressed up to look like an accident or suicide who would have wanted her out of the way? (Capell 68). The RFK hater proclaimed that RFK was an aggressive, ambitious and already important man with designs on the biggest job of all, the US presidency; and Kennedy knew, of course, that a sexual and a marital scandal would damage his designs. Capell’s political diatribe did not present any tangible or verifiable evidence to support that Bobby Kennedy was even romantically involved with Marilyn, much less enmeshed in her death, her insinuated murder. Using Joyce Carol Oates, who, I truly believe, despises Marilyn Monroe, and Frank Capell, who I know despised Robert F. Kennedy, using Oates and Capell as sources was certainly a poor decision by James Patterson.
Continuing to read what appeared to be another worthless MM biography assumed the negative attributes of an exercise in futility: what would possibly be accomplished?
After several days of internal debate, I decided to trudge through Patterson’s creation, his true crime thriller, his novel, if only because he at least admitted that his book was fictitious. Patterson must have an odd sense of humor, however. Obviously, he is an author who can admit to creating a fictional narrative that he can also classify as true, a humorous oxymoron. Also, I find the title of the book to be somewhat goofy. If, as advertised, the narrative crafted by Patterson would be the story of MM’s life, why title the book to suggest such a limited probe thereof, limited to her last days? Besides, Donald H. Wolfe employed that title for his 1998 outrageous MM publication.
Structurally, Patterson’s true crime thriller is odd; at least, that is, to me it is odd, beginning with a Prologue that consists of four brief sections. “Prologue: Section One” opens the narrative on the morning of August the 5th and the discovery of MM’s body. Following the four-section Prologue are seventy chapters. Each chapter is unnamed except “Chapter 70,” which is awarded the title of “Epilogue.” The sections of the prologue and all the subsequent chapters are unusually brief, consisting on the average of three eBook pages. More than a few consume only one page, while a few extend to the length of five. The longest chapter in the book, “Chapter 42,” consumes seven pages. The Epilogue consumes two pages.
Either Patterson or his co-writer, Imogen Edwards-Jones, committed this opening passage to the contemporary equivalent of paper: Housekeeper Eunice Murray wakes suddenly, fear lodged in the pit of her stomach. She is worried, unsettled without knowing why. It could be the stifling heat […] (Patterson 4). Just a mere three sentences into our new true crime thriller, and we discover troublesome and nagging problems.
Mrs. Murray awoke twice that morning, first at approximately 12:00 AM and then again three hours later. The first time she awoke, she noticed a strip of light beneath MM’s closed bedroom door. Eunice stood at the door and gently called Marilyn’s name. Getting no response, the housekeeper returned to bed. At approximately 3:00 AM, she awoke a second time and noticed MM’s light was still burning, a fact that caused her to become concerned. Since Marilyn suffered from chronic insomnia and had difficulty falling asleep even under the most ideal of circumstances, the housekeeper knew, Marilyn could not have been asleep with the bedroom light still burning brightly. Mrs. Murray knocked; and then she pounded on the door. Marilyn still did not answer, not even after Mrs. Murray shouted her name a few times. Eventually, the housekeeper tried to enter Marilyn’s bedroom, but the door was locked. The housekeeper’s concern then became alarm; so she immediately called Dr. Greenson. The preceding events and times were clearly noted on the original LAPD Death Report.
The exact mechanism that alerted Eunice to a potential problem with her employer and caused the housekeeper to awake, she never actually revealed. In her memoir, she noted that she was, after all, a child of Pisces; and she alluded to her Piscean Sensibilities. Additionally, according to my research, the evening of August the 4th in 1962 was cooler than a normal August night in Southern California. According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the temperatures on August the 4th in Los Angeles were as follows: low 62°F, high 73°F, mean 66°F. The Weather Underground posted the following temperature data: low 59°F, high 74°F, mean 66°F. Clearly, Eunice Murray did not awake due to the stifling heat.
Of course, Sgt Jack Clemmons appeared in the “Prologue, Part 3,” identified as a homicide investigator with the Los Angeles Police Department (Patterson 13). Sgt Clemmons was not a homicide detective or investigator, a falsehood frequently repeated and clearly addressed in the LADA’s Summary Report, hereafter abbreviated SR, a report published following the threshold re-investigation of MM’s death in 1982. From that report:
Within his fifteen years of [police] service, his total investigative experience amounted to an eight-month assignment in the Accident Investigation Division and a three-and-one-half-month stint in the Administrative Vice Division. His other assignments were not investigation or detective assignments (SR 27).
Additionally, virtually all of Sgt Clemmons’ statements over the years, and he offered many, were actually just speculations or his personal opinions; and to paraphrase Anthony Summers, author of Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe, Sgt Clemmons personal opinions based on his observations that Sunday morning in August of 1962 were essentially worthless simply because he had no actual training or experience as an investigator or detective of any type (Summers 660). As the SR noted: Jack Clemmons’ personal conclusions do not appear to be predicated on experience or investigative expertise (SR 27). In truth, Sgt Robert Byron, an LAPD investigative detective, received the assignment to investigate MM’s death. Sgt Byron filed he original Death Report on August the 5th in 1962; however, the actual detective who investigated MM’s death does not appear in Patterson’s true crime novel.
I could continue with this type of dissection of every chapter in Patterson’s book. Honestly, I could continue with a dissection of the Prologue. For example, the Prologue contains a considerable amount of invented dialogue passing between Sgt Clemmons and the three persons present in MM’s hacienda that morning; did the authors interview the sergeant, Eunice Murray, Dr. Greenson and Dr. Engelberg? I doubt it: they have all been dead for decades. Additionally, in Part Two of the Prologue, the authors suggested that MM died while lying on her back, face up; and in Part Four of the Prologue, Guy and Don Hockett arrive to pick up MM’s body. Clearly, as noted in her autopsy report, the visible liver mortis or lividity proved that she died on her stomach; and even though the Hocketts did arrive during the early morning of August the 5th to pick-up MM’s corpse, according to Patterson, Don Hockett was so adversely effected by the sight of the deceased actress, that his father said: Get the gurney, son. I can deal with this. According to Patterson, as Don walked through the house, he walked past the housekeeper doing the washing […] and then went out into the front yard (Patterson 17). The myth that Mrs. Murray was operating a washer and dryer that morning, washing MM’s sheets, destroying vital evidence, began with Sgt Jack Clemmons in the mid-1980s. The sergeant was the only individual to ever report or comment on Eunice Murray’s domestic activities, meaning that his testimony was belated, undocumented and unsubstantiated; however, the most egregious and serious problem with the Eunice-Was-Washing-Marilyn’s-Sheets myth is this: MM used a service to do all of her laundry: she did not own a washer and dryer. Also, 12305 Fifth Helena Drive was not even equipped with washer connections or a dryer vent.
So where should I go from here? That is the Shakespearean question. I do not think there is any reason to continue with an evisceration of Patterson’s book. It is fictitious, an apocryph. James Patterson and his co-author, Imogen Edwards-Jones, at least admitted as much. And too, the book does not engage in crass sensationalism like Blonde, even though the narrative drifts on an undercurrent driven by MM’s sexuality; and too, all the motifs, all the bromides are in the text; and the usual suspects each make an appearance: Peter Lawford, the middle Kennedy brothers, Mickey Song at MSG when MM sang happy birthday to JFK, the ubiquitous Robert Slatzer and his creation, MM’s Little Red Diary, Sam Giancana, John Miner and his tapes, the renown liar Fred Otash and his mysterious notes on his mysterious tapes, etcetera, etcetera and so forth. John Kennedy appeared moderately early in “Chapter 43,” a chapter dedicated to MM’s time in England during the summer of 1956, immediately following her marriage to Arthur Miller. Patterson strongly suggested that MM, after Miller returned to the US briefly in late August, crept, skulked away from England and surreptitiously joined John Kennedy on a yacht in the Mediterranean, an event that most certainly never happened, a fact that the evidence and many reliable writings about those events clearly prove, prove to a mathematical certainty. According to Michelle Morgan’s 2022 publication, When Marilyn Met the Queen, Miller departed for the US on August the 26th. During his absence, MM continued to film The Prince and the Showgirl with Sir Laurence Olivier and Paula Strasberg. Gary Vitacco-Robles reported in ICON, Volume 2, that Miller left England on August the 30th to check on his ill daughter, Janie. Whether Miller departed from England on the 26th or the 30th matters not: on August the 26th, the yacht with John Kennedy aboard docked in Genoa, Italy. From there, the future president departed for the US. Clearly, John Kennedy was either en route to or already in Newport, Rhode Island, by the time Miller left England for his return to the US. MM never left England during Miller’s absence. She and Olivier continued to film their picture show and battle over their disparate acting methods and techniques.
Do I object to fiction disguised as biography even if the authors admit that their literary concoctions are apocryphal? Yes. I do. I object to books like Patterson’s The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe and Oates’[2] Blonde and Norman Mailer’s 1973 publication, Marilyn: A Biography, which the author ultimately admitted was primarily a factoidal contrivance. In an article written by Joe Pompeo that appeared on the website, HollywoodReporter.com, Pompeo noted that Patterson’s book contained imagined dialogue. But then, Patterson engaged in some relatively harmless deflection: I learned that from Norman Mailer, Patterson offered. I believe in it, as long as you’re being honest with the public. I suppose that is one way to rationalize dishonesty, following in the footfall of Norman Mailer. But then, Patterson, like Norman Mailer, did not disclose for his readers which passages of dialogue he had imagined.
It is unfortunate that authors feel a need to use Marilyn Monroe as the medium for their fictional séances. Why do they feel this need? Simple. Her name, especially when linked to the names John and Robert Kennedy, sells books. It’s all about money, is it not? But what I don’t understand about James Patterson is this: he is already inordinately wealthy, with a net worth estimated to be $800M. Does he actually need to use Marilyn Monroe’s abused and defamed corpse to earn a few more bucks? Besides, the promised new probe, referred to as a bombshell probe in several Internet articles, is not a bombshell, uncovers nothing even remotely new; and the authors do not present any evidence whatsoever, evidence that might prove MM was treading very dangerous waters that led to her murder. Even so, Patterson is already hawking his fictional true crime thriller like a carnival barker: the author believes that his book would be an interesting source for a miniseries. What is his rationale? That most people do not know much at all about MM and her tragic story. That assessment may be partially true, but Patterson’s fictitious book, or a television miniseries made therefrom, will not impact that unfortunate situation whatsoever. Then, too, I believe it is time to let Marilyn rest in peace.
(Don's site, from which this article is borrowed, is one of the best sites dealing with Marilyn Monroe. Click here https://marilynfromthe22ndrow.com/wp/)
______________
I despise the word bombshell due to its overuse, particularly as a descriptive for Marilyn Monroe or anything related to her.
In an article for TheTimes.com, published on 22 September 2022, Oates wrote: Before writing the book [Blonde] I was not interested in Marilyn Monroe. I was not interested in her in the same way that I am not particularly interested in Elizabeth Taylor. These were famous, glamorous movie stars to me when I was a child, and they were people in whom I took no interest at all. She entitled the article: “How I Tried to Crack the Mystery of Marilyn Monroe’s Death.” I can say unequivocally, that Joyce Carol Oates never tried to crack the mystery of MM’s death, if for no other reason than this fact: the movie star’s death is not mysterious.
