A Non-Conspiracist’s View of Marilyn’s Death

Marilyn Monroe was afflicted with a “divided and confused mind bordering on an hysteria.” As a result of that division and confusion, her behavior was often conflicted and contradictory. The mythology has flourished in the unusually fertile firmament of distrust and paranoia; and it has been continuously fertilized by a voyeuristic media and opportunistic individuals adept at manipulating the confusion caused by misinterpretation and misunderstanding, invariably grinding confusion into a dollar, literary or otherwise. Dr. Greenson ended up spending most of that Saturday with her. While the actress and her therapist talked in private, Pat Newcomb lounged by her host’s swimming pool under the Southern California sun. Their session ended between 6:45 and 7:00 PM. Ralph Roberts telephoned a second time to discuss the menu for their planned Sunday evening BBQ. Perhaps the reluctance to accept a probable suicide edict has something to do with who Marilyn Monroe was and what she represented to the millions of fans who adored her, adored her movies and her talent, adored her charm and her humor, adored her beauty. To them, she was a person, a woman, a goddess who had it all. They loved her and they sensed that she loved them. Those feelings about Marilyn persist today. Slatzer essentially cobbled together a book that was then sold to Pinnacle, who was eager to publish a story about Marilyn merely to capitalize on the success and the publicity generated by Norman Mailer's factoidal biography. The problem is this: Slatzer was unknown to all of Marilyn’s friends. It is quite possible that all of Marilyn’s friends did not know all of Marilyn’s friends; however, for everyone who was actually close to Marilyn, especially Joe DiMaggio, who stated that he never met Slatzer, to have missed Slatzer’s presence stretches a fellow’s credulity.

In his 2014 update of Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress, Revised and Updated, Carl Rollyson admitted the he “shied away from references to dubious sources such as Robert Slatzer, Ted Jordan, and Lena Pepitone. Reputable biographers like Lois Banner and Donald Spoto have exposed the unreliability of such books.” Slatzer claimed that he and Marilyn were together all day on the 3rd of October and they talked about marriage well into the small hours of the 4th. The problem with that assertion is this: on the 3rd of October in 1952, Marilyn attended a party in Hollywood thrown by Photoplay magazine during which she received an award, an event and an accolade not mentioned by Slatzer; and Slatzer’s alleged friend, former boxer, Noble Chissell, who testified that he witnessed the wedding in Tijuana, later recanted and admitted to both Donald Spoto and the photographer Joseph Jasgur that Slatzer paid him to lie. Additionally, Slatzer’s wife from 1954 until 1956, Kay Eicher, according to Donald Spoto, guffawed at the mention of a marriage between Marilyn Monroe and her former husband. Eicher confirmed for Spoto that Slatzer’s only encounter with the blonde movie star occurred at Niagara Falls while filming her Technicolor noir, when his photographs with her were taken, photographs that Slatzer used to deceive many people. But the final and definitive proof is what follows. Slatzer claimed that he and Marilyn arrived in Tijuana at approximately 11:30 AM on the 4th. Driving time from Los Angeles to Tijuana is approximately three hours, so to arrive at 11:30 AM, Slatzer and his soon to be bride had to leave Los Angeles by 8:30 AM, a time when probably most of the shops and clothing stores in Los Angeles had yet to open. 

While researching for his tome, Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, Donald Spoto uncovered proof of a shopping excursion by Marilyn and Natasha Lytess which occurred on the 4th of October in 1952. Marilyn wrote a check to JAX of Beverly Hills in the amount of $313. The check was dated October the 4th. Beneath her signature, she included her address at the time, 2393 Castilian Drive, the house in Hollywood Heights which she sub-leased along with Joe DiMaggio. Obviously Slatzer’s 'weekend wife' was not with him during that weekend. Slatzer parlayed a few photographs taken of him posing with her at the waterfalls into an amazing, fortuitously lucrative and virtually lifelong career. He was frequently accorded the status of expert and former spouse when he appeared as a guest on several television talk shows hosted by uninformed microphonists like Larry King, Geraldo Rivera and Phil Donahue. He invariably complained that Marilyn’s death was never properly investigated; he knew she did not commit suicide. Slatzer also contributed Marilyn’s Little Red Diary, her Red Book of Secrets, in which, according to him, she kept an accounting of the tiptop secrets revealed to her by John and Robert Kennedy. Slatzer’s memoir is demonstrably false, based on what is undeniably known about Marilyn’s real life. Those realities reduce Slatzer’s memoir generally, and his marriage claim specifically, to the level of a completely deceitful mendacity. During her tenure at UCLA, Marilyn's biographer Lois Banner worked with John Miner; and according to Banner, he admitted that he never interviewed Ralph Greenson, certainly a significant revelation. According to Banner, an unnamed source told Miner about the mysterious tapes. Were Miner's recollections a mere fabrication? Possibly. Also, Marilyn's sporadic journal entries (collected in the 2010 book, Fragments) contain no references to either Kennedy brother.  

Marilyn had become so famous and so powerful that omnipotent studio heads, Darryl Zanuck for instance, actually had feared her. But her worst adversary was always her mental illness. Marilyn had come to believe that Thorazine had been helpful in stabilizing her. It had begun to represent hope to her that she might be able to regain control of her often chaotic thought processes. However, Marilyn thought her magic was leaving her, but really it was just transitioning. Perhaps the only real question about her death is whether or not it was intentional. It’s been argued that Marilyn’s upcoming prospects were so promising, she couldn’t possibly have taken her own life. She supposedly had too much to live for. However, what was probably going on inside her mind might have had little correlation to those factors. When we consider her last moments on earth we need to focus on an unwell brain, not simply the enticing rewards of a movie star’s existence. Norma Jeane created and became a woman more fascinating than she believed possible. And in the face of her own failing mind, she battled to keep that creation alive—not for her, but for us. Indeed, Marilyn Monroe did exist. Even though the woman inside her was at times doubtful of that fact, we knew it better than she did. She spent so much of her energy, her own will, projecting an image of impossible beauty and ultimate joy. Yet, as the end neared, her experience of who she truly was drifted farther and farther from that ideal—until she found it impossible to pretend to be Marilyn anymore. —"A Non-Conspiracist’s View of Marilyn Monroe’s Death" (2018) by Donald R. McGovern