Finally we are being shown the most expected images of Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe. Months after we knew that the cuban actress was going to play the ambition blonde, the filming began. Ana de Armas is in charge of interpreting the ill-fated actress in the adaptation of Netflix’s acclaimed novel Blonde, written by Joyce Carol Oates and directed by Andrew Dominik. Filming of the film began in August, with Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale and Julianne Nicholson among the newly added cast members.
Ana de Armas, who has been photographed on the set of the shoot, she has a remarkable resemblance to Marilyn Monroe, a character that was already played in the film by Michelle Williams in My week with Marilyn, which earned him the Golden Globe for best actress, or by other actresses such as Kelli Garner or Theresa Russell in Insignificance (1985) directed by Nicholas Roeg. For this role, Ana de Armas had to channel Norma Jeane Mortenson and if the newly released images are anything to go by, she is going to truly embody the icon. Netflix has yet to announce a release date for “Blonde.” Source: www.thenational.ae
When best-selling author David Heymann's last book, Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love, came out, Kirkus Reviews said it was "a well-researched story". The popular Canadian magazine Maclean's praised Heymann's research, finding "his sources credible." The publisher, a subsidiary of media behemoth CBS, says Joe and Marilyn tells "the riveting true story" of the lusty, tempestuous and brief marriage between the Yankees slugger and the iconic actress. In May 2012, Heymann fell dead in the lobby of his New York City apartment building, but that presented no problem for his publisher, according to Emily Bestler, who edited his last four books. Bestler's mood changed when I told her I wanted to discuss numerous fabrications Newsweek had uncovered in Joe and Marilyn. She cut me off in mid-sentence, shouting that such questions were improper. She then declared that "this is getting ugly" and hung up. It's too bad CBS didn't want to hear more, because all the celebrity bios Heymann wrote for them—dealing with JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe—are riddled with errors and fabrications. An exhaustive cataloging of those mistakes would fill a new book. Heymann described a woman called Susan Sklover who worked as a White House masseuse while JFK was president. Heymann also describes President Kennedy's evaluation of Sklover as an "ordinary lover"—without any indication of how Heymann could have known this. Heymann wrote that Sklover's name was kept out of Secret Service logbooks, a variation of an assertion in his other books to explain his reliance on people for whom no records exist. Brown University, in an email, said it has no record of any student named Susan Sklover. An exhaustive search of public records turned up two women named Susan Sklover, who are aware of each other, but know no one else with that name. Both said they never spoke to Heymann or any researcher. Neither attended Brown, knew JFK Jr. or worked at the White House. The women were born in 1954 and 1960, which meant they were both children during the Kennedy administration. When a red flag is raised, publishers have an obligation to their readers to investigate. And when a sea of red flags floods their lobby, they need to start pulping the fiction. Source: www.newsweek.com
About the evolution of these "JFK scandal stories" over a number of years, people whose presence should have caused alarm bells to go off with intelligent observers are: Frank Capell, Robert Loomis, Ovid Demaris, Liz Smith, James Angleton, Timothy Leary, etc. These people who had agendas in mind when they got into this racket. Others, like Robert Slatzer or Ted Jordan, were just money grubbing hustlers. But the net effect is that by reinforcing each other, they became a business racket, a network creating its own echo chamber. A series of anti-Kennedy biographies began. That Marilyn Monroe's death was caused by her "involvement" with the Kennedys became a rather peculiar cottage industry. Egged on by advocates of Judith Exner (e.g. Liz Smith and Anthony Summers), this political and cultural time bomb landed in Seymour Hersh's and ABC's lap. When it blew up, all parties went into a damage control mode, pointing their fingers at each other. As we examine the sorry history of these industries, we shall see that there is plenty of blame (and shame) to be shared. The first anti-Kennedy book in this brood, although not quite a perfect fit into the genre, is The Search for JFK, by Joan and Clay Blair Jr.
The book appeared in 1976, right after Watergate and the Church Committee hearings. First of all, the authors apparently accept the Washington Post version of Watergate–i.e. that Nixon, and only Nixon, was responsible for that whole range of malfeasance and that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein got to the bottom of it. The Blairs spend much of their time delving into two areas of Kennedy's personal life: his health problems and his relationships with the opposite sex. Concerning the first, they chronicle many, if not all, of the myriad of unfortunate medical problems afflicting JFK. Previous to this book, the public did not know that Kennedy's back problem was congenital. Second, the book certifies that Kennedy was a victim of Addison's disease, which attacks the adrenal glands and makes them faulty in hormone secretion. The condition can be critical in fights against certain infections and times of physical stress. I exaggerate only slightly when I write that the Blairs treat this episode as if Kennedy was the first discovered victim of AIDS. They attempt to excuse the melodrama by saying that Kennedy and his circle disguised the condition by passing it off as an "adrenal insufficiency." Clearly, Kennedy wanted to hide a rare and misunderstood disease that he knew his political opponents would distort and exaggerate in order to destroy him, which is just what LBJ and John Connally attempted to do in 1960.
The second major area of focus is Kennedy's sex life. The authors reference to Judith Exner, Mary Meyer, and perhaps Marilyn Monroe. Kennedy seems to have been attractive to females. He was appreciative of their overtures. There seems to me to be nothing extraordinary about this. Here we have the handsome, tall, witty, charming son of a millionaire who is going places. If he did not react positively to all the attention heaped on him, I am sure his critics would begin to suggest a "certain latent homosexual syndrome." But what makes this (lengthy) aspect of the book interesting is that when the Blairs ask some of Kennedy's girlfriends what his "style" was (clearly looking for juicy sex details), the answer often is surprising. For instance, in an interview with Charlotte McDonnell, she talks about Kennedy in warm and friendly terms adding that there was "No sex or anything" in their year long relationship. Another Kennedy girlfriend, the very attractive Angela Greene had this to say: Q: Was he romantically pushy? A: I don't think so. I never found him physically aggressive, if that's what you mean. He was adorable and sweet. In another instance, years later, Kennedy was dating the beautiful Barbara Beckwith. She invited Kennedy up to her apartment after he had wined and dined her. There was champagne and low music on the radio. But then a news broadcast came on and JFK leaped up, ran to the radio, and turned up the volume to listen to it. Offended, Beckwith threw him out. The Blairs' book established some paradigms that would be followed in the anti-Kennedy genre. First, and probably foremost, is the influence of Kennedy's father in his career. In fact, Joe Kennedy's hovering presence over all his children is a prime motif of the book. The second theme that will be followed is the aforementioned female associations. The third repeating pattern the Blairs' established is the use of Kennedy's health problems as some kind of character barometer.
I must point out Davis' discussion of JFK's Vietnam policy. In his hands, Kennedy turns into a hawk on Vietnam. Davis writes that on July 17, 1963, Kennedy made "his last public utterance" on Vietnam, saying that the U.S. was going to stay there and win (p.374). But on September 2, 1963, in his interview with Walter Cronkite, Kennedy states that the war is the responsibility of "the people of Vietnam, against the Communists." In other words, they have to win the war, not Americans. Davis makes no mention of this. Davis similarly ignores NSAM 111 in which Kennedy refused to admit combat troops into the war, integral to any escalation plan, and NSAM 263, which ordered a withdrawal to be completed in 1965. This last was published in the New York Times (11/16/63), so Davis could have easily found it had he been looking. In light of this selective presentation of the record on Vietnam, plus the acrobatic contortions performed on the Church Committee report, one has to wonder about Davis' intent in doing the book. I question his assertion that when he began the book he "did not have a clear idea where it would lead." So I was not surprised that in addition to expanding Exner's story, he uncritically accepted the allegations about Mary Meyer and Marilyn Monroe. It is interesting in this regard to note that Davis devotes many pages to JFK's assassination. He writes that Kennedy died at the "hands of Lee Harvey Oswald and possible co-conspirators". Going even further, he can state that: It would be a misstatement to assert that Deputy Attorney General Katzenbach and the members of the Warren Commission consciously sought to cover up evidence pertaining to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. As the declassified record now shows (Vol. 4 #6 "Gerald Ford: Accessory after the Fact") this is just plain wrong. Davis then tries to insinuate any cover-up was brought on by either a backfiring of the Castro plots (Davis p. 454) or JFK's dalliance with Exner (p. 498). As wrongheaded and against the declassified record as this seems, this argument still has adherents, e. g. Martin Waldron and Tom Hartman. They refine it into meaning that the Kennedys had some kind of secret plan to invade Cuba in the offing at the time of the assassination. This ignores the Church Committee report, which shows that by 1963, Kennedy had lost faith in aggression and was working toward accommodation with Castro.
In their approach to JFK, Collier and Horowitz take up where the Blairs left off. In fact, they play up the playboy angle even more strongly than the Blairs. Both authors have advanced degrees from Berkeley. Both say they had done some solid academic work in their Ramparts days. Yet neither has any qualms about questioning the Judith Exner or Mary Meyer stories. After contemplating these stories, I thought to myself that JFK was never this open to his girlfriends. Perhaps maybe with Inga Arvad, who he wanted to marry, but very few others. So I flipped back to see who the source was. The footnote read "Authors' interview with Priscilla McMillan." I then remembered that, by this time, Priscilla had been classified by the CIA as a "witting collaborator." I also recalled that years later, Priscilla changed her "Platonic" relationship with JFK for the National Enquirer. She was now saying that young Jack Kennedy had actually made a pass at her.
A Question of Character, But Not Kennedy's: Which brings us to Thomas Reeves. By the nineties, the negative literature on the Kennedys had multiplied so much that it was possible just to put it all together and make a compendium of it. In 1991, Reeves did just that with his book A Question of Character. It obediently follows the path paved by its noted predecessors. In fact, many of his footnotes are from Davis, Collier and Horowitz. Although Reeves is another Ph. D., he never questions the faulty methodology the previous authors used. On the contrary, by ignoring the primary sources, he can actually state that JFK authorized the Castro plots, and that John H Davis is authoritative on the issue. Predictably, he completely buys into Exner's story and, like Liz Smith, tries to portray her as a victim of the Kennedy protecting "liberal media" (p. 424). He even endorses the Kitty Kelley 1988 People update of Exner's story, finding no inconsistencies between that and the 1977 installment. Any scholar who compromises this much, must have an axe to grind. So how ideological is Reeves? He tries to imply that Lasky's book on JFK, published in 1963, was banned shortly after Kennedy's death by the "liberal media". What he doesn't say is that it was reprinted in 1966. Reeves' method here is to basically combine the Davis book with the Collier-Horowitz book. From the former Reeves repeats the notion that Kennedy was a Cold Warrior not very different from Eisenhower or Nixon. Like Davis, Reeves performs gymnastics with the Cuba and Vietnam record in order to proffer this notion. In fact, Reeves is so intent on pommeling JFK that, at times, he reverses field and actually uses Bruce Miroff's Pragmatic Illusions, a leftist critique of the New Frontier, as a source. As Jim Garrison once noted, the more one scratches at these Minutemen types, the more their intelligence connections appear. James Spada quotes TV director Paul Wurtzel asking Peter Lawford "Did Oswald kill Kennedy or was it higher up?," Lawford (who was usually pretty cautious about the Kennedys) said, "It was higher up." Frank Capell had worked for the government in World War II, but was convicted on charges of eliciting bribes from contractors. After the war, in the Red Scare era, Capell began publishing a Red baiting newsletter, The Herald of Freedom.
It was this experience that put him in a good position to pen his murderous smear of Bobby Kennedy. For as Donald Spoto reveals in his brilliant book of Marilyn Monroe, one of the people who relentlessly pushed Capell's fabricated smear was fellow FBI asset, Hoover crony, and Hollywood Red baiter Walter Winchell. William Sullivan (FBI Assistant in COINTELPRO) called Bobby a near-Puritan and then added: The stories about Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe were just stories. The original story was invented by a so-called journalist, a right-wing zealot who had a history of spinning wild yarns. It spread like wildfire, of course, and J. Edgar Hoover was right there, gleefully fanning the flames. (The Bureau: My thirty years in Hoover's FBI, William C. Sullivan, 1979). The Capell/Winchell/Hoover triangle sowed the seeds of this slander. But the exposure of this triangle does even more. In the Vanity Fair article in which Judith Exner dumped out the latest installment of her strange saga, Liz Smith revealed that she was an apprentice under Walter Winchell in New York (January 1997 p. 32). This may explain why she took up her mentor's cudgel. Capell's work is, as Spoto notes in his Afterword, a frightful piece of reactionary paranoia. But there are two details in his pat anti-Kennedy tract that merit mention. First, Capell is probably the first to propagate the idea that RFK was indirectly responsible for his brother's murder. He does this by saying (p. 52), that commie sympathizer Bobby called off the investigation of the shooting of General Edwin Walker in April of 1963, thus allowing that crazed Communist Oswald to kill JFK. What makes it so fascinating is that, through the FBI's own files, we now have evidence that Capell was deliberately creating a fiction: he had actual information that Oswald was not a communist, but a CIA agent.
Spoto notes that on August 3, 1962, Dorothy Kilgallen printed an item in her column saying that Marilyn was "vastly alluring to a handsome gentleman who is a bigger name than Joe DiMaggio". Spoto notes the source for Kilgallen's story as Howard Rothberg, the man named in the memo. This is interesting for more than one reason. First, Spoto writes that Rothberg was "a New York interior designer with no connection at all to Marilyn or her circle." This means that he was likely getting his "information" through a third, unnamed source. This is extraordinary. Anyone who has jousted with the FBI or CIA knows how difficult it is to get "sources and methods" revealed. In fact this is one of the big battles the ARRB had to fight with the FBI. Yet in this document, both the method and the source are open. But interestingly, right after Kilgallen printed her vague allusion, Winchell began his steady drumbeat of rumors until, as Spoto notes, he essentially printed Capell's whole tale. Rothberg was either a witting or unwitting conduit to the media for either Hoover or Angleton (or both). The quick Winchell follow-up would argue for Hoover. The Director would want someone else to lead the story before his man Winchell pushed it to the limit. Capell was drawn up on charges in 1965. The charges were rather fatal to the tales told in his RFK pamphlet. One would have thought this discreditation would enough to impale the slanderous tales. And it probably would have been had it not been for Norman Mailer.
In 1973, Mailer published a book, Marilyn, (really a photo essay) with the assistance of longtime FBI asset on the Kennedy assassination Larry Schiller. He recirculated these tales again, inserting a new twist. He added the possibility that the FBI and/or the CIA might have been involved in the murder in order to blackmail Bobby Kennedy. In 1973, pre-Rupert Murdoch, the media had some decent standards. In fact, Mailer was excoriated for his baseless ruminations. In private, he admitted he wrote it to help pay off a tax debt. Mailer also made a confession in public. When Mike Wallace asked him on 60 Minutes why he had to trash Bobby Kennedy, Mailer replied "I needed money very badly." In 1993, Donald Spoto wrote his revealing bio of Monroe. After reading the likes of Haspiel, Slatzer and Summers, picking up Spoto is like going back into one's home after it has been fumigated. Spoto is a very experienced biographer who is not shy about controversy. His biographies of Alfred Hitchcock and Laurence Olivier reveal sides of their personalities that they tried to conceal. Spoto is also quite thorough in obtaining and then pouring over primary sources. Finally, he respects himself and his subject, which allows him to question sources before arriving at a judgment on someone's credibility. This last quality allowed him to arrive at what is the most satisfactory conclusion about the death of Monroe: accidental overdose (Spoto pp. 566-593). And the Kennedys had nothing to do with it. I do appreciate Spoto's good research, fine writing, and a clear dedication to truth. If any reader is interested in the real facts of Marilyn Monroe's life and death, this is the book to read.
Mega-Trasher, or Just Mega-Trash? Hersh's book promises to be the mega "trash Kennedy" book. And, like any hatchet man, Hersh tries to disguise his mission. In the Vanity Fair article, his fellow workers on the ABC documentary say, "there have been moments when, while recounting private acts of kindness by JFK, Hersh has broken down and wept." This from a man who intimidated witnesses with his phony papers and waved them aloft while damning the Kennedys with them. Robert Anson's article begs the next question: Who is Hersh? As is common knowledge, the story that made Hersh's career was his series of articles on the massacre of civilians at the village of My Lai in Vietnam. Hersh then wrote two books on this atrocity: My Lai 4 and Cover Up. There have always been questions about both the orders given on that mission and the unsatisfactory investigation after the fact. These questions began to boil in the aftermath of the exposure of the Bill Colby/Ted Shackley directed Phoenix Program: the deliberate assassination of any Vietnamese suspected of being a Viet Cong. These questions were even more intriguing in light of the fact that the man chosen to run the military review of the massacre, General Peers, had a long term relationship with the CIA. In fact, former Special Forces Captain John McCarthy told me that–in terms of closeness to the Agency–Peers was another Ed Lansdale. Domestic ops were banned by the CIA's original charter, although they had been done ever since that Agency's inception. But at Christmas, 1974, Hersh's stories were splashed all over the Times. Hersh won a Pulitzer for them. One would think this would be a strong indication of Hersh's independence from, even antagonism for the CIA. One would be wrong. As everyone familiar with the Agency's history knows, in 1974 there was a huge turf war going on between Angleton and Colby (formerly of the Vietnam Phoenix program).
Which brings us to the nineties. Everyone knows that the broad release of Oliver Stone's JFK in 1992 put the Kennedy assassination back into play. The pre-release attack against the film was unprecedented in movie history. That's because it was more than just a movie. It was a message, with powerful political overtones that dug deeply into the public psyche: a grand political conspiracy had killed the last progressive president. That Vietnam would have never happened if Kennedy had lived. That JFK was working for accommodation with Castro at the time of his death. That the country has not really been the same since. The preemptive strike was successful in slowing up the film's momentum out of the starting block. But the movie did increase the number of people who believe the case was a conspiracy into the ninety-percent range. The following year, in anticipation of the 30th anniversary of the murder, Gerald Posner got the jump on the critics with his specious book on the case. The media hailed him as a truth-teller. The critics were shut out. No nonfiction book in recent memory ever received such a huge publicity campaign as Posner's–and deserved it less. This blurring of tabloid and journalistic standards inevitably leads to a blurring of history. Disinformation feeds on disinformation, and whatever the record shows is shunted aside as the tabloid version becomes "accepted history," to use Davis' phrase (p. 290). But beyond this, there is an even larger gestalt. If the Kennedys were just shady types or CIA hawks, then what difference does it make in history if they were assassinated? For the CIA, this is as good as a rerun of the Warren Commission, since the net results are quite similar. The standard defense by these purveyors is that they go on the offense.
Anyone who objects to their peculiar blend of misinformation, or questions their sources or intent is labeled as "protecting the Kennedys," or a "disappointed Kennedy fan". Tactically, this is a great cover to avoid the questionable credibility of people like Joseph Alsop, Priscilla Johnson McMillan or Robert Slatzer. It also avoids acknowledging their descent into the ranks of Hoover and Angleton. So Where are the Kennedys? In a deeper sense, it is clear now that no one in the major media was or is "protecting the Kennedys." The anti-Kennedy genre has now become self-sustaining. Anthony Summers used the Collier and Horowitz book for Goddess (2007).
Summers even uses Priscilla McMillan to connect JFK with Monroe! (p. 244) Will Liz Smith call him on this? Will Ben Bradlee? Far from "protecting the Kennedys" the establishment shields these writers from potentially devastating critiques. The reason being that the Kennedys were never part of that establishment. No one protected JFK in Dallas. No one protected RFK in Los Angeles. The ensuing investigations did everything they could to protect the true murderers. People like Slatzer, Davis, and now Hersh have made their living off of it. The Kennedys have sustained many tragedies. Andy Harland called up Steve Jones after reading his article in The Humanist (Probe Vol. 4 #3 p. 8). He was an acquaintance of Peter Lawford's who talked to him a few times about the assassination. Jones' notes from that phone call includes the following: Lawford told him that Jackie knew right away that shots came from the front as did Powers and O'Donnell. He said shortly after the funeral the family got together.... Bobby told the family that it was a high level military/CIA plot and that he felt powerless to do anything about it.... the family always felt that JFK's refusal to commit to Vietnam was one of the reasons for the assassination.... Lawford told him that the kids were all told the truth as they grew up but it was Teddy who insisted that the family put the thing to rest. The Kennedys are silent; they won't sue, so if it's in print it must be true. As a corollary, this shows that the old adage about history being written by the victors stands. In this upside down milieu, all the Kennedys' sworn enemies can talk to any cheapjack writer with a hefty advance and recycle another thrashing. Mobsters, CIA officers and their assets, rabid right-wingers and criminals. Escorted by these opportunist writers, they now do their dances over the graves of the two men they hated most in life and can now revile in death. There is something very Orwellian about this of course.
The image of JFK on national television giving hell to the steel companies; of Kennedy staking out his policy for detente at American Universities; of RFK grilling Sam Giancana and Jimmy Hoffa; of Bobby going through the personnel list at the State Department to be sure there was no Dulles still on the payroll; these images have to be erased. Most of all, the RFK of 1965-68, angry at the perversion of his brother's policies, must be subverted. Who of the elite would want people to remember RFK saying these words: What the Alliance for Progress has come down to then is that the native rulers can close down newspapers, abolish Congress, fight religious opposition, and deport your political enemies, and you'll get lots of help, but if you fool around with a U.S. oil company, we'll cut you off without a penny. Is that right? By 1963, after the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis and the cries for escalation in Vietnam, JFK was moving toward the Sorenson-Schlesinger side of the White House. By 1968, RFK was further to the left than that, being hooked up with labor leaders like Walter Reuther and Cesar Chavez. As Otis Chandler, a firm member of the establishment, said after Bobby's death: "I guess there's no one to stand up for the weak and the poor now." That memory is now being replaced by those of RFK cavorting with Monroe on the beach; of JFK drinking martinis with Monroe; and the Kennedys trying to take Castro down. In the Anson piece, Hersh talks about changing the way people think about the Kennedys. Talk about reversing the Church Committee. These people could teach Orwell something. What will the future bring? Will Hersh now say that he was duped on the Monroe docs but now he has the real McCoy: it was Jayne Mansfield all along. With Liz Smith as the moderator, satire is impossible in this field.
But down deep, submerged but still present, there is a resistance to all this. The public knows something is wrong. CBS and the New York Times conducted a poll which asked the respondents: If you could pick a President, any President, which one would you choose to run the country today? The winner, in a landslide, was John F. Kennedy who doubled the tally of the second place finisher. In 1988, Rolling Stone surveyed the television generation, i.e. the below forty group, on their diverse opinions and attitudes. Their two most admired public leaders were Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, dead twenty years before, when many of those polled were infants or not even born. This holds not just in America. In Pete Hammill's 1995 book Piece of Work, he relates an episode in his life when his car broke down in the Mexican countryside. He walked to a poor, "Third World" style hut which had no amenities except a phone. Before he left, he thanked the native Mexicans who lived there and took a look around the dilapidated, almost bare interior, featuring a frame photo of John F. Kennedy. It's that international Jungian consciousness, however bottled up, ambiguous, uncertain, that must be dislodged. In a sense, this near-maniacal effort, and all the money and effort involved in it, is a compliment that proves the opposite of the position being advanced. This kind of defamation effort is reserved only for the most dangerous foes of the status quo, as Thomas Jefferson or Huey Long. In a weird sort of way, it almost makes one feel for the other side. It must be tough trying to control any ghosts rising from the ashes. Which, of course, is why Hersh has to hide his real feelings about his subject. That's the kind of threat the Kennedys posed to the elite: JFK was never part from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR); Bobby Kennedy hated the Rockefellers (Thy Will be Done pp. 538-542). For those sins, and encouraging others to follow them, they must suffer the fate of the Undead. And Marilyn Monroe must be thrown into that half-world with them. At the hands of Bob Loomis' pal, that "liberal" crusader Seymour Hersh. As Robert Anson (Vanity Fair editor) says, Hersh must just want the money. My feeling is that people who have perverted the historical record have, in an inexcusable way, pardoned the murderers. Source: kennedysandking.com
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