In 1993, Donald Spoto wrote his revealing bio of Marilyn Monroe. After reading the likes of Haspiel, Heymann, Margolis, Slatzer, Summers, and Wolfe, picking up Spoto's biography feels like a revelation. Spoto was a very experienced biographer who was 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.
During the production of Bus Stop, a young publicist named Patricia “Pat” Newcomb was assigned to handle Marilyn’s press and so would enter Marilyn’s inner circle. A few years later Newcomb would become one of the major players in the last months of Marilyn’s life. Newcomb was also known to have a volatile temper—she would slam her office door so hard that a framed picture of Dean Martin would fall off the wall, shattering the glass “every other day.” Rupert Allan, who handled most of Marilyn’s press relations, told biographer Donald Spoto that Pat Newcomb would take phone messages for Marilyn—many from men wanting to meet her. “Pat intercepted Marilyn’s messages,” Rupert Allan asserted that Newcomb went through “a lesbian phase” but also dated men. The head of Marilyn’s public relations firm, Arthur Jacobs, recommended she give Newcomb another try. Newcomb entered Marilyn’s life again, but this time the two would become very close. Rupert Allan and Ralph Roberts (among others) would come to believe that Pat Newcomb became obsessed with Marilyn. “It’s Pat Newcomb who knows more about Marilyn Monroe than anyone else,” Jeanne Martin (Dean Martin’s wife) commented once. Newcomb was at Marilyn’s side at almost every major event in 1961–62, hovering protectively on the sidelines. Some say Newcomb wanted more from Marilyn than she was prepared to give. But—at this stage in her life—Marilyn needed someone who extended complete dedication, unconditional love. This is what Newcomb offered.
In return—as she did with anyone who was devoted to her—Marilyn made extreme demands. If Marilyn tried to call Newcomb at home and got a busy signal, she would become hysterical. When she finally got through she would scream and yell. Eventually Marilyn had a separate phone line installed in Newcomb’s apartment so she could reach her at all times. As always, Marilyn would do her best to repay Newcomb’s loyalty. After she complained that her car wasn’t working well, Marilyn gave Newcomb a new Thunderbird. And after wearing them a few times, Marilyn gave Pat a valuable pair of emerald earrings Frank Sinatra had given her. But after Marilyn’s death, Newcomb seemed to want to distance herself from their intensely personal and multilayered relationship. Michael Selsman, who also worked with Newcomb at the Arthur P. Jacobs agency, claims that there was a lot of talk about a possible lesbian relationship between Marilyn and Pat Newcomb—and it wasn’t only coming from the show-business community.
The rumors spread among people in Marilyn’s circle “who knew her and worked with her.” Susan Strasberg pointed out that “the adrenaline rush that came from Marilyn’s involvement with Pat Newcomb became somewhat sexualized.” Marilyn began discussing Newcomb in her sessions with Dr. Greenson, with homosexuality a major concern. “She could not bear the slightest hint of anything homosexual,” Greenson wrote. “She had an outright phobia of homosexuality and yet unwittingly fell into situations which had homosexual coloring, which she then recognized and projected onto the other, who then became her enemy.” In his correspondence Greenson gave an example of Marilyn’s relationship with a girlfriend named “Pat,” who had put a blond streak in her hair, close to Marilyn’s color. Marilyn interpreted Newcomb’s emulation as an attempt to “take possession of her,” feeling that identification meant “homosexual possessiveness.” Newcomb’s perceived passionate feelings threatened her. But—with everything in her life becoming more confusing and unclear—she pressed ahead with the relationship. “She could be very touching,” Newcomb recalled. “I always felt a kind of watching out for her. But deep down at the core she was really strong. And you’d forget it because she seemed so vulnerable.” Sometimes Marilyn’s suppressed angst surfaced, and she would say something “quite cruel,” Newcomb revealed. “She could be quite mean.” Newcomb declined all offers to publish a memoir of her time with Marilyn. This may seem an odd stance for a woman whose entire career has been devoted to maintaining the public image of Marilyn Monroe. She only gave interviews to Donald Spoto, Anthony Summers, Lois Banner and Gary Vitacco-Robles.
“Marilyn’s vocabulary included words I’d never ever heard of, and she wielded them like a sailor with no embarrassment,” Susan Strasberg once said. “She had quite a temper when she lost control.” On Friday afternoon, August 3, 1962, Marilyn filled two prescriptions at a pharmacy on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. One was for Phenergan, a drug used to treat allergies, and the other for Nembutal. Greenson and Engelberg had been weaning Marilyn off of Nembutal for weeks, substituting the milder drug chloral hydrate. Marilyn would take that with a glass of milk before bed. That evening Pat Newcomb had dinner with Marilyn in a Santa Monica French restaurant. When talking to Donald Spoto she said, “Afterwards we came back to the house. We just sat around—” Then Newcomb indicated the journalist’s tape recorder, stating, “I want to shut this off.” On Saturday, August 4, 1962, Mrs. Murray found Marilyn quiet and contemplative. She had tentative plans of going to Peter Lawford’s house for dinner in the evening. Legend has come down through the years that Marilyn’s foul mood toward Newcomb was because she had been able to sleep for twelve hours straight while Marilyn slept very little. However, there was something else going on that Pat Newcomb has been silent about for decades. In December 1961 Marilyn's psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenson labeled her a 'borderline paranoid schizophrenic' in a letter sent to Anna Freud. Rather than work in a vacuum, Dr. Greenson obtained a second opinion by consulting psychologist Dr. Milton Wexler. After taking a doctorate at Columbia University, studying under Theodor Reik, a disciple of Freud, he became one of the country’s first nonphysicians to set up in practice as a psychoanalyst. Also a member of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society, Dr. Wexler would go on to become a pioneer in the study and treatment of Huntington’s disease, forming the Hereditary Disease Foundation. Wexler also felt strongly that Marilyn Monroe suffered at least from borderline paranoid schizophrenia after sitting in on three sessions with her at Dr. Greenson’s home. “Yes, I treated her,” he said in 1999.
“I will say that I agreed with Dr. Greenson that she presented borderline symptoms of the disease that had run in her family. I found her to be very proactive in wanting to treat those borderline symptoms, as well. One misconception about her treatment is that it was Dr. Greenson’s idea that she move in with his family. She never moved in with the Greensons. Instead, it was my suggestion that she spend as much time there as possible in order to create the environment that she lacked as a child. That was my theory at the time and Dr. Greenson agreed.” From the first day they worked together in private sessions in the Strasberg apartment at 225 West Eighty-sixth Street that spring of 1955, Lee Strasberg gave Marilyn the strongest paternal-professional guidance of her life—a kind of total psychological mentorship that soon provoked the resentment of both Milton Greene and Arthur Miller. Strasberg fully encouraged Marilyn’s resentment of the movie industry in general and Fox in particular, for he believed their abuse of good actors and writers was standard operating procedure. This disaffection was based on his own experience, for in 1945 that studio had denied him the opportunity to direct Somewhere in the Night, which he had co-written with Joseph L. Mankiewicz. On June 6, 1962, Sidney Guilaroff, a good friend of Marilyn, came to visit her to Fifth Helena but he was brusquely turned away by Greenson, “I went to see her,” Guilaroff recalled, “but Greenson kept me out. He kept a lot of people from her.” She had suffered a fall while she was taking a shower and for over a week, she was virtually recluse at home until her bruises healed and was forced to decline social invitations she might otherwise have attended. Among these was an invitation from Pat and Peter Lawford, who were to be guests of honor at the home of Robert and Ethel Kennedy in Virginia. Her telegram of regret to the Kennedys, dated June 13, linked her struggle with Fox to the famous “Freedom Riders” fighting on behalf of civil rights for minorities.
According to Ralph Roberts, a very close friend of Marilyn, she decided on her own to reject her biological father's wishes to meet her. One afternoon, after returning from Greenson's therapy, the phone rang, recalled Roberts, and he heard Marilyn say loudly: “Tell him he can contact me through my lawyer, Mickey Rudin.” A shudder racked his body when Marilyn confessed to him: “That was the daughter, the legitimate daughter of my father. She wanted me to talk with him. He’s in the hospital and wants to talk with me. I knew his name a long time ago. In 1952, when I finally was signed with Fox and knew that there was some kind of security ahead, I took a train to the city he lived. I walked into the office, and told the secretary my name, and would like to see him. I heard him tell her, ‘Tell her she can contact me through my lawyer.’ I turned around, left, and that statement ended that.” Ralph Roberts heartily agreed that Marilyn was in very good spirits during the summer of 1962, despite of her troubles with Fox studio.
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“She was really taking control of her life and asserting herself that summer,” Roberts said, sentiments echoed by Rupert Allan and Susan Strasberg, among others. Roberts recalled that during the last months of her life, Marilyn was more optimistic than she had been. She nurtured a close friendship with Wally Cox and renewed one with Wally’s friend Marlon Brando. “And she saw,” Roberts added, “that Greenson was severing all her close relationships, one by one. He had tried to cut me and the Strasbergs and Joe out of her life—and now Marilyn said he thought it would be better if she dismissed Pat Newcomb, too. By the end of July, Marilyn realized that if she was going to have any friends left, any life of her own at all, she might have to disconnect from Greenson.” “Marilyn just couldn’t stand her living there anymore,” said Pat Newcomb of housekeeper Eunice Murray. “The truth is that Marilyn at last felt in control of things, and so she fired Mrs. Murray. It was over.” Her last day of work for Murray would be Saturday, August 4. This was only the beginning of Marilyn’s healthy self-assertion, but the real challenge still lay ahead—confronting Greenson with her new autonomy.
Now Ralph Greenson was himself retreating into a psychoneurotic fear of abandonment and rejection, precisely the mental attitudes Marilyn was learning to put behind her. In mid-afternoon, Jule Styne, who was looking forward to composing her songs for I Love Louisa, telephoned from New York with another idea. He proposed to Marilyn a film musical version of Betty Smith’s novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which had been a successful Fox film in 1945. To this idea she responded enthusiastically and added that since she was coming to New York the following week, they could meet in his office. Thus an appointment was fixed for the following Thursday, August 9, at half past two: “She was very excited about the idea,” recalled Jule Styne, “and she would have been wonderful in it. We spoke of Frank Sinatra for the other leading role.” A few minutes after eight on the morning of Saturday, August 4, Eunice Murray arrived at Fifth Helena for her last day of work, which was to include supervision of the garden plantings. The theory of suicide by deliberate Nembutal overdose would have been an action entirely inconsistent with everything in Marilyn Monroe’s life at the time—especially after the call to Marilyn from Joe DiMaggio, Jr., as reported by him and by both Murray and Greenson.
In the unlikely scenario she had suddenly decided to commit suicide, she would have taken a large dose at one time (not a quantity of capsules throughout the day). The barbiturates would have reached a toxic level rapidly, and she would have died. But in that case, there would almost certainly be a residue of pills in the stomach: “Forty or fifty pills simply are not going to dissolve so quickly in the stomach,” as Dr. Arnold Abrams reported. “The odds that she took pills and died from them are astronomically unlikely.” The possibility of barbiturate injection must also be rejected. A dose large enough to be lethal, injected intramuscularly or intravenously, would have resulted in an instantaneous death and a much higher level of barbiturate in the blood. And because the level of chloral hydrate was twice that of the Nembutal (which had accumulated in the liver, having been ingested gradually over many hours), it is clear that the chloral hydrate was administered after the Nembutal pills had been taken. In his haste that last evening, Dr. Greenson perhaps overlooked one crucial factor, the adverse interaction of the two drugs. Chloral hydrate interferes with the body’s production of enzymes that metabolize Nembutal. It was the chloral hydrate that pushed Marilyn over the edge.
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