Marilyn, Dorothy Kilgallen, JFK, Destiny Betrayed

Prior to the 1960 election, Marilyn – although politically astute – had apparently shown little interest in John F. Kennedy, dismissing him as too inexperienced. But like many Americans, she soon warmed to his youth and charisma. It is generally thought that they first met in late 1961. Marilyn met his brother Bobby, now Attorney General, over dinner at the Lawford home. She was accompanied that evening by Pat Newcomb. Pat was known for her extreme loyalty and protectiveness towards Marilyn, and some likened their relationship to that of sisters. In a letter to a colleague, Greenson wrote that Marilyn had been angered when Pat dyed her hair the same shade as hers. Dr. Ralph Greenson construed it as a fear of lesbian advances – which Pat denied. At lunchtime, Pat joined Marilyn by the pool, and Mrs Murray heard them bickering. It seems unlikely that Marilyn was angry merely because Pat had slept well, so it may have been about something more personal. “She was furious, it’s true,” Pat told Anthony Summers, author of Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe. “But I think that she was also furious about something else, I think there was a lot more, not related to me, that I don’t know about.” Although she didn’t mention it in early interviews, Mrs Murray would later claim that Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford arrived, apparently unannounced, at the house early that afternoon. Many critics dispute this, because Bobby was supposedly with his family at a ranch outside San Francisco. Pat has denied outright that Bobby visited Marilyn. “Marilyn paid me my salary during her lifetime,” Pat told columnist Mike Connolly in 1962, “and I’m not going to write any post-mortems about my best friend.” True to her word, she declined all offers to publish a memoir of her time with Marilyn. “Evidence of Marilyn’s relationships with the Kennedys is mostly anecdotal – but substantial,” Charles Casillo asserts. However, he does not give credit to the many conspiracy theories implicating the Kennedys. The whole subject has become something of an urban myth that it has distorted Marilyn’s legacy.“Marilyn could not resolve her feelings of being unloved because she felt she was unlovable,” he writes, adding that “the depression that enveloped her in 1962 was like nothing she had experienced before.”  Source: tarahanks.com

The Reporter who knew too much was born of eight words: “They’ve killed Dorothy; now they’ll go after Ruby.” They were uttered by Jack Ruby’s attorney Melvin Belli. He said them to friend Dr. Martin Schorr shortly after Dorothy Kilgallen’s death. On April 14, 1965, Kilgallen was headlining her Journal-American column with the daunting words, “Why Did Oswald Risk All By Shooting Cop?” Her column proves she was continuing to question the “Oswald Alone” theory even after the Ruby trial had ended. Kilgallen wrote: "A mysterious and significant aspect of the events following the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas has never been explored publically, although it must have occurred to crack reporters covering the case as well as authorities investigating the tragedies. The important question—why did Lee Harvey Oswald, presumably fleeing from the police after the assassination, approach Patrolman J. D. Tippit’s car—in broad daylight with witnesses standing by—and shoot the policeman three times, although he had not said a word to Oswald. Oswald had managed to slip away from the scene and was—up to that point—not a reckless one. A man who knows he is wanted by the authorities after a spectacular crime does not seek out a policeman usually, unless he has decided to give himself up, and certainly Oswald was not doing that. By shooting Tippit instead of trying to make himself inconspicuous, Oswald put himself in double jeopardy. His act almost guaranteed his arrest. Why? A whodunit fan would infer that the policeman knew something about Oswald that was so dangerous [the policeman] had to be silenced at any cost, even Oswald’s chance at escape and freedom." 

Commenting on Ruby’s state of mind, she added, “He opened the floodgates of his mind and unloosed a stream of consciousness that would have dazzled a James Joyce buff and enraptured a psychiatrist. There was a great deal of fear inside Jack Ruby that Sunday in June [when he testified]. He feared for his own life.” In her “Voice of Broadway” column, and to anyone who would listen, Kilgallen called the Warren Commission report “laughable” and continued her assassination probe with Jack Ruby as the focal point. She learned of his three prison attempts at suicide in late 1964. First, Ruby stood 20 feet from a concrete wall. His face soaked with perspiration, he ran as fast as possible head first into the wall. He hoped to crack open his skull. He did not. Ruby’s second attempt involved use of an electric light socket. His third try involved using his pants legs to hang himself. A guard, always on watch, squelched Ruby’s intended plan. Hearing of Ruby’s suicide attempt anguished Kilgallen. She continued to ponder the shocking statement Ruby made after appearing before the Warren Commission: “The world will never know the true facts of what occurred. My motives. The people who had, that had so much to gain and had such an ulteior motive to put me in this position I’m in would never let the true facts come above board to the world.” Ruby’s admission only reinforced Kilgallen’s belief that Oswald’s killer was part of a conspiracy and cover-up. More certain every day of her suspicions, Kilgallen was not shy about sharing them. She told friend Marlin Swing several times, “This had to be a conspiracy.” The savvy Kilgallen realized what other competent researchers who fit facts to conclusions instead of the other way around, have during the years: Oswald was a puzzling/confusing character and attempts to decipher his role in the killing of JFK an absolute quagmire with few answers available. The famous reporter, like John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Jack Ruby, was doomed. She just did not know it yet. —"The Reporter Who Knew Too Much: The Mysterious Death of Dorothy Kilgallen" (2016) by Mark Shaw

While sequestered at the Inn of the Six Flags in Arlington, Marina Oswald was asked about her husband’s activities after she left New Orleans. She first replied that she thought he stayed in New Orleans and looked for work. She then said she had no knowledge of any trip to Mexico by Lee in September, and she added that, to her knowledge, Oswald had never been to Mexico. Marina was repeatedly asked about this topic on six more occasions. But she continued to deny that Oswald had ever said anything about being in Mexico City. In February she signed a deal with an entity called Tex-Italia films for the rights to her story. She would go on to make 132,500 dollars from this mysterious company, which never produced a film. In February, before the Warren Commission, she now reversed her story: Oswald had told her he was going to Mexico. And she now backed up what the CIA was saying: Oswald went to Mexico City to get a visa to Cuba. Again, the Commission now had some corroboration for a trip to Mexico that no one recalled Oswald mentioning. And it began with Ruth Paine. The Commission was enthralled by Ruth Paine now producing questionable evidence to implicate Oswald in the shooting. Why would a communist be shooting at both a rightwing ideologue like General Edwin Walker and the most liberal president since Franklin D. Roosevelt? Further, it was Kennedy who pushed Walker out of his command after a thirty year career in the service. This was for distributing rightwing, John Birch Society literature to his troops. No one from the Commission posed these obvious questions. To my knowledge, no critic before Jim Garrison ever seriously questioned the Warren Commission’s version of Oswald’s alleged journey to Mexico City.

Today, with the declassified documents secured by the ARRB, it appears that Garrison was correct about both the importance of and deliberate mystery surrounding Mexico City. The declassified record suggests that, seven weeks before the assassination, certain individuals in the CIA were manipulating either Oswald or an imposter in Mexico City. Almost all the information the Commission received came from the CIA and the FBI. And it arrived in heavily censored form. It was not until August of 1996, thirty-four years later, that the ARRB declassified the Slawson-Coleman Report. This was the report written by Warren Commission lawyers David Slawson and William Coleman describing their journey to Mexico City to investigate what Oswald did there. The excursion was actually suggested to them by Deputy Director Richard Helms. One reason for the Commission’s ignorance about the Oswald file is that Helms actually appointed James Angleton to be the main liaison to the Commission. Unlike his predecessor in that spot, John Whitten, Angleton tried to accent Oswald’s Russian period for the Commission. Since Angleton and Dulles were close colleagues from the 1940s, Allen Dulles tipped off his friend as to what queries they would get about Oswald from the Commission. Since there had been a rumor that Oswald was an FBI agent, Dulles informed Angleton in advance as to what the Commission queries would likely be about Oswald’s possible intelligence ties. Then Angleton and William Sullivan of the FBI rehearsed and unified their responses to deny any intelligence connection to Oswald. This is the reason that the HSCA report on Mexico City was not part of the published volumes in 1979. The report is over 300 pages long. It was therefore classified until the ARRB was created. And then it had to go through several reviews. But even today, an annex to the report, “Was Oswald an Agent of the CIA” has not been released.—"Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case" (2012) by James DiEugenio

Marilyn Monroe & The Kennedys

With the recent release of the long sought-after JFK documents, there’s been a renewed interest in all things related to the 35th president. Few things of the Kennedy era are more recognizable than the dress Marilyn Monroe wore when she serenaded him with her sultry “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” The dress has remained out of the public’s view for most of the time since that night in 1962. That all changed last year when Orlando-based Ripley’s Entertainment purchased the dress and other items from the birthday gala. The dress sold for a whopping $4.8 million – with the auction fees, it clocked in at over $5 million, making it the most expensive dress ever sold. The Jean Louis-designed, champagne-colored dress has over 2,500 crystals and 6,000 rhinestones hand-sewn on it. “This is the most famous item of clothing in 20th-century culture,” says Ripley's VP of Exhibits and Archives, Edward Meyer, who is responsible for acquiring items for Ripley’s for nearly four decades, including the dress. “It has the significance of Marilyn, of JFK, and of American politics.” Ripley’s Orlando Odditorium will also screen Marilyn Monroe films on select Saturdays throughout December. The exhibit is scheduled to remain in Orlando through the end of the year. Source: www.orlandoweekly.com

“One of the bright spots in Ladies of Chorus (1948) is Miss Monroe’s singing,” wrote critic Tibor Krekes. “She is pretty and, with her pleasing voice and style, she shows promise”—hardly a rave, but nevertheless a gratifying first review that did not alter Harry Cohn’s decision. His major star was Rita Hayworth, just as Fox had Betty Grable and MGM had Lana Turner; none of them was listening to Harry Lipton or Lucille Ryman when they spoke of a potentially sensational new movie star named Marilyn Monroe with unusual qualities. “Under Marilyn’s baby-doll, kitten exterior, she was tough and shrewd and calculating,” was Lucille’s assessment. ‘Hollywood will never forgive me—not for leaving, not for fighting the system—but for winning, which I’m going to do,’ Marilyn told Susan Strasberg. 

At a New Year’s Eve party given by producer Sam Spiegel, in 1948, Marilyn had been introduced to Johnny Hyde, executive vice-president of the William Morris Agency and one of Hollywood’s most powerful representatives. Hyde was besotted and prevailed on Marilyn to accompany him on a short vacation to Palm Springs, where he spoke of her career prospects. Johnny Hyde was desperately in love. Despite Johnny Hyde’s strong recommendation of her to MGM, production chief Dore Schary did not offer a deal for more work. His excuse was that the studio had Lana Turner under contract and therefore no need of a rival blonde; to colleagues like Lucille Ryman Carroll, he expressed a quaint moral outrage at the Hyde-Monroe affair. Ladies of the Chorus was already a forgotten second feature, and The Asphalt Jungle, despite some critical acclaim, was too bleak to win much popular favor.

When not studying with her drama coach Natasha Lytess, Marilyn posed for pinups in evening gowns or swimsuits, scoured the trade dailies and was seen in the movie colony’s dinner-party circuit with Johnny, with whom life became increasingly difficult as his health became ever more fragile. Despite this, he refused to limit himself, escorting Marilyn to an endless round of social and corporate events, presenting her proudly as valuable and available talent. More poignantly, Johnny also wanted Marilyn known around town as his fiancée, the desirable young woman he still hoped to marry. Fearful of displeasing or alienating her, Johnny acted the nervous, benighted lover, taking action perilous in his condition: he was often breathless and in pain after trying to satisfy what he presumed were her sexual needs. Johnny Hyde had no opportunity to resolve with Marilyn the tension that underlay his unrequited love, and she had no chance to express her gratitude. “I don’t know that any man ever loved me so much,” she said in 1955. “Every guy I’d known seemed to want only one thing from me. Johnny wanted to marry me, but I just couldn’t do it. Even when he was angry with me for refusing, I knew he never stopped loving me, never stopped working for me.”

A passionate love affair between Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy has been assumed for so long that it has achieved as solid a place in public awareness as almost any other event in the man’s presidency. All that can be known for certain is that on four occasions between October 1961 and August 1962, the president and the actress met, and that during one of those meetings they telephoned one of Marilyn’s friends from a bedroom; soon after, Marilyn confided this one sexual encounter to her closest confidants, making clear that it was the extent of their involvement. In October 1961, after a photography session for a magazine, Marilyn asked Allan Snyder to deliver her to a party at Patricia and Peter Lawford’s Santa Monica beach house. The occasion was a dinner party honoring President Kennedy, and among the other guests were several blond movie stars—Kim Novak, Janet Leigh and Angie Dickinson, for all of whom the president had a keen appreciation. All contrary allegations notwithstanding, this was the first meeting between Marilyn Monroe and John Kennedy; hearsay about any earlier introduction simply cannot be substantiated. The schedules of Monroe and Kennedy since his January 1961 inauguration reveal wide geographic distances between them. That October night, Marilyn was driven back to her apartment by one of the Lawfords’ staff.

The second encounter occurred during February 1962, when Marilyn was again invited to a dinner party for the president, this time at the Manhattan home of Fifi Fell, the wealthy socialite widow of a famous industrialist. She was escorted to the Fell residence by Milton Ebbins. The third meeting occurred on Saturday, March 24, 1962, when both the president and Marilyn were houseguests of Bing Crosby in Palm Springs. On that occasion, she telephoned Ralph Roberts from the bedroom she was sharing with Kennedy. “She asked me about the solus muscle,” according to Roberts, “which she knew something about from the book The Thinking Body, and she had obviously been talking about this with the president, who was known to have all sorts of ailments, muscle and back trouble.” That night in March was the only time of her “affair” with JFK. “A great many people thought, after that weekend, that there was more to it. But Marilyn gave me the impression that it was not a major event for either of them: it happened once, that weekend, and that was that,” said Roberts. Accounts of a more enduring affair with John Kennedy, stretching anywhere from a year to a decade, owe to fanciful supermarket journalists and tales told by those eager for quick cash or quicker notoriety: those who fail to check the facts of history and are thus easily dispatched as reliable sources.

“Marilyn liked [President Kennedy] the man as well as the office,” according to Sidney Skolsky, among the first friends to be informed of the March tryst; he added that she also enjoyed the fantasy that this experience carried—“the little orphan waif indulging in free love with the leader of the free world.” And as she soon after told Earl Wilson, Rupert Allan and Ralph Roberts, she found John Kennedy amusing, pleasant, interesting and enjoyable company, not to say immensely flattering. As for Mrs. Kennedy, as Skolsky added, “Marilyn did not regard her with envy or animosity.”  The posthumous revelations of Kennedy’s philandering revealed the impossibility, for obvious reasons, of pursuing any serious romance with one woman. The exaggeration of his “affair” with Marilyn is part of the myth of King Arthur’s Camelot. There was a need to believe in the tradition of courtly intrigues and infidelities—Lancelot and Guinevere, Charles II and Nell Gwynn, Edward VII and Lily Langtry. But in this case there was but one rendezvous between the attractive, princely president and the reigning movie queen; to follow the Arthurian simile: the mists of Avalon are easily dispersed by shining reality’s clear light onto the scene. It is important to establish definitively the truth of this matter not only for the sake of historical accuracy but also because of a far more damaging rumor that began after Marilyn Monroe’s death. 

The unfounded and scurrilous accounts of a concomitant or subsequent sexual affair with Robert F. Kennedy, has been even more persistent than that of the presidential liaison. It has also led to the completely groundless assertion of a link between Robert Kennedy and Marilyn’s death—a connection so outrageous as to be hilarious were it not also injurious to the man’s reputation. The rumors of an affair with Robert Kennedy are based on the simple fact that he met Marilyn Monroe four times, as their schedules during 1961 and 1962 reveal, complementing the testimony of Edwin Guthman, Kennedy’s closest associate during this time. But Robert Kennedy probably never shared a bed with Marilyn Monroe. Guthman, a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter and journalist, was Special Assistant for Public Information in the Kennedy administration as well as senior press officer for the Justice Department. The travel logs of the attorney general’s schedule for 1961–62 (preserved in the John F. Kennedy Library and in the National Archives) support the detailed accounts provided by Guthman. These, collectively, attest to the fact that Robert Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe enjoyed a socially polite relationship—four meetings and several phone calls over a period of less than ten months. But their respective whereabouts during this time made anything else impossible—even had they both been inclined to a dalliance, which is itself far from the truth on both counts.

Marilyn’s first meeting with Robert Kennedy occurred several weeks before her introduction to the president. “On either October 2 or 3, 1961,” said Guthman: “Kennedy and I were attending a series of meetings with United States attorneys and members of the FBI in Albuquerque, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. The attorney general and I attended a dinner party at the Lawfords, and around midnight Marilyn decided to go home. But she had drunk too much champagne, and we were worried for her. Bobby and I would not let her drive her car, and we did so together, delivering her safely to her door.” The second meeting between the attorney general and Marilyn occurred on Wednesday evening, February 1, 1962, when he and his entourage dined at the Lawfords en route from Washington to the Far East on a diplomatic journey. “That evening,” according to Guthman, “Marilyn was quite sober—a terrifically nice person, really—fun to talk with, warm and interested in serious issues.” Pat Newcomb, also present at the dinner, remembered that Marilyn really cared about learning. The day before [the dinner party], Marilyn told me, “I want to be in touch, Pat—I want to really know what’s going on in the country. She was especially concerned about civil rights. She had a list of questions prepared. When the press reported that Bobby was talking to her more than anyone else, that’s what they meant. I saw the questions and I knew what they were talking about. She identified with all the people who were denied civil rights.” —Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (ekindle, 2014) by Donald Spoto

Lost Opportunity: John F. Kennedy, Jim Morrison

This Monday John F. Kennedy would have turned 100, and it has taken nearly this long to develop a full picture of his presidency: The more we learn about it, the more impressive he becomes. Much of the biographical work until recently has been filling in the gaps created by censors—JFK had a taping system installed in the White House a decade before Nixon, and these recordings have only been fully opened since late 2012. Unlike the technophobic Nixon, whose taping system would turn on at the literal drop of a hat, Kennedy’s was controlled by a button usually pressed by him alone. John F. Kennedy was not only far less hawkish than his public rhetoric, he was far less hawkish than the American people. He was certainly anti-communist, and mistrusted pro-Kremlin revolutionaries, but he believed, as he would reveal publicly in his American University address in June 1963, that Americans had an irrational fear of Russians and that both peoples shared an aversion to nuclear war. At the same time, the president’s brother underscored that an arms-control agreement would only come if the Soviets stopped underestimating U.S. power and causing trouble in divided Berlin and Southeast Asia. The Kennedys also refused to soften their hard line on Fidel Castro or even discuss it with Moscow. “Cuba is a dead issue,” explained RFK. Some of this was naïve—Khrushchev did not want an arms-control agreement as much as Kennedy did and was suspicious of the president’s gesture—and all of it was politically dangerous at home for JFK. Had these secret discussions ever become public, RFK, let alone his brother, might well have been charged with being pro-Soviet. In retrospect, these risks were worth taking at the height of the Cold War. The Kennedys’ secret meetings certainly helped to make an accidental war less likely. 

JFK sought liberal outcomes while abhorring instability and uncertainty. But, in the end, he could and would take risks, avoided nuclear holocaust during the Cuban missile crisis and negotiated a partial nuclear test-ban treaty with the Soviet Union. He took office with a muscular promise that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden” in the battle for freedom. But five months before his death, he became a prophet of what would be called detente, describing peace as “the necessary, rational end of rational men.” All these years later, we share a collective sense of an unfinished era, an unfulfilled promise and a lost opportunity. One of Kennedy’s most admirable traits was his talent for maintaining a critical distance from himself and who he became. Theodore Sorensen noted in 1965 that JFK was “a constant critic” of his own myth. In the 1960s, we know now, a president and his closest adviser took creative and audacious steps to make the world a safer place. Happy 100th birthday, JFK. Source: www.slate.com

Between the late 1950s and the early 1960s Jim Morrison preferred to cut school and visit beatnik hangouts in San Francisco. Two significant events had shaken America. First the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the earth. This sensational event provoked spasms of American self-doubt and recriminations about being beaten into space by the Russians. It began the so-called missile gap debate that later helped put John Kennedy in the White House. In the summer of 1960, something in Jim Morrison changed. Classmates remembered he seemed to undergo a change of personality. He appeared depressed and angry, and neglected his studies. Morrison wrote in a notebook that he was both a fool and the smartest kid in class. Apparently he took no interest in the November presidential election—hotly debated in his politically conservative school—in which John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon. Kennedy’s death occupied a dark corner of the Morrison psyche, making frequent appearances in notebooks and later lyrics. “Dead president’s corpse in the driver’s car” is one of the keystone images from both 'Celebration of the Lizard' and the song excerpted from this long poem, “Not to Touch the Earth.” On the same notebook page on which Morrison recorded the Kennedy assassination, he wrote the name of Aldous Huxley. Huxley had died at his home in Los Angeles on the same day Jack Kennedy was murdered. We as a nation have never fully recovered from the psychological disarray resulting from the JFK assassination in 1963. Oliver Stone's "JFK" reprised the circumstances and complexities behind that historic and fateful day: the exact moment when the bullet struck the President's head, that precise instant when an entire civilization was forever changed. Kennedy's death established a milestone that American society had reached unknowingly. It became more significant the further away in time we got historically from that event. The assassination was a huge tragedy that created an inability for the nation to find firm footing after it had been knocked off balance.

Ray Manzarek saw in Jim Morrison political potential. Although Morrison was essentially a lonely and tortured rebel, he was likable and engaging in all kinds of conversation. Leonard Pitts, Jr., a columnist for “The Miami Herald,” wrote: "Whatever you think of the 60's one thing is undeniable: They tore us apart, ripped American society to pieces and threw those pieces in the air so they rained down like confetti, falling into new configurations, nothing where it used to be. It was an angry time—Fifty years later we are still angry, still sifting through confetti pieces, trying to find a way to make them whole.” The events of the 1960's set up the impulse toward “psychic disintegration” we are now encountering. Morrison saw what was happening to our souls as a society and reported as a witness to "the vultures descending on the scene for curious America aplomb," a nation possessed and frozen in time. JFK and Jim Morrison seemingly had in common health ailments and a sex addiction, but whereas the President had multiple liaisons with Hollywood stars (Gene Tierney, Marilyn Monroe, June Allyson, Arlene Dahl) Jimbo juggled female journalists and groupies.


It was against the backdrop of these tumultuous days that Morrison wrote “Peace Frog,” with innovative guitar sounds by Robby Krieger. For Morrison it was a song not only of isolation but a complete rejection of what America had become that suggested an inevitable and violent end. He unconsciously intimated mayhem in America that would become epidemic. In the song’s opening line there is a chorus chanted in counterpoint by Morrison. “She came” is the chorus that parallels and follows Morrison's opening warning, “There's blood in the streets, it's up to my ankles.”  “She came,” has a dual meaning.  It is an easy reference to sexual climax. But the phrase also refers to a line in the first break, “Just about the break of day, she came, and then she drove away, sunlight in her hair.” The sunshine in her hair is a brilliant image that might be just Pamela Courson. She is a fleeting, unreachable image, she leaves the city, and she remains beyond us, unobtainable, the queen of the highway, waiting for us on the edge of town, beckoning to us. “Blood screams her brain as they chop off her fingers,” which speaks of the social insurrection Morrison possibly foresaw in a destructive break-up and dismemberment of the city.

I never saw Jim make a homosexual advance towards anyone. As for Jim's wife Pam, she was straight too. She once mentioned that two of her girlfriends had come together in a Lesbian experience. But she completely rejected that kind of experience. Pam, underage, had been convicted of driving under the influence and remanded to the custody of Juvenile Hall. One night, she and another girl resolved to escape by climbing into the ventilator shafts: she was still bitter about the law and all it had tried to do to her. Once Pam and I left Jim and Mary Werbelow alone for awhile and Pam said something I will never forget: “I feel sorry for Mary.” I knew it meant she was not threatened by the emergence of Mary. That something had long been settled between her and Jim. A relationship deeper than either one of them had ever had before. I’d begun to suspect that something had been settled between the two of them – unbreakable except by death itself. Nietzsche once said: 'In the end what a woman wants is a warrior'. Perhaps the women who gravitated toward Jim Morrison were attracted to this quality. Morrison felt that women had a greater future perhaps than most men would have. Most men were concerned with the accumulation of empty numbers. Morrison was the contemplative type, hardly the freak that popular consumption would have us believe. He was Apollonian in his life, Dionysian on stage. He aimed at the heart of American Democracy. He believed in it. —"Summer with Morrison: The Early Life and Times of James Douglas Morrison, A Memoir" (2011) by Dennis C. Jakob and "Some Are Born to Endless Night: Jim Morrison, Visions of Apocalypse and Transcendence" (2011) by Gerry Kirstein