Rock Wives: Bettye Kronstad, Angie Bowie, Lynn Krieger, Pam Courson (Set the Night on Fire)

An advocate for the downtrodden, Lou Reed gave a voice to those who were never heard before. He showed us people just like ourselves, but although they were underground, they were in no way beneath us. We could easily become them. Bettye Kronstad was Reed’s first wife. She met him as a young college student in NYC in the fading embers of 1968. She memorably recounts meeting him in an elevator where Reed tried to impress her by acting like an imperious jerk and slapping her rear. From meager beginnings, she eventually found herself falling for the moody artist. Ms. Kronstad writes about Reed inviting her to his last performance with The Velvet Underground in August of 1970, and this was the point at which their relationship began. Ms. Kronstad writes of that fateful concert at Max’s Kansas City “The band played notoriously loud, and Cale’s droning climbed over, around, and through us, yet you could also hear Lou singing – screaming, really, over the instruments. Lewis sang his heart out – sometimes, I could have sworn, right at me. It was a bit intimidating.” This would all be fine except for the salient fact that by August of 1970, John Cale had been gone from The VU for nearly two years. He had been fired from the band after a show at The Boston Tea Party in September of 1968. Okay, so this was that kind of book. 

Ms. Kronstad and Reed were in an erratic orbit of each other as Reed left The Velvet Underground, worked for his father’s business, and ultimately made his name as a solo performer. The dialogues contained within the book depict the mercurial Reed as a tortured, emotionally insecure artist who bluffed his way through life to protect his damaged core to the best of his ability. While attempting to work in theater, Ms. Kronstad decided to give Reed a chance, to the extent that she and Lou were living together for several years as Reed came to depend on her for emotional stability. Given that I can’t begin to remember anything that I say to someone the next day, never mind 48 years later, the conceit of the book to recount exchanges is entirely suspect to my eyes in the veracity department. While the exchanges may or may not have happened, the emotional truth of the bouts of emotional and chemical dependency between Bettye and Reed do have the whiff of truth to them. Along the way the pills that Ms. Kronstad was fine with gave way to the demon in the bottle, Johnny Walker Red, who ultimately kept pushing her away from Reed even as she became his emotional crutch by the end of their time together.  Like many drug users, she “drew the line” at needles, only to see Reed succumb many times over their relationship. Ironically, they finally married near the end of their tumultuous relationship, around the time of Reed’s “Berlin” album. Ms. Kronstadt was comfortable with a song like “Perfect Day” recounting the details of their intimacy together, but when Reed used her painful family history as inspiration for “Berlin’s” harrowing narrative, then she finally came to the point where she had to leave Reed. That wasn’t the end of the tale, though. Reed’s manager talked her into accompanying Reed on his crashing and burning “Berlin” tour where she was expected to “mind” the erratic Reed until she walked out on him, finally, in Paris in 1973 after a cocaine fueled argument. 

The doomed relationship depicted here seemed to set the tone for the self-destructive Reed throughout much of the seventies. Bettye Kronstad lives today in Wytheville, VA. While I doubt things played out exactly as depicted here, Reed was depicted with both light and shadow with all of his personal strengths along with his worst tendencies. Lou Reed was a gifted, pivotal artist who dramatically expanded the vocabulary of rock to encompass literary concerns. Yet at the end of the day, he was also a troubled man whose destructive defense mechanisms took their tolls on both himself and those around him. By the end of the book, I marveled at Bettye's ability to leave him behind and move forward on her journey. Source: postpunkmonk.com

As Madeline Bocaro (writer for Dazed & Confused and Mojo magazines, and author of biographies Stardust: The David Bowie Story (McGraw Hill, 1986), and The Wild One – The Story of Iggy Pop (Omnibus, 1988) stated after Lou Reed's passing: "Ironically, Lou's influences were Bettye LaVette, Doc Pomus, Delmore Schwartz, Edgar Allan Poe, 1950s Doo Wop… somehow it doesn’t come out that way, but Lou did it his way. His life was saved by rock n’ roll. But who was Lou Reed? A crazy, cool, sarcastic genius who influenced thousands of lives across several generations. Reed had a bad rep for a nice guy. His masterpiece was Berlin. His 20th and final solo album was Hudson River Wind Meditations (2007). He was finally at peace."

Angela Bowie: David [Bowie] was the one who was gaga over the Velvet Underground. He just thought the Velvet Underground and Lou Reed as a songwriter was the greatest thing that ever happened. Also whatever David was into I immediately took interest. I was that naive and that much of a youngster at that time, I believed that if I echoed what he said, and trumpeted it louder, people would believe what David said was important. As David started talking about Andy Warhol I never told him I thought he was an idiot. I’d shut up on that part. I was the perfect hostess. Iggy Pop and The Stooges were awfully nice to me. I don’t know if somebody had told them that I was well-intentioned or basically nice underneath it all. I suppose the only person who I was really very nervous of knowing was Iggy but I mean he was a sweetheart. I liked Lou Reed intellectually. I loved his conversations, he was so articulate and intelligent, but personally I didn't find him sexy, although he had a sort of romantic, sexy aura. I always thought that he was totally asexual. Probably Bettye didn't think so. I did a lot of listening when Lou and David spoke about New York and David would draw him out and get him to talk about what was going on in New York and it was very easy to impress David because England was very backward; I mean, it was against the law to commit sodomy. So you gotta understand where David was coming from is not because he was stupid, or because he was juvenile, or naive, it was because he was looking at it with this whole look of an English man.

At that time in England you realize how repressed they were and how even the slightest hint of that kind of scandal could mean the difference between someone getting a recording deal or someone spending their life playing working men’s clubs in the North of England and never actually becoming really popular, well yeah, you have to remember this is like late 1960s, beginning of the 1970s. It was very different and so when Lou Reed would talk about the Factory and Candy Darling and all of these incredible characters who Andy Warhol was making stars out of, for David that was like America must be the most wide open, wonderful place. And so what I mean is you’re like looking at it from a social mores, and from the point of view that if he hadn’t had all of those experiences, when they asked him in that Melody Maker article and he said he was bisexual, he would never have had the balls to do that unless he’d been around Iggy and Lou and realized that fuck it, if the English wanted to behave like that with that kind of hypocrisy, fuck it, but there was this place in the States where things were changing - not that much in the Midwest but David didn’t know that, he just knew New York. Both Lou and David were extremely professional–which is an over used word–let's says, manic about detail and getting it right and so that’s what they were involved in; they were involved in the musicality of doing something incredible. The Ziggy Stardust tour ended in L.A.–and then Iggy was at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. He was in a terrible state. Iggy was staggering around and apologizing. I can’t remember what he’d done. Maybe he'd tried to fuck me or something. I picked him up off the floor and carried him to my suite. I think David was just as stoned as Iggy was. Later, at the Mercer Arts Center I met David Johansen when he was going out with Cyrinda Foxe so I knew him a little more than I knew Johnny Thunders, these guys were all so cool, too, so sweet. That’s what everybody doesn’t realize is that there was ten years of this stuff going on before the Sex Pistols. I mean, Malcolm [McLaren] even says it and everybody else. The New York Dolls, The Stooges, The Ramones: I thought they were fabulous, because it was caricature and cartoon-like and larger than life. 

I don’t know if Lisa Robinson promoted David Johansen and Cyrinda Foxe as a great couple, but they were a great couple. I thought they were terrific but I only know my own feelings about them but this is a personal opinion and I just felt that Cyrinda always had very little vision as far as her own talent was concerned. Then I think that for her to leave Johansen and go with that crap guy in Aerosmith who was a total ignoramus, you know, compared to David, who was bright, intelligent and treated her well. I mean, she was my friend, I loved her to death, but I’ve never been able to fathom her perception of men. Johansen positioned himself to be with her, he wanted to be with her, he was smart, it would appear to me that he would be an extremely supportive person to be with and stay with. As soon as David [Bowie] said he was going to put Cyrinda in the “Rebel Rebel” video I knew he was fucking her. I think it’s incredible that David and I were together for so long. I can only put it down to my stamina and endurance. I must be some kind of masochist to have been able to endure it. And with David the first thing that shocked me was he could write such intelligent lyrics and so it was very much in the same mode of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, you know, they wrote intelligent lyrics. Now, you could laugh and say, “Now I wanna be your dog” is an intelligent lyric? Yes it is! Those lyrics conjure an image in your mind. —Backstage Passes: Life on the Wild Side with David Bowie (2000) by Angela Bowie

Robby Krieger: In the fall of 1966. The Doors had recently arrived in New York City to play a month-long residency at the Ondine Discotheque, to finish the mixing of our debut album, playing five half-hour sets each night, finishing just shy of sunrise. On our nights off, drummer John Densmore and I explored jazz clubs in the Village. During the daylight hours, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and his girlfriend, Dorothy, ventured out to the museums. Even though the New York crowd hadn’t heard our songs before, they seemed to dig us, and the local groupies seemed fascinated by these mysterious aliens from California. I had brief flings with several of them, including Rory Flynn, a six-foot-tall model I knew from back in L.A., who also happened to be Errol Flynn’s daughter. I found out later that the groupies at Ondine’s compared notes with one another and bestowed ratings on their conquests. I didn’t get much attention from anyone after Rory, so I must not have rated too highly. Before I met my wife, Lynn, she was hanging out with her friend Peggy at the New York apartment of a guy forebodingly known as Danny Overdose. Peggy found Danny’s supply of liquid Owsley acid (a particularly potent formula) and said, “Let’s have a tea party!” Instead of placing a single droplet on their tongues, Peggy and Lynn filled up half a teacup each and started sipping. A normal acid trip kicks in after about a half hour; the Owsley hit them almost instantly. The people outside on the street suddenly appeared to have bizarrely long necks, and their heads were bobbing around like they were in some sort of spooky cartoon. In hopes of finding a new way to look inward, I tried an alternative to acid: morning glory seeds. I had heard that by eating the crushed seeds I could achieve a similarly psychedelic high. So off I went to my local florist. Despite my wife Lynn’s negative experiences with acid, she had no interest in meditation and rolled her eyes whenever John or I talked about it. For all my dedication and practice, she said she never saw much of a difference in me. I was already a mellow guy. According to her, if I got any mellower I would drop off the face of the earth. Lynn’s mom was a fanatic Catholic who dragged the family to regular church services and forbade any of her eight children to curse, even though she herself cursed all the time. Lynn’s dad was generally laid-back, but her mom had wild mood swings and kept the whole house on edge. When Lynn was a teenager, her brother told their mom that Lynn had gone on a date with Sammy Davis Jr. It was an absurd story, intended to inflame their mom’s simmering racial prejudice, but it worked better than expected. Lynn’s mom not only flipped out in the moment but held it over Lynn’s head for years, no matter how many times Lynn attempted to explain that it was a joke. Lynn had to get out. She couldn’t take the pressure and the hypocrisy and the oppression, so she escaped into New York City to go clubbing whenever she could. At only sixteen years old she moved into an apartment on the Upper East Side with one of her closest companions, a gay hairdresser named Kenny. By the time Lynn was eighteen, she had friends at clubs all over the city, so she had no trouble getting into the Ondine Discotheque when the Doors made their New York debut in 1966. I didn’t meet her that night, but Jim Morrison did. She met the humble, gentlemanly version of Jim and was predictably charmed by him. That night, with the enthusiasm of a tourism board member, Jim told her all about Los Angeles, and how the West is the best. Palm trees, sunshine, beaches… she was sold. She and her friends drove cross-country and saw that Jim wasn’t lying. But he hadn’t been too forthcoming about his relationship status. One day during her visit, she was hanging out at Jim’s house on Rothdell Trail in Laurel Canyon when Pam walked in and shrieked, “Jim! Who’s that?” Lynn asked. “Oh, this is Pam, my girlfriend.” 

Jim had failed to mention Pam before then. Lynn wasn’t naive; but a secret, official, live-in girlfriend? Lynn ran out of the house and down the steps past the Canyon Country Store. Jim chased after her, shouting, “Don’t go!” Somehow, Jim convinced Lynn to keep hanging out with him. She went back to New York and they met up whenever the Doors traveled east, and she saw him whenever she took trips out to L.A. with her friends. It was the beginning of the hippie era, and L.A. wasn’t as crowded or as noisy as Manhattan. At first it was almost too peaceful for Lynn, but after a while — convinced that she could maybe solidify things with Jim if she lived a little closer to him — she finally made the move to Laurel Canyon. Jim tested Lynn’s limits just as he did with everyone else. Once they were at a party at a fancy Malibu beach house, with a deck that stretched out over the sand. Lynn was leaning over the railing when Jim grabbed her ankles and hoisted her over the edge. He held her dangling there as the blood rushed to her head. She screamed, “Get me up! Get me up!” He made a single demand: “Tell me you love me.” She could barely sputter out the words because she was so furious, but she told him what he wanted to hear and he pulled her back onto the deck. At first it was easy for Lynn to cope with Jim’s behavior because she had been surrounded by one type of craziness or another her whole life. But he kept pushing. Lynn’s relationship with Jim officially ended for good when she moved to a house at Horse Shoe Canyon with a new group of friends.

By early ’68, though, we were both officially single, and Lynn's hilarious sense of humor, her East Coast edge, and her fearless spirit set her apart from other girls and made her irresistible. So one night when I found out that Lynn was going to be at a party at a mutual friend’s house, I made sure to attend. I had recently bought a burgundy Porsche 911S, so I gallantly offered Lynn and her friend a ride home. Like every dumb guy, I tried to show off by gunning the engine and taking corners at dangerous speeds. Nothing physical happened that night, but it was the first chance Lynn and I had to really get to know each other, and we started hanging out. I never asked Jim how he felt about me dating Lynn because he still had Pam, so it seemed like everything had worked out well for everyone. About a year later, Lynn and I moved into a house in Benedict Canyon that would later become the inspiration for the song “Hyacinth House.” Later, Jim complimented me on my choice of partner. He never went after Lynn again. Lynn and I remain together to this day. Set the Night on Fire is dedicated to her. "This book is dedicated to Lynn Ann Veres, my wife of fifty years so far. She’s the only person I’ve ever met who lets me be me. And that’s why I’ll always love her."

Pamela Courson never tried to put a wedge between Jim and the band. She never meddled in our creative process. I always thought she was good for Jim. Their relationship may have been tumultuous at times, but they never had any major fights when I was around. They made their own rules. It was clearly an open relationship since they were both seeing other people, and that incited trouble from time to time. But they genuinely seemed devoted to each other. A true couple. And even their unstable version of stability was better than Jim bouncing from girl to girl every night. Pam used to date Arthur Lee from Love, who called her Yellow Tooth due to her discolored incisors. But her sweet looks outweighed her dental shortcomings enough that John hit on her at the London Fog before Jim ever did. Her squeaky voice and goofy demeanor made her appear sweet and innocent, but she was crazier than Jim in some ways, taking up with weird guys and doing heroin. To many men that would be a negative, but Jim had finally met someone who could walk on the edge right alongside him. Pam was too flaky to get into poetry or literature on the same level as Jim, but she was smarter than most people realized. Some people question whether she was calculating the cost-benefit of dating Jim in the name of a financially comfortable future. I can’t say that wasn’t a factor, but she still legitimately loved him. It was a complex coupling, to say the least. The bottom line is that she was weird, he was weird, and they were lucky they found each other to be weird with. Pam and I were both Capricorns so we always got along well. She seemed to get along with the other band members and all our girlfriends, too, even after Lynn’s awkward introduction to her at the Rothdell Trail house. But Jim and Pam were often in their own bubble. I don’t think Pam ever consciously tried to separate Jim from the rest of us. She just hung out with all these junkies and oddball Europeans, and the separation naturally evolved. I can’t say for sure that moving to Paris with Jim in 1971 was her idea, but I’ve always believed that her long-standing affair with a French count/heroin dealer must’ve factored into her enthusiasm for the idea. After Jim died, Pam returned to the States, exited the airport, got in a cab, and entered into a heroin-fueled fling with the driver, who happened to also be a drug dealer. I saw her only a few times after that. She was still the same Pam, but her silly side had been blunted by severe depression. She never wanted to talk much about what had happened in Paris, of course. The last time I ran into her was when Lynn and I met Ray and John and their wives for dinner up in Sausalito. Pam coincidentally walked into the same restaurant with another new boyfriend  and made chitchat but then excused herself to eat at a separate table. There has always been speculation about whether Pam’s fatal overdose was accidental or intentional. I couldn’t possibly say. I just know she was sad. And one way or the other, the grief took her. —"Set the Night on Fire" (2021) by Robby Krieger

The Velvet Underground (2021) by Todd Haynes

In the new Apple documentary "The Velvet Underground" (2021), Lou Reed says he made $2.35 royalties for his pre-Velvet song "Leave Her For Me", more than he made with the Velvets. But The Velvet Underground is, along with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, one of the three seminal groups in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. If you want to see the Velvets in their prime performing “What Goes On” or “White Light/White Heat” in a steamy rock club, or get a taste of what it was like to see the Exploding Plastic Inevitable at the Dom in New York City in 1966, you’re out of luck, because those clips basically don’t exist. It’s quite an irony considering that Warhol, the band’s mentor, was notorious for filming everything around him. The Velvet Underground, whose music was a mesmerizing midnight trance-out, had no radio niche, no publicity, no “media,” no backstage verité Pennebaker or Maysles. Todd Haynes appears to have vacuumed up every last photograph and raw scrap of home-movie and archival footage of the band that exists and stitched it all into a coruscating document that feels like a time-machine kaleidoscope that immerses you in the band but still leaves them slightly out of reach. The film interviews Reed’s sister, Merrill Reed Weiner, who sets us straight on the legendary tale of how the teenage Lou’s suburban Long Island parents okayed his getting electroshock therapy because they wanted to shock the homosexuality out of him. (She says that’s untrue.) 

Lou the subversive guitar bad boy and Cale the debonair experimentalist came together like an acid and a base. Cale is the one whose story the documentary feels organized around. And that’s not just because Cale (now 79) is interviewed at length while Lou Reed, who died in 2013, couldn’t be. No, it’s as if Haynes wanted the Velvets to be an art band even more than he wanted them to be a rock ‘n’ roll band. The Velvets’ second album, “White Light/White Heat”, is written off in the movie as an angry amphetamine binge of a record. But out of that came drama: Lou Reed fired John Cale, just as he had already fired Andy Warhol. That sounds like reckless Lou, and that’s certainly the way the documentary presents it. But maybe Reed knew just what he was doing. He replaced Cale with Doug Yule, and together they made what I think is the group’s greatest album, “The Velvet Underground” (1969). It’s a masterpiece of religious street passion, yet the movie kind of brushes by it. Through it all, the Velvets, and perhaps only the Velvets, have remained perpetually hip. Source: variety.com 

Lou Reed enjoyed a solo career renaissance primarily by passing himself off as the most burnt-out reprobate around (and it wasn't all show by a long shot). People kept expecting him to die, so he perversely came back, not to haunt them, but to clean up. The central heroic myth of the sixties was the burnout. Lou Reed was necessary because he had the good sense to realize that the whole concept of sleaze, of decadence, degeneracy, was a joke and he turned himself into a clown. In fact, a large part of Lou's mythic appeal has always been his total infantilism. Like Jim Morrison, Lou Reed realized the implicity absurdity of the rock 'n' roll bète-noire badass pose and parodied it, deglamorized it. Lou Reed, like all the heroes, is there for the beating up. They wouldn't be heroes if they were infallible, they wouldn't be heroes if they weren't miserable wretched dogs, the pariahs of the earth.  –"Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung" (2013) by Lester Bangs

“All the books about me are bullshit,” Lou Reed once said, when asked about Victor Bockris' biography, although he reckoned there were lots of truth in Bockris' book. In a breezy tone, Reed’s first wife Bettye Kronstad wrote of the five-year period, 1968-1973, between the end of the Velvet Underground and Reed’s third solo album Berlin. Kronstad makes an effort in Perfect Day to contextualize what’s happening with their personal life with the goings-on of Reed’s career. But at its most interesting and tragic, this book serves to inject the well-worn myths of Lou Reed the legend with humanity, and offers an insider’s perspective to Reed’s losses of personal control, his fears and anxieties, particularly during the Transformer era. With a legacy of four commercial failures to his name, Reed didn’t exactly emerge as a hot property. Wearied from his Velvets experience and unsure about his next move, Reed ended up moving back to his parents’ house on Long Island and started a relationship with theatre student Bettye Kronstad. Bettye found him a kind, gentle, sensitive guy who nicknamed her 'Princess' and who telephoned her in the wee hours talking about his dreams of becoming a writer. In fact, they became serious and Bettye spent the first year she dated him living at his parents’ Long Island home. 

Bettye Kronstad: "At seventeen, Lou’s parents had sent him to see a psychiatrist who prescribed EST for his depression and mood swings. During the summer of 1959, he was treated at Creedmoor State Psychiatric Hospital in Queens, New York, where the EST treatments were administered without an anesthetic. At that time, the procedure involved putting him on a wooden gurney with a rubber block between his teeth. This was an experience that scarred Lou for life. It is commonly thought that EST was prescribed to Lou in order to cure him of his ‘bisexual tendencies,’ but he never told me this or even alluded to it. I think he told journalists this to be more sympathetic to the gay community, and in part to broaden his appeal to that audience. From the beginning of our relationship I told Lou in no uncertain terms that if I saw a needle anywhere near him, I would—without fail—leave him. Hard drugs were his Achilles’ heel, and I knew they would destroy him if he started taking them again." 

Shelley Albin: "Lou Reed is a very fifties type guy. He's ultimately straight. He wants his wife, Sylvia, who is a very fifties type girl, to take care of him." As much as Reed's sexuality was pondered, he had a long time girlfriend in Shelley Albin, and married three times. Reed even admitted his heterosexuality when initiated his relationship with Sylvia Morales. Reed's Ecstasy album addressed the failed marriage to Sylvia Morales (in the songs Baton Rouge and Tatters - she wanted kids, Reed obviously did not) and then he came with Set The Twilight Reeling, which dealt with his need to become "the newfound man, and set the twilight reeling" with Laurie Anderson.

Lou Reed was a self-sabotaging, widely disliked man who gave voice to the unwanted and despised. Like Danny Fields said once: "poor Lou - his act worked too well." Humanity brought out the worst in him, and he returned the favor. Anthony DeCurtis: "There was an incredible level of fear of abandonment and terror and that's what motivated his violence—coming out of a kind of desperation, it was less about hostility than about a kind of self-hatred and fear." As Lester Bangs wrote shortly after his first encounter with Reed: "I never met a hero I didn´t like. But then, I never met a hero. But then, maybe I wasn´t looking for one." "I just hope it doesn’t start getting thought of as this terrible down death album, because that’s not at all what I mean by it,” Lou Reed said of "Magic & Loss" (1992) to the Chicago Tribune: "I think of it as a really positive album, because the loss is transformed magically into something else." In "Warrior King," Reed channels his anger into a fantasy of omnipotence: "I wish I was a warrior king; inscrutable, benign / With a faceless charging power always at my command / Footsteps so heavy that the world shakes / My rage instilling fear." Reed feels his loss, but has reached a level of acceptance: "My friends are blending in my head / They're melting into one great spirit / And that spirit isn't dead."

Ellen Willis, the first rock critic for The New Yorker wrote “The Velvet Underground” essay, included in fellow critic Greil Marcus’ book “Stranded” (1979). “The songs on ‘The Velvet Underground’ are all about sin and salvation,” Willis begins. The crux of Willis’ essay is that Lou Reed managed to exist in that rare space between irony and sentimentality, to avoid slipping into either the snarl or the smile. His music was an exercise in rejection, but not the knee-jerk anti-establishment hostility. It’s a rejection of rejection, a fight against both the nihilism of punk and the boppy, commercial vibes of pop music. “For the Velvets, the aesthete-punk stance was a way of surviving in a world that was out to kill you,” Willis writes. “The Velvets were not nihilists but moralists.” Willis explains, “Their songs are about unspeakable feelings of despair, disgust, isolation, confusion, guilt, longing, relief, peace, clarity, freedom, love—and about the ways we habitually bury them from a safe, sophisticated distance in order to get along in a hostile, corrupt world. Rock & Roll makes explicit the use of a mass art form was a metaphor for transcendence, for connection, for resistance to solipsism and despair.”

Shelley Albin said about Reed's sexuality: "I think by nature he was more driven to women because of his relationship with his mother. That’s what he thought was normal. It was comfortable.” Reed, Shelley said, was “a romantic at heart. He could be very sweet. He’s probably the only person who ever literally gave me a heart-shaped box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day. But he wasn’t happy unless he made somebody more miserable than he was. Misery made for his best work, whether it came from me or somebody else. He wasn’t anybody I wanted to live with and put up with. It wasn’t worth it. It was too much grief.” As for his reputation as a sexual player, that, too, was something of an image. “I got the impression that he never really had a girlfriend in high school,” she said. “I think he put on an aura later of being a ladies’ man. Hardly at all. That didn’t fit with the guy I met. He didn’t do as much in college as he pretended later. I met him after he’d been at college for a year. He was awkward. Boys I went out with in high school were smoother.” “I liked his brain,” Shelley said. “We could talk for hours and hours, days and days. We connected. He was an incredible romantic. So we connected on that level. It was very much a creative-mind thing. I was crazy about him. He was a great kisser and well coordinated. His appeal was of a very sexy boy/man. Lou was very insecure, and he needed a nurturer.” Lou Reed treated relationships, sex, and masculinity with a sense of simultaneous distance and intimacy. Just as femininity, sex clubs, and drugs were something to look at, so was masculinity. Reed’s explorations of identity  evolved  from rocker to strung-out junkie to effeminate songster to middle-aged intellectual. Lou Reed's quixotic/demonic relationship to sex was clearly intense. No one understood Lou's ability to make those close to him feel terrible better than the special targets of his inner rage, his parents, Sidney and Toby. Lou dramatized what was in the 1950s suburban America his father's benevolent dominance into Machavellian tyranny, and viewed his mother as the victim when this was not the case at all. The fact is Sidney and Toby Reed adored and enjoyed each other. After twenty years of marriage, they were still crazy about each other." –"Transformer: The Complete Lou Reed Story" (2014) by Victor Bockris 

Bombshell, The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

Bombshell (2021) by Mike Rothmiller is both unconvincing as an argument and poorly written in general. And no, if he took this to any court he would not get a conviction, unless they chose to investigate all of his crooked dealings as a cop and prosecute him instead. A former (somewhat) bad cop talking about other somewhat bad cops at LAPD OCID while greatly exaggerating his importance and 'insider' knowledge writes on a key historical event about which we can only take his word. He read mystery police files from filing cabinets while not busy performing his primary task of sharpening pencils at OCID headquarters. Without vetted copies of documents, without recorded audio proof of his revelatory {if accurate} conversation with Peter Lawford, around which the substance of this narrative hinges, we can not evaluate his veracity. It's all hearsay. Unfortunately all of the pictures/taped recordings the author has seen or heard have not been shared to prove his statements. And all of the main characters are of course long dead so it is easy to make claims which they cannot refute or confirm. We are given a lot of information about gangsters and LAPD officers that I think we could have done without. There isn't a single photograph in the book apart from the cover photo of Marilyn. 

Despite his “growth and evolution” in the groovy Sixties, Bobby Kennedy was supposedly a homophobe and anti-Semite. From Roy Cohn to Bayard Rustin to J. Edgar Hoover, he seemed to despise gays. As for Jews, Bobby took after his dear old dad, Joe Kennedy, who once described Jews as “pants pressers.” In 1962, Bobby was assigned to arrange for Marilyn Monroe to sing at JFK’s 45th birthday fundraiser at Madison Square Garden. Then Bobby called up the movie producer she was working for, a Jewish lawyer named Henry T. Weinstein, and demanded she be given a couple of days off. The producer balked, Weinstein later told Seymour Hersh, and Bobby reacted in his usual way. “He called me a ‘Jew bastard’ and hung up the phone on me.” ‘I’m not having an affair with Bobby,’ Marilyn confided to her masseur Ralph Roberts. ‘I like him, but not physically.’ Marilyn met with Bobby in June 1962, at the Lawfords residence. The following day, Bobby called on Marilyn alone at her bungalow in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood. According to her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, Marilyn ‘did not seem bubbly or excited by his visit.’ 

Marilyn had recently been fired by Twentieth Century Fox following repeated absences from the set of Something’s Got To Give. At the time, Bobby’s book about organised crime, The Enemy Within, was being considered as a film project at Fox, so Marilyn maybe hoped he would use his influence to get her reinstated. She called Bobby at the Justice Department six times in July, concluding with an eight-minute call on July 30th. ‘Robert Kennedy was such a sympathetic kind of person,’ Bobby’s secretary, Angie Novello, told Anthony Summers. ‘He never turned away from anyone who needed help, and I’m sure he was well aware of her problems with her studio. He was a good listener and that, I think, was what she needed more than anything.’

Among the slew of books purporting to solve the ‘mystery’ of Marilyn’s untimely death, only a few are worth the paper they were written on. David M. Marshall’s The DD Group is one, and Donald R. McGovern’s Murder Orthodoxies another. Gary Vitacco-Robles, author of Icon : The Life, Times, and Films of Marilyn Monroe, will publish his own interpretation in 2022. The remainder, unfortunately, tend to propagate wild conspiracy theories involving the Kennedys, the Mafia etc. Bombshell was featured mainly in the UK tabloids The Sun and the Daily Mail, with the following blurb: "With his training and investigator’s knowledge, Rothmiller used confidential information to get to the heart of the matter, to the people who were there the night Marilyn died and the wider conspiracy to protect the Kennedys." Curious to know more about Rothmiller, I consulted McGovern’s Murder Orthodoxies. If you’re considering purchasing Bombshell, I suggest you read McGovern’s thoughts on the author first.

Donald  McGovern: “Prior to the publication of Donald Wolfe’s The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe, his 1998 exposé about Marilyn’s alleged murder, only four persons claimed to have seen Marilyn’s diary and read some of its pages: Robert Slatzer, Jeanne Carmen, Ted Jordan, and Samir Muqaddin [aka Lionel Grandison], a clerk in the county coroner’s office. Donald Wolfe added a fifth name: Michael Rothmiller, a Los Angeles police detective. Wolfe, according to his source notes, interviewed Michael Rothmiller in 1998. Rothmiller, a Los Angeles Police Department detective, was a member of the Organised Crime Intelligence Division (OCID), otherwise known as LAPD’s infamous Gangster Squad. In 1978, Rothmiller worked in the OCID file room which housed confidential data including the police department’s files regarding Marilyn and the LAPD’s investigation into her death. Those files, according to Rothmiller, contained not Marilyn’s original Red Book of Secrets but a copy thereof. Neither Rothmiller nor Wolfe explain when the copy was made. In 1982, making copies of documents and books was not as easy and convenient as it is today or as it was in 1998. Rothmiller told Wolfe that Marilyn’s diary was more like a journal; and some of her entries memorialised her conversations with the middle Kennedy brothers. Apparently, Wolfe relied on Slatzer, certainly a questionable tactic. Samir Muqaddin’s memoir, however [Memoirs of a Deputy Coroner, 2012], offered a much more detailed view. It is definitely difficult, if not impossible, to conclude that Marilyn’s Red Book of Secrets actually existed based on Michael Rothmiller’s testimony. By 1998, the year Wolfe interviewed the LAPD detective, two decades had elapsed since he allegedly saw the copy of Marilyn’s diary. Why did he wait so long to reveal that this copy existed, to tell the world what he allegedly observed? Where was he in 1982 during the LAPD’s threshold investigation? 

Oddly, neither Robert Slatzer nor Jeanne Carmen nor Samir Muqaddin nor the 1982 LADA Summary Report regarding that investigation mentioned Michael Rothmiller. But then, the mythology surrounding Marilyn’s diary, as it relates to her death, is so ingrained in her story, that is entirely remarkable that more persons have not appeared with similar stories to Rothmiller’s. The assertion that the little red diary existed in a storage room filled with secret files fits neatly into the conspiracist’s mindset and their conspiracy puzzle: for them, the diary has become the missing piece which will bring into focus for the conspiracists, the complete picture of Marilyn’s untimely death. Still, Rothmiller’s testimony remains uncorroborated and unverifiable. Wolfe apparently expected his readers to accept Rothmiller’s testament on faith, a quantum leap that I, for one, cannot make.

Many biographers and many conspiracists have delineated over the years a Marilyn Monroe that did not exist. She was neither a helpless victim nor a silly girl of fantasy swooning over or gripped by the passion of an infatuation. When we compare the actual writings of Marilyn Monroe [collected in Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters, 2010] with the writings certain individuals have alleged were Marilyn’s, a large chasm between what those individuals have alleged were Marilyn’s and what we now know is real becomes painfully apparent… It is their word against history: no diary of the type described by Slatzer, Carmen, Jordan, Rothmiller and Muqaddin has, in fifty years, been found. Besides and in fact, not one person in Marilyn’s inner circle ever mentioned seeing a diary of the type described by our witnesses, not Pat Newcomb nor Susan Strasberg nor Ralph Roberts nor Joe DiMaggio nor Arthur Miller, not even Eunice Murray, who allegedly possessed it briefly, ever mentioned a little red diary.” Source: themarilynreport.com

A mysterious box of Marilyn Monroe documents sealed until 2039 could prove she was killed by her obsessed psychiatrist, claims a private investigator. The papers belonged to Dr Ralph Greenson, who found her body and who is suspected by some of administering the barbiturate overdose which killed her in 1962. Private detective Becky Aldrige found 'Box 29' stored at UCLA library where it will remain sealed to the public for another two decades, despite a list of contents showing it contains  a trove of files about Monroe. Aldrige claims that Dr Greenson remained haunted by the actress' ghost. Aldrige told The Sun that she was stunned to find that Dr Greenson, who died in 1979, had a sealed box of papers. 'I spent hours looking at everything I was allowed to - I couldn't make copies or take pictures so I just took notes.'  'I discovered he was obsessed with Marilyn Monroe because he had every book, every magazine, every newspaper that was ever written about Marilyn Monroe, everything. Then there were letters that were written to him, people telling him to kill himself because they thought it was his fault, she was dead. I remember thinking "Why did you save this?" 'There is also letters in there to Marilyn Monroe from other people - and letters she wrote to other people - why does he even have those? There's also some of his confidential medical files, and another file that doesn't say what it is.' Aldrige says that in a previous Monroe's suicide attempt she had left a note, but on the night of her death there was none. Source: thedailymail.com

Heroes and soulmates: John Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette, Jim Morrison & Pam Courson

Investigating heroism in mate choice: An article published in the July issue (2021) of Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, by Bhogal and Bartlett, sheds light on the importance of heroism in the context of mate selection. Participants were required to read various scenarios (four involving a target with low/high heroism, plus two control situations) and rate the desirability of the target for both short-term relationships and long-term relationships. Compared to men, women expressed greater desire for heroic targets. Nevertheless, heroism mattered to both sexes. Desirability of heroic romantic partners: It is puzzling why heroism exists at all. After all, heroism is quite nonadaptive. According to Dunbar and Kelly, “Brave, courageous and self-sacrificing individuals” should be rare, “both in evolutionary terms (sacrificing self for unrelated others is not an ideal way of promoting your own genes) and in terms of lifetime survival chances (the more risks taken, the greater the likelihood of disaster).” However, we also need to remember the following: While it is true that heroes are risk-takers, heroes’ risk-taking is prosocial. Perhaps this explains why women are attracted to heroic men. After all, care and concern for others are important qualities in a supportive romantic partner, particularly one who might become a parent one day. In their own investigation, these researchers found male bravery had the biggest impact on female choice for short-term sexual partners. For long-term partners and friends, however, altruism was more important. And to the extent heroism relates to risk-taking, it might signal fitness (in mating situations), thus increasing the desirability of the person as a romantic partner, at least for short-term relationships. As Bartlett and Bhogal state, “Through displaying heroic behavior, one can signal that they can bear the costs of behaving heroically, thus making them more desirable in mate choice contexts.” Source: www.psychologytoday.com

“Against the exceptional individual are the great numbers of men, trained in a vice that ensnares them.” —Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison talked of his cosmic soulmate Pamela Courson to one of his last lovers, Eva Gardony: “She was a child when we met, and I feel responsible for her because she never grew up. She has been everything for me, my mom, my sister and my daughter.’ And he forgave her a lot of things. Even though at times she was impossible to be with—because she would be stoned or bad tempered—he would say, ‘She’s a sweet child.’ It was touching he just felt he had to take care of her the rest of his life. They argued, both had their grievances, like ‘You done that to me, and for that I done that to you.' But they always gravitated back to each other after every little escapade. He always spoke of Pamela with total affection. Pamela was quick, she was witty, she was funny; she was neurotic. She had the clarity of a child, with very good intuitions, and an innocence that Jimmy loved in her a great deal.” —"Jim Morrison: Friends Gathered Together" (2014) by Frank Lisciandro

"It wasn’t that I didn’t like Jim Morrison. I just didn’t really know him as a friend. One time, I was at the Tropicana Hotel, on Santa Monica, and out of my window I saw Jim and Bryan MacLean standing, face to face. All of a sudden, Jim socked Bryan in the mouth, pretty hard. Bryan made the mistake of mentioning Pamela or something. I actually thought that was the best thing I’d ever seen Jim Morrison do. Bryan said that they were arguing and Jim hit him square in the mouth. I said to myself, “Regardless of what I think, Jim Morrison’s got a heart.” —"Arthur Lee: Alone Again" (2001) by Barney Hoskyns

"Everything that he did with his power, his fame, it was all about some greater good," Rose Marie Terenzio (his former executive assistant at George magazine) said of John Kennedy Jr. "He's truly missed for the way that he gracefully took that mantle of responsibility and lived an honorable life full of integrity—and he's missed for what we all want, which is somebody to look up to and to be proud of." 

Kevin Myron (Celebrity & Spectacle: The Making of a Media Event): John Jr. signifies purity and virtue since the act of publicly shaming his cousins is an attempt to separate himself from those negative connotations. There is also a discourse of family betrayal running through John’s figure, that he somehow broke the code of family protectionism. Here, we see that in life the acceptable discourses for a Kennedy figure might be much more complex and controversial than in death. Last, if we analyze all of the television tributes and coverage of John Jr.’s death, we get the realization of the American dream, where the Kennedy family is seen as American Royalty, with John Jr. as the fallen prince. We get a vision of politics, where liberal is not seen as a dirty word. John Jr. embodies the Kennedys’ brand of compassionate, pragmatic democratic politics even though he never ran for office himself. We saw John Jr. as the newest tragedy from a family virtually defined by the dialectic of tragedy/success. I want to address Carolyn Bessette here now. She is a powerful image and certainly powerful from the perspective of the image of the marriage. She does a lot of things symbolically and from the perspective of a sign to perpetuate this. First of all, she fulfills the popular myth of Camelot. There must be a queen or at least a princess in Camelot, and Carolyn Bessette filled that purpose in a very, very compelling way.  —Celebrity & Spectacle: The Making of a Media Event/Mediated Realities of the JFK Jr. Tragedy (November, 1999) edited by Gregory Payne

The Camera is the Rifle: Oliver Stone (JFK Revisited), John Newman's Into the Storm

The Camera is the Rifle: an Interview With Oliver Stone by Dennis Bernstein for Conterpunch.org

Bernstein: You have had some pretty strong critiques of your work.  You’ve been successful, but a lot of people get very angry; for instance around JFK.  Is it because the truth hurts?

Stone: Oh, I guess it does.  They don’t want to admit it.  You’re asking me an obvious question.  Why would they get angry?  There’s a long list of people who’d like to see me, among others, see me dead.

DB: Right.  And when you raised the issue about JFK; I mean you did the film, and I understand you’re still working on the story of JFK.

OS: The story never went away, because it was never solved.  We just made a documentary called JFK Revisited.  It’s going to be released in November of this year in the United States. We showed it at Cannes very successfully; we sold 10-12 countries and it’s coming out here in November.  So the case has never ended; they never solved it. The investigations kept coming. Our film created a third investigation called The Assassination Records Review Board, and they interviewed a lot of people who were still alive back in ’94 and ’98. And they wrote up these things that were said and done, and a lot of people had provisionist stories to tell. And of course it was ignored for the most part. It was really ignored by the media. Americans love to say well, we’re going to make an investigation, another investigation. But then they never follow up because it’s tedious over four years to follow all the little details. Well we did. The people in this JFK research community did follow it, and there’s a lot there.  There were – 60,000 documents were declassified, and almost two million pages. On the other hand, Trump backed down at the last second and he was swamped with CIA objections; and he put a lid on it and he changed the law. He basically did it illegally; not with the authorization of Congress. And now the law is – they’re not respecting the law.  We still have these 20,000 documents that are still classified. And there’s a lot there. There may not be, but you have to get into the CIA people. The CIA has been most obstructive to the investigation. They don’t release the files on some of these key agents that appear around the edges of the story, like David Atlee Phillips, George Joannides in Miami, or William Harvey who was around the Cuba operation.  There’s a lot there, but who knows what’s in there? But the point is we accepted the Warren Commission, which was a joke. We go back in the film and show the basic evidence: the bullet, the rifle, the fingerprints, everything that matters in a murder trial.  And we show it to be completely phony. There’s not one piece of evidence that really holds up against the so-called Oswald killer routine. It’s disgusting.

DB: What do you think?  You’ve spent so much time; what are some of the basics that people should know, that should be taught in the history books; in the alternative history books?

OS: I’ve written about it, and the documentary is made. I don’t think there’s time to go into it all.  It’s about Oswald, it’s about the evidence, it’s about the Warren Commission itself and how crooked it was.  All this has come out in declassifications. We have to cover a lot of bases, and there’s no one headline. Also, the big question is why, why, why was Kennedy killed? I keep re-emphasizing that. And I can tell you that our history books are still screwed up.  I mean if you were to believe them, Mr. Johnson, Lyndon Johnson, succeeded Kennedy smoothly and continued his policies in Vietnam. This is rubbish; complete rubbish. We have proof now through declassification that Kennedy was absolutely withdrawing from Vietnam, win or lose. And they said that’s what he told McNamara; McNamara said it in his book.  He was Secretary of Defense.  McGeorge Bundy, who was pro-Vietnam war, also says it very clearly in his book. These things are written years after.  People don’t pay attention. The historians still go on with that nonsense about Lyndon Johnson was a successor. But he changed everything in the foreign policy of Kennedy. Everything from Vietnam to Cuba to – Kennedy was working on another détente with the Soviet Union and Johnson never did anything towards détente. He moved the other direction, encouraged dictatorships and overthrew a government in Brazil, and all over the world, in Greece in 1967. You see a complete repudiation of the Kennedy doctrine. Kennedy had the Alliance for Progress in South America; out the window with Johnson.  In Africa, Kennedy was making huge strides to make allies with a whole new generation of Africans; all out the window.  In Asia of course, Kennedy was working with Indonesia; he liked Sukarno. With Johnson they get rid of Sukarno and there’s the bloodiest coup d’états of all time; a million people are killed because they were so-called Communists. But those are lists of course put together by the American CIA, and it’s just murder. That’s what it was, just outright murder. The world has gotten very violent and ugly, and we’ve played a huge role in bringing that about.

DB: All right, sure. Well, I want to thank you for joining us. Can I just ask you, are there any more feature films coming up? Is there – are you in a different place now?

OS: Yeah, I’m in a different place. I’ve made a nuclear energy documentary, which is very, very fact-based and I think will be very interesting and possibly move some marbles around here. Because we need to get going and get clean energy. We’ve got to get the CO2 out of the fucking system; out of the system. And it’s going to take a lot of work. People are dreaming when they think about if windmills and sun are going to do the whole job, they’re not. Certainly they’re good, but they need a lot of help. And we’re not going to make it unless we use nuclear energy, and a lot of it. A lot of it. So there has to be a change in thinking. But it’s not just us; it’s the whole world that we have to change. The whole world. Source: www.counterpunch.org

According to Robert Brent Toplin, a historian who admires Oliver Stone, JFK has probably “had a greater impact on public opinion than any other work of art in American history.” Indeed, the movie remains a great source of pride for Stone, if not his masterpiece. Thurston Clarke, in his book “J.F.K.’s Last Hundred Days” argues passionately that J.F.K. was moving ever more decisively left, flapping his wings like a dove, just before he was killed. The evidence is that Kennedy began to argue, more loudly than he had before, that American politicians should do everything possible to avoid provoking a nuclear holocaust that would destroy civilization. Kennedy was planning to get out of Vietnam by the end of 1965, or at least had made up his mind not to get drawn any farther in.  Paranoid as the period was, it was in ways more open. Oswald’s captors decided that he would have to be shown to the press, and arranged a midnight press conference for him, something that would not happen today. Source: www.hutchnews.com

John M. Newman’s analysis of how the CIA switched back their plots to kill Castro onto the Kennedy White House is very well done. In fact, it is unmatched in the literature. As the author explicates it, this deception started with Director of Plans Dick Bissell; it was then continued, expanded, and elongated by William Harvey’s assistant Sam Halpern. The author proves that both men knowingly lied about the subject. The myth that arose from it was that Kennedy was trying to get Castro, but Castro got him. When, in fact, neither clause was true. And neither was the corollary: JFK dug the hole for his own death. Bissell was the first person who created the chimera that somehow “the White House” urged him to create an executive action capability. In fact, Bissell first told this story to William Harvey in 1961. But under examination by the Church Committee, Bissell said six times that he could not recall who the person at the White House was who first asked him to do this. Someone in the administration calls you about such a subject and you cannot recall who it was? But this was not credible. And, in fact, it was Bissell’s idea to reach out to the Mafia. After doing depositions with Bissell, Harvey, and McGeorge Bundy, the Church Committee concluded that Kennedy had filed no such request with CIA and none had been discussed with him. 

The giveaway about Sam Halpern was his frequent assertion that RFK deliberately left no paper behind about his dealings with Charles Ford. This turned out to be utterly false. And as the author points out, for Seymour Hersh to have accepted this from Halpern for his 1997 book, The Dark Side of Camelot, tells you all you need to know about Hersh’s piece of rubbish. In fact, Charles Ford testified twice before the Church Committee. For whatever reason, we only have his second deposition. But it is clear from the references he makes to the lost first interview that he never did what Halpern said he was acting as a liaison for RFK to the Mob for the purpose of killing Castro. Considering Bobby Kennedy’s war on the Mafia, this was preposterous on its face. But as the author points out, we have documents from both sides today—RFK’s and Ford’s—as to what Ford was doing for Bobby. The idea was that he was supposed to check out some American representatives of anti-Castro groups in Cuba and also explore ways to retrieve the prisoners from the failed Bay of Pigs project. But the capper about this is that Halpern knew about it, since he signed off on one of Ford’s memos. In fact, Ford was working with Halpern and Harvey in 1961. And since Ford worked under those two men in 1961, within their domain at CIA, he could not have been working under Bobby Kennedy. The Church Committee examined Ford’s testimony afterwards and found it to be accurate. Perhaps the sickest statement that Halpern made to Hersh was this: “Bobby Kennedy’s primary purpose is dealing with Charles Ford was to do what Bill Harvey was not doing—finding someone to assassinate Fidel Castro.” As Hersh could have found out through declassified documents available at that time, this was an ugly lie. Harvey had found someone he was working with to kill Castro. That was John Roselli. And the CIA had lied to Bobby Kennedy about the existence of this plot. 

The book closes with what is a testament to its title. The author notes that Dwight Eisenhower and his National Security Advisor Gordon Gray had thought of using a false flag operation at Guantanamo Bay in the waning days of Ike’s administration. That is, they would employ Cuban exiles to simulate an attack on the base and that would suffice as an excuse to invade Cuba. In fact, Eisenhower had told Joint Chiefs Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer that he had little problem with that scenario, as long as they could manufacture something “that would be generally acceptable.” It is clear that Lemnitzer recalled Eisenhower’s approval of this concept, since both he and Edward Lansdale, who was running Operation Mongoose, were going to try and push it on President Kennedy. As Newman, and many others have written, once Mongoose—the secret war against Cuba—was up and running in February of 1962, the three men supervising it were not well-suited for each other. That would be Lansdale, William Harvey, and Bobby Kennedy. RFK was there at his brother’s request. Since after the Bay of Pigs, the president did not trust the so-called experts anymore. Lansdale did not like this. He actually asked CIA Director John McCone for complete control over Mongoose. A request that was promptly denied. On top of this, Lansdale and Harvey despised each other and Harvey hated RFK. Lansdale was quite imaginative—and deadly—in his plans to shake up things on the island. He thought up outlandish schemes like Task 33. This was a plan to use biological warfare against Cuban sugar workers, but this was only part of an even more wild menu: to create a pretext to attack Cuba. Lansdale now brought back the idea of staging a fake Cuban attack at Guantanamo to provoke an American invasion. 

As the reader can see, what Lansdale had in mind actually preceded what the Joint Chiefs were going to propose to President Kennedy, which was the infamous Operation Northwoods. The problem was that President Kennedy not only did not want to provoke American direct intervention, he did not even want to hear about it. But yet, on March 13, 1962 the Joint Chiefs proposed Northwoods to the White House. This was a series of play acted events designed to manufacture chaos in Cuba in order to provoke an attack by American forces. One was a staging of a “Remember the Maine” scenario: blowing up a ship in Guantanamo Bay and blaming it on Castro. Another was to create a communist Cuban terrorism wave on cities like Miami. Kennedy rejected these proposals. Newman closes the book with Kennedy’s searing disagreements with Lemnitzer over both Cuba and Vietnam. About the latter, Lemnitzer said that Kennedy’s policy would lead to “communist domination of all of the Southeast Asian mainland.” In regard to Cuba, Lemnitzer would not let up on the idea of American intervention. This led to his eventual rebuke by Kennedy in mid-March of 1962. Kennedy did kick him out of the White House, but he would be secretly guiding the Strategy of Tension under Operation Gladio. In other words, the terrorist plan Lemnitzer had been turned down on with Cuba, he was now going to be part of in Europe. Source: kennedysandking.com

The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy, Sirhan Sirhan

Gov. Gavin Newsom is not likely to ever free Robert F. Kennedy’s killer from prison — nor should he. That’s just a guess based on Newsom’s stated admiration for Kennedy and the fact that he’s no political dummy. He also apparently understands that assassin Sirhan Sirhan unforgivably changed American history for the worse, committing a crime against the nation. If Newsom could announce now that he would never allow Sirhan to be paroled, he’d probably leap at the chance. If Sirhan’s release still has the green light, the governor could block it. Of course, just because RFK is a hero to Newsom and Sirhan spoiled history doesn’t necessarily mean the governor wouldn’t feel compelled to release him. Under California law, to be released on parole, a prison lifer must be considered no longer a danger to the public. Asked at his hearing whether he’d ever kill again, Sirhan replied: “I would never put myself in jeopardy again.” That wasn’t exactly a statement of remorse. But Sirhan at another point said: “Sen. Kennedy was the hope of the world … and it pains me … the knowledge for such a horrible deed — if I did, in fact, do that.” Source: www.latimes.com

Dan Moldea, author of the book, "The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy", participated in a recent television special on the RFK assassination. Using, laser sights, stand-ins, and a re-creation of the Ambassador Hotel pantry in which the assassination occurred, Moldea purported to account for the six assassination victim's wounds using no more bullets than Sirhan's gun could hold. Moldea's television explanation, the same offered in his book, has several fatal shortcomings. One particularly critical conclusion by Moldea ensures that, under his scenario, no less than 9 shots were necessary to account for the victims' wounds. Problematically for Moldea, Sirhan fired an 8-shot revolver, which he unquestionably did not reload. Ironically, in a book which concluded that Sirhan B. Sirhan acted alone, Moldea actually offered a shooting scenario that demands two shooters! And what was Moldea's fatal mistake? He concluded that one of the victims (Paul Schrade) was struck in the forehead by a bullet that struck nothing else first. I made Moldea aware of his error in 2003 during a lengthy phone conversation. He sidestepped the issue, saying, "I wrote the book almost ten years ago. Honestly, I've forgotten the details [of the trajectory scenario] and put the RFK assassination behind me." Moldea ended the pleasant conversation by giving me some genuinely friendly advice: spend more time with your family and let the RFK assassination go. The key to understanding how Moldea's single-assassin shooting scenario, if correct, actually proves conspiracy, begins with an understanding of the number of victims and wounds they suffered. These wounds are undisputed:

1. RFK - Shot in the head, no exit.

2. RFK - Shot in the right rear armpit, with the bullet coming to rest in the flesh beneath the skin at the base of the back of the neck. The bullet was recovered at autopsy.

3. RFK - Shot in the right rear armpit one inch above shot No. 2. The bullet exited through right front chest below the clavicle.

4. RFK - Entry and exit of a bullet which passed through the rear right shoulder of RFK's suit jacket. The entry and exit were both behind the yolk seam at the top of the shoulder, and penetrated only the outermost layer of fabric.

5. Paul Schrade - Shot in the forehead above hairline near the apex of the head. Bullet fragments remained in the head, with a majority exiting through an exit defect several centimeters behind the entry point.

6. Ira Goldstein - Shot in the left buttock/thigh. The bullet was recovered during surgery.

7. Ira Goldstein - Entry and exit of a bullet that passed cleanly through his left pant leg without striking him.

8. Irwin Stroll - Shot in the left shin. The bullet was recovered during surgery.

9. Elizabeth Evans - Shot in the center of the forehead one inch below the hairline. Fragments of a bullet recovered during surgery were too light to comprise a full .22 round. There was no exit point in the scalp.

10. William Weisel - Shot in the left abdomen. The bullet was recovered near the spine during surgery.

The story of the girl in the polka dot dress has been a lingering theme in accounts of the events just after midnight on June 5, 1968, when Kennedy was gunned down in the hotel pantry after claiming victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. Witnesses talked of seeing such a female running from the hotel shouting, "We shot Kennedy." But she was never identified, and amid the chaos of the scene, descriptions were conflicting. Through the years, Sirhan has claimed no memory of shooting Kennedy and said in the recent interviews that his presence at the hotel was an accident, not a planned destination. Under hypnosis, he remembered meeting the girl that night and becoming smitten with her. He said she led him to the pantry. "I am trying to figure out how to hit on her... That's all that I can think about," he says in one interview cited in the documents. "I was fascinated with her looks. It was very erotic. I was consumed by her. She was a seductress with an unspoken unavailability." During Sgt. Hernandez’ polygraph testing of Jerry Owen, Hernandez seemed to display something of that attitude: “I’ve talked to twenty three people that say they saw a girl in the polka dot dress. They are all--they're all fibbing.”  (Tape #29272, July 3, 1968; Lt.Hernandez of SUS interrogation of Jerry Owen, page 46 of transcript). 

   

Larry Hancock: It does seem clear that Sgt. Hernandez shifted from being an detached polygraph interviewer to an aggressive police interrogator during the course of the interview with Sandra Serrano. In the end, Hernandez gave Sandy Serrano a choice, she could accept his appeal to recant or she would be talking to police forever… and possibly worse. Serrano quit her job and moved back to Ohio. Much later, in 1988 after the LAPD files were made public, Serrano had one more comment. In a brief radio interview she said simply: “I don’t ever want to have to go through that again….that sort of everyday harassment…being put in a room for hours with polka dot dress all around you. It was a bad scene and one that as a young person I was totally unprepared to handle. I was just twenty years old and I became unglued. I said what they wanted me to say.” It is should be mentioned that a great many of the witnesses which LAPD discounted were rejected based on interviews with Sgt. Hernandez. Chief Houghton describes one instance of this in his description of how the police handled Sandra Serrano’s observations. He relates that supervisor Manny Pena knew that if Serrano stuck to her story nothing could dispel the polka dotted dress girl “fever”, only Serrano herself could “put the spotted ghost to rest”.

In his book, and with no apparent concern, Houghton described their tactics, beginning with Manny Pena calling the SUS (Special Unit Senator) polygraph specialist and asking him to take Ms. Serrano out for a “SUS bought steak” dinner. He did just that, first with an informal dinner with Serrano and her Aunt, then isolating Serrano at the police station for a impromptu series of aggressive and emotional interviews, including a lengthy polygraph interrogation lasting until very late that night. Conflicting statements and evidence, which the defense seems not to have been aware of (or certainly did not take up in court) did not become public knowledge until years and in some cases decades had passed. It became public only as the result of almost constant pressure from private investigators and researchers. Lisa Pease details the statements of the “five best” witnesses who were described by LAPD as being in a position to see both RFK and Sirhan. All confirm a distance between them of “three” to “several” feet. The closest man to both, Karl Uecker, later went on record as stating that “There is no way that the shots described in the autopsy could have come from Sirhan’s gun. When I told this to the authorities, they told me I was wrong. But I repeat now what I told them then: Sirhan never got close enough for a point-blank shot.” 

The coroner’s report on the wounds, the eyewitnesses to Sirhan’s distance from RFK and the witnesses who reported other men with guns in the pantry – all suggest an alternative scenario of the shooting: Robert Kennedy entered a relatively long hallway with side doors and progressed into the section of the hallway which served as a pantry. As he moved through the pantry, he approached Sirhan. Then Sirhan moved out as if to shake his hand and began firing a pistol at Kennedy. As Kennedy fell back and down, one of the men whom Kennedy had passed, stepped up behind him and fired with a concealed weapon (a weapon probably held at waist level where it had been concealed under a newspaper). Kennedy was fatally wounded from one of these shots fired at extremely close range and sagged to the floor. At that point the shooter and the women withdrew as others ran forward; they slipped out one of the side corridor doors into the Embassy room, observed by several witnesses in the corridor and around the doors. Sirhan, drawing attention because he was firing a now very visible weapon into the oncoming crowd, was wrestled down, his pistol coming out of his hand. There is little doubt that some of Sirhan's writing was done in an abnormal state of mind. Certain of his notebook entries were done in highly repetitive fashion, very suggestive of automatic writing, a technique that does involve auto-suggestion and visualization, suggesting Sirhan had practiced a form of self hypnosis and did have the ability to force himself into a trance like state. Research into Sirhan’s activities disclosed considerable evidence that he had indeed been highly interested in the occult, had appeared at a Theosophical Society meeting and studied its literature, joined the Rosicrucians and studied their literature and practices (which included auto-hypnosis) and at the time of the assassination had a book by Manley Hall, founder of the Philosophical Research Society and a master hypnotist. 

It seems virtually certain that there was a conspiracy involved in the murder of Senator Kennedy. He had been stalked in the weeks and days immediately before his death; Sirhan himself had been present at the Ambassador the prior weekend, reported in both areas where the Senator was to speak and in the general area of the hotel kitchen. Credible witnesses place Sirhan in the company with the same set of individuals throughout the evening of the assassination and Sirhan was clearly “positioned” on the route which the Senator had used to enter the stage on which he gave his victory speech. The fatal encounter was no random accident. In addition, Sirhan’s notebook entries clearly reveal a focus on the Senator and specifies the date at which he would have to be killed, an obvious date given the timing of the California primary. Sirhan’s knowledge of the actual shooting may be debated, his claim to have no recollection at all of any of his notebook entries, of various notes about RFK on other pieces of paper or of other events is questionable. It is unwise to use Sirhan himself as a reliable source of information. The same can be said for many aspects of the LAPD investigation. There is substantive reason to challenge a good deal of their ballistics and forensics data. Much of their witness investigation work raises questions, including witness evaluations based on department polygraphs. All of this leaves us with a most unsatisfactory situation, with ample evidence to recognize a conspiracy, with clues to possible accessories, with profiles of the people who were repeatedly reported in association with Sirhan – and with justice very definitely incomplete. Source: www.maryferrell.org

Marilyn Monroe: 65th Anniversary of "Bus Stop"

Picture Marilyn Monroe and you'll see platinum blonde hair, bright red lipstick, and a white dress fluttering over a subway grate. But right after immortalizing exactly that image in 1955's The Seven Year Itch, Monroe reinvented herself. Under her own company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, and with a new studio contract under her belt, Marilyn Monroe delivered what remains one of her best performances in Bus Stop. Marilyn Monroe makes it worth remembering on the 65th anniversary of its premiere: August 31, 1956. The film, penned by The Seven Year Itch co-writer George Axelrod and directed by Joshua Logan, is based on a William Inge play. It follows Beau Decker (Don Murray), a bad mannered and rambunctious cowboy who's never left his ranch before. He sets out by bus from Montana to Arizona in the hopes of winning a rodeo – and bagging himself a woman. 

When he sees Monroe's Chérie performing at a bar, he's immediately smitten, and decides they'll be married the very next day. No matter how often Chérie turns him down or tries to escape, Beau won't be deterred, and she is eventually won over at the film's titular bus stop on their way back to Montana. Despite branching out into other genres earlier in her career, playing the femme fatale in 1953's Niagara and appearing in noirs The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Don't Bother to Knock (1952), 20th Century Fox was determined to keep her pigeonholed in the airy, comedic roles she was so adept at playing. This didn't work for Monroe, who was intent on being taken seriously as an actor. Her contract at Fox had her underpaid, with no say in what she appeared in. She refused to film the comedy The Girl in the Pink Tights, so Fox suspended her. A resolution seemed to have been reached when Monroe agreed to play a supporting role in 1954's There’s No Business Like Show Business and star in Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch (complete with a hefty bonus) – but the battle was far from over. Monroe made her commitment to changing her image clear. She ditched her acting coach and took up classes at the prestigious NYC Actors Studio. She would not appear in Fox's next choice for her, a comedy called How to Be Very, Very Popular. 

Eventually, Monroe proved to be too big a star to lose, and she got a new contract with Fox at the end of '55. It was a huge win, paying far better and giving her more control over her career, including approval over directors and her films' subjects. MMP's first picture would be Bus Stop, and before cameras rolled, its leading lady put the final stamp on her transformation with a legal name change from Norma Jeane Mortenson to Marilyn Monroe.  If Bus Stop had starred anyone else, it's doubtful the film would stand the test of time. Monroe disappears into her role, with her signature blonde hair dyed a darker shade, her famous low, breathy voice exchanged for a high-pitched Ozark accent, her skin tone made chalky with makeup (Chérie works nights and hardly sees the sun), her singing warbly, and her dancing awkward – just contrast her faltering performance of the film's "That Old Black Magic" with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' knockout "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." Monroe even found her own bedraggled costume, turning down one she thought looked too polished, and putting her own holes into her fishnets. Behind the scenes, she worked busily with her acting coach Paula Strasberg to perfect her performance, painstakingly going over every line of every scene. 

The hard work paid off. Director Joshua Logan, who before the cameras rolled protested that "Marilyn can’t act!", was entirely won over, going so far as to call her "one of the great talents of all time." The New York Time's review mirrored his about-face: "Marilyn Monroe has finally proved herself an actress in Bus Stop. She and the picture are swell! This piece of professional information may seem both implausible and absurd to those who have gauged the lady's talents by her performances in such films as Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and even The Seven Year Itch." By modern standards, Chérie's storyline is entirely misogynistic. It's disturbing to watch her give in to Beau's advances because he's the first person to accept her history with other men (apparently, it "averages out" because he has never had a girlfriend). Beau's "I like you the way you are, so what do I care how you got that way" would be sweet if not for all the time he's spent harassing – and literally abducting – Chérie, his inability to even pronounce her name right, and the fact that her transgression in his eyes is having been with other men. "That's the sweetest, tenderest thing anyone's ever said to me," Chérie replies.

That doesn't mean that Chérie is a character undeserving of Monroe's talents, though. There's something tragic in her speech on the bus about wanting whoever she marries to have "some real regard for me," as well as her dreams of making it to Hollywood when her talents aren't quite up to scratch. There is a meta tongue-in-cheek moment in which Chérie talks about her big plan to make it to Hollywood where “you get treated with a little respect.” It’s an overt dig at Zanuck and 20th Century Fox (which Marilyn famously called 19th Century Fox for its backward treatment of female stars). And one imagines that’s what the ingenue version of Marilyn might have initially thought with her grand plans to become a star. Except, unlike Chérie, she already grew up right next to Hollywood, her own mother a film cutter at RKO. Don Murray (Marilyn's co-star) was nominated to Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Source: www.gamesradar.com

James DiEugenio: Concerning Marilyn Monroe, there is no evidence of her closeness to the Mafia, or RFK. And there is no evidence of her doing a tell all on the Kennedy brothers. And if you read Donald McGovern's current article, she was not murdered. The pills were ingested, not injected. And what Mark Shaw does to try and get RFK into Brentwood was exposed by McGovern as nothing but photographic trickery. I say that because it is difficult to imagine that a lawyer/author could be that stupid. Also, there were many people who were not invited to her last rites proceeding, as Joe DiMaggio only invited 26. A lot of cheap hucksters have created a lot of smoke and mirrors out of a lot of nothing in order to create what, in reality, is a wild and lurid fantasy which libels Marilyn Monroe, RFK and JFK. Marilyn was not a Mob moll and she was not some kind of intel asset, or being tossed around by, of all people, RFK--who Hoover could not find anything on, even though he had agents following him around. What is incredible to me is that some people in the JFK critical community have actually take this rubbish seriously as Paul Hoch.

But the diary tale is actually worse than all the above. Because it turned out that Marilyn did have a diary. It was recovered in one of her storage boxes years after a dispute was resolved over her estate. It was nothing like Lionel Grandison, Robert Slatzer, or Jeanne Carmen said it was. The bulk of her estate was given over to the Strasberg family, since Monroe greatly appreciated what her acting coach, Lee Strasberg, had done for her. Those notebooks were compiled in a book called Fragments in 2010. There is no mention of Giancana, Roselli, Hoover, or Tony Accardo. Frank Sinatra is not in there and neither is Castro. Nothing about any romance with the Kennedy brothers or her desire to be First Lady. The only mention of the Kennedys was in notes she made for an interview, in which she said she admired them, as she did Eleanor Roosevelt, because they represented hope for young people. Grandison then surpassed himself. Not only did he find the diary, but there was also a publicity release in her purse. The release said that there would be a press conference at the LA Press Club. Marilyn would answer questions based upon her Diary of Secrets. I am not kidding. That is what it said and McGovern reproduces it in his book. Of course, no one ever saw it except Lionel Grandison. One wonders, since there was no such Diary of Secrets, what was the conference going to be about? Her failed marriages? Her thoughts on her acting career? Because, as one can see, that is what she wrote about in her diary, her real one, not the Slatzerian creation. Source: www.kennedysandking.com