Page 31 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

AS THE MONKEY BUSINESS shoot wraps, Marilyn is struck down by appendicitis, bent double with abdominal pain and a fever brought on by infection.

Marilyn is scheduled for an appendectomy but is suddenly struck by a terrible thought while prepping for surgery. What if her “routine procedure” turns out to be a “Mississippi appendectomy”? She’s heard rumors of unauthorized hysterectomies given to unsuspecting young women.

In the operating room, the surgeon pulls back the gown on an unconscious Marilyn and makes an unexpected discovery: she’s scotch-taped a message to her abdomen.

Dear Dr. Rabwin,

Cut as little as possible. I know it seems vain, but that doesn’t really enter into it. The fact that I am a woman is important and means much to me.

Save please (can’t ask enough) what you can—I’m in your hands. You have children and you must know what that means—please Dr. Rabwin—I know you somehow will!

Thank you—thank you—thank you—For God’s sake Dear Doctor no ovaries removed—please, again, do whatever you can to prevent large scars. Thanking you with all my heart,

Marilyn Monroe

Recovering in her hospital room, Marilyn is surrounded by bouquets of flowers and “Get Well Soon” cards. DiMaggio sends a dozen roses that stand in a vase by her bedside.

The studio sets up a photo shoot to show fans that their favorite star is on the mend.

Whitey Snyder arrives to do her hair and makeup. He sets her famous blond curls, applies her favorite red lipstick, and adds a bloom of health to her complexion.

Just before the photographers arrive to snap photos of her reading the get-well cards—especially the one from DiMaggio—Marilyn plants a kiss on Snyder’s cheek.

“Thank you for making me look like myself again,” she smiles. “Promise you’ll do this for my funeral.”

“Your funeral!” he laughs. “I’ll be dead myself by then!”

“Promise,” she insists.

“I promise,” he replies. “Sure, bring the body back while it is still warm and I’ll do it.”

“With your pinky,” she adds, extending her own as they shake little fingers.

A few days later, Whitey Snyder receives a golden Tiffany money clip engraved “Whitey Dear: / While I’m still warm / Marilyn.”

While Marilyn lies in the hospital recovering, questions about her past are coming to light.

There’s boundless curiosity about the 20th Century-Fox star, now receiving over five thousand fan letters a week.

On the heels of the nude photo revelation, Marilyn recently gave an interview to a reporter from ladies’ magazine Redbook about her childhood as an orphan, titled “So Far to Go Alone,” which it’s slated to publish in its June edition.

But what if the endearing little-girl-lost story of the orphan who made good isn’t airtight?

MARILYN MONROE CONFESSES MOTHER ALIVE, LIVING HERE runs the headline to Erskine Johnson’s May 3, 1952, story in the Hollywood Reporter . A photograph shows Homestead Lodge, a nursing home outside Pasadena where her mother, Gladys Monroe Baker (now Gladys Eley), is working a low-wage job.

This latest blow is a harder recovery than either the nude photo scandal or the appendectomy. Marilyn is immediately branded a liar. An eager young hustler. The most focused, most determined, most ambitious, and most pushy starlet out there.

Maybe in those first few years I didn’t do anything to deserve other people’s trust, Marilyn frets. I don’t know much about these things. I just tried not to hurt anybody, and to help myself.

As annoyed as he is that Redbook magazine will be now on press with a discredited story of an orphaned Marilyn, Fox’s lead press agent, the hard-nosed former newsman Harry Brand, is still doing his best to guard a far more explosive secret: that Marilyn was born illegitimate.

In full damage-control mode, Marilyn writes an apology to Redbook , taking the position that as a child she’d been unaware her mother was alive.

“I frankly did not feel wrong in withholding from you the fact that my mother is still alive … since we have never known each other intimately and have never enjoyed the normal relationship of mother and daughter.”

The anger toward Marilyn subsides, replaced by a flow of letters from people claiming to be her mother.

Not long after the Hollywood Reporter ’s scoop runs, Gladys writes Marilyn herself.

Please dear child, I’d like to receive a letter from you. Things are very annoying around here and I’d like to move away as soon as possible. I’d like to have my child’s love instead of hatred.

With love, Mother

Marilyn doesn’t reply.

I just want to forget about all the unhappiness, all the misery she had in her life and I had in mine, she thinks. I can’t forget it, but I’d like to try. When I am Marilyn Monroe and don’t think about Norma Jeane, then sometimes it works.