Page 66 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe
What she doesn’t know is that the switchboard has been duly informed that neither “Miss Green” nor the president’s other close friends should be put through any longer. Kennedy’s private number has also been disconnected.
Marilyn’s stand-in, Evelyn Moriarty, convinces a studio artist to draw a funny “Happy Birthday (suit)” card sending up last week’s skinny-dip.
They do, and the mood brightens when the cake is lit with sparklers at the end of the day.
After it’s cut, Marilyn playfully feeds George Cukor a piece.
The director had bristled earlier when Dean Martin brought bottles of Dom Perignon to set, but Marilyn has done well filming her scene today, so why not raise a toast?
Marilyn’s evening is just getting started. She’s next due at Dodger Stadium.
Two local Major League teams, the Dodgers and the Angels, call the brand-new facility home. Tonight the Angels are playing the defending World Series champion New York Yankees—Joe DiMaggio’s old team.
“I have to go,” she tells producer Henry Weinstein. “I promised the people at Muscular Dystrophy.” She’s making an appearance to help the charity raise money.
The evening temperature is hovering around fifty-five degrees.
To keep warm, she asks to borrow her Jean Louis–designed movie costume—a cream-colored fur-trimmed suit.
Then she’s driven to Beverly Hills to pick up Dean Martin’s ten-year-old son, Dean Paul Martin.
She’s known “Dino” since he was a toddler, even babysitting him from time to time.
The game is a big draw. Both teams are in contention for the American League pennant. A record-setting crowd of 51,584 ticket holders is about to see a celebrity more famous than any player on a roster that includes Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford.
When Angels outfielder Albie Pearson reports to the home-team dugout, the “Littlest Angel,” as he’s called for his five-foot-five-inch frame, knows only that he’s drawn escort duty for the pregame charity presentation.
“So I go out to the dugout,” Pearson says, “and they tell me the person I’m going to walk to home plate is Marilyn Monroe.”
The player, who’s in his second season with the Angels, is suddenly nervous. “Where is she?” he asks, looking around the dugout.
He finally spots her in the far corner, standing completely in shadow, “pale and shaking and I’m thinking this can’t be Marilyn Monroe, the famous movie star.” Marilyn is “the most famous yet loneliest person I ever saw in my life,” Pearson thinks. “She was a beautiful shell.”
She’s also a professional. Pearson watches in amazement as Marilyn taps into that spark that made her famous. As they climb the steps of the dugout, the actress is suddenly smiling, waving, and sparkling. She’s transformed into Marilyn Monroe.
Standing at home plate, Marilyn asks the crowd to consider a donation to the muscular dystrophy fund. But the Angels haven’t forgotten that it’s her special day. The acclaimed Robert Mitchell Boys Choir, which frequently appears in movies, sings “Happy Birthday” to her.
Pearson sees Marilyn safely back to the dugout. Though they haven’t exchanged a word, he’s feeling protective of her. He’s a religious man, and Bible verses run through his head.
Suddenly, she turns to him, asking, “What? What is it you want to tell me?”
Pearson is too tongue-tied to answer.
Someone else is looking out for Marilyn tonight—her favorite limo driver, Rudy Kautzsky.
She climbs into a rented Cadillac, returning to the Fox lot to return her costume.
Then it’s on to dinner at La Scala, the Beverly Hills restaurant where, Variety columnist Army Archerd notes, Marilyn often “dines alone, late.”
Shortly after midnight on Saturday, June 2, it’s finally time to go home.
Within hours, she’s gripped by a fever and a chill she caught at the baseball game. The symptoms of her acute sinusitis come rushing back. But her mind is whirring with the feelings that wash over her every year around her birthday, feelings of sadness and regret over being alone.
Marilyn’s telephone rings. She can tell it’s long distance by the clicking sounds when she picks up the phone. She’s brimming with hope when the operator connects her with Hyannis Port.
“Jack?”
“It’s me, Peter. Peter Lawford.”
Lawford has once again been pressed into doing Jack’s dirty work. “You can handle it, Peter,” his brother-in-law had told him.
Lawford does the president’s bidding. Clearly and firmly, he tells Marilyn that she will never again hear from Jack Kennedy. The president was never going to divorce his wife to marry her. Marilyn was never going to be First Lady.
To drive the point home, Lawford gets crude. “You’re just another one of Jack’s fucks.”
Lawford ends the call, then makes another one to Marilyn’s publicist.
“Get to Brentwood as soon as you can,” Lawford tells Pat Newcomb, knowing the damage his call has inflicted. “Marilyn needs you.”
Pat Newcomb hurries over to comfort her friend, who is deeply distraught.
Penicillin cured the ear infection Marilyn suffered after filming the swimming scene, but there’s no cure for the twin afflictions of humiliation and heartbreak the Kennedys have so cruelly administered. But she can always sedate herself.
On Sunday morning, a shaft of light pierces Marilyn’s new blackout blinds. No matter how many times she tugs at the curtains, the room is simply not dark enough to sleep.
By the afternoon, Marilyn is begging for relief. She asks Mrs. Murray to call Dr. Greenson, who’s been away in Germany for four weeks.
“Bring him back!” she cries, collapsing to her knees.
Mrs. Murray calls Dr. Greenson’s children, Joan and Danny. Danny is now a medical student.
The three of them enter Marilyn’s dark room and find her wrapped in a bedsheet.
Her masked face looks to Danny like “the Lone Ranger,” but when he looks beneath it, he sees that her face is white with anxiety and damp with sweat, classic signs of a Dexamyl overdose.
After consulting with their father by telephone, they summon a local doctor, who clears Marilyn’s nightstand of all drugs.
“I can’t sleep. I’m ugly. Nobody loves me. People are only nice to me when they want something I can give them.”
Listening to her expressions of hopelessness and rejection, Danny grows increasingly concerned. This woman is desperate.
“My life isn’t worth living,” she insists.