Page 73 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

MARILYN AND SID Skolsky have been friends for decades, ever since the days at Schwab’s.

She’s never been a political person. Until lately, when she’s gotten involved with America’s leading political family.

It’s one thing to attend parties at the beach house of Peter and Pat Kennedy Lawford. They’re Hollywood types.

But her association with, as she calls them, “extremely important men in government … at the highest level” is another matter entirely.

It’s Saturday, August 4, and Skolsky calls to check on Marilyn.

She starts in on her problems with the Kennedys. She’s seeing one of them, she insists. Tonight.

Skolsky’s journalistic instincts kick in.

He motions to his daughter Steffi, asks her to pick up a telephone extension. Steffi is hit with the same shock and disbelief her father is experiencing.

Marilyn is adamant about her plans. And she seems to be telling the truth.

Marilyn calls Dr. Greenson to come over for an emergency afternoon session.

“Here I am, the most beautiful woman in the world, and I do not have a date for Saturday night.”

Investigator Fred Otash is reviewing his surveillance notes. The tape recordings from the “grain of rice” microphone run about forty minutes.

Seems like Marilyn was right about seeing a Kennedy tonight. Only, not in the way she had planned.

The recordings place both Peter Lawford and Bobby Kennedy at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, deep in conflict with a highly emotional Marilyn, who’s demanding “an explanation as to why Kennedy was not going to marry her.”

“It was a violent argument about their relationship and the commitment and promises Bobby made to her,” Otash writes in his notebook. “She said she was passed around like a piece of meat.” The attorney general loses control of his tone of voice, which becomes “screeching, high-pitched.”

He’s not leaving without finding what he came for—Marilyn’s diary. The little red book where she kept all her notes about “political things.”

“Where is it? Where the fuck is it? We have to know. It’s important to the family. We can make any arrangements you want, but we must find it.”

Marilyn refuses to answer.

“She was really screaming … Bobby gets the pillow and he muffles her on the bed to keep the neighbors from hearing. She finally quieted down and then he was looking to get out of there.”

Marilyn lies in bed with her white telephone. She’s calmed herself with some pills. Talking to friends might make her feel better.

She holds it together when Joe DiMaggio Jr. calls—she’s so proud of Joey, now a twenty-year-old military private—but by the time she reaches her friend and hairdresser Sydney Guilaroff after 8 p.m., she’s rambling.

“Danger … betrayals … men in high places … clandestine love affairs,” she says, before finally declaring, “I know a lot of secrets about the Kennedys. Dangerous ones.”

When José Bolanos telephones at 9:30, Marilyn claims to have news for him that “will one day shock the whole world.”

She sets the phone down. Is someone at the door?

Eventually, Bolanos ends the call.

Marilyn picks up the telephone again. She was supposed to go over to Peter Lawford’s again for dinner tonight, but he’d made excuses on her behalf.

“Marilyn’s not coming, she’s not feeling well,” he’d told the other guests.

Now Lawford is alarmed by the drifting quality of her voice on the phone. He shouts at her, desperately trying to draw her focus.

Marilyn answers sweetly, “Say good-bye to Pat, say good-bye to Jack, and say good-bye to yourself, because you’re a nice guy.”

Is he?

Silence is his only answer.

Marilyn is too far gone.