Presidential Affairs: JFK and Marilyn Monroe
One of the less flattering aspects of the image of President John F. Kennedy is his numerous alleged instances of marital infidelity. As President, Kennedy reportedly had affairs with a number of women, including Gunilla von Post, Judith Campbell, Mary Pinchot Meyer, Marlene Dietrich, Mimi Alford, and Pamela Turnure who was his wife's press secretary. Undoubtedly, the most famous woman that Kennedy is alleged to have gone offside with was actress Marilyn Monroe. The extent of a relationship with Monroe will never be known, but it is alleged that they spent a weekend together in March 1962 while Kennedy was staying at Bing Crosby's home. The White House switchboard noted a number of calls from Monroe in 1962, and Monroe famously and seductively sang Happy Birthday to the President on Saturday, May 19, 1962 (10 days before his actual birthday) at a celebration of his forty-fifth birthday.
Kennedy was introduced to the famous actress in February of 1962 when his brother-in-law, British actor Peter Lawford, invited Monroe to a dinner party in New York that was being held to honor JFK. Monroe had actually met Kennedy twice before, but very briefly each time. Although dinner was at eight, Monroe was notoriously late for everything, and the fact that she was going to attend a dinner with the President of the United States waiting did not improve her lack of punctuality. She eventually arrived more than an hour late. Lawford's business partner, Milt Ebbins, later recalled
"When she walked in, it was like the parting of the Red Sea. There were about 25 people in there and the crowd divided into halves as she walked through the room." Actress Arlene Dahl, was also at the party, and as she recalled: "Marilyn walked in and everything stopped, everyone stopped. It was magical, really. I've never seen anyone stop a room like that. The President turned around and you could see that he was immediately attracted to her. 'Finally! You're here,' he said, with a big smile. 'There are some people here who are dying to meet you.' Then she was descended upon. People just wanted to stand near her, smell her fragrance, breathe the same air."
According to other reports, Kennedy took Monroe's arm and they went to the table, giving Ebbins a wry little smile and a wink. Kennedy later asked Monroe for her phone number and called her the next day. In the call, Kennedy is alleged to have told Monroe that he was going to be in Palm Springs on March 24, and he asked if she would meet him there, adding "Jackie won't be there."
Philip Watson, a former Los Angeles county assessor, stated that he was present when Monroe met Kennedy on March 24th at Bing Crosby's Spanish-style house in Palm Springs. According to Watson, Monroe was calm and relaxed, and was wearing "kind of a robe thing". Watson added, "There was no question in my mind that Marilyn and the President were together. They were having a good time. She'd had a lot to drink. It was obvious they were intimate and that they were staying there together for the night."
According to other reports, the tryst was viewed differently by the two main subjects. Monroe became obsessed with the President, while Kennedy simply looked upon their encounter as another conquest. According to Kennedy's good friend Florida Democratic Senator George Smathers:
"Jack was pretty much done with her after Palm Springs. JFK told me that they were talking and he happened to say something to her like: 'You're not really First Lady material, anyway, Marilyn.' He said it really stuck in her craw. She didn't like hearing that. I think he only saw her one more time, and that was when she came into Washington unexpectedly and we - he, I and a few others - took her sailing on a motorboat down the Potomac River. We got back at 11.30 at night. She didn't stay at the White House, she stayed somewhere else. There was no hanky-panky between her and JFK that night. I know, because I asked him the next day and he would have happily said so. But, anyway, Jackie knew about that trip. In fact, we were dancing at a White House ball and she said to me: 'Don't think I'm naive about what you and Jack are doing with all those pretty girls, like Marilyn, sailing on the Potomac under the moonlight.' She was accustomed to Kennedy's indiscretions, but this one bothered her. She knew from what she'd heard and read that Marilyn was a troubled woman. It wasn't so much that she was angry about it, more that she was just disgusted."
A Secret Service agent later stated: "We all knew about the weekend. It wasn't until she and the President were both dead that people started talking about an affair. Trust me, no one was saying anything about an affair in 1962. What we knew was that JFK and Marilyn had sex at Bing Crosby's, and that's it. We didn't think it was a big deal. He had sex with a lot of women. She was just one of many and it wasn't that noteworthy. If there was more to it between them, they somehow managed to keep it from us - and I don't think you can keep something like that from the Secret Service."
The weekend in Palm Springs developed into an obsession for Monroe, who desperately wanted to see Kennedy again. Her publicist Rupert Allan described her as being "fixated on the President. It started to become unclear as to what was going on between them, even though I thought it wasn't much. She was acting like she wanted more, though." Another secret service agent said: "She was calling him a lot. She wanted to see him. Everyone knew it." But the feeling wasn't mutual and Kennedy refused to return her calls to the White House.
After the incident in May in which Monroe sang "Happy Birthday Mister President" to Kennedy at Madison Square Gardens in a skintight sequined gown (shown in the YouTube video above), first lady Jackie Kennedy told her husband that she was deeply unhappy about the event. According to author Seymour Hirsch, she threatened to file for divorce immediately, before the next presidential campaign, something that would have hamstrung his chances of being re-elected.
George Smathers said:
"Jack was already done with Marilyn anyway, by that time. He had this other girl named Mary Meyer he was playing around with. His view of Marilyn was that she was a very sweet girl, but to him sweet girls were a dime a dozen and Marilyn was trouble. She began to ask for opportunities to come to Washington, to the White House, that sort of thing. But he told Jackie: 'Look, it really is over. It was nothing anyway.' Jack told me 'It's not worth it, George. I have a free ride here with Jackie. She gives me great latitude. So if this one is going to be an issue for her and cause me problems with respect to her dealing with the other women, then, fine, I can live without this one. No problem. So let's just end it with Marilyn before it's too late.' So I called someone I knew, a friend of Marilyn's I could trust, and said 'I need you to put a bridle on Marilyn's mouth and stop her from talking so much about what's going on with Jack. It's starting to get around too much.' That's all I did to end things, my little contribution. But I know what Jack did: he stopped taking her calls, if he ever took any. As far as he was concerned, he was done with her. But, Marilyn... well, she wouldn't be so easily got rid of, let's put it that way."
Publicist Rupert Allan adds, "If Kennedy had handled Marilyn differently, things might not have turned out so badly. But just ducking her as he did - not good."
Kennedy never personally told Marilyn that their fling was over. Instead, he had his brother Attorney-General Robert Kennedy tell her that she was not to call the White House again.
Whether it was rejection by Kennedy or some other cause, by 1962, the year she died, Monroe was heavily dependent on prescription drugs and alcohol to control her emotional instability. On August 5, 1962, at 4:25 a.m., LAPD sergeant Jack Clemmons received a call from Dr. Ralph Greenson, Monroe's psychiatrist, saying that Monroe was found dead at her home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California. She was 36 years old.
Monroe's death led to many conspiracy theories, some of which speculated that either the President or his brother, Attorney-General Robert Kennedy, were somehow involved. In 1964, Frank A. Capell's self-published pamphlet The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe alleged that her death was part of a communist conspiracy. Capell claimed that Monroe and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had an affair, which she took too seriously and was threatening to cause a scandal. He claimed that Robert Kennedy therefore ordered her to be assassinated to protect his career.
Norman Mailer's 1973 book entitled Marilyn: A Biography, claimed that Monroe and Robert F. Kennedy had an affair and speculated that she was killed by either the FBI or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Later that year Mailer recanted his allegations in an interview with Mike Wallace for 60 Minutes, stating that he had made them to ensure commercial success for his book, and that he believes Monroe's death was "ten to one" an "accidental suicide".
In 1975, Robert F. Slatzer published The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe, in which he also asserted that Monroe was killed by order of Robert F. Kennedy. Slatzer also claimed to have been married to Monroe in Mexico for three days in October 1952, and said that the two of them had remained close friends until her death.
Later that year, in October 1975, rock journalist Anthony Scaduto published an article about Monroe's death in Oui magazine. The following year he expanded this account into book form as Who Killed Marilyn Monroe? (1976). Scaduto alleged that Monroe had kept a red diary in which she had written confidential political information she had heard from the Kennedys, and that her house had been wiretapped on the orders of union leader Jimmy Hoffa, who was hoping to obtain incriminating evidence he could use against the Kennedys.
British journalist Anthony Summers claimed that Monroe's death was an accidental overdose that was covered up by Robert F. Kennedy. His 1985 book, Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe, was one of the most commercially successful Monroe biographies. According to Summers, Monroe had severe substance abuse problems. He alleges that Monroe had affairs with both John and Robert Kennedy, and that when Robert Kennedy ended their affair, she threatened to reveal their association. Kennedy and Peter Lawford attempted to prevent this by encouraging her addictions. According to Summers, Monroe became hysterical and accidentally overdosed, dying in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. He alleges that Robert Kennedy wanted to leave Los Angeles before Monroe's death became public to avoid being associated with it. In furtherance of this plan, Monroe's body was returned to her home and the overdose staged as a suicide, with the assistance of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Summers' allegations formed the basis for the 1985 BBC documentary Marilyn: Say Goodbye to the President (1985).
British author Matthew Smith's 2003 book entitled Victim: The Secret Tapes of Marilyn Monroe, asserts that Monroe was murdered by the CIA due to her association with Robert F. Kennedy. Smith claims that the CIA wanted revenge for the Kennedys' handling of the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
According to Kennedy biographer Richard Reeves, "the logistics of Kennedy's liaisons required secrecy and devotion rare in the annals of the energetic service demanded by successful politicians". Kennedy reportedly believed that his friendly relationship with members of the press would help protect him from revelations about his sex life. During his lifetime, he was correct about this assumption.
Kennedy was introduced to the famous actress in February of 1962 when his brother-in-law, British actor Peter Lawford, invited Monroe to a dinner party in New York that was being held to honor JFK. Monroe had actually met Kennedy twice before, but very briefly each time. Although dinner was at eight, Monroe was notoriously late for everything, and the fact that she was going to attend a dinner with the President of the United States waiting did not improve her lack of punctuality. She eventually arrived more than an hour late. Lawford's business partner, Milt Ebbins, later recalled
"When she walked in, it was like the parting of the Red Sea. There were about 25 people in there and the crowd divided into halves as she walked through the room." Actress Arlene Dahl, was also at the party, and as she recalled: "Marilyn walked in and everything stopped, everyone stopped. It was magical, really. I've never seen anyone stop a room like that. The President turned around and you could see that he was immediately attracted to her. 'Finally! You're here,' he said, with a big smile. 'There are some people here who are dying to meet you.' Then she was descended upon. People just wanted to stand near her, smell her fragrance, breathe the same air."
According to other reports, Kennedy took Monroe's arm and they went to the table, giving Ebbins a wry little smile and a wink. Kennedy later asked Monroe for her phone number and called her the next day. In the call, Kennedy is alleged to have told Monroe that he was going to be in Palm Springs on March 24, and he asked if she would meet him there, adding "Jackie won't be there."
Philip Watson, a former Los Angeles county assessor, stated that he was present when Monroe met Kennedy on March 24th at Bing Crosby's Spanish-style house in Palm Springs. According to Watson, Monroe was calm and relaxed, and was wearing "kind of a robe thing". Watson added, "There was no question in my mind that Marilyn and the President were together. They were having a good time. She'd had a lot to drink. It was obvious they were intimate and that they were staying there together for the night."
According to other reports, the tryst was viewed differently by the two main subjects. Monroe became obsessed with the President, while Kennedy simply looked upon their encounter as another conquest. According to Kennedy's good friend Florida Democratic Senator George Smathers:
"Jack was pretty much done with her after Palm Springs. JFK told me that they were talking and he happened to say something to her like: 'You're not really First Lady material, anyway, Marilyn.' He said it really stuck in her craw. She didn't like hearing that. I think he only saw her one more time, and that was when she came into Washington unexpectedly and we - he, I and a few others - took her sailing on a motorboat down the Potomac River. We got back at 11.30 at night. She didn't stay at the White House, she stayed somewhere else. There was no hanky-panky between her and JFK that night. I know, because I asked him the next day and he would have happily said so. But, anyway, Jackie knew about that trip. In fact, we were dancing at a White House ball and she said to me: 'Don't think I'm naive about what you and Jack are doing with all those pretty girls, like Marilyn, sailing on the Potomac under the moonlight.' She was accustomed to Kennedy's indiscretions, but this one bothered her. She knew from what she'd heard and read that Marilyn was a troubled woman. It wasn't so much that she was angry about it, more that she was just disgusted."
A Secret Service agent later stated: "We all knew about the weekend. It wasn't until she and the President were both dead that people started talking about an affair. Trust me, no one was saying anything about an affair in 1962. What we knew was that JFK and Marilyn had sex at Bing Crosby's, and that's it. We didn't think it was a big deal. He had sex with a lot of women. She was just one of many and it wasn't that noteworthy. If there was more to it between them, they somehow managed to keep it from us - and I don't think you can keep something like that from the Secret Service."
The weekend in Palm Springs developed into an obsession for Monroe, who desperately wanted to see Kennedy again. Her publicist Rupert Allan described her as being "fixated on the President. It started to become unclear as to what was going on between them, even though I thought it wasn't much. She was acting like she wanted more, though." Another secret service agent said: "She was calling him a lot. She wanted to see him. Everyone knew it." But the feeling wasn't mutual and Kennedy refused to return her calls to the White House.
Click to viewAfter the incident in May in which Monroe sang "Happy Birthday Mister President" to Kennedy at Madison Square Gardens in a skintight sequined gown (shown in the YouTube video above), first lady Jackie Kennedy told her husband that she was deeply unhappy about the event. According to author Seymour Hirsch, she threatened to file for divorce immediately, before the next presidential campaign, something that would have hamstrung his chances of being re-elected.
George Smathers said:
"Jack was already done with Marilyn anyway, by that time. He had this other girl named Mary Meyer he was playing around with. His view of Marilyn was that she was a very sweet girl, but to him sweet girls were a dime a dozen and Marilyn was trouble. She began to ask for opportunities to come to Washington, to the White House, that sort of thing. But he told Jackie: 'Look, it really is over. It was nothing anyway.' Jack told me 'It's not worth it, George. I have a free ride here with Jackie. She gives me great latitude. So if this one is going to be an issue for her and cause me problems with respect to her dealing with the other women, then, fine, I can live without this one. No problem. So let's just end it with Marilyn before it's too late.' So I called someone I knew, a friend of Marilyn's I could trust, and said 'I need you to put a bridle on Marilyn's mouth and stop her from talking so much about what's going on with Jack. It's starting to get around too much.' That's all I did to end things, my little contribution. But I know what Jack did: he stopped taking her calls, if he ever took any. As far as he was concerned, he was done with her. But, Marilyn... well, she wouldn't be so easily got rid of, let's put it that way."
Publicist Rupert Allan adds, "If Kennedy had handled Marilyn differently, things might not have turned out so badly. But just ducking her as he did - not good."
Kennedy never personally told Marilyn that their fling was over. Instead, he had his brother Attorney-General Robert Kennedy tell her that she was not to call the White House again.
Whether it was rejection by Kennedy or some other cause, by 1962, the year she died, Monroe was heavily dependent on prescription drugs and alcohol to control her emotional instability. On August 5, 1962, at 4:25 a.m., LAPD sergeant Jack Clemmons received a call from Dr. Ralph Greenson, Monroe's psychiatrist, saying that Monroe was found dead at her home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California. She was 36 years old.
Monroe's death led to many conspiracy theories, some of which speculated that either the President or his brother, Attorney-General Robert Kennedy, were somehow involved. In 1964, Frank A. Capell's self-published pamphlet The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe alleged that her death was part of a communist conspiracy. Capell claimed that Monroe and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had an affair, which she took too seriously and was threatening to cause a scandal. He claimed that Robert Kennedy therefore ordered her to be assassinated to protect his career.
Norman Mailer's 1973 book entitled Marilyn: A Biography, claimed that Monroe and Robert F. Kennedy had an affair and speculated that she was killed by either the FBI or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Later that year Mailer recanted his allegations in an interview with Mike Wallace for 60 Minutes, stating that he had made them to ensure commercial success for his book, and that he believes Monroe's death was "ten to one" an "accidental suicide".
In 1975, Robert F. Slatzer published The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe, in which he also asserted that Monroe was killed by order of Robert F. Kennedy. Slatzer also claimed to have been married to Monroe in Mexico for three days in October 1952, and said that the two of them had remained close friends until her death.
Later that year, in October 1975, rock journalist Anthony Scaduto published an article about Monroe's death in Oui magazine. The following year he expanded this account into book form as Who Killed Marilyn Monroe? (1976). Scaduto alleged that Monroe had kept a red diary in which she had written confidential political information she had heard from the Kennedys, and that her house had been wiretapped on the orders of union leader Jimmy Hoffa, who was hoping to obtain incriminating evidence he could use against the Kennedys.
British journalist Anthony Summers claimed that Monroe's death was an accidental overdose that was covered up by Robert F. Kennedy. His 1985 book, Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe, was one of the most commercially successful Monroe biographies. According to Summers, Monroe had severe substance abuse problems. He alleges that Monroe had affairs with both John and Robert Kennedy, and that when Robert Kennedy ended their affair, she threatened to reveal their association. Kennedy and Peter Lawford attempted to prevent this by encouraging her addictions. According to Summers, Monroe became hysterical and accidentally overdosed, dying in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. He alleges that Robert Kennedy wanted to leave Los Angeles before Monroe's death became public to avoid being associated with it. In furtherance of this plan, Monroe's body was returned to her home and the overdose staged as a suicide, with the assistance of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Summers' allegations formed the basis for the 1985 BBC documentary Marilyn: Say Goodbye to the President (1985).
British author Matthew Smith's 2003 book entitled Victim: The Secret Tapes of Marilyn Monroe, asserts that Monroe was murdered by the CIA due to her association with Robert F. Kennedy. Smith claims that the CIA wanted revenge for the Kennedys' handling of the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
According to Kennedy biographer Richard Reeves, "the logistics of Kennedy's liaisons required secrecy and devotion rare in the annals of the energetic service demanded by successful politicians". Kennedy reportedly believed that his friendly relationship with members of the press would help protect him from revelations about his sex life. During his lifetime, he was correct about this assumption.