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Marilyn Monroe: Death and aftermath
Marilyn Monroe was found dead August 5 1962 in the bedroom of her Brentwood, California, home at age thirty-six from an overdose of barbiturates. As with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, conspiracy theories have sprung up around the circumstances of her death, nearly all involving allegations that she was murdered due to her involvement with the Kennedy family. However, the fact that Kennedy's many girlfriends, including Judith Campbell Exner (who was also the paramour of mobster Sam Giancana), outlived the president, would cast doubt on this interpretation. Nevertheless, a plausible case was made for the Kennedy connection in "The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe" by author Donald Wolfe.
Marilyn's body was discovered by live-in housekeeper, Mrs. Eunice Murray, assigned to Marilyn's care by her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson. Controversy today still surrounds the unexplained timeframe of events on the night of Monroe's passing. Interestingly, Murray attempted to cash a $200.00 check made out to her by Monroe several days after Monroe's death. City National Bank of Beverly Hills declined to pay Murray and marked the check "deceased." The un-cancelled check is today on display in the Monroe exhibit at the Hollywood Entertainment Museum. In the Fall of 1962, Murray, a widow of modest means, left the country for an extended European cruise on the Queen Mary. Pat Newcomb, Monroe's personal publicist from Hollywood, joined the Kennedy administration during the ensuing months. Eventually in the 70s, Murray told her own sanitized version of that fateful night in "Marilyn, The Last Months." The book was written by a ghostwriter while Murray was living in a guest house in Santa Monica; Pat Newcomb was a frequent visitor then. In her later years, Murray moved back East, possibly to Martha's Vineyard, remarried for a short time, and oddly survived the passing of her second husband within very short order. Murray has since passed away.
A formal investigation in 1982 by the Los Angeles County District Attorney came up with no credible evidence of foul play, but the stories persist. Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who performed the autopsy (and the autopsies of Robert F. Kennedy,
Natalie Wood and
William Holden, among other celebrities), wrote in his book
Coroner that Marilyn's death was a highly likely suicide.
DiMaggio claimed her body and arranged her funeral. According to her half-sister, Berniece Baker Miracle, he just took over and she allowed him to. For twenty years, he had a dozen red roses delivered three times a week to her crypt. Unlike the other men who knew her intimately (or claimed to), he never publicly spoke about her nor wrote a book.
Marilyn is interred in a crypt at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. She had Grace Goddard interred there because Grace's aunt - who cared for Norma Jeane briefly - is there. Just as her career took off, she asked her make-up man, Whitey Snyder, to promise he would make her up when she died. Snyder joked he would if her body was brought to him while it was warm. A few days later, he received a money clip: "Whitey Dear, While I am still warm, Marilyn." He fulfilled that promise with the help of a bottle of whiskey.
When Gladys was between mental hospitals, she married her last husband, John Stewart Eley, who died in 1952. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, she walked out of a sanitarium in the early 1970s and flew to Florida, where Berniece picked her up at the airport. She died of congestive heart failure on March 11, 1984 at a nursing home. Obsessed by Christian Science, she would refuse to discuss Norma Jeane or Marilyn Monroe, perhaps unable to relive the past. A woman once so fascinated with movie stars that she named her daughter after one,
Norma Talmadge, apparently never knew she had given birth to one of the most famous women in history.
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