The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story (68 page)

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Authors: Keith Badman

Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #Arts & Literature, #Actors & Entertainers, #Television Performers

BOOK: The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story
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October 1960, Pyramid Lake, Nevada. Marilyn and her third husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, take a break during the filming of
The Misfits.

11 November 1960, New York. Marilyn attempts to leave her apartment following the announcement that she was divorcing Arthur Miller. ‘Arthur is a wonderful writer,’ she would remark, ‘but I think he’s a better writer than a husband.’

22 March 1961, Reddington Beach, Florida. DiMaggio sticks his tongue out to waiting journalists who were attempting to disrupt his and Marilyn’s rest on the beach.

14 June 1961, Sands Hotel, Las Vegas. Dean Martin’s surprise belated 44th birthday celebration, midnight. Marilyn was seen seated at the very edge of the Sands’ stage, champagne glass in hand, gently swaying along to the music, enthusiastically applauding each number and gazing up adoringly at Sinatra as he performed. Seated alongside her were Martin and her great screen rival, Elizabeth Taylor.

15 June 1961, Idlewild Airport. Marilyn arrives back in New York following her flight out of Los Angeles. Amid tidal waves of wolf-whistles and flash bulbs, she remarked ‘No comment’ to reporters who enquired why she had suddenly returned.

11 July 1961, the Polyclinic Hospital, New York. After two weeks of recuperating, Marilyn was wheeled out of hospital following gall-bladder surgery. Before doing so, her obligatory New York hairstylist, the eminent Kenneth Battelle had been urgently summoned to fix her tresses. ‘I had flown in from Europe that day,’ he recalled. ‘I flew to New York for three hours just to do Marilyn’s hair.’

11 August 1961, Beverly Hills Hotel. Marilyn fulfils the wishes of 14-year-old Barbara Heinz, who was dying of incurable bone cancer in Wisconsin’s Appleton Memorial Hospital. With just a month to live, the young girl, a keen collector of toys, penned a letter to the actress requesting a picture of her with Maf. Marilyn duly obliged. This photograph arrived at the girl’s bedside on Wednesday 23 August inscribed with the words, ‘From Marilyn Monroe to Barbara Heinz. With love.’

5 March 1962, Golden Globes ceremony. By Marilyn’s side at this star-studded event was the Mexican-born Jose Bolaños. His presence naturally ignited rumours in the American press of a ‘Latin lover’ in Marilyn’s life. However, aside from a few short walks in the moonlight, there was no romance. Just days after the lavish ceremony, and with the actress clearly tired of his company and the language barrier, Bolaños was packing his bags, heading back to his motherland.

5 March 1962, Golden Globes ceremony, the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. After a poll carried out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Marilyn’s apparent fall from prominence proved to be premature when she was bestowed with the Henrietta Award for the World’s Favourite Female Movie Star. She is pictured here with the actor, Rock Hudson.

10 April 1962, Twentieth Century-Fox Studios, Los Angeles, screen-tests for
Something’s Got To Give
. Marilyn’s first appearance on a film set in 17 months. This was a newborn Monroe. Aided by her new svelte 22-inch waist and 8-stone 4lbs body weight, she was considerably more sophisticated and stylish than she had ever been before.

10 April, 1962, Twentieth-Century Fox Studios, Los Angeles, screen-tests for
Something’s Got to Give.

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