The Genius and the Goddess (41 page)

At 5:30 a.m. Marilyn's corpse was taken to the Westwood Village
Mortuary; at 8 a.m. it was moved to the City Morgue; and at 10:30
a.m. Dr.
Thomas Noguchi, the deputy coroner, did the autopsy.
Noguchi specified that Marilyn's "liver, kidney,
stomach and contents
,
urine and
intestine
[should be]
saved for further toxicological study
." But
most of her organs were destroyed by his superiors before they could
be analyzed. Marilyn's death seemed to make self-destruction fashionable.
In Los Angeles in August 1962 suicides increased by 40 percent.

The studios had carefully created the glamorous Marilyn through
a series of aesthetic improvements. The autopsy carved her up and
took her apart. Dr. Noguchi, a well-respected pathologist, wrote, "I
began my examination by searching painstakingly with a hand-held
magnifying glass for any needle marks which would indicate that
drugs had been injected. . . . I found no needle marks, and so indicated."
But he allowed the possibility of an injection by adding,
"punctures made by fine surgical needles, such as Dr. Greenson used,
heal within hours and become invisible. Only fresh punctures can be
discovered."

Noguchi also asked and answered the two vital questions that would
trouble investigators for years:

—If Marilyn Monroe swallowed dozens of sleeping pills, why
was there no evidence of pills in her digestive tract?

—Her stomach was familiar with those pills, and they were
digested and "dumped" into the intestinal tract.

—The yellow dye on the Nembutal she swallowed should have
stained her stomach. And yet you found no evidence of
staining. How can that be?

—Nembutal is made with a capsule whose color does not run
when it is swallowed.

Considering the forty to fifty pills that Marilyn swallowed, Noguchi
definitively concluded, "In Monroe's case, an accidental overdose of
that magnitude was extremely unlikely." His conclusion was confirmed
by the suicide panel that studied her case and also "had no doubt
that she had killed herself."
⁶

The autopsy report seemed conclusive. But it was clear from the
many lies, contradictions and irregularities surrounding
Marilyn's
suicide that there had been a cover-up between 11 p.m., when Jacobs
arrived, and 4:30 a.m., when the police arrived. This cover-up was
meant to conceal any foul play that might have caused Marilyn's death
and to hide her intimate connection with the Kennedys. (There is
no trace of Marilyn in the John F. Kennedy presidential library.) The
attempt to conceal the truth has spawned many wildly implausible
conspiracy theories, fueled by political fanaticism or a crass desire for
publicity and money. The leading theories were: Greenson, Marilyn's
lover and in a jealous rage, murdered her with a fatal injection or a
fatal enema. Or Greenson, acting as an agent for the Kennedys, killed
Marilyn, who threatened to expose her affairs with them. The other
usual suspects were the CIA, the FBI and the Mafia, who killed her
either to prevent her from disclosing top secret information or to
discredit, frame and incriminate the Kennedys.

There's absolutely no evidence that Greenson was Marilyn's lover.
In any case, with no apparent motive, he would never have risked his
career, reputation and life by murdering her. Noguchi had explained
why there was no residue of pills or dye in Marilyn's digestive tract
and stomach. But David Heymann, in a hostile and sensational attack
on Robert Kennedy, argued with false logic that the lack of residue
"proved" that Greenson not only gave her a fatal injection or enema,
but also that "the attorney general of the United States very likely
had conspired in the murder of his former lover." Some authors even
claimed that Robert Kennedy actually smothered Marilyn with a
pillow. By contrast, Noguchi convincingly argued that "Almost every
allegation has been followed up and found to be without basis so far
as the DA's office was concerned, ranging from the mysterious missing
'diary' to the 'doctor' who had administered a 'killing' shot."
⁷

Though the Kennedys did not kill Marilyn, they did attempt to
hide their affairs with her. Newcomb has never revealed anything
about her friendships with Marilyn or the Kennedys. Immediately
after Marilyn's death, she was flown to the Kennedy compound on
Cape Cod, sent on a long trip to Europe and then given a job at the
United States Information Agency. Murray quickly disappeared on a
long, gift-wrapped cruise around the world. But an FBI report of July
9, 1963, quoting the early release of a
Photoplay
magazine article of
August 1963, said a "married man had an affair with Marilyn and
'caused' her suicide when he rejected her." The "clues" to the identity
of her lover, obviously Robert Kennedy, were "that the man is
happily married and has children; . . . that he is a great man, famous,
known the world over; . . . and that he is considered a 'truly honorable
man.'"

Robert Kennedy's rejection was a factor in Marilyn's suicide. But
the theory that the Kennedys were responsible for murdering her,
because she was going to reveal top secret political information or
expose their affairs with her, does not bear close examination. The
Kennedys would never have discussed sensitive material with such
an unstable and indiscreet woman (John didn't even have time for
foreplay). And Marilyn's "secret knowledge" that Jimmy Hoffa was
hostile to Robert and that Fidel Castro hated John was obvious to
everyone.

If the Kennedys were seriously worried about a sexual scandal
involving Marilyn, they would not have kept the Oval Office tapes
of their indiscreet conversations about her nor asked someone else to
destroy her potentially damaging letters. The risk of killing her was
infinitely greater than the risk of her revelations. Their affairs with
her might actually have increased their prestige (as it increased Miller's)
and helped rather than hurt their political careers. The Kennedys were
also skilled at crisis management. If Marilyn had publicly revealed her
affairs with John and Robert, they could have denied them. The public
would not have believed the wild accusations of a suicidal woman,
who'd recently been confined in a psychiatric hospital, against the
word of the apparently honorable and happily married Kennedys.
Most important, Marilyn, loyal to the Kennedys, conclusively told
Greenson, "Bobby would do absolutely anything for his brother and
so would I. I will never embarrass him."

The Kennedys' chauffeur remembered the mood on Cape Cod
when the family learned that Marilyn had died: "[On] the day we
heard the news that Marilyn Monroe had been found dead in
California, I remember the strange silence that came over everybody
who was there. . . . It was such a curious reaction. . . . Years later,
when the rumors came out about Marilyn Monroe and John Kennedy,
and then Robert Kennedy, I remembered the silence that August
afternoon."
⁸
The Kennedys did not grieve for Marilyn, but felt guilty
about the way they'd treated her and relieved that she was no longer
a problem.

Greenson had much more reason to feel guilty. From the beginning
of July until her suicide, he saw Marilyn almost every day. (She also
had many medical problems and Engelberg saw her thirteen times
during her last month.) Greenson's letters to his mother confessor,
Anna Freud, written before Marilyn's death and not mentioning her
by name, were characteristically self-centered. He complained about
his interrupted holiday in Europe and alluded to, but did not explain,
her traumatic dismissal by Fox: "I had to interrupt my trip and
return home alone because of the difficulties of one of my patients.
Since I returned home she felt much better and was able to resume
work. Nevertheless, the studio fired her the day after I returned for
a variety of other reasons. This was a most frustrating experience,
since now I was back home and she was feeling fine, but she no
longer had to work and therefore I was free to return to Europe,
which was impossible."

Anna Freud, using the childlike euphemism "acting up," attempted
to comfort him and (in contrast to Greenson) expressed concern
about Marilyn: "I have tried to follow your fate in the newspapers
and I saw that your patient was acting up. But I did not realize that
this would interrupt your holiday and I do feel sorry for this. I wonder
what will happen to her and with her. There must be something very
nice about her from what I understood from Marianne Kris."

Marilyn's suicide and his own failure were a personal loss as well
as a public humiliation for Greenson. With hindsight and remembering
her panic in Payne Whitney, he wrote Rosten, ten days after
her death, "I should have played it safe and put her in a sanitarium,
but that would have only been safe for me and deadly for her."
⁹
Writing to Marianne Kris at the same time, Greenson admitted (after
all their analytic sessions) that he had not been able to provide professional
insights and had offered kindness instead of therapy:"I was her
therapist, the good father who would not disappoint her and who
would bring her insights, and if not insights, just kindness. I had
become the most important person in her life. I also felt guilty that
I put a burden on my own family. But there was something very
lovable about this girl and we all cared about her and she could be
delightful. . . . She was a poor creature I tried to help, and I ended
up hurting her" – as Kris had done.

On August 20, Greenson wrote again to Anna Freud. He admitted
the all-too-obvious failure of his so-called "science." Then, shifting
the blame from himself to the hypocritical world (that is, Hollywood),
he focused as usual on his own tender feelings. He never mentioned,
of course, that he and Engelberg had supplied the drugs that Marilyn
had used to kill herself:

This has been a terrible blow in many ways. I cared about her
and she was my patient. She was so pathetic and she had had
such a terrible life. I had hopes for her and I thought we were
making progress. And now she died and I realize that all my
knowledge and my desire and my strength were not enough.
God knows I tried and mightily so, but I could not defeat all
the destructive forces that had been stirred up in her by the
terrible experiences of her past life. Sometimes I feel the world
wanted her to die, or at least many people in the world, particularly
those who after her death so conspicuously grieved and
mourned. It makes me angry. But above all I feel sad and also
disappointed. It is not just a blow to my pride, although I am
sure that is present, but also a blow to my science of which I
consider myself a good representative. But it will take me time
to get over this and I know that eventually this will only
become a scar. Some good friends have written to me some
very kind letters and this helps me, but it hurts to remember;
and yet it is only by remembering that I shall some day be
able to forget it.

In January 1963 Greenson, suffering from bronchitis and feeling
lonely after his two children had moved out of his house, wrote Anna
Freud about his current emotional state and mentioned that he'd had
some informal therapy with two other mentors: "I personally am
beginning to feel better and think that I have overcome the worst of
my grief about Marilyn Monroe. I saw Marianne Kris and Max Schur
in New York in a recent meeting and it was very helpful to talk to
them." Finally, ten months after her death, Greenson announced that
he was cured: "I have overcome my grief and depression about the
M.M. affair."
¹⁰

In his collection of essays,
Explorations in Psychoanalysis
(1978),
Greenson gave a patronizing and self-aggrandizing account of how
he'd successfully treated a young woman. Though he never mentioned
her name, readers were clearly meant to see that he was discussing
Marilyn Monroe. He said she'd developed an exceptionally close and
clinging relationship to him, but did not admit that he'd encouraged
it in every possible way. He wrote that she'd tried to compensate for
his forthcoming absence in Europe by choosing a primitive fetish to
represent him:

I told an emotionally immature young woman patient, who had
developed a very dependent transference to me, that I was going
to attend an International Congress in Europe some three months
hence. We worked intensively on the multiple determinants of
her clinging dependence, but made only insignificant progress.
Then the situation changed dramatically when one day she
announced that she had discovered something that would tide
her over [during] my absence. It was not some insight, not a
new personal relationship, it was a chess piece. The young woman
had recently been given a gift of a carved ivory chess set. The
evening before her announcement, as she looked at the set,
through the sparkling light of a glass of champagne, it suddenly
struck her that I looked like the white knight of her chess set.
The realization immediately evoked in her a feeling of comfort,
even triumph. The white knight was a protector, it belonged to
her, she could carry it wherever she went, it would look after
her, and I could go on my merry way to Europe without having
to worry about her.

He noted that Marilyn had used it as a good luck charm during her
performance – evidently at John Kennedy's birthday party:

The patient's major concern about the period of my absence
was a public performance of great important to her professionally.
She now felt confident of success because she
could conceal her white knight in her handkerchief or scarf;
she was certain he would protect her from nervousness, anxiety,
or bad luck. I was relieved and delighted to learn, while in
Europe, that her performance had indeed been a smashing
success.

But her sense of security was tenuous, and she needed the magical
presence of her analyst: