Marilyn Monroe: Mystery and Myth

[MonarC]

Marilyn Monroe, the blonde "sex-goddess" died a tragic death on August 5, 1962 in Los Angeles. The coroner ruled the actress' death at age 36 a suicide, albeit under mysterious circumstances.

There were many connections to Nevada during her short life, beginning with the divorce in Las Vegas in September 1946 from first husband James Dougherty at the tender age of 20, to her last visit to Frank Sinatra's Cal-Neva Lodge at Crystal Bay, Lake Tahoe, with actor Peter Lawford, a member of Sinatra's colorful "Rat Pack" and John F. Kennedy's brother-in-law, in July 1962.

The biggest mystery...more likely myth...associated with her Nevada connection is that Marilyn Monroe's now well-known affair with President Kennedy included a tryst at North Shore, Lake Tahoe. Local reporters tried to determine the last sitting president to visit Lake Tahoe prior to Bill Clinton and focused on John Kennedy. "The juiciest piece of the Kennedy rumors," wrote the Tahoe Daily Tribune/North Lake Tahoe Bonanza (July 27, 1997), "stems from an alleged secret rendezvous with actress Marilyn Monroe on the North Shore."

The one documented account of John Kennedy visiting Lake Tahoe was as a Massachusetts U.S. Senator seeking the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States. Governor Grant Sawyer had arranged for Kennedy to address a joint session of the state legislature in Carson City on Monday, February 1, 1960. A reception was scheduled for Sunday evening at the Governor's Mansion followed by a talk at the civic auditorium. "When Kennedy and Pierre Salinger and their party got to Reno," according to Governor Sawyer in his oral history Hang Tough (1993), "they eluded the press and sneaked off in a car and went up to Lake Tahoe and looked it over before coming to Carson City."

According to Richard Ham, a Sawyer aide and adviser, Kennedy was staying at the Riverside Hotel. The Senator asked Ham to provide him with a car that he could drive alone to Lake Tahoe before going to Carson City. Kennedy apparently visited the Cal-Neva Lodge after a stop at Squaw Valley, the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics.

However, it is highly unlikely that Marilyn Monroe was there at Lake Tahoe to greet the aspiring presidential candidate. Monroe, by all accounts, was in Hollywood at the time rehearsing scenes for the movie "Let's Make Love". Her marriage to third husband, playwright Arthur Miller, was clearly troubled and would soon end in divorce. At the time, she pursued a short-lived affair with co-star Yves Montand.

Some writers conjecture that Monroe was also having an affair with Senator Kennedy while he was campaigning in the Los Angeles area. Donald Spoto, the most rigorous and careful of Marilyn's biographers, wrote in 1993 that the so-called "love affair" between Kennedy and Monroe was fleeting and did not begin until after the first documented meeting in October 1961 at Peter and Patricia Kennedy Lawford's Santa Monica beach house. In fact, Spoto claimed Monroe was intimate only once with Kennedy on March 24, 1962, when both the president and Marilyn were Bing Crosby's house guests in Palm Springs.

If Spoto is right that any other claims to the contrary cannot be substantiated, then Marilyn Monroe's getaways to Lake Tahoe during and after the filming of Arthur Miller's "The Misfits" had nothing to do with John Kennedy, and more to do with her attraction to Frank Sinatra. Filming in Nevada began in July 1960 in Reno, and concluded in October after scenes had been shot in and around Dayton and Pyramid Lake. At long last, Monroe worked with her childhood film idol Clark Gable, who from an early age growing up in Los Angeles represented the father she never knew. Ironically, both Monroe and Gable had experienced Las Vegas divorces, Gable from his second wife Ria Langham in 1939, and Monroe from James Dougherty in 1946. Meanwhile, in the summer and fall of 1960, John Kennedy was busy campaigning for the presidency of the United States after winning the Democratic nomination at the Los Angeles convention in July.

There is nothing on record at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston that states President Kennedy, officially or unofficially, ever visited Lake Tahoe prior to his assassination in Dallas in November 1963. Marilyn Monroe is known to have made her last visit to Lake Tahoe at the invitation of the Lawfords during the weekend of July 27-29, 1962, just prior to her apparent suicide. The events surrounding Marilyn's short stay at Sinatra's Cal-Neva Lodge are controversial, confusing, and contested, making it very hard to separate fact from fiction. We know that she met Dean Martin briefly to discuss a movie project. Joe DiMaggio, her second husband was there, and according to one account there was a reconciliation and talk of marriage. Still other accounts have Peter Lawford telling Monroe that all communication with John and Bobby Kennedy was cut off. There have even been unsubstantiated claims that Monroe tried to commit suicide or was drugged while staying at the Cal-Neva.

The truth in its entirety will likely never be known about the JFK-Monroe affair. However, the stories about a liaison between John Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe at Lake Tahoe are unsupported, and may well represent a titillating, modern-day presidential version of the "George Washington slept here" myth.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

So beautiful and so young

[Georgia's on my Mind]

Originally posted by MonarC

thats my favorite pic of marilyn.

[MonarC]

there are so many great pics of her at

www.allposters.com

[°Bubbly Blonde°]

Im pretty sure that Marilyn was having an affair with Bobby Kennedy before she died...atleast that's what all the biography's I've read of her have said.. I dont know if it was a conspiracy or not, I use to believe she commited suicide, but there are so many theories and strange things that happened pertaining to her death, I dont know...
I love Marilyn Monroe, ever since I was a little girl I use to read books about her. She's always been my idol...RIP

[MonarC]

She was so beautiful... and it was natural not any silicone involved. Natural style and grace and beauty...

[Liza]

I've always loved Marilyn Monroe. She just had this aura about her - young, fresh, beautiful, and full of life. She was a movie star in every sense of the word. I don't know if she really had an affair with either of the Kennedys, and honestly, it really doesn't matter to me. All of her marriages failed, although by all accounts, Joe was the love of her life.

Anyways, about her death - it was actually ruled to be an accidental suicide. The last person she talked to was Peter Lawford, asking him to come over. Most people believe that she took the pills, then changed her mind - which is why she called Peter. But, sadly, the pills had already taken too strong of an effect and he couldn't understand what she was saying. Tragic, but in a strange way, it does seem destined.

[Pitooey]

So many beautiful pictures of Marilyn she was one of the most beautiful woman in the world.

She died so young. Shelley Winters believes she died by her own hand. I just don't know what to believe anymore.

[cablejockey]

Those pictures of Marilyn and James Dean are great. Did you create them Georgia on my Mind?
Thru movies we will always have Marilyn with us. Her dream was to become a movie star and its good that one of her dreams came true.

[MonarC]

you can find those pics of Marilyn & James at www.allposters.com