June 5, 2026
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe: Part 2
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe: Part 2
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WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_00]: A global sensation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jason Horton.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Rebecca Leade, and this is Ghost Town.
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[SPEAKER_01]: On Wednesday, nearly 100 years after Marilyn Monroe's birth, we talked about Marilyn's early life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her traumatic origin, her rise to fame, and the many hurdles, both internal and external, she encountered along the way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Today, we'll talk about the latter part of the screen icon's story.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her studio defying business endeavors, her stint in a psychiatric hospital, and the lesser
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[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, we'll even throw in some conspiracies along the way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the secret life of Marilyn Monroe, part 2.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1955, Marilyn Monroe was at the top of her game.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The seven year itch had just been released to huge success, and Monroe had separated from and divorced Joe Demagio.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Rumors flew about her personal life, her next film, or her next publicity stunt.
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[SPEAKER_01]: but nobody exactly knew what was coming.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe was sick of being pigeonholed by others and perhaps herself as the happy go-lucky sexy blonde and of her contract at 20th century Fox.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was one of their biggest stars but her contract had not changed for five years so she was paid far less than other actors of her same draw.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And she couldn't choose her own projects.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was sick of a lot of things, so on December 31, 1954, Monroe and her photographer friend Milton Green founded Marilyn Monroe Productions, their own production company.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A brief aside on Green, so when you think about Marilyn Monroe, you're probably thinking about a photograph Milton Green took of her, dramatic kind of black and white, often a stark background contrasting with the gorgeous Marilyn, looking of course incredibly glamorous.
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[SPEAKER_01]: but often in a mysterious intriguing pose.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Green was good at capitalizing and Monroe's allure, but used these photographic mechanisms contrast, shape, and lighting to really tease out her vulnerability and emphasize it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The results were photographs that were beautiful, but seemed to reveal a secret, a private moment.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A mysterious gaze with a crazy backstory, a kind of small crack in Monroe's glamorous facade, not a huge crack, but one that took the photo beyond just a beauty shot.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A parallel in a Petri dish, if I may, two Monroe's own life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's why these photos felt so memorable.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In any case, Monroe and Green went public with their production company on January 7, 1955, with the statement read out to 80 journalists and friends at the East 64th Street home of her lawyer, Frank Delaney.
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[SPEAKER_01]: With 51% of the company, Monroe was appointed president.
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[SPEAKER_01]: With 49% of the company, Green was appointed Vice President.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe was the second American woman to ever lead her own production company.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The first was Mary Pickford, who went 1919 along with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and DW Griffith, formed United Artists to gain independence from the established studio system.
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[SPEAKER_01]: More than 30 years later was Maryland, Helbed undoing the exact same thing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, the immediate reaction was mockery, and then outraged by 20th century Fox, who immediately sued the production company.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That same year, to add a little bit of insult to injury, Monroe was parodied and the Broadway play will success spoil rock hunter, in which her look-alike Jane Mansfield played a dumb blonde actress,
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[SPEAKER_01]: But, surprisingly, Monroe and Green came out on top.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They won the case against 20th Century Fox, with Monroe receiving a non-exclusive deal with the studio, back earnings on movies she had shot, a new salary for four movies over a seven-year period, and approval on a script, director, and cinematographer as part of her deal.
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[SPEAKER_01]: All of these were, of course, huge gains that were incredibly hard won, brought on by Monroe's star power, savvy, and perhaps the huge success of the seven-year-edge.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, Marilyn Monroe Productions produced only two films, bus stop in 1956 for Fox, and its first and only independent production, the Prince and the Showgirl in 1957.
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[SPEAKER_01]: For the latter performance, Marilyn Monroe won international acclaim, and she also became more difficult on set, had more creative conflict.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, she had also suffered a miscarriage which, of course, understandably devastated her.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1956, the relationship between Monroe and Green was deteriorating.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Despite diving into acting with the famed at least, she'd also been getting serious with playwright Arthur Miller, after, of course, a short-stint dating Marlon Brando.
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[SPEAKER_01]: After her and Miller were engaged and married, Arthur Miller wanted more hand in Monroe's creative future.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe won even more claim for her performance in 1956's bus stop, leading her to believe that perhaps, Green wasn't pulling his weight on their team.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe had an ectopic pregnancy in mid-1957 and another miscarriage a year later, likely her fertility struggles were due to her endometriosis.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Becoming more dependent on pharmaceuticals, Monroe was also briefly hospitalized due to an overdose of barbituates.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This all exacerbated the fact that Monroe and Green just could not settle their disagreements over the production company, and so Monroe bought Green's share of the company and the partnership formally ended in April of 1950's sadly.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe Productions became less of a groundbreaking creative entity, and more of a corporation for Marilyn Monroe's accounting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1958, Monroe was offered the role of Sugarcane in Billy Wilders, some like it hot, acting opposite Jack Lemon and Todi.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Acting opposite Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Though I did not know this, she almost turned down what was perhaps the most iconic role.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her husband's encouragement and the offer of 10% of the film's profits on top of her standard pay made the deal a hard one to pass up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Accepting the role, Marilyn Monroe's difficulty on set would become the stuff in this film of Diva Legend.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe demanded dozens of retakes, didn't remember her lines, clashed with the actors and the director.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You remember from the last episode the whole Marilyn Monroe was like kissing Hitler line from Tony Curtis?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's from this film.
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[SPEAKER_01]: When all was said and done, though, Wilder was extremely happy with Monroe's performance, and some like it hot became both a critical and commercial success upon its release on March 19th, 1959.
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[SPEAKER_01]: After some like it hot, however, things unraveled even more from Monroe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was behind on her contract, she had an affair, and she became more erratic on set with in her creative pursuits.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Still Monroe had fans.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Big fans.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Truman Capote, whose work breakfast at Tiffany's was being adapted for screen, lobbied hard for Monroe to play holly go lightly in the film.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, however, her reputation got ahead of her, and producer's felt Monroe would be too difficult on set, so the role went to, of course, Audrey Hepburn.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The last film Monroe would complete was John Houston's 1961 dramatic western, The Misfits.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe played Rosaline, who had just received a quicky divorce in Reno, Nevada and befriends three aging cowboys played by Eli Wallick, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The production was also difficult, with Monroe and Miller's marriage finally crumbling, as Monroe began an overt relationship with an onset photographer named Ing Morath.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Not only that, Monroe's health was bad.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was an excruciating pain from gallstones, and her drug addiction was so severe that, according to her biographer Donald Spodo, her makeup was usually applied while she was unconscious.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In August, the set went dark so Monroe could be hospitalized for a week-long detox.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Despite all of these problems, these difficulties really, Houston said that when Monroe was acting, she was, quote, not pretending in a motion.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was the real thing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She would go deep down within herself and find it and bring it up into consciousness.
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[SPEAKER_01]: After filming on Misfits,
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[SPEAKER_01]: At that point, Marilyn was in really bad shape, both in body and mind.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She committed to spending 1961 focusing on her health, beginning with what she thought was a, quote, rest spa, recommended by her psychiatrist, Dr. Marianne Chris.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe checked into this rest spa called the pain Whitney Clinic, but it was not exactly what she imagined.
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[SPEAKER_01]: No cucumber water, no massages.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, it was the psychiatric unit of Cornell University Hospital.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe had long feared inheriting her mother's mental instability, and the hospital treated her like a psychiatric patient, putting her in a padded cell and keeping her under close watch.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She would later describe the experience in a letter to her Los Angeles analyst, Dr. Ralph Greenson.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She said, quote, There was no empathy at pain Whitney.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It had a very bad effect.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They asked me after putting me in a cell, I mean cement blocks and all, for a very disturbed depressed patients.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The inhumanity there I found archaic.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They asked me why I wasn't happy there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Everything was under lock and key.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Things like electric lights, dresser drawers, bathrooms, closets, bars concealed on the windows.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The doors have windows so patients can be visible all the time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Also, the violence and markings still remain on the walls from former patients.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I answered, quote, well I'd have to be nuts if I liked it here, they asked me why I felt I was different from the other patients I guess.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I decided if they were really that stupid, I must give them a very simple answer.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I said, I just am.
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[SPEAKER_01]: After a traumatic 48 hours, Marilyn Monroe made contact with her ex-husband Joe Demazio and Dr. Chris also available to her
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[SPEAKER_01]: Blaming Chris for her ordeal, Marilyn never saw her doctor again.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A transfer to the neurological department of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center was eventually arranged, and Marilyn and Rose stayed there for three weeks, with Demagio reportedly visiting daily.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At the end of the day, it seemed like Jodemazio and Marilyn Monroe, but it kind of evolved past their divorce into some kind of cute relationship, friendship, something, despite everything.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and began pre-production on movies again.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Days before filming her next project, something's got to give, Marilyn Monroe caught Sina Sitis.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Despite all of the advice, medical and non-to-just rest and get through it, she felt pressured by the studio to shoot the movie, and she did, with a quick break on May 19th, to legendarily sing Happy Birthday to JFK.
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[SPEAKER_01]: While shooting her movie and also being very sick, Monroe also orchestrated a publicity stunt, inviting press to take photos of her while she swam nude in a pool.
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[SPEAKER_01]: These photos were later published in Life Magazine, and it was the first time that a major star had posed nude at the height of their career.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And yet Monroe
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[SPEAKER_01]: Surprisingly, maybe not surprisingly, kept getting sick.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was also using drugs to cope with her mental state and also her physical state.
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[SPEAKER_01]: On June 7th, Monroe was fired from something's got to give, and the production eventually shut down.
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[SPEAKER_01]: However, Fox soon regretted its decision and reopened negotiations with Monroe later in June, wanting to pick back up on something he's got to give and another new film what a way to go.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe was also planning on starring in a biopic of Gina Harlow, one of her film idols.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, Monroe wouldn't get to see those projects to their end, as her life would be tragically and controversially cut short.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The death of Marilyn Monroe and the many conspiracies that surround it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: After this break.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At 3 a.m. on August 5, 1962, Monroe's live-in housekeeper woke up, sensing something was wrong.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She saw light from under Monroe's bedroom door, but nobody responded when she asked to come in.
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[SPEAKER_01]: With the door locked, the housekeeper then called Monroe's new psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson, who we talked about earlier, who arrived at the house and broke into the bedroom through a window.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There he found Monroe on responsive in her bed covered by a sheet with her hand clamped around a telephone receiver.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe's physician arrived at around 350am and pronounced the actor dead at the scene.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At 425am, the Los Angeles Police Department was notified.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The toxicology report showed Monroe dying between 8.30 pm and 10.30 pm on August 4 with no foul play.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her cause of death, acute perpetuate poisoning.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She had chloral hydrate and phenobarbital in her blood and phenobarbital in her liver.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Empty medicine bottles were found next to her bed.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The possibility that Monroe had accidentally overdosed was ruled out, because the dosages found in her body were several times the lethal limit.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe's doctors stated that she had been, quote, prone to severe fears and frequent depressions, with, quote, abrupt and unpredictable mood changes, and had overdosed several times in the past, possibly intentionally.
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[SPEAKER_01]: From these facts, and the fact that there was no foul play, deputy coroner Thomas Naguchi classified Monroe's death as a probable suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Now, Naguchi was known as the coroner to the stars, also processing high-profile deaths including Robert F. Kennedy and Anadali Wood.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He wasn't the most thorough of corners and was said to be a bit of a fame whore, not doing the most thorough investigations and inserting himself into the dialogue and investigative processes around celebrity deaths.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That is a topic for a different episode, but does factor in when you wonder if Monroe's death was in fact a suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was 36 years old.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, Marilyn Monroe's death was front page news all over the world.
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[SPEAKER_01]: According to historian Lois Banner, quote, It said that the suicide rate in Los Angeles doubled the month after she died.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The circulation rate of most newspapers expanded that month.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Former co-star Lawrence Olivier deemed her the quote, complete victim of Ballyhoo and sensation.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Bustop director Joshua Logan said that she was quote,
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe's funeral was arranged by Joe Demagio, and while highly private, he was the only of her three ex-husbands to attend.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Demagio was angry.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He believed in short that the demands and scrutiny of Hollywood was responsible for Marilyn's death.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The funeral service presided over by a local minister, held at Westwood Memorial Cemetery, and conducted at the Cemetery's Chapel.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe wore a green Emilio Pucci dress and held a bouquet of small pink roses.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The eulogy was delivered by Marilyn's acting coach Lee Straussberg, and the music played was a selection from Chekovsky's sixth symphony and a record of Judy Garland singing over the rainbow.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe's longtime makeup artist and friend, Alan Whitey Snyder, had done her makeup for her funeral, and a promise that they had made to each other, that whoever dies first would do the other person's makeup.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe was in turn at crypt number 24 at the corridor of memories.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Demagio would continue to send these roses again three times a week for 20 years.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Though the ceremony was small, hundreds of spectators crowded the streets around Westwood Village Memorial Cemetery, eager to glimpse her grave.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1992, Hugh Hefner paid $75,000 to be interned in the crypt next to Monroe at Westwood Memorial Park.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He told the Los Angeles Times, quote,
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[SPEAKER_01]: But you don't have to be buried next to Monroe to have your own moment with her, or at least her grave.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The plaque on Marilyn Monroe's grave often has to be replaced as it's worn down by the countless hands yearning to connect with her some way and somehow.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 2022, the independent referred to her death as, quote, global obsession.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And they were not wrong.
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[SPEAKER_01]: As the decades passed, of course, you know this, I know this, Monroe became larger than her life, a symbol of a certain era, both in cinematic history and culture as a whole.
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[SPEAKER_01]: With that in mind, her life and death have spawned several colorful conspiracy theories.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Again, indicative of the time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, many believe that her death was an overdose and not a suicide, including Monroe's half-sister and many people that were close to her.
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[SPEAKER_01]: As this is something that's been debated quite a bit, I don't want to touch too much on it as it's pretty close to her life and her family.
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[SPEAKER_01]: For me, the conspiracies really are reflective, more of our culture and what they put on Marilyn Monroe versus
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[SPEAKER_01]: the very real part of her death that people are still kind of trying to understand.
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[SPEAKER_01]: perhaps for a different time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But for now, I think again, more interesting on a cultural level is these outlandish kind of strange conspiracy theories.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So let's get to them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The first one, this is a fun one, is the Kennedy cover up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This is a couple of arms to it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So many people thought that maybe Marilyn Monroe was being silenced over her affairs.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Not just with John of Kennedy, but with his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There is argue that she was killed to prevent her from exposing details about their sex life, dynamics between the brothers, and maybe even leaking sensitive government secrets.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There was also this diary, so people who believe this theory claimed that Monroe kept a secret diary detailing whatever.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The diary reportedly vanished from her home or the morgue right after her death.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A variation of this theory popularized by Bagger for Anthony Summers suggests that Marilyn Monroe accidentally overdosed, but because RFK and his brother-in-law were allegedly trying to manage her, they delayed calling the police to clear out incriminating evidence before staging the scene as a suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's also variation on that, that says that RFK was perhaps having sex with her when she died and also cleaning up the scene to prevent himself from being implicated in any way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Now, again, that's bringing back suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really want to do that, but that's a theory that's also circulating that is very outlandish.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Then there's the theory of medical negligence.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Author Donald Spodo proposed that Monroe's death was actually a miscommunication between her doctors.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The theory suggests that her psychiatrist, Dr. Greenson, we talked about him a couple times in the episode, administered a lethal dosage of her drugs via Enema, unaware that she'd already taken sedatives.
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[SPEAKER_01]: To escape professional ruin, the doctors and the housekeeper reportedly staged the scene as a suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Circling back to JFK, there's a theory of CIA infiltration.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Some theories argue that the CIA assassinated Monroe to either punish the Kennedy administration after the failed Bay of Pigs, or because she had learned some kind of very intricate, very sensitive state secrets from her relationship with JFK.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's also the theory of mafia hits, another narrative claims that mob boss Sam Giancana ordered a hit on Monroe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The alleged motive was to frame the Kennedy family and neutralize RFK's aggressive legal crusade against organized crime.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Then there's a theory that Marilyn Monroe is actually still alive that she faked her own death, that she did not die in 1962.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, fearing for her safety, she supposedly had her doctors, stage her death, and secretly leave, maybe to go to a psychiatric institution, maybe to go elsewhere under an assumed name.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever actually happened, Marilyn Monroe's real tangible legacy in our modern world is actually quite beautiful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So Marilyn Monroe left part of her estate to her first psychiatrist.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the one that said that she was going to maybe a spa and she was actually going to a psych ward, Dr. Mary and Chris.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you're wondering why she did that, likely it was because she had not changed her will before they had their falling out, or perhaps they patch things up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever happened, Dr. Chris ultimately left the estate portion to the Anna Freud Center in London, a mental health nonprofit supporting children and young adults.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Mental health was something that touched Marilyn Monroe, something she felt extremely passionate about, among her many passions, and her many legacies.
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[SPEAKER_01]: One's that occurred far beyond her short, but unforgettable life.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A global sensation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jason Horton.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Rebecca Leade, and this is Ghost Town.
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[SPEAKER_01]: On Wednesday, nearly 100 years after Marilyn Monroe's birth, we talked about Marilyn's early life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her traumatic origin, her rise to fame, and the many hurdles, both internal and external, she encountered along the way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Today, we'll talk about the latter part of the screen icon's story.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her studio defying business endeavors, her stint in a psychiatric hospital, and the lesser
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[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, we'll even throw in some conspiracies along the way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the secret life of Marilyn Monroe, part 2.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1955, Marilyn Monroe was at the top of her game.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The seven year itch had just been released to huge success, and Monroe had separated from and divorced Joe Demagio.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Rumors flew about her personal life, her next film, or her next publicity stunt.
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[SPEAKER_01]: but nobody exactly knew what was coming.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe was sick of being pigeonholed by others and perhaps herself as the happy go-lucky sexy blonde and of her contract at 20th century Fox.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was one of their biggest stars but her contract had not changed for five years so she was paid far less than other actors of her same draw.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And she couldn't choose her own projects.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was sick of a lot of things, so on December 31, 1954, Monroe and her photographer friend Milton Green founded Marilyn Monroe Productions, their own production company.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A brief aside on Green, so when you think about Marilyn Monroe, you're probably thinking about a photograph Milton Green took of her, dramatic kind of black and white, often a stark background contrasting with the gorgeous Marilyn, looking of course incredibly glamorous.
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[SPEAKER_01]: but often in a mysterious intriguing pose.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Green was good at capitalizing and Monroe's allure, but used these photographic mechanisms contrast, shape, and lighting to really tease out her vulnerability and emphasize it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The results were photographs that were beautiful, but seemed to reveal a secret, a private moment.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A mysterious gaze with a crazy backstory, a kind of small crack in Monroe's glamorous facade, not a huge crack, but one that took the photo beyond just a beauty shot.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A parallel in a Petri dish, if I may, two Monroe's own life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's why these photos felt so memorable.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In any case, Monroe and Green went public with their production company on January 7, 1955, with the statement read out to 80 journalists and friends at the East 64th Street home of her lawyer, Frank Delaney.
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[SPEAKER_01]: With 51% of the company, Monroe was appointed president.
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[SPEAKER_01]: With 49% of the company, Green was appointed Vice President.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe was the second American woman to ever lead her own production company.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The first was Mary Pickford, who went 1919 along with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and DW Griffith, formed United Artists to gain independence from the established studio system.
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[SPEAKER_01]: More than 30 years later was Maryland, Helbed undoing the exact same thing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, the immediate reaction was mockery, and then outraged by 20th century Fox, who immediately sued the production company.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That same year, to add a little bit of insult to injury, Monroe was parodied and the Broadway play will success spoil rock hunter, in which her look-alike Jane Mansfield played a dumb blonde actress,
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[SPEAKER_01]: But, surprisingly, Monroe and Green came out on top.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They won the case against 20th Century Fox, with Monroe receiving a non-exclusive deal with the studio, back earnings on movies she had shot, a new salary for four movies over a seven-year period, and approval on a script, director, and cinematographer as part of her deal.
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[SPEAKER_01]: All of these were, of course, huge gains that were incredibly hard won, brought on by Monroe's star power, savvy, and perhaps the huge success of the seven-year-edge.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, Marilyn Monroe Productions produced only two films, bus stop in 1956 for Fox, and its first and only independent production, the Prince and the Showgirl in 1957.
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[SPEAKER_01]: For the latter performance, Marilyn Monroe won international acclaim, and she also became more difficult on set, had more creative conflict.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, she had also suffered a miscarriage which, of course, understandably devastated her.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1956, the relationship between Monroe and Green was deteriorating.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Despite diving into acting with the famed at least, she'd also been getting serious with playwright Arthur Miller, after, of course, a short-stint dating Marlon Brando.
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[SPEAKER_01]: After her and Miller were engaged and married, Arthur Miller wanted more hand in Monroe's creative future.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe won even more claim for her performance in 1956's bus stop, leading her to believe that perhaps, Green wasn't pulling his weight on their team.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe had an ectopic pregnancy in mid-1957 and another miscarriage a year later, likely her fertility struggles were due to her endometriosis.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Becoming more dependent on pharmaceuticals, Monroe was also briefly hospitalized due to an overdose of barbituates.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This all exacerbated the fact that Monroe and Green just could not settle their disagreements over the production company, and so Monroe bought Green's share of the company and the partnership formally ended in April of 1950's sadly.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe Productions became less of a groundbreaking creative entity, and more of a corporation for Marilyn Monroe's accounting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1958, Monroe was offered the role of Sugarcane in Billy Wilders, some like it hot, acting opposite Jack Lemon and Todi.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Acting opposite Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Though I did not know this, she almost turned down what was perhaps the most iconic role.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her husband's encouragement and the offer of 10% of the film's profits on top of her standard pay made the deal a hard one to pass up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Accepting the role, Marilyn Monroe's difficulty on set would become the stuff in this film of Diva Legend.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe demanded dozens of retakes, didn't remember her lines, clashed with the actors and the director.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You remember from the last episode the whole Marilyn Monroe was like kissing Hitler line from Tony Curtis?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's from this film.
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[SPEAKER_01]: When all was said and done, though, Wilder was extremely happy with Monroe's performance, and some like it hot became both a critical and commercial success upon its release on March 19th, 1959.
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[SPEAKER_01]: After some like it hot, however, things unraveled even more from Monroe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was behind on her contract, she had an affair, and she became more erratic on set with in her creative pursuits.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Still Monroe had fans.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Big fans.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Truman Capote, whose work breakfast at Tiffany's was being adapted for screen, lobbied hard for Monroe to play holly go lightly in the film.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, however, her reputation got ahead of her, and producer's felt Monroe would be too difficult on set, so the role went to, of course, Audrey Hepburn.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The last film Monroe would complete was John Houston's 1961 dramatic western, The Misfits.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe played Rosaline, who had just received a quicky divorce in Reno, Nevada and befriends three aging cowboys played by Eli Wallick, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The production was also difficult, with Monroe and Miller's marriage finally crumbling, as Monroe began an overt relationship with an onset photographer named Ing Morath.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Not only that, Monroe's health was bad.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was an excruciating pain from gallstones, and her drug addiction was so severe that, according to her biographer Donald Spodo, her makeup was usually applied while she was unconscious.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In August, the set went dark so Monroe could be hospitalized for a week-long detox.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Despite all of these problems, these difficulties really, Houston said that when Monroe was acting, she was, quote, not pretending in a motion.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was the real thing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She would go deep down within herself and find it and bring it up into consciousness.
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[SPEAKER_01]: After filming on Misfits,
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[SPEAKER_01]: At that point, Marilyn was in really bad shape, both in body and mind.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She committed to spending 1961 focusing on her health, beginning with what she thought was a, quote, rest spa, recommended by her psychiatrist, Dr. Marianne Chris.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe checked into this rest spa called the pain Whitney Clinic, but it was not exactly what she imagined.
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[SPEAKER_01]: No cucumber water, no massages.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, it was the psychiatric unit of Cornell University Hospital.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe had long feared inheriting her mother's mental instability, and the hospital treated her like a psychiatric patient, putting her in a padded cell and keeping her under close watch.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She would later describe the experience in a letter to her Los Angeles analyst, Dr. Ralph Greenson.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She said, quote, There was no empathy at pain Whitney.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It had a very bad effect.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They asked me after putting me in a cell, I mean cement blocks and all, for a very disturbed depressed patients.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The inhumanity there I found archaic.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They asked me why I wasn't happy there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Everything was under lock and key.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Things like electric lights, dresser drawers, bathrooms, closets, bars concealed on the windows.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The doors have windows so patients can be visible all the time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Also, the violence and markings still remain on the walls from former patients.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I answered, quote, well I'd have to be nuts if I liked it here, they asked me why I felt I was different from the other patients I guess.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I decided if they were really that stupid, I must give them a very simple answer.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I said, I just am.
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[SPEAKER_01]: After a traumatic 48 hours, Marilyn Monroe made contact with her ex-husband Joe Demazio and Dr. Chris also available to her
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[SPEAKER_01]: Blaming Chris for her ordeal, Marilyn never saw her doctor again.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A transfer to the neurological department of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center was eventually arranged, and Marilyn and Rose stayed there for three weeks, with Demagio reportedly visiting daily.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At the end of the day, it seemed like Jodemazio and Marilyn Monroe, but it kind of evolved past their divorce into some kind of cute relationship, friendship, something, despite everything.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and began pre-production on movies again.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Days before filming her next project, something's got to give, Marilyn Monroe caught Sina Sitis.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Despite all of the advice, medical and non-to-just rest and get through it, she felt pressured by the studio to shoot the movie, and she did, with a quick break on May 19th, to legendarily sing Happy Birthday to JFK.
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[SPEAKER_01]: While shooting her movie and also being very sick, Monroe also orchestrated a publicity stunt, inviting press to take photos of her while she swam nude in a pool.
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[SPEAKER_01]: These photos were later published in Life Magazine, and it was the first time that a major star had posed nude at the height of their career.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And yet Monroe
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[SPEAKER_01]: Surprisingly, maybe not surprisingly, kept getting sick.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was also using drugs to cope with her mental state and also her physical state.
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[SPEAKER_01]: On June 7th, Monroe was fired from something's got to give, and the production eventually shut down.
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[SPEAKER_01]: However, Fox soon regretted its decision and reopened negotiations with Monroe later in June, wanting to pick back up on something he's got to give and another new film what a way to go.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe was also planning on starring in a biopic of Gina Harlow, one of her film idols.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, Monroe wouldn't get to see those projects to their end, as her life would be tragically and controversially cut short.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The death of Marilyn Monroe and the many conspiracies that surround it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: After this break.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At 3 a.m. on August 5, 1962, Monroe's live-in housekeeper woke up, sensing something was wrong.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She saw light from under Monroe's bedroom door, but nobody responded when she asked to come in.
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[SPEAKER_01]: With the door locked, the housekeeper then called Monroe's new psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson, who we talked about earlier, who arrived at the house and broke into the bedroom through a window.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There he found Monroe on responsive in her bed covered by a sheet with her hand clamped around a telephone receiver.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe's physician arrived at around 350am and pronounced the actor dead at the scene.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At 425am, the Los Angeles Police Department was notified.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The toxicology report showed Monroe dying between 8.30 pm and 10.30 pm on August 4 with no foul play.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Her cause of death, acute perpetuate poisoning.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She had chloral hydrate and phenobarbital in her blood and phenobarbital in her liver.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Empty medicine bottles were found next to her bed.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The possibility that Monroe had accidentally overdosed was ruled out, because the dosages found in her body were several times the lethal limit.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe's doctors stated that she had been, quote, prone to severe fears and frequent depressions, with, quote, abrupt and unpredictable mood changes, and had overdosed several times in the past, possibly intentionally.
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[SPEAKER_01]: From these facts, and the fact that there was no foul play, deputy coroner Thomas Naguchi classified Monroe's death as a probable suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Now, Naguchi was known as the coroner to the stars, also processing high-profile deaths including Robert F. Kennedy and Anadali Wood.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He wasn't the most thorough of corners and was said to be a bit of a fame whore, not doing the most thorough investigations and inserting himself into the dialogue and investigative processes around celebrity deaths.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That is a topic for a different episode, but does factor in when you wonder if Monroe's death was in fact a suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: She was 36 years old.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, Marilyn Monroe's death was front page news all over the world.
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[SPEAKER_01]: According to historian Lois Banner, quote, It said that the suicide rate in Los Angeles doubled the month after she died.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The circulation rate of most newspapers expanded that month.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Former co-star Lawrence Olivier deemed her the quote, complete victim of Ballyhoo and sensation.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Bustop director Joshua Logan said that she was quote,
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[SPEAKER_01]: Marilyn Monroe's funeral was arranged by Joe Demagio, and while highly private, he was the only of her three ex-husbands to attend.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Demagio was angry.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He believed in short that the demands and scrutiny of Hollywood was responsible for Marilyn's death.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The funeral service presided over by a local minister, held at Westwood Memorial Cemetery, and conducted at the Cemetery's Chapel.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe wore a green Emilio Pucci dress and held a bouquet of small pink roses.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The eulogy was delivered by Marilyn's acting coach Lee Straussberg, and the music played was a selection from Chekovsky's sixth symphony and a record of Judy Garland singing over the rainbow.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe's longtime makeup artist and friend, Alan Whitey Snyder, had done her makeup for her funeral, and a promise that they had made to each other, that whoever dies first would do the other person's makeup.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Monroe was in turn at crypt number 24 at the corridor of memories.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Demagio would continue to send these roses again three times a week for 20 years.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Though the ceremony was small, hundreds of spectators crowded the streets around Westwood Village Memorial Cemetery, eager to glimpse her grave.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 1992, Hugh Hefner paid $75,000 to be interned in the crypt next to Monroe at Westwood Memorial Park.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He told the Los Angeles Times, quote,
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[SPEAKER_01]: But you don't have to be buried next to Monroe to have your own moment with her, or at least her grave.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The plaque on Marilyn Monroe's grave often has to be replaced as it's worn down by the countless hands yearning to connect with her some way and somehow.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 2022, the independent referred to her death as, quote, global obsession.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And they were not wrong.
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[SPEAKER_01]: As the decades passed, of course, you know this, I know this, Monroe became larger than her life, a symbol of a certain era, both in cinematic history and culture as a whole.
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[SPEAKER_01]: With that in mind, her life and death have spawned several colorful conspiracy theories.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Again, indicative of the time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, many believe that her death was an overdose and not a suicide, including Monroe's half-sister and many people that were close to her.
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[SPEAKER_01]: As this is something that's been debated quite a bit, I don't want to touch too much on it as it's pretty close to her life and her family.
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[SPEAKER_01]: For me, the conspiracies really are reflective, more of our culture and what they put on Marilyn Monroe versus
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[SPEAKER_01]: the very real part of her death that people are still kind of trying to understand.
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[SPEAKER_01]: perhaps for a different time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But for now, I think again, more interesting on a cultural level is these outlandish kind of strange conspiracy theories.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So let's get to them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The first one, this is a fun one, is the Kennedy cover up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This is a couple of arms to it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So many people thought that maybe Marilyn Monroe was being silenced over her affairs.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Not just with John of Kennedy, but with his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There is argue that she was killed to prevent her from exposing details about their sex life, dynamics between the brothers, and maybe even leaking sensitive government secrets.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There was also this diary, so people who believe this theory claimed that Monroe kept a secret diary detailing whatever.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The diary reportedly vanished from her home or the morgue right after her death.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A variation of this theory popularized by Bagger for Anthony Summers suggests that Marilyn Monroe accidentally overdosed, but because RFK and his brother-in-law were allegedly trying to manage her, they delayed calling the police to clear out incriminating evidence before staging the scene as a suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's also variation on that, that says that RFK was perhaps having sex with her when she died and also cleaning up the scene to prevent himself from being implicated in any way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Now, again, that's bringing back suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really want to do that, but that's a theory that's also circulating that is very outlandish.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Then there's the theory of medical negligence.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Author Donald Spodo proposed that Monroe's death was actually a miscommunication between her doctors.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The theory suggests that her psychiatrist, Dr. Greenson, we talked about him a couple times in the episode, administered a lethal dosage of her drugs via Enema, unaware that she'd already taken sedatives.
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[SPEAKER_01]: To escape professional ruin, the doctors and the housekeeper reportedly staged the scene as a suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Circling back to JFK, there's a theory of CIA infiltration.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Some theories argue that the CIA assassinated Monroe to either punish the Kennedy administration after the failed Bay of Pigs, or because she had learned some kind of very intricate, very sensitive state secrets from her relationship with JFK.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's also the theory of mafia hits, another narrative claims that mob boss Sam Giancana ordered a hit on Monroe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The alleged motive was to frame the Kennedy family and neutralize RFK's aggressive legal crusade against organized crime.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Then there's a theory that Marilyn Monroe is actually still alive that she faked her own death, that she did not die in 1962.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, fearing for her safety, she supposedly had her doctors, stage her death, and secretly leave, maybe to go to a psychiatric institution, maybe to go elsewhere under an assumed name.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever actually happened, Marilyn Monroe's real tangible legacy in our modern world is actually quite beautiful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So Marilyn Monroe left part of her estate to her first psychiatrist.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the one that said that she was going to maybe a spa and she was actually going to a psych ward, Dr. Mary and Chris.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you're wondering why she did that, likely it was because she had not changed her will before they had their falling out, or perhaps they patch things up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever happened, Dr. Chris ultimately left the estate portion to the Anna Freud Center in London, a mental health nonprofit supporting children and young adults.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Mental health was something that touched Marilyn Monroe, something she felt extremely passionate about, among her many passions, and her many legacies.
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[SPEAKER_01]: One's that occurred far beyond her short, but unforgettable life.
