MARILYN MONROE - THE PRIVATE LIFE OF A PUBLIC ICON by CHARLES CASILLO : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

Over 200 books have been written about Marilyn Monroe and so the question is, can any author bring something new to the understanding of this actress who died 60 years ago this summer, August 4th or 5th, 1960?  Having read maybe a half dozen of those books, I featured Marilyn on this blog in May 2016 focused on just one of them. She was the mistress of super-agent Johnny Hyde, who got her a contract with Twentieth Century Fox, wanted to marry her, and died suddenly without that ever happening.  To her credit, Marilyn did not want to marry him because she was not in love with him. I'm particularly interested in the controversial aspect of her death and if she was actually involved with President John F. Kennedy, or his brother, Robert Kennedy.

What is the tone of this book by Charles Casillo? Casillo delivers a clear and empathic report. The author was aware of the hunger for knowing more about Marilyn that so many fans have and says he spent hours listening to interviews that other author conducted that are housed at the Los Angeles Public Library. Then he also sought out new interviews with people who met her or knew her, people who were quite old themselves. (My note is that people interviewed in their 80's and 90's would have had to have been very young at the time. She was born as Norma Jean Mortensen in 1926 and was known as Norma Jeane Baker in her childhood. Recently DNA testing revealed  Charles Stanley Gifford was her birth father)  I think Casillo did a fine job of letting us know who he spoke to and where there was controversy. that there was one, instead of taking a particular side.

In particular, the author outlines her heritage of mental illness, not just in the case of her mother which is now well known, but others of her lineage. This makes a case for the possibility that Marilyn's fears that she would also become mentally ill realistic rather than neurotic. He shows just how much influence psychiatrists had on Marilyn and especially the amount of control psychiatrist Greenson, had on her in her last days. (I think of the control that Beach Boy Brian Wilson experienced in his life when a person in the mental health profession moved in. I tend to think that Green should have lost his license to practice.) Marilyn clearly needed to trust in someone, a doctor, and was mentally ill. So, when I read a quote by her first husband, James Doughterty, from another sources, stating that he never knew Marilyn Monroe but had loved Norma Jean, and that she was too sensitive to be in the movie business, I have to agree. 

Here is the question for YOU, my readers. Does mental illness make a person go after experiences that most people would avoid out of self-preservation or out of desperation, or is it that having so many horrible experiences makes a person mentally ill? I think that most women with a life like Marilyn's would have had a difficult time but that she was in the public spotlight made managing it all more difficult. So very many people wanted something out of an association with her, but she seemed unable to keep healthy boundaries and this is because some of them were deceivers.

As for the Kennedys, Casillo does bring some new light to the rumors that she was involved with one or both of the brothers. That Jackie Kennedy specifically asked her husband to break with Marilyn because she had empathy for Marilyn is new to me. That the involvement with Robert Kennedy was more serious interesting. Did one or both of them have Marilyn murdered?

The author reveals that the relationship with Pat Newcomb, her press agent and, it could be argued, best friend, who frequently stayed over at Marilyn's house, might have also had an interest in Robert Kennedy and that there were aspects of that relationship that might not have been healthy.  Of many passages I could excerpt here is one from page 295.

Dean Martin's wife, Jeanne, has said that "Pat was deeply in love with Bobby. It took her many years to get over it." There was something deeper to their relationship than friendship.  It certainly would have been better for all concerned if Marilyn didn't hear it.  But she suspected.  And now she demanded explanations.  She grappled with the notion of Pat Newcomb possibly being involved with Bobby - at once so loyal but at the same time seemingly desperate to take "possession" of her.  Was an involvement with Bobby, in some way, a maneuver for Newcomb to be more enmeshed with Marilyn?  Marilyn thought so, feeling a "sibling rivalry" kind of relationship had developed between them in the two years they had been closely associated with each other.

The author points out that while Marilyn did call the White House and also Robert Kennedy many times, it is not known how many times one or both of these men called her.  Rather than make it seem like she was a desperate caller, Marilyn might have been returning phone calls. He points out that there are "reasonable witnesses" on both sides of the question of Robert Kennedy being in Los Angeles on Saturday August 5th. Then he reveals the two stories. There is a two hour window in which RFK could have made it to Los Angeles via helicopter perhaps from San Francisco or Gilroy, California. He speculates that Robert Kennedy was supposed to make it over to his sister and brothers-in-law's house and that when Marilyn learned he was not going to go to the Lawford's, she cancelled going there herself. 

I speculate that because Marilyn knew that her family heritage contained various individuals who were manic, depressed, suicidal, she had at least reached out for help.

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Revisit by finding these posts in my archive.

MARILYN MONROE - ACTRESS - "SEX GODDESS" - and MISTRESS OF TALENT AGENT JOHNNY HYDE May 2016