J. Taraborrelli - The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

In the spring of 1960, these two very different women—Marilyn and Pat—became close friends. It was an ironic meeting in the sense that Marilyn had dated Peter for a short time back in 1950. Peter was crazy about her, Marilyn not so much him. In some ways, the friendship between Marilyn and Pat made sense, though. Pat was drawn to the glamour and glitz that was all Marilyn’s, whereas Marilyn had always longed for the security and financial stability enjoyed by Pat. In other ways, the friendship seemed surprising. For instance, Pat was puritanical. While Pat was rather plain and ordinary in appearance, Marilyn was… well, Marilyn. While it was said that Pat made the sign of the cross whenever she had to have sex with Peter, Marilyn was… well, Marilyn .

“I don’t know when it happened exactly, but I know that Pat started to become very, I don’t know what the word is for it, really—infatuated, I guess, with the idea of knowing Marilyn Monroe,” says Pat Brennan, who met Pat in 1954 and remained friends with her through the 1960s and 1970s. “I think it’s safe to say that she was starstruck by her. Suddenly, everything was ‘I just spoke to Marilyn and she said that…’ It was as if she had a best friend overnight. I found it strange.

“I remember calling Pat once in the spring of 1960 and she said, ‘I’d like for you to speak to someone here.’ The next thing I knew, I was hearing this breathy voice on the other end of the phone. Marilyn. ‘Pat says you are her dear friend,’ she told me. ‘Well, I am, too. Maybe we’ll meet one day.’ I said, ‘Fine, let’s do.’ Finally Pat came back on the line. ‘So what do you think of that ?’ Pat said. She was definitely impressed by Marilyn and wanted to impress others that she knew her.”

Very quickly, the two women became close. Pat’s son Christopher recalled of his mom and Marilyn, “[Marilyn] had a quiet voice and she would smile at me and head out to walk on the sand with my mom. My mother told me Marilyn was like her ‘little sister.’ It surprised her that Marilyn was so open with her. My mom didn’t come from an environment where emotions and feelings were openly shared. Marilyn Monroe trusted my mother’s love for her.”

As they got to know each other, they began to share details of each other’s life while commiserating about their joys and sadnesses. For instance, Pat had three children—Christopher, Sydney, and Victoria. In a year, she would have a fourth, Robin. Marilyn, of course, desperately longed for children. Sometimes the stories Pat told Marilyn about her family would leave her with her mouth wide open, such as this one:

“After Peter and I had Christopher, Peter was very unhappy because the baby cried all the time and the house smelled like shit,” Pat told Marilyn in front of other friends.

“Oh, well, I guess that’s what happens when you have a baby,” Marilyn said. “So what did you do?”

“Well, we decided it would be best if Christopher had his own apartment across the street.”

“What? How old was he?”

“Well, he was about two months old, actually. So, anyway, we rented an apartment for him and the nanny and he slept over there. It was just a lot easier on everyone.”

Indeed, Pat Kennedy Lawford was of a rare breed. Her story about Christopher aside, she was the best mother she knew how to be to her children. Of course, the Lawfords had a live-in nanny, but when the brood was a little older Pat would give the nanny one week off a month so that she could be a full-time mom to them. She would turn the clocks ahead an hour so that the kids would go to sleep a little earlier—but after spending the day running after four small children she probably figured she deserved the break.

Then there was this story:

“You will never guess what my dad gave me when I turned twenty-five.”

“A new outfit?” Marilyn asked.

“No, guess again.”

“A car?

“Nope. Guess again.”

“What? What?

“One million dollars,” Pat said with an impish grin.

Again, Marilyn couldn’t believe her ears. “But why?” she asked.

Pat laughed. “Oh, who knows? I guess because he loved me. It was quite generous, wasn’t it?” *

Marilyn had to agree.

The friendship with Pat had an interesting dynamic in that Pat wanted to share it with others while Marilyn chose to keep it to herself. “She liked Pat, I know that much, but other than that, I don’t know a lot,” said Ralph Roberts. “She was not effusive when it came to Pat. I remember thinking that it was mostly a telephonic relationship. I think Marilyn began to call her when she had problems—as she did all of us. And I think Pat enjoyed that. I think she wanted to help Marilyn, though I’m not sure why except that, well… everyone wanted to help Marilyn. She had that kind of vulnerability that made you want to take care of her, and I think Pat Kennedy Lawford was struck by it, too.”

In July 1960, Pat invited Marilyn to be present when her brother, John F. Kennedy, accepted the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United States. Marilyn wasn’t sure she could make it. She said she had prior commitments with The Misfits . However, Pat told her that if she missed it she would be “missing something very historical.” So Marilyn agreed that she would be there. She would be out of town, she said, but she would fly in for the convention and fly right back out that night.

On the night of July 15, 1960, Marilyn and many other celebrities joined a packed house at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles and watched in rapt attention as John Kennedy spoke of his New Frontier. “The new frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises,” he intoned, “it is a set of challenges, it sums up not what I intend to offer of the American people but what I intend to ask them.” His aide Peter Summers, who was responsible for coordinating much of the television coverage of Kennedy’s campaign, recalled, “It was a magical moment like no other I can remember. When he came to the podium, the applause was thunderous but then, as he spoke, you could hear a pin drop. Chills were going up and down your spine. Yes, Marilyn was in the audience, along with many other stars. That night, I think a strong friendship began to develop between her and Jack Kennedy. She was free, but Jack Kennedy wasn’t.”

Marilyn did see Kennedy backstage after his speech. It was Pat who introduced them. Actually Marilyn and JFK had met once before, in the 1950s at a dinner party, but hadn’t had a chance to talk or get to know one another. They wouldn’t on this night, either. There was too much going on—the scene was chaotic and Marilyn had to fly out of Los Angeles that night anyway. However, something strange did happen as a result of that evening. It was clear to some observers that the two were flirtatious toward one another, and there was concern about it. Because Kennedy was known for his voracious sexual appetite, red flags went up in his campaign quarters anytime he flirted with a movie star. “Some people on staff said products are sold by star endorsement,” Peter Summers recalled, “and that maybe a closeness [between JFK and Monroe] of this nature will be a benefit to him getting elected. The other side was that you’re not going to elect someone president who is perhaps ignoring his wife or cheating on his family. So, yes there was concern. Marilyn was spoken to very frankly about it. The president was spoken to very frankly about it. There was great concern at the time. It could have destroyed him.”

In fact, Marilyn was spoken to—by Pat. One Kennedy relative recalled, “What happened was that someone from the Kennedy campaign told Peter Lawford that JFK had been flirting with Marilyn. They wanted to nip it in the bud before something happened. Would he talk to Marilyn about it? Peter thought it was unfair to approach Marilyn Monroe with a warning since nothing had even occurred. Still, he decided to ask Pat to at least mention to her that there was concern about it. So, from my understanding of it, Pat called Marilyn and said, ‘Look, I know this is ridiculous, but everyone is going nuts because they think my brother was flirting with you the other night. Do you think he was?’ Marilyn said, ‘Well, of course he was. And I was flirting back. But it meant nothing. It was just flirting.’ Pat said, ‘Fine. I just wanted you to know that they were worried about it.’ Marilyn asked, ‘About what?’ And Pat said, ‘Just that something might happen between you and my brother, that’s all. It’s very silly.’ Marilyn agreed. ‘Oh Pat, that is silly,’ she said. ‘It’s just ridiculous.’ ”