Reading - MM´s Suicide
The Death of Marilyn Monroe
In July 1962 Marilyn Monroe was sacked from the set of the film Something´s got to Give for persistent absence. To the public she was still Holywood´s greatest star and one of the world´s most desirable and highly paid women, but in private things had fallen apart. Her marriage to the third husband Arthur Miller had ended in divorce, her latest film, The Misfits, had flopped at the box office (though it achieved cult status after her death), and now she had lost the opportunity to show that the Mistfits was a temporary aberration. The trajectory that had taken Monroe from poor orphan to the most potent star attraction in the American cinema had passed its zenith, and the plunge back down to earth was a rapid one.
The Overdose
At about 20:00 on 4th August, Marilyn´s friend Peter Lawford spoke to her on the telephone and was so worried by her tone that he asked her lawyer, Mickey Rudin, to check on her. Rudin phoned at 21:30, but Marilyn´s housekeeper, Eunice Murray, told him that everything was fine; Marilyn was resting in her room. In fact, she was probably already dying.
At about 3:00 Murray woke sensing something wrong and noticed that Monroe´s light was still on. The bedroom door was locked, so Murray went outside, reached through the window grille to part the curtains and saw Marilyn lying face down on the bed with one hand on the telephone and a near-empty bottle of sleeping pills beside her. Murray had already phoned Marilyn´s psychiatrist who arrived 3:40 closely followed by a doctor, who pronounced Marilyn dead at the scene.
Conspiracy have persisted ever since that her apparent suicide was in fact murder, with Marilyn´s well-known sleeping problems providing the perfect cover for anyone intent on ending her life.
From: Where were you when? 1962