If an idol dies young, fans always hope that he just faked his funeral and quietly lives out his days away from the press. Moreover, in the case of Marilyn Monroe, a lot speaks in favor of this version …
Marilyn Monroe is a master of performance and a PR genius. Most likely, she faked her death on August 5, 1962 with the help of her ex-husband, baseball player Joe DiMaggio. This was the solution to all problems:
financial, career, relationship with the Kennedy brothers. Monroe complained about surveillance and feared for her life.
PR genius
Hoax is the essence of the image of Marilyn Monroe. Her main talent is in the ability to effectively present herself. Monroe's beauty is the result of daily work, she did not just do makeup, but put on makeup.
Norma Baker has never identified herself with her stage image, Marilyn Monroe. Once the writer Truman Capote noticed how she gazed at the reflection in the mirror. To his question, Monroe replied that she was looking at her. That is, the actress drew the line between stage and life.
Monroe fanned interest in the image of a sexy silly blonde with various PR stunts. For example, journalist Earl Wilson wrote from her that Marilyn did not wear underwear. Alleged romances with famous actors such as Marlon Brando, Yves Montand, Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable, often discussed in the press, were part of the film's advertising campaigns. Monroe has repeatedly emphasized that she does not live up to the sexual image, remaining in her soul an ordinary American woman who dreams of family and children.
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Monroe needed rumors of an affair with President John F. Kennedy for PR. For this she sang on May 19, 1962 in Madison Square Garden at a celebration in honor of his birthday. To be invited, she presented the President with an engraved gold Rolex watch. Monroe tried to save her career with this. But the Kennedy scandal was not needed, he asked his assistant Kenneth O'Donnell to get rid of the gift.
Monroe's idol was Jean Harlow, a 1930s star who died of illness at the height of fame at the age of 26. Marilyn was offered to play Harlow in the film. Perhaps she brought it to life. The mysterious death of Marilyn's image is also a PR stunt.
“Run away if you want to be loved,” Monroe often said. In 1960-1962, there was a decline in the career of the actress. Neither a nude photo session in July 1962, nor gossip about an affair with the president could prevent it. Monroe was 36 years old, beauty and youth were leaving.
In 1961, Marilyn was ill a lot, almost did not act in films. Remote appendicitis, the consequences of pneumonia (obtained after performing in South Korea in front of soldiers in a light evening dress), 2 miscarriages from an ectopic pregnancy, removal of the gallbladder affected the actress's performance. Rumors of her mental illness were more spread by the film company, as Monroe used barbiturates to fall asleep and forget about physical pain.
Monroe returned to cinema in the spring of 1962 and began filming Something's Got To Happen. A couple of days before that, Monroe had sinusitis. Doctors advised to postpone the work, the sick Monroe constantly disrupted the shooting, and the studio 20th Century Fox insisted on the film. On June 7, 20th Century Fox fired Monroe and sued her for $ 750,000 in damages.
In an interview on July 4, 1962, Monroe excused herself for being constantly late for filming by the purely consumer attitude of the film company to the actress. From the interview, it is clear that she wants to get rid of her stage image. "It's nice to be the subject of people's imagination, but it's no less pleasant to be recognized for who you are in life."
Preparing to disappear
On August 3, 1962, Monroe talked for a long time with her PR manager Pat, possibly calculating the details and the effect of the disappearance. On the eve of “death,” she rejected offers from 2 friends to spend the evening together: there was no time, they were preparing a hoax with Joe, but not everything was foreseen. According to the official version, Monroe took the entire bottle of pills, but in numerous photographs of Monroe's bedroom, a glass of water is not visible in the room to drink them.
At Monroe's house in Brentwood, although she lived there for almost 6 months, there was practically no furniture in the bedroom. All things (bag, cosmetics) lay right on the floor. And in other rooms they did not seek to create comfort, as if it were a staging post before flight. In the bedroom, all the windows are curtained with thick black cloth. It's easier to do something forbidden this way.
Monroe talked to Sinatra and others on the eve of her "death", no one noticed the breakdown. Only nervousness, easily explained by the upcoming staging.
Housekeeper Monroe
Eunice Murray spent the night at her house, and later at the trial, she and the doctors often changed their testimony. At first she said that she went to bed at midnight and called Dr. Greenson only at 3 o'clock in the morning when she woke up and noticed the light under the bedroom door. The police noted the insecurity and evasiveness in the answers of the housekeeper. Although Eunice was a key witness, she was allowed to leave for Europe and was no longer questioned. It is unknown what role she played that night. Two doctors also changed their testimony and during the investigation stated that Monroe died not at about 22:00, but at about 3:50 am.
On August 5, 1962, at 5:30 am, the body of the alleged "Marilyn Monroe" is taken from the house and taken to the morgue in a van.
Already during her lifetime, Marilyn was her stunt double. In the 1950s, a whole cult of Marilyn arose, they imitated her, dyed her hair and did her hair like hers. So it was not difficult to find a corpse suitable for physique. In the photo in the bedroom, Monroe lies face down, only her hair is visible, further evidence of the staging. This body was transported 3 times, as if hiding from the paparazzi and the curious.
Posthumous photographs
Despite this, on August 5, 2 photographers entered the morgue: Bud Gray of the Herald-Exeminer and free photographer Lee Winer. One of the employees opened the door of Ward 33 and Winer took pictures (2 published in Life magazine). They are considered to be a photo of Monroe's corpse.
Everyone notes how strikingly different the depicted woman is from Monroe. There are photographs of a living Monroe without makeup, and it can be seen that in the photo of dead Marilyn the woman has a different shape of the nose (Monroe has a snub nose, the corpse has a straight and long one) and thin lips.
The posthumous images show traces of blows to the face, the neck is swollen and the face is in black spots. The corpse's face and body in the photo are severely swollen, bruises on the back (if it was lying face down, then the question is, where did the bruises come from), the skin looks like the corpse has been decomposing for several days.
There were also contradictions during the autopsy, which lasted 5 hours. The unknown blood contained Nembutal and chloral hydrate. To receive such a dose of drugs, as recorded by the pathologist, the woman had to take about 17-18 capsules of chloral hydrate and about 60-70 capsules of nembutal. Los Angeles chief toxicologist Raymond Abernathy examined samples of only the stomach and duodenum. No traces of drugs were found there, and Abernathy did not check the rest of the organs. When the investigator asked for the rest of the samples to be analyzed, the chief toxicologist had already thrown them away, by accident or hiding inaccuracies.
DNA expertise was not carried out at that time. Only the opening of the crypt and the conduct of this examination will be the decisive argument for or against the hypothesis of staging.
Suspicions of staging are reinforced by the story of the preparation of the body for burial and the funeral itself.
On the evening of August 6, the body was taken to the Westwood Morgue, and only the make-up and costume designer were allowed to see him. It is not clear why, if the body was buried in a closed coffin and was not shown to anyone close. The dresser, Miss Hamrock, “made” the body a chest of cotton wool and dressed in a dress and one of Monroe's wigs (due to constant discoloration towards the end of her career, the actress's hair faded, she wore wigs, now exhibited in the Monroe Museum). Monroe's permanent make-up artist, Alan Snyider, who worked with a corpse for the first time in his life, painted Monroe's features on it. In the makeup, the dead woman already looked like Marilyn. It is characteristic that after this Fimer refused to give interviews about Monroe until the end of his life.
After that, Joe DiMaggio came to the morgue and remained there until 11 o'clock at night, as if he was guarding the body from strangers. It is interesting that after Monroe's “death” he did not marry until the end of his life, but was engaged in the sale of her things at auctions, for example, a wardrobe.
There is not a single photograph of Monroe in his coffin. There is only a painted bronze sculpture "At rest" by Paolo Schmidlin. He portrayed Monroe lying in a coffin in her favorite green dress under a gauze veil. Perhaps a similar dummy was at the funeral.
For two nights in a row, the coffin was guarded by a morgue worker Pat Spinelli, she slept on a cot next to her so that none of the journalists would enter again and expose the deception.
She's somewhere near
On August 8, there was a private funeral of the world famous star. At 5 in the morning, the embalmer followed by Snaider examined the body and corrected the makeup.
Joe DiMaggio took over the organization of the funeral and made sure that admission to the memorial service was by invitation only. He himself carefully compiled a list of invitees, which, in addition to those who were initiated into the secret, included those who had long or rarely talked with Marilyn - that is, they could not identify her. Only 25-30 people.
Here are the people on the invite list. Rudy, Marilyn's new chauffeur, he hasn't gotten to know her yet. Emmeline Swinelli, head of a modeling agency, hasn't spoken to Monroe for 15 years. Goslar Latte, the director of Monroe's dances in one of the 1954 films, has not spoken since then. From the list, Monroe's real friends were only Alan Snyider (personal makeup artist) and Pat Newcomb (press attaché). Of the family members, there was only Monroe's half-sister Bernice, they saw each other only 3 times in their life. Joe turned down Frank Sinatra, but added Eunice Murray and Dr. Greenson to the list. Former husbands Monroe refused to participate in the "funeral". This proves that they suspected the staging and did not want to participate in it.
The ceremony began at one o'clock in the afternoon in a chapel that had been built shortly before in Westwood Cemetery. There were 50 police officers at the funeral, more than those invited. They made sure that no one took posthumous pictures of Marilyn in the coffin, did not film what was happening in the chapel, and especially that no one from the press approached the funeral ceremony.
All media representatives were forced out behind a special fence. There were all Monroe fans who had come to pay their last respects. There are about a thousand people in total. From the surviving photographs, some of the fans laughed and did not take the funeral seriously.
3-5 photos of not very good quality, some amateur videos taken in secret during the funeral. This is all that is left to the descendants.
The funeral and funeral service in the chapel passed quickly and without much solemnity. As if for show. As soon as the attendants threw flowers at the foot of the coffin, the lid was slightly opened. No matter how hard Snyider and the others tried, the sight of "Monroe's corpse" shocked everyone. Agnes Flanagan has been Monroe's hairdresser for over 12 years. She claimed that she had never seen death so change a person's appearance.
After the service, everyone left the chapel, only Joe remained with the coffin, he put everything in order. The coffin was taken out closed so that no one could recognize the fake, and walled up in a crypt nearby.
It was not difficult for Monroe to hide in the same America. Just dye your hair (or take off your wig), put on glasses (Monroe was nearsighted and read with glasses), and she's different.
Hollywood is a place of legends and sensations. Having buried the image of the blonde Marilyn Monroe, it is likely that Norma Baker lived to old age alone. Perhaps, sunbathing to her heart's content under the Latin American Sun (which she couldn't do in the image of Monroe, so as not to spoil the milky-white skin color that complemented the image of a touching blonde), or in Switzerland, surrounded by a family that she had dreamed of all her star life.
It is in the spirit of the actress herself - to arrange another hoax and, remaining one of the loudest sensations of the 20th century, go into obscurity so that the legend of Marilyn Monroe remains immortal.
Magazine: Mysteries of History №36. Author: Maria Kosorukova