As pop culture rumours go, there’s one that has historically garnered more interest than any other: did Marilyn Monroe have an affair with John F. Kennedy?
It’s something that is expanded upon in full, grotesque detail in the film Blonde, which is based on a fictionalised novel of the Hollywood star’s life by Joyce Carol Oates. In one of the darkest moments of the director Andrew Dominik's movie, Monroe, who at the time was heavily drugged, is trafficked by the president’s secret service and taken to JFK’s hotel room, where he forces her to give him oral sex, and further sexual violence is hinted at.
As we’ve been informed, this scene is just an imagined meeting from Monroe’s life, and while JFK isn’t named in the film, it’s very clear by the casting exactly who it’s meant to be. But what is the truth in the rumours of their relationship, and what is recorded fact, rather than fiction?
When did Monroe and JFK first meet?
There are several conflicting suggestions as to when they first entered into each other's orbit. In 1954, according to biographer James Spada, talking to People, the actor Peter Lawford – brother-in-law to the president – first introduced JFK to Monroe.
In April 1957, they were reported to both be at a ball in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, but they were both accompanied by their spouses: JFK’s wife Jackie, and Monroe’s then-husband, Arthur Miller. The party had around 1,000 guests, so their paths may not have even crossed on that night.
There’s also a chance they may have met four years later in 1961 at a dinner party at Lawford's Santa Monica home. But most biographers believe that the actual affair began in March 1962, at Bing Crosby’s Palm Springs house.
In Donald Spoto book Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, Monroe’s masseur and friend, Ralph Roberts, claims she called him from the party to ask advice on giving a massage. Roberts alleged that not only did he hear the president in the background, but Kennedy also spoke with him too: “Marilyn told me that this night in March was the only time of her 'affair' with JFK. A great many people thought, after that weekend, that there was more to it. But Marilyn gave me the impression that it was not a major event for either of them: it happened once, that weekend, and that was that.”
The story is backed up by Lee Strasberg’s – Monroe’s acting teacher and close friend – daughter, Susan, in her memoirs, published in Vanity Fair: “It was O.K. to sleep with a charismatic president and Marilyn loved the secrecy and the drama of it, but Kennedy was not the kind of man she wanted to spend her life with, and she made that very clear.” Strasberg also confirmed that this is the night Kennedy had asked Monroe to perform at his birthday party
On May 19, 1962 – just three months before she died, aged 36 – Monroe was invited to JFK’s birthday party and fundraiser, and made herself every inch the Hollywood bombshell she had created. She wore a body-hugging cream rhinestone-adorned dress (yep, that one that Kim Kardashian recently wore to the Met Gala) covered in a fur coat that she threw off once she was on stage.
In probably the sexiest rendition of the song ever, Monroe then shimmied her way through a breathless Happy Birthday, with her own reworked version of Thanks For The Memories, with the gushing lyrics: “Thanks, Mr. President / For all the things you've done / The battles that you've won / The way you deal with U.S. Steel / And our problems by the ton / We thank you so much.”
JFK quipped on stage: “I can now retire from politics after having Happy Birthday sung to me in such a sweet and wholesome way”. Whether they hooked up again is unknown, and only one picture of the duo – and his brother, Robert – is in existence, taken by Cecil Stoughton after the event at an after party held at a movie executive’s house.
However, some believe that JFK was not the only Kennedy that Monroe had been having relations with. Spada told People: “It was pretty clear that Marilyn had had sexual relations with both Bobby and Jack.” While an affair has never been confirmed, in a letter Monroe wrote to one of Miller’s children, she described meeting him, as per Vanity Fair: “I had dinner last night with the Attorney-General of the United States, Robert Kennedy… He is very intelligent, and besides all that, he’s got a terrific sense of humor. I think you would like him. Anyway, I had to go to this dinner last night as he was the guest of honor and when they asked him who he wanted to meet, he wanted to meet me.. . . [A]nd he isn’t a bad dancer either.” Interestingly, any other Kennedy letters from or to Monroe have never been recovered, unlike all her other memoirs and communications.
There has long been speculation by those close to Monroe who have alleged that Robert Kennedy may have been at Monroe’s house on the day she died, and that there had been an argument between them. In a 1983 BBC interview with Monroe biographer and investigative journalist Anthony Summers and Monroe’s housekeeper, Eunice Murray – which can be heard in the Netflix documentary, The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes – he said there was a “moment where she put her head in her hands and said words to the effect of, 'Oh, why do I have to keep covering this up?' I said, 'Covering what up, Mrs. Murray?' She said, ‘Well of course Bobby Kennedy was there, and of course, there was an affair with Bobby Kennedy.’”
Alongside Monroe’s supposed communist party leanings (which saw the FBI open up a file on her, alongside the playwright Miller) the actor's interactions with the Kennedys may also explain why authorities were tracking her until the day she died. While the FBI have released some redacted files which can be read online, there is nothing mentioning the former president and his brother, meaning that any relationships, illicit or otherwise, were ultimately taken to the grave by all three people.
Blonde streams on Netflix from September 28.
