But, then again, Spoto is a Hollywood biographer, so probably not.) (One can even imagine Kennedy wife Pat Lawford giving the book a quote. According to Spoto, Kennedy in-law Peter Lawford was a soul mate, not a pimp-conspirator. To stay on the payroll, Spoto suggests they “conspired to keep her drugged and dependent.” The shrink was retreating into a “psychoneurotic fear of abandonment and rejection” the housekeeper “had become a crippled version of the increasingly healthy Marilyn.” And she wasn’t a psychiatric nurse, after all, just a lonely woman from practically around the corner whose husband recently died.įor once, a biographer is letting the Kennedys off scot-free. Spoto leans heavily on the shrink and the housekeeper (both of whom are now dead). Because without them, who do we blame for the loss? With a star this beloved, there has to be a villain. The hook, of course, is still the Kennedys. At other times, we get every microscopic detail, down to the numbers of Nembutals she took. Sometimes this book goes at the speed of one of MM’s afternoons-nothing happens. Unlike Anthony Summers, who in “Goddess” was after a Kennedy cover-up, Spoto is only after his subject, whom he portrays as a garden-variety neurotic. So for once, we see Monroe’s day-to-day life, the shrewd careerist plotting every move, building the Marilyn Monroe business. And Spoto gets to all the right service people-the analysts and gurus who were MM’s true family. Stars often get rid of people, of course, but the good service people are the last to go.

“Her resentment of the doctor had reached the breaking point,” MM’s masseur, Ralph Roberts tells Spoto. The motive? MM had fired the maid and was about to dump the shrink. “It was logical for the doctor to ask the housekeeper to do this particular deed,” writes Spoto. (Korda has the JFK-MM affair lasting 8 years.) It wasn’t the Kennedys who killed MM, but rather her psychiatrist via his minion, the housekeeper, who administered the lethal enema of killer chloral hydrate. The new party line is, MM didn’t even have an affair with Bobby Kennedy, although she did sleep with JFK-once, at Bing Crosby’s place in the Springs.

Marilyn monroe spoto