Kennedy and Marilyn, in the bathtub
She, a pill addict who used to wash little. He, a man without morals who 'slept <i>' </i> with half of Hollywood. This is how François Forestier portrays the relationship between the president and the 'sex symbol'
December 1962. John Fitzgerald Kennedy takes Sunday off and goes to the house of his brother-in-law, Peter Lawford, who, in addition to being a brother-in-law and an actor, is his matchmaker, the one who procures all his lovers. There he awaits Marilyn.
JFK has back problems, he wears a corset, but takes it off to enter the hot tub with his beloved. Marilyn rides The Prez, which is how she privately calls the President of the United States of America. After a while, Peter Lawford opens the door ajar and takes a few Polaroid pictures of him. The president smiles, Marilyn grimaces. While the two lovers exchange confidences in the room, the men of Hoover, the almighty head of the FBI, listen to the conversations with their headphones while they eat pizza. There are microphones installed everywhere.
- Marilyn's house was filled with the FBI, the CIA, DiMaggio, the Mafia; everyone spied on her
- The Kennedys were in charge of erasing all the tracks of that relationship, according to François Forestier.
- Joe Kennedy, the patriarch of the family, paid $ 75,000 to have his son appear on the cover of 'Time'
- "Kennedy was a rich kid, with the arrogance of the rich kid that he thinks that nothing can happen to him," says the author
This is one of the many secret encounters that the French journalist François Forestier narrates in Marilyn and JFK (Aguilar), a work that recreates the relationship between the great sex symbol of the 20th century and the mythical president. "It is a book that tells a story," the journalist for the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur says by telephone from Paris, "it is not a journalistic work, nor a history book." Of course, he assures that there is not a single line of fiction. That everything that counts is supported by declassified FBI and CIA documents, by the abundant bibliography related to the subject, by files that are available to anyone who wants to see them and by the interviews with direct witnesses that he has conducted throughout of years. The French journalist, specialized in cinema, says that the story of that Polaroid by Peter Lawford was known thanks to the neighbor of J. Edgar Hoover. The all-powerful head of the FBI kept compromising documents of some of those spied on by his network of informants in his house. Among others, the photo of Kennedy and Marilyn in the bathtub. When Hoover died, her neighbor found it in the trash. There was the proof of that encounter. "Those photos exist. They circulate," says Forestier.
Few images are known of the couple, who, according to Forestier, had an intermittent relationship over the years. The secret services and Kennedy themselves were in charge of erasing the tracks of that relationship. "They removed everything to keep the myth alive, the Kennedys were untouchable," says Forestier. The image that accompanies this report is one of the few that are known. It is the remainder of a reel that was removed. In the snapshot appear John and Bobby Kennedy, with whom Monroe also hooked up, according to the book. It was taken at the home of Arthur Krim, treasurer of the Democratic Party, a few hours after the most lewd public demonstration of their relationship, the unrepeatable Happy birthday, Mr. President.
Forestier spoke with some of those who were behind the scenes that mythical night at Madison Square Garden, the celebration of the president's 45th birthday. He says that Marilyn's dress broke and that those present appreciated that she was not wearing her underwear. She had her dress patched - for $ 12,000 - in her dressing room, but it didn't take long to crack as Marilyn sang to her Mr. President.
Getting the star on stage that night was costly. He had to kidnap her Peter Lawford from the filming of Something's got to give - the film that did not finish - by showing up with a helicopter. Bobby Kennedy's call to Fox boss Milton S. Gould, asking that he let the actress escape "over a matter of state" was not enough. And it was clear to JFK that that night Marilyn was his birthday present.
Jacqueline Kennedy, the first lady, fed up with Marilyn's story, and without any desire to be humiliated in front of 15,000 spectators, left to spend the night of her husband's birthday at Glen Ora, the weekend residence of she. She riding a horse.
Marilyn and JFK tell a spy story. Because if there was something in Marilyn's house - and in the places she frequented the most - it was hidden microphones. If any life was scrutinized, that was that of the protagonist of the unforgettable Con faldas y a lo loco. The FBI, the CIA, the Mafia; the head of the transport union, James Hoffa; her husband jealous of her, DiMaggio. Kennedy's friends and enemies spied on her. And the charismatic president had many enemies. As Forestier recounts, he came to power boosted by his father, Joe Kennedy, who promised favors to Cosa Nostra when his son became president. La Cosa Nostra would soon see how his little brother, Bobby, built his career by harassing gangsters. She felt cheated. She started to work.
Forestier's book makes an absolutely demystifying portrait of her two protagonists. Marilyn is presented as an unbalanced, drug-addicted woman who does not take care of her personal hygiene and is also frigid. Kennedy, like a guy without any morals, a posh boy used to never being told no, a recalcitrant egotist who despises the feelings of others. He sleeps with half Hollywood, the book says. And he suffers from premature ejaculation. Angie Dickinson, one of her multiple lovers, remembers her fluid exchange with JFK as twenty unforgettable seconds.
The news of Jackie Kennedy's abortion to which John does not ruffle his hair, continuing his boat vacation with a load of girls; the payment of $ 75,000 to Time magazine by Joe Kennedy, the family patriarch, to launch his son's run for president; Kennedy's use of LSD shortly before the Bay of Pigs invasion; the rape that Marilyn suffers, drunk and bloated with pills, by the mobster Mooney Giancana. The book goes through the most rugged episodes of the biography of both myths without restriction. "I am a supporter of the spirit of James Ellroy," explains Forestier, "you have to look behind the myths. Hollywood is a corrupt world, without morals. Politics, too. With Marilyn and JFK, these two dirty worlds meet."
Forestier assures that her book does not include major revelations. That practically everything that she narrates had already been told, in pieces, in the many books that have tangentially approached the subject. It was necessary for someone to articulate the great story, he says. "No one has told this story," he maintains without a shadow of a doubt. She attributes this circumstance to the pact of silence signed by the media for years, which had publishable material in their hands, but refused to do so. And to the elimination of recordings, photos and documents to which Kennedy themselves contributed. This was the first stage. Over the years, he says, everyone took it for granted that his story was already told.
François Forestier writes film reviews and reports for the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur. At 62, he is a man fascinated by classic Hollywood. "Not because of Scarlett Johansson," he clarifies. He has spent half his life interviewing the greats of cinema. Many of them, like John Huston, were telling stories of Marilyn that began to germinate in his head. Author of autobiographies of Howard Hugues, Aristotle Onassis and Martin Luther King, as well as a novelist, he declares his fascination for this story between two egocentric children, between a woman, as he describes her, empty and a man without morals. "Kennedy was a rich kid, with the arrogance of the rich kid that he thinks that nothing can happen to him. He thought that even if the darkest parts of his biography were discovered, he would never happen anything."
Marilyn met Kennedy in 1954, at a party at the home of producer Charlie Feldman. A party to which she attended with her husband Joe DiMaggio, in which she danced caramelly with her admired Clark Gable and in which she slipped a paper with her phone number on the jacket of the then young senator North American.
For eight years the encounters between the two took place. On May 24, 1962, Monroe receives a call from matchmaker Peter Lawford.
-It's over, Marilyn. You should not try to contact the president again. You should not see him again, or call him on the phone.
Before the tears of the star, Lawford settles the question.
-Marilyn, you've just been a fuck for Jack.
