The truth (with facts) behind the romance between Marilyn Monroe and Kennedy
The magazine 'Pop Sugar' has recovered several of these testimonies to show that the evidence around the possible romance is quite scarce
"No serious biographer can maintain the existence of an affair between Marilyn and Kennedy. The only thing we can say with certainty is that the actress and the president have met four times, between October 1961 and August 1962." The phrase is from Donald Spotto, resurrector of the memory of the stars and also biographer of Norma Jean Baker, the woman who hid behind the 'costume' (and the name) of the most famous platinum blonde in Hollywood. The magazine 'Pop Sugar' has recovered several of these testimonies to show that the evidence surrounding the possible romance between the former president of the United States in the early 60s and the platinum blonde who sang 'Happy Birthday' to him was reduced to a single night of passion.
Let's go through the evidence that exists. The first night for which there is evidence of a meeting between the two takes place at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York on April 11, 1957. Marilyn is accompanied by her husband at the time, Arthur Miller. JFK, who is not yet president, attends the event hand in hand with Jackie, his wife. They are joined by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a relative of the brilliant young man. There is not a single piece of evidence that the two marriages intersected at any time. The second night in which the destinies of the actress and the politician intersect takes place in 1961. Peter Lawford, a good friend of Frank Sinatra, organizes a dinner attended by John Fitzgerald Kennedy and in which the protagonist of 'Whit skirts and being crazy'. There is an encounter, but it doesn't seem like it goes beyond simple introductions.
The same does not happen, according to Spotto himself and other historians, on March 24, 1962. At that time it is another actor (and singer), the ineffable Bing Crosby, who is holding a massive party in Palm Springs. And that's when a masseuse for the actress enters the scene. His name is Ralph Roberts and he gets a call from her. Marilyn asks him about massage techniques for her back and he is stunned. In the background, he hears a Boston accent and she confesses, days later, that it was Kennedy himself and that he had had a sexual affair with the president. No more no less. Roberts's was the only testimony Donald Spotto could collect throughout his relentless pursuit of a presidential affair. The 'affair', therefore, remains without absolute confirmation. Proof of this are other nearby testimonies.
Even Susan Strasberg herself, daughter of the founder of the American Film Institute and a good connoisseur of the star's life, assured the biographer that "it was good to sleep with a charismatic president" in reference to that night in which Marilyn and JFK got carried away for passion. It was probably also on that evening that Kennedy asked the star to sing the famous 'Happy Birthday' to him at Madison Square Garden a couple of months later. Despite the rumor mill, 'Pop Sugar' ensures that the thing stays there, overnight. Neither official documents nor any other type of writing have been able to reliably demonstrate that there was something more than a sexual encounter between the blonde and the president. So what has fueled the legend?
Surely, the myth is part of the collective imagination and the rosary of doubts that still hang about the tragic and unexpected death of the actress in August 1962, when she was 36 years old and no one expected that one day she would appear face down, dead and with a boat of barbiturates on your nightstand. Like her own image of an oxygenated blonde, a sexy naive mistreated by all those who idolized her to the point of eroding her true personality, Marilyn's and her love for John Fitzgerald Kennedy remains, at this point, a fairy tale that surely never existed.
