SATURDAY RUBRICS: 5/4/24

MARLENE DIETRICH, MARILYN MONROE, JUDY GARLAND, and JFK

SOME JOY: Marilyn and Marlene

In the photo above, Dietrich is stopping by a party in 1955 thrown by photographer Milton Greene and Marilyn to celebrate the opening of their production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, Inc. It is reportedly their first meeting and it was even rumored that they might have had a bit of an affair. The year before, Monroe had started writing her memoir assisted by Ben Hecht. It came out 20 years later and was titled My Story. In it, Monroe not only told Hecht that she was “the kind of girl they found dead in the hall bedroom with an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her hand,” but also admitted to him that she had at one point questioned her sexuality and wondered if she might be a lesbian until she fell in love with a man. During the investigation of her death, it was discovered that in a confidential session with her therapist Dr. Ralph Greenson, she told him about a one-night stand with Joan Crawford. Greenson had recorded their sessions and turned the tapes over to investigators without knowing that the transcripts would be leaked.

Dietrich, who knowingly claimed that “at heart I am a gentleman,” has become a queer icon because of her sexual fluidity and androgynous style and many lesbian love affairs. “Sex without gender” is how her friend Kenneth Tynan described her. Andy Warhol once, unattributed, put into the Interview gossip column, “Small Talk” back in 1973, the tidbit that someone had told him about Dietrich having been at a screening of one of Monroe’s movies and kept muttering each time Monroe had a scene, “So this is what they want now. This is what they call sexy.” I’d like to think that Dietrich became a “they” for a night or two herself.

Each woman is reported to have also slept with JFK - Dietrich even having an affair with his father which began in the summer of 1938 at Hotel du Cap. You can read all about it here at Vanity Fair in a story by Cari Beauchamp. Joe Kennedy had brought his family to vacation in the south of France for the summer in a villa that abutted the hotel where Dietrich arrived with her husband and young daughter. At Elsa Maxwell’s summer ball at the hotel, a 21-year-old JFK danced with Dietrich to “Begin the Beguine” and remembered her holding him a bit too tightly before she slipped a hand down his trousers. He would laugh when recounting the tale and wonder if his father had put her up to it.

Here are the last paragraphs of the Vanity Fair article, I linked to above:

“Jack Kennedy had always remembered the glamorous woman in the South of France who had massaged him seductively when she wasn’t off in her bungalow with his father. Dietrich was a grandmother and past 60 when she brought her sold-out one-woman show to Washington, D.C., in September of 1963 and was flattered by Jack’s phone call inviting her to the White House. She was given directions for arrival at the south entrance and was shown upstairs to the family living quarters, where she found the president alone and expecting her. She later regaled friends such as Kenneth Tynan and Gore Vidal with her tales of that early-evening visit, saying the tour consisted of the West Sitting Room and a bedroom where Jack made a ‘clumsy pass.’

“In Vidal’s recounting, her initial protest of ‘You know, Mr. President, I am not very young’ soon gave way to ‘Don’t muss my hair. I’m performing.’ After an ‘ecstatic three to six minutes,’ Jack fell asleep. Marlene pulled herself together and, already running late and not wanting to just wander the halls, woke Jack. He rang for his valet, who was clearly ‘used to this sort of thing.’ With a towel around his waist, the president led her to the small elevator across the hall from the bedroom and ‘shook her hand as if she were the Mayor of San Antonio,’ but something else was on his mind.

“‘If I ask you a question, will you tell me the truth?’ he inquired, according to Vidal. Marlene did not promise anything, but nodded in acquiescence.

“‘Did you ever go to bed with my old man?’

“Knowing exactly what he wanted to hear, Marlene demurred. ‘He tried,’ she responded after a brief pause, ‘but I never did.’

“Jack was triumphant, exclaiming, ‘I always knew the son of a bitch was lying.’

“Marlene couldn’t resist a little bragging of her own. When she returned to her New York apartment, she was greeted by [her daughter] Maria’s husband, who was visiting. Before even saying hello, Marlene smiled victoriously, opened her bag, pulled out a pair of pink panties, and waved them at his nose. ‘Smell! It is him! The president of the United States! He … was … wonderful!’ As Maria tells the story, she is quick to note that her husband immediately removed himself to a hotel.

“Two months later, the president was assassinated in Dallas, and Dietrich mournfully sent notes and flowers to the family. Maria was crushed, remembering Jack’s long-ago kindnesses to her and ‘the youth he wore so well.’ In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, she recalls, ‘my mother donned simple widow’s black, her face a white mask of personal sorrow, sat erect, her voice hushed and reverent as she repeatedly told of their last romantic encounter.’

“Six years later, on November 18, 1969, was on the short list of friends who received cables from Ted Kennedy, telling her of Joe’s passing at the age of 81, eight years after he had suffered a debilitating stroke. By this time, Marlene had endured a variety of ailments herself, and after her final film appearance, wearing a thick black veil in Just a Gigolo in 1978, she took to living behind closed doors in her Paris apartment, staying hidden even from her closest friends, keeping alive her unique brand of allure long past her death, in 1992.”

(Above: Monroe, Dietrich, and Greene. New York. 1955.)

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