Suicide or murder? The conspiracy theories surrounding Marilyn’s death
On 5 August 1962 screen icon Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her bedroom. Ever since her death was claimed to be a probable suicide on her death certificate, the probable written hastily in pencil, there has been an air of mystery surrounding her death. No one has ever known what really happened that fatal night Hollywood lost one of their favourite stars. Coco Evennett-Watts investigates the many theories surrounding Marilyn’s alleged suicide.
Born Norma Jean Mortenson in Los Angeles on 1 June 1926, Marilyn endured a horrific childhood, loosing both her parents at the age of three. Her father died in a motorcycle accident and her mother was put in a mental institution. At just eight years old Norma Jean was raped, leaving her with a stutter for the rest of her life. After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946.
After signing a motion picture deal with Twentieth Century Fox she changed her name to Marilyn Monroe and appeared in her first film Dangerous Years, which unfortunately wasn’t as successful as everybody had hoped it would be and the studio fired her. Some time later Twentieth Century Fox re signed Marilyn and for the next few years she appeared in a number of internationally successful movies including Some Like it Hot. She became a Hollywood star.
However, the Hollywood lifestyle didn’t always suit Marilyn and she slowly became addicted to drugs and champagne, often turning up late or not at all at the studio. At approximately 21.30 that mysterious summers evening in1962, Marilyn’s agent phoned the Monroe household to see if the actress was okay. It was the unanswered phone in her bedroom and the fact that the phone cord was under her door with her bedroom light still on that raised alarm for the housekeeper Eunice Murray, who had been fired earlier that day.
It was no secret that as her career got bigger, so did Marilyn’s addiction to drugs, which caused her to suffer with insomnia. So, why would it be a shock for Eunice to see the bedroom light on quite late in the evening? After going upstairs to see what was wrong, Eunice became concerned that she couldn’t get into the bedroom as the door had been locked and there was no response from the room. Eunice claimed that she phoned Marilyn’s psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenson who arrived minutes later, smashing the bedroom window in to find Hollywood’s most iconic actress dead.
Many of Eunice’s claims about that historic evening don’t add up. For instance, why was Marilyn’s door locked to begin with? After spending some time in Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in 1961, she never locked her bedroom door nor had she been able to that nightm having just had a thick carpet fitted making it extremely hard for the actress to close the door. The glass that Dr. Ralph Greenson smashed was found outside the window. If he had really broken the glass from the outside then surely the glass would be inside.
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Category: 1960s, Vintage news
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