'I watched her frolicking naked in the pool with JFK': Hollywood's finest lift the lid on life with Marilyn Monroe and reveal a kind but desperately lonely star who craved a family of her own

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Speculation continues to this day about the cause of Marilyn Monroe's death in 1962. Did she take an overdose - or was she murdered? Over several decades, broadcaster NEIL SEAN asked every star he met for their personal memories of her - and has published them in a new book...

Jack Lemmon 

The star of Some Like It Hot, The Apartment and The Odd Couple was among the first to know that Marilyn Monroe was having an affair with President John F. Kennedy.

Lemmon used to live at silent movie star Harold Lloyd’s old house, which was next door to a well. 

He recalled: ‘One day I was coming back home and there’s this helicopter doing a low lazy circle above it. 

Jack Lemmon, (left) pictured in Some Like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe (right), said: 'She DID have an affair with JFK - I saw her naked in the pool with him' 

'And there were these guys in funny suits and funny glasses, standing around watching Marilyn Monroe and JFK having a frolic in the pool.

‘So whatever stories you’ve heard about Marilyn, that one is true: it was a big affair for her and she was in a deep relationship with JFK. 

'Whether he thought the same, we’ll never know. I think for sure she shouldn’t have got mixed up in the Kennedy clan. But she was the type of girl that looked straight into trouble and no one could ever advise her.’

Marilyn, as it turned out, wasn’t remotely embarrassed that he had seen her naked in the pool with the President. 

In any case, Lemmon said with a laugh, he had already seen quite a lot of her beautiful body while making Some Like It Hot. 

He and Tony Curtis, who played cross-dressers in the classic film, had both liked Marilyn very much, he said, despite her continual lateness on set.

‘She was a very unhappy girl, though. She had a lot of problems, yet no one seemed to know what they were,’ said Lemmon. 

‘Still, what she created — which in effect was Marilyn Monroe — must have been hard to conjure up day after day on a movie set.’

Time after time, he said, she would be dressed and fully made-up but wouldn’t come out of her dressing-room. It was as if there were a force field holding her back at the door.

‘I felt for her make-up man,’ he mused, ‘because she’d always find fault with her look and blame the make-up. Either that or she said she looked too fat. And, yes, she was fat at that stage because she was expecting a baby [which she later lost] though none of us knew that. She just loathed the way she looked on camera — but all I could see was one sexy girl in her prime.

‘I know the extras loved her because they got paid overtime when she failed to show up on time. Quite a few got new things like cars or paid off their mortgages on the back of her lateness. But when you look at her performance, she was wonderful — truly great. She steals every scene she’s in, so she was right to make us all wait until she got that “magic moment”.’

Lemmon felt her erratic behaviour may have been linked to problems in her marriage. He described her husband, playwright Arthur Miller as ‘a bore’ and ‘a terrible misery’.

‘I felt Miller thought she was a crackpot. But she was the breadwinner, and not him. Even if he didn’t really like her, what could he do? He was on the Marilyn payroll.’

Lemmon kept in touch with the star and saw her several times in the months before her death. ‘She looked great, though totally different in many respects — slimmer and with different hairstyles. I think she was trying to recreate herself and move ahead with the times.’

Norman Wisdom

The unlikeliest of friendships blossomed while Marilyn was making The Prince And The Showgirl in 1956. But it wasn’t her co-star Laurence Olivier who connected with her — it was the British slapstick comedian. 

He’d been on set at the Pinewood lot, making another film, when he suddenly realised Marilyn was watching him.

Norman Wisdom (pictured) said: 'She was fascinated by my kids - she really wanted her own family'

‘In fact, she quite unintentionally ruined a couple of takes — she couldn’t help laughing, and on two occasions she was politely escorted off the set,’ he said. 

‘We had a few cups of tea and she came to my dressing-room for a chat. She was a great girl and not at all depressed, like people paint her out to be.

‘The bigger story was that while she loved being a movie star, she also wanted a family. I think she was more fascinated with my little children, Nicolas and Jackie, than with me. 

'She wanted to know all about them. And I’d always talk to her about them as I think it made her happy — she giggled when I told her the daft things they did.’

Wisdom’s fondest memory was of passing her one day in a Pinewood corridor. 

‘It was lunchtime so it was crowded, but she caught hold of me, kissed and hugged me, and then walked away laughing. The people around me couldn’t believe it.’

Charlton Heston

Just five months before she died, the actress attended the Golden Globes to receive an award — which was presented to her by Heston and fellow stars Rock Hudson and Stefanie Powers.

Heston, then riding high as the star of Ben-Hur, remembered the occasion vividly, not least because she looked ‘stunning’.

‘She’d turned up with this guy Jose — a real user, the type who knows being pictured with Marilyn will do him a lot of good,’ he said. 

‘He was far younger than her and that was a problem, because he had an eye for the ladies. But Marilyn, I think, liked the fact he paid her a lot of attention.

‘She was very lonely and felt she had no friends there, really. And by the time she came up to receive her award, she was steaming drunk.

‘She uttered just a few words and left the stage, leaving us all a bit lost for words. Then once I’d joined her backstage, she made a lunge for me and started to kiss me all over, thanking me again and again for the award. I tried to tell her it was nothing to do with me.

Charlton Heston (pictured) said: 'She lunged at me, grabbed my thigh... then had to be carried out'

‘We sat down to chat and she kept placing her hand on my thigh and giving me the come-on look.

‘I started saying: “Look, Marilyn you’re a swell girl, and I think you’re beautiful . . .”

‘She stopped me right there and said: “But you don’t want me, do you?” I had to gently explain that I was happily married.

‘As the room was filled with some of the best-looking men in Hollywood, I wondered: “Why me? Was it because I wasn’t showing interest in her?” 

'It always baffled me, but I did wish I could have helped her. I never saw her again. As she left the awards, she was virtually carried out. She looked so unhappy.’

The following day, Marilyn rang Heston to ask if he’d like a cameo role in her next movie, Something’s Got To Give. But he was shocked to discover that she had very little idea of what the movie was about.

After that, he said: ‘I had calls from her from time to time, but I never knew how serious she was about wanting to work with me. Anyway, I knew that it could be dangerous.’ 

Although Heston never had any intention of getting entangled with Marilyn, he regretted that they’d never made a film together.

‘I felt she was a good actress and had the potential to be an even greater one,’ he said.

Eddie Fisher

One man who wasn’t wild about Marilyn was the singer who’d married two stars in succession — Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor — and he’d learned quite a bit about the seamier side of Hollywood. 

Marilyn, he told me, was ‘a user’ — reeling in men who could be useful to her, then discarding them when they’d served their purpose.

‘Marilyn Monroe was a serious player. She used people — she played them off, and I was a victim, too. When I first met her at the start of the Fifties, she made a beeline for me and asked me out on many occasions for a date.

‘But she wasn’t the “Marilyn” creation then — pretty, yes, but fake. And that was the problem.

Eddie Fisher (pictured) said: 'Marilyn was so jealous of beauties like Liz Taylor. She loathed her'

‘The people who fascinated her were the likes of Ava Gardner and Liz [Taylor]. Why? Because they were genuinely beautiful girls.

‘Marilyn told me: “I know I’m a manufactured look — the blonde hair and make-up. I get it. But I also hope I give some hope to the ordinary girls like me who may not be the greatest beauties.” ’

The truth, says Fisher, is that Marilyn was insanely jealous of Liz Taylor’s beauty, and to a lesser degree her fame.

He recalled one night in the early Sixties when the two beauties went to Las Vegas to see a performance by Frank Sinatra, who was then dating Marilyn.

Also there was Fisher — then desperately trying to keep his crumbling marriage together. Taylor had recently fallen in love with Richard Burton, her married co-star in the film Cleopatra, but the affair was on hold because he refused to leave his wife.

‘So we were sitting together at a table — myself and Liz and some of Frank’s pals,’ said Fisher. 

‘Marilyn arrived late, unsteady on her feet and already loaded with booze — but not enough to forget the impact she was having on the room.

‘It was always about her and the effect she could create when she entered a room...’

He laughed. ‘Watching Marilyn and Liz, two of the world’s most celebrated women, being cordial to each other was a great experience for me, as you’d have never guessed they loathed each other or indeed were any kind of rivals. [It was all] smiles and hugs: you got the impression they were the best of friends.’

But Marilyn, knowing full well that Taylor’s marriage was vulnerable, had something else on her mind. ‘She was between husbands,’ said Fisher. ‘So during the interval of the show, she was very friendly and kept kissing and touching me.

‘And then she dropped her bombshell: “Imagine what people would say if we were found out to be having an affair?”

‘She was deadly serious as she knew that this would take the flame of interest right off Elizabeth.

‘I scolded her, but she was very keen to pursue her suggestion and gave me her room number for later that evening. When I reminded her she was Sinatra’s date, she just shrugged and said: “If you like me, you will come along.” ’

So did he? Fisher refused to elaborate. In any case, his marriage fell apart shortly afterwards, when Taylor left him for Richard Burton.

Debbie Reynolds

Eddie Fisher’s first wife had much fonder memories. Marilyn was a bright girl, you know,’ said Reynolds, star of Singin’ In The Rain. 

‘I think she applied herself to being what people wanted her to be. To me, she was a very kind soul, quiet and not at all movie-starish.

‘I liked her. But to someone else, she could be bawdy and fun, playing whoever she thought that person wanted her to be.’

Reynolds followed all the twists of Marilyn’s lurid love life, but never thought the worse of her. 

‘We knew each other well because we attended the same church,’ she said.

‘Marilyn was very religious, which may surprise some people. Her faith was very important to her and I think that it helped her many times. 

'She told me it was the one thing in her life that hadn’t let her down. She’d attend church looking very low-key: she could switch that “Marilyn” persona on and off.

‘After my marriage ended, she was concerned for me as a single mother with two children. I think having a child would maybe have saved her, because at 36 she was on her own.

‘I saw her two days before she died. She looked wonderful: super-slim and very girlish. So all the stuff you read about her being depressed and washed-up wasn’t true. Or if it was, she was doing a brilliant acting job of hiding it.

Star of Singin’ In The Rain Debbie Reynolds (pictured) said: 'She was murdered by someone who feared the truth would come out'

‘I’d warned her to be careful with the Kennedys because they just used people. I mean, Joe Kennedy [JFK’s father] was known for that.

‘She was a movie star and that was something both brothers liked. But once they’d used her like a tissue, they thought she’d just blow away. But she wouldn’t listen.

‘She was such a sweet and innocent girl, but she was used by men. For all her fame and beauty, they took advantage of her and she paid the ultimate price.’

Did Marilyn take an overdose after being dumped by JFK’s brother, Robert? Debbie shook her head.

‘I believe she was murdered because too many people were afraid the truth would come out,’ she said. ‘When you look at the evidence and the way people messed around in that vital time when she was dying — well, none of it stacks up. But we’ll never know the truth.’

Joan Rivers

One night in the early Sixties, the comedienne could barely believe her luck: she was seated at a dinner party next to Marilyn. At the time, the bawdy New Yorker was trying to make her name as an actress.

‘What I remember most is how tiny she was — not the big buxom blonde we see in the media,’ said Rivers. 

‘We talked about the New York theatre and I asked her advice about acting agents. She was really helpful. Then Marilyn suddenly turned to me and said: “Men, they’re all the same. They’re just stupid and they like big boobs.”

Comedienne Joan Rivers (pictured) said: 'She wasn't a fan of gay men... she was bemused about Rock Hudson'

‘I loved her for saying that, because she knew that’s what it was all about for her — boobs and nothing else. I realised she was far brighter than anyone ever thought.’

Marilyn was then in her mid-30s but Rivers recalls how she kept pointing out liver spots on her hands and saying she’d have to cover them up by wearing gloves because people would say she was getting old.

They also discussed homosexuals in showbusiness. ‘One thing about Marilyn,’ Rivers said, ‘was that she wasn’t a great gay fan: she loathed the idea that some men might not find her attractive.

‘I told her about my gay pals and she looked bemused. She had a hard time even believing Rock Hudson was gay.’

Like Debbie Reynolds, Rivers was convinced Marilyn was murdered.

‘Sure, she was a pill addict and had problems, but none of the story of her death stacks up. I blame the Kennedys: without a doubt, she got mixed up in some terrible trouble.

‘Given all she had going for her, why would she suddenly kill herself? She wasn’t the type to do it.’

Adapted from I Met Marilyn by Neil Sean, published by CreateSpace at £12.99, www.amazon.co.uk