Marilyn and the Mob (2025) s01e01 Episode Script

1
"This programme contains
discussions of organised crime,
drug misuse and historic allegations
which some viewers may find upsetting"
On the screen, I can see my town
in its party dress.
And see again,
shown so vividly across the horizon.
Marilyn Monroe,
one of the most iconic movie stars
of the 20th century.
You mix everything
about Marilyn Monroe
together like a cocktail.
Her physical beauty, her wit,
her talent for acting.
Adored for her beauty,
Marilyn was also a performer
of remarkable depth and charisma.
Marilyn is a perfect movie star.
You watch her repertoire
really expand throughout
the course of her career.
To the world, she was
the picture of glamour and success.
Yet behind the facade lay
vulnerability, turmoil and danger.
From Marilyn's earliest days
in Hollywood
On the surface, she seemed
to have such a zest for life.
to her untimely death, aged 36.
Marilyn Monroe was found dead in bed
under circumstances that were
Powerful and ruthless men tried
to possess and control her
These were people
that Marilyn will have at some point
or another come into contact with -
some speculate, slept with.
celebrities,
politicians and violent figures
from the world of organised crime.
Everyone in the mob knew
that John F Kennedy
was sleeping with Marilyn Monroe.
What were Marilyn's connections
to the mob,
and did they play a role
in her mysterious death?
Box office favourites
in motion picture history
Norma Jeane Mortenson
was born in California in 1926.
Unfortunately, her mother suffered
from paranoid schizophrenia
and was eventually institutionalised
for it,
which meant that Marilyn
had very little contact
with her mother.
She was, almost immediately
after birth,
put into foster care
with a family.
They were very religious and it was
a very strict upbringing on her.
She spent her early years,
her childhood years
in many different foster homes
and for a while in an orphanage.
Marilyn is exploited by cruel
and manipulative people from
an early age, a pattern
that will repeat
throughout her life.
There are various sources that say
that she may have suffered
some sexual abuse in her childhood.
By the time she was 16,
she had lived quite
a rough childhood
and quite a rough upbringing.
When she was a child,
in all her loneliness
and unhappiness,
her one escape was the movies.
She always said that, she'd go
to the movies early
in the morning and sit at
the movie theatre all day long,
watching whatever was playing
over and over again.
And I think that started
to look to her as an escape.
She could be other people.
She didn't always have to be
Norma Jeane.
I think that was the seeds
in her wanting to become an actress.
The Hollywood Strip is not
a burlesque,
but a section of Sunset Boulevard
flanked by
By the time
that Norma Jean is growing
up in the '20s and '30s,
Hollywood has established itself
as the kind of primary form
of entertainment to
the American public,
who are looking to the screen
for solace during difficult times
and a sense of hope.
And so young Norma Jeane
was another kind
of person who was going to
the movies, loving Jean Harlow,
another great blonde bombshell.
She looked to these stars
and saw something to emulate
or to admire.
Women are employed as never before.
More than 19 million
at the war's peak.
When World War Two breaks out,
Norma Jeane takes a job
in a munitions factory.
After a short lived marriage
in her teens,
the factory offers stability
until a chance
encounter changes her life
and sets her on
the path towards Hollywood.
There was a photographer
David Conover, was assigned
to basically take photographs of
the attractive young women working
to encourage other women
to join up the war effort.
He saw immediately
that she was very photogenic,
and they immediately
saw her potential,
and she started working right away
as a model.
That world sort of introduced her
into the acting world.
In 1946, She changes her name.
She takes her first name
from a Broadway actress,
Marilyn Miller,
and she takes her surname,
Monroe,
which is her mother's maiden name.
So in this middle '40s,
late '40s period,
she meets a series of photographers,
agents, acting coaches
and begins to sculpt an image
which is different
from this kind
of sweet strawberry blonde.
She starts to really lean into
the voluptuous blonde.
As Marilyn tries to make it
as an actress,
she soon discovers
that Hollywood has a dark side.
From the early years of Hollywood,
there was
a connection between organised crime
and some of these studios.
If you wanted to be successful
in Hollywood, you had to know
organised crime figures.
Across America,
organised crime is thriving,
from mobsters
in New York to gangsters
in the Midwest controlled
by mob boss Al Capone.
The next frontier
for these mobs is California.
It came from the Outfit in Chicago,
which was Al Capone's organisation.
There are lots of ample
opportunities
for them to extort
and racketeer across the state,
and particularly across Los Angeles.
They were sent to shakedown
the movie studios
and extort a tremendous
amount of money
from them on an annual basis.
Most of the big movie studios
had to pay $100,000 a year.
So the studio is hand in hand,
are very much linked into the mob.
The mob was able
to control Hollywood.
The interaction with Hollywood,
it looked easy, the glamour
It's a very misogynistic kind
of environment.
And you've got
all these powerful people,
head of studios
or casting directors.
It's an open secret in Hollywood -
the casting couch,
a polite phrase
for a dark and abusive practice.
Girls were asked for sexual favours
in return for parts in movies.
It was one of
the only ways to really break in.
You had It was almost
like an initiation.
Casting couch, it still does play
an enormous role
in the stars' kind of rise to fame.
You're selling sex for a job,
sex to get on, sex for status.
And often I would think sex
from absolutely nothing at all.
Because as soon as you've had sex,
it's not
You know,
there's no interest anymore.
Certainly in the '30s, '40s,
'50s, you have
this truth amongst actresses
that there are certain things
that must be done
in the name
of advancing one's career.
You've got Marilyn Monroe
coming into this world
as a hugely attractive girl,
willing to help everybody,
troubled by her own upbringing,
wanting to get on,
seeing other people,
getting on, wanting to be
You know, wanting to be a star.
Marilyn used whatever she had
to get ahead.
She famously said that Hollywood is
a place where they pay you $1,000
for a kiss and 50c for your soul.
She desperately wanted
to be taken seriously
as a serious actress.
She's going to have the best care
a car ever had.
I think sometimes her
looks actually went against her.
She sees the casting couch
for what that is.
She's quite willing to lie on
that casting couch.
She's quite willing to move
up the studio
system through connections
with studio bosses.
She wrote a piece called
The Wolves I Have known.
She talked about all the different
men that had sort of
tried to take advantage of
her throughout her career.
She was very conscious of that.
1949, Marilyn was actually signed to
a small contract with
20th Century Fox.
At 20th Century Fox,
Marilyn's beauty
and charm don't go unnoticed,
especially by legendary studio boss
Joseph Schenck.
Joseph Schenck is
an important money man
and one of the original
founders of 20th
Century Fox and Hollywood
as an empire.
He's a much older man,
by the time Marilyn is on the scene.
Sort of a symbiotic relationship
where he's impressed by her beauty
and her sexuality,
and she knows that this is
a good man to have helping her.
And he must be late 60s, 70s,
she's early 20s.
So there's a relationship which
is beneficial to both.
He's a studio head,
he can help her career,
she can make him feel better.
He became extremely fond of her.
He's the one that actually got her
the role in Ladies of the Chorus,
her first speaking role.
But he's a very powerful man to have
in her corner,
and he starts to invite her
to his parties,
to his poker games and things
of that nature.
At Schenck's exclusive
poker parties,
Hollywood's elite rubbed
shoulders with
the underworld's most
notorious figures.
You have Marilyn there,
you may have other starlets there,
all sitting on their knees,
and there were sexual favours.
Now Schenck had a bit
of a checkered past.
He'd been in prison.
He had long had relationships
with gangsters
like Sam Giancana
and Johnny Roselli,
who was another very
powerful figure. These were people
that Marilyn will have at some point
or another come into contact with.
Some speculate slept with,
but she would have known
and been aware of these people
and how powerful they
were from quite
an early point
in her Hollywood career.
Marilyn's career takes her
to a new studio,
one which had alleged ties
to organised crime.
One of the studios,
Columbia Pictures,
was run by a man named Harry Cohn.
The mob invested so much money
in Columbia Pictures
that they were able to control,
who appeared in movies, who didn't
appear in movies, and even,
in some cases, what movies were made
and not made.
Harry Cohn was known as,
quote unquote,
the meanest man in Hollywood.
He was notorious for not at all soft
pedalling his critiques of his stars
and his employees.
He fired people at the drop of
a hat. He was notorious tyrant.
Cohn was very severely connected to
the mob and very, very powerful man.
Quite a frightening man,
I think, too,
because he I mean,
he was vicious.
He was blood brothers, in a sense,
with Johnny Roselli, who was the
Mr Fix-It in Hollywood for the mob.
Roselli even gave him
a sapphire ring,
and he had one for himself.
And these were his and her rings,
if you like.
The studio had one,
and the mob guy had one.
Actresses who wanted to star
in a Harry Cohn
movie at Columbia Pictures often had
to sleep with Harry, and there were
a couple of actresses
who refused to do it
and went to other studios
where they had successful careers.
Powerful and sometimes dangerous men
like Joseph Schenck
and Harry Cohn
shape Marilyn's early career,
but it's a man named Johnny Hyde
who truly sets her on
the road to superstardom.
Johnny Hyde was the president
of William Morris Agency,
one of
the most powerful acting agencies
in Hollywood at the time, and he
was madly in love with Marilyn.
He met Marilyn at
a New Year's Eve party,
and he actually left his wife
to devote himself totally
to Marilyn and her career.
And together, they kind of formed
the Marilyn that we see
and recognise today.
She becomes fully platinum blonde.
She has very slight
corrective surgery
to fix a little bump on her nose.
She has electrolysis
to change her hairline.
She starts
to be sewn into her dresses.
She mixes Vaseline
in with her foundation
so that she has this kind
of incredible glow on the screen.
So it's very much
a moment of persona creation.
And he got her the two roles
that really jumpstarted her career.
All About Eve
and The Asphalt Jungle
and she really got a chance
to shine in them.
Unfortunately,
he didn't live very long after that,
so he never got to see
what he accomplished
in really being the springboard
for one of the greatest stars
in Hollywood history.
I'd like to think
that Marilyn was aware of
the fact that these men were often,
quote unquote,
wolves, that they treated Hollywood
like an open brothel.
So I don't think
that she was this stereotype of
a little girl lost who was
so innocent and naive that she just
was stumbling around looking
for a daddy.
I think that's quite reductive
and ultimately not a very empowered
way to see Marilyn.
For Marilyn,
Hyde's sudden death from
a heart attack at 55 is devastating,
but her career is now unstoppable.
By the early 1950s,
the age of Marilyn Monroe has begun.
Now here comes a young lady
who has created
a real sensation in the picture
business, Marilyn Monroe.
APPLAUSE AND SCREAMS
The public started noticing her,
and the fan mail started coming in.
"Who's the blonde?" I know Marilyn.
When's the first time we met?
Well, once you almost gave me a job.
There was an excitement about her.
Everybody in
the industry felt it now.
They knew she was going places,
so they put her on
the cover of Life magazine with
the headline - The Talk
of Hollywood.
She's become a huge pinup
for Korean War veterans.
NEWSREEL: Marilyn Monroe arrives
in Korea to tour the frontlines
for four days. Live with troops,
as Marilyn puts on her act.
Officers estimate
that she plays to about 60,000 men
in her first two days in Korea.
There's agreement among soldiers
People are coming out
in their droves to see her,
to see her appearances at things.
She's really become this kind
of cultural phenomenon.
Marilyn was a sort of supernova by
this point. She was sort of
this glittering blonde diamond
of a star,
and everyone was incredibly
in love with her.
She was magnetic.
Marilyn's rise is meteoric.
In 1953 alone, she stars
in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
How to Marry a Millionaire,
and Niagara.
They put her
in full technicolour glory and, wow,
the impact she had
on audiences, seeing
Marilyn Monroe flesh come to life
on the screen,
she bowled everybody over.
At this point,
there was no other blonde
in Hollywood.
It was only Marilyn Monroe.
As Marilyn's stardom soars, so does
the public's fascination,
especially when she falls for one of
the most famous athletes
in the world.
One of baseball's all time greats,
Joe DiMaggio
Joe DiMaggio slams what looks
like a sure homer.
Joe DiMaggio had just retired.
He was one of
the greatest baseball players
for the Yankees in history.
He met Marilyn,
and he asked some friends
to pull some strings
to get a date with her.
He was very taken
with her right away,
and she was taken with him.
They have a brief marriage,
nine-month marriage.
Former baseball star Joe DiMaggio
weds screen star Marilyn Monroe.
They kept the nation
The level of fame
that is afforded to them
as this enormous celebrity couple.
Joe D and Marilyn arrive in Tokyo,
the recently wedded couple
get a royal welcome.
DiMaggio is here to help coach
I think she was always in search of
the father that she never knew.
There was something of
a father figure in the relationship.
She needed a protector.
And Joe DiMaggio offered that.
In 1955, Marilyn stars
in The Seven Year Itch,
featuring one of
the most unforgettable moments
in cinema history.
They were actually filming on
a subway grate,
and there was a man underneath
the grate with a fan, and the dress
was going way up in the air.
As funny as it is to believe today,
that was quite
a shocking thing to do
and a lot of people complained
about it.
There's an open set on
the Seven Year Itch,
where the famous shot of
the white dress blowing
up over the subway
grate is then attended not only by
the cast and crew, which is already
a lot of people,
but by people in New York
who just want to come
and flock to see Marilyn
maybe show her underwear.
Joe DiMaggio was watching it
with several other people,
and that was his wife.
He was mortified at that.
But, you know,
you marry Marilyn Monroe,
that's part of the bargain.
He's aggressive to
the point of violence,
jealousy and protectiveness
around her.
So The Seven Year Itch kind of comes
as a final straw for DiMaggio,
that they got into such
a violent fight,
after she shot the scene
that he struck her.
The marriage was effectively over
and on its way out by
the time The Seven year itch
comes out.
Joe DiMaggio believed
that Marilyn Monroe left him not
because he was abusive to her,
which he was,
but because she was having
an affair with another man.
And he hoped that if he hired
a private detective to film her,
that would bring her back to him.
Joe DiMaggio turns to a
close friend for help,
a man with mob connections
who also happens to be
the most famous singer of the age.
Mr Swoon himself, the old collapso
singer, Frank Sinatra.
Sinatra,
for all of his great talent,
does sometimes fancy himself
as a bit of a tough guy and does
like to pal around with gangsters.
And so him and DiMaggio run
in the same circles
as tough guy Italian Americans,
and they know each other,
they're friendly.
Frank Sinatra
had quite a few ties to the mob.
DiMaggio asked Sinatra,
with the connections
that Sinatra has to burst
in on Marilyn having an affair.
Sinatra suggests they all go
over there with one
of their heavies
To Marilyn Monroe's apartment
to catch her in the act.
And instead, they went
to the wrong door.
And with sledgehammers and axes,
they hacked
down some woman's apartment door
and she was screaming and yelling,
and she didn't know
what was happening.
And when they realised they had
knocked down the wrong door of
the wrong apartment,
they all took off running.
It's a very, very ugly event.
But what it does show is
the very depressing degree to which
that patriarchal chumminess
and male chumminess meant
that they felt they had
complete carte blanche
and ownership over her
to do something like that, which is
a pattern you see again and again
in her life, unfortunately.
By 1955, Marilyn is one of
20th Century Fox's biggest stars,
her films grossing tens of millions.
But with superstardom
comes relentless pressure.
Marilyn was always very
nervous on set.
She often requested many retakes.
She sometimes forgot her lines.
Some of her early acting coaches,
a woman called Natasha Lytess
that she worked with,
used to say,
sometimes for close ups,
she would ask to hold Natasha's
hand on the set.
She always felt she had
to either live
up to her image or better it,
and it put
a tremendous strain on her to face
the camera.
She had become this
otherworldly kind of person,
this phenomenon.
And so the appeal of
a little bit of something
to take the edge off,
a little bit of Seconal,
some barbiturates,
a little bit of champagne,
which was her drink of choice,
would just relax her a bit.
It starts out
as a relatively innocuous habit
that many other stars have,
but it does grow over time
and fame mounts and pressure mounts.
Feeling suffocated by Hollywood,
Marilyn escapes to New York,
determined to reinvent herself.
There, she studies acting to hone
her craft and begins to move
in more liberal intellectual
circles.
She's hanging out in these New York
circles, and she meets
the great playwright
of The Crucible, Arthur Miller,
who is very taken with her,
and he will become her
third husband.
Actress Marilyn Monroe
and playwright
Arthur Miller are married, climaxing
days of worldwide speculation.
The happy couple poses for a battery
of feverish photographers
at their honeymoon retreat,
the Miller Farm in Roxbury,
Connecticut.
Arthur Miller is
a left-wing firebrand.
Were you actually a member of
the Communist Party?
I was I attended several
meetings,
meetings of communist writers.
And soon Marilyn finds
herself caught
in the political
crossfire of 1950s America.
As his wife and as someone who very,
very strongly supported
that position,
there was a question mark over her.
And so J Edgar Hoover,
who's the head of the FBI,
opened a file on her.
It does put her in the position
to be accused of communist leanings.
It's a bit of a mixed bag
for Marilyn in the late '50s.
Her career
is doing phenomenally well.
Marilyn's brilliance
shines brighter than ever
in the smash hit comedy
Some Like It Hot.
Some Like It Hot,
along with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,
is the quintessential
Marilyn Monroe movie.
It became a smash hit.
I think it was
the biggest hit of her career.
And she wins a Golden Globe in 1959
for that performance.
But unfortunately, same time,
her personal life is unravelling.
She's not having a lot of luck
in her marriage to Arthur Miller.
That's not helping
with her ongoing substance abuse.
By the end of the 1950s,
where she was personally and where
she was professionally
were pretty much at odds.
In 1960, Marilyn stars
in The Misfits,
a powerful drama penned
by her husband, Arthur Miller.
Though hailed
as one of her finest performances,
the production itself
is plagued by tension and turmoil.
She was addicted to sleeping pills.
If it was difficult for her to face
the camera before, now
it was nearly impossible.
Eventually, they had to shut
down the production.
Her eyes weren't focusing
when they were shooting.
She was just too sort
of zonked out on the sleeping pills.
Her marriage with Arthur Miller
was unravelling at that time.
He left his diary out for her to see
and it was saying
what a disappointment she turned out
to be to him.
It devastated her.
And I think that was the moment
that started
the House of Cards collapsing.
It's a tragically familiar pattern
in Marilyn's life,
from mob-linked moguls
in Hollywood to writers
and intellectuals in New York City.
Her search for love
and stability repeatedly collides
with men who exploit
and control her.
When she separates
from Arthur Miller,
she really takes a sort
of a downhill slide.
She ends up going into
a psychiatric institution called
the Payne Whitney in New York.
She ended up having some terrible
sort of existential crisis
while she was there.
Eventually, she was heavily sedated
and put in a padded cell.
It probably was one of the most
terrifying experiences of her life.
And she finally got
one call through,
and she called the one
person she knew
she could count on.
It's quite an interesting story
of who she relies on
when she's at her lowest ebb.
And it's not Arthur Miller,
and it's not anyone
who you would have
thought - it's Joe DiMaggio.
And he got her out of there.
After leaving the hospital,
Marilyn doesn't return
to Joe DiMaggio,
but reputedly finds comfort
in the arms of his close friend,
Frank Sinatra
beginning a risky new affair.
Frank Sinatra has always been
in and around
the glitz
and glamour of Marilyn's life.
He bought her a dog
when he heard news of her
and Arthur Miller's divorce
in order to console her,
which she then nicknamed Mafs,
as in Mafia.
She was always aware of
what was going on, if nothing else.
Frank Sinatra had an on again,
off again relationship
with Marilyn Monroe.
He was attracted to Monroe.
He liked Monroe.
He respected Monroe.
Marilyn has long known men with ties
to organised crime.
But Sinatra now brings her even
closer to the mob.
He's been friends with gangsters
since his childhood in New Jersey.
Frank Sinatra was born into the mob
in Hoboken.
His mother ran a bar where
all the mobsters hung out.
He was kind of adopted by them.
When Frank's mother asked the mafia
boss to help get her
son singing engagements,
he did,
because the mob controlled
just about all the nightclubs
in New York and in New Jersey.
It was no big deal for him to get
that to happen.
His career was managed.
He was organised by them
in a big way from
the very early days
all the way through.
Marilyn started dating Frank Sinatra
seriously in 1961 after her divorce.
Their relationship more hush-hush.
He had been good friends
with Joe DiMaggio,
and he knew that it would hurt him.
Marilyn's affair
with Sinatra is brief but intense.
And even after it ends,
their friendship endures.
Yet she remains connected
to Sinatra's world,
a glittering circle
where Hollywood stars,
politicians and mobsters
allegedly mingle,
including the notorious
Sam Giancana.
Sam Giancana is a Chicago gangster,
who came up in the 1920s in Chicago.
He gained this reputation of being
the toughest guy.
He made money for the Chicago mob.
He took care of those who opposed
the Chicago mob.
I think with Giancana,
he was psychopathic.
He killed so many people,
he felt entitled to get
what he wanted and got away with it,
had got away with it for so long.
He loved being around celebrities.
When Frank Sinatra meets him
in the early 1950s,
he finds a bit of a fellow traveller
in Giancana.
He's a tough guy.
Giancana was attracted to the fame,
the accoutrements of fame,
the women, the jewellery,
the swagger.
If you haven't got your own swagger,
borrow somebody else's.
Frank Sinatra and Sam Giancana
are rumoured
to have been close for years,
sharing a taste for nightlife,
gambling and beautiful women.
But politics soon joins the list
when they come into
the orbit of a promising
young senator
with presidential ambitions,
John F Kennedy.
Announcing my candidacy for
the Presidency of the United States.
John Kennedy made no bones about
the fact that he had high ambitions,
politically speaking.
His father was
a powerful corporate figure,
Joseph Kennedy.
Beneath John F Kennedy's
immaculate public persona,
historians have long pointed
to rumours of
a covert alliance tying the Kennedy
family to organised crime.
Though disputed, some argue
that Sam Giancana played
a role
in John F Kennedy's election victory
by leaning on mob controlled unions
to deliver votes,
with Frank Sinatra acting
as a middleman between
the Kennedys and the gangster.
One of Sinatra's daughters, Tina,
wrote a biography of her father.
She asked him point blank,
"Is there evidence that the Kennedy
family asked you
"to intervene with Sam Giancana
"to help win
the 1960 presidential election?"
To her surprise, he said yes.
In 1960, they're short
a lot of votes.
John Kennedy,
senior meets Sam Giancana
for a meeting
orchestrated by Frank Sinatra.
They agree that Sam will buy
the election for Kennedy.
You've got Hollywood,
you've got the mob,
you've got Kennedy and you've got
a deal done.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
do solemnly swear.
I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
do solemnly swear
That you will faithfully execute
the office of President
of the United States
That I will faithfully
execute
the office of President
of the United States.
The public know nothing
of John F Kennedy's
alleged connections to the mob
nor do they know of his many
vices,
including an appetite
for womanising,
which is assisted by his friend
and brother in law, Peter Lawford.
But as far as I'm concerned,
it hasn't changed me.
I'm still looking for a job!
LAUGHTER
Peter Lawford was an English actor,
an old aristo who went
to Los Angeles to become famous,
and he married Patricia Kennedy,
who is the sister of Jackie Kennedy.
He was very good friends
with Frank Sinatra.
He had huge pool parties
in his house in Santa Monica.
He was one of
the big sort of social hubs.
He knew everybody.
Lawford as well as Frank Sinatra,
another friend, were there
to supply women to Kennedy.
John F Kennedy loved women.
He had an unending round of affairs
with women,
and he was really excited
about being around Hollywood
starlets.
There are numerous stories
about Marilyn Monroe
and JFK and how they met
and how their affair began
in the 1960 Democratic Convention
in Los Angeles.
They're photographed, together with
Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford,
and they're flirting away heavily.
Then he invites her to go and stay
with him at Bing Crosby's house,
was supposed
to be Frank Sinatra's house.
Robert F Kennedy said
to his brother,
"I don't think you should go there.
"Sinatra is too closely
associated with the Mafia,
"and it's not good
for your reputation,
"and it's not good
"for what I want to do
in terms of prosecuting the mob."
In an unusual move, John F Kennedy
has appointed his own brother,
Robert F Kennedy,
as attorney general,
the nation's top legal authority.
As attorney general.
In the appointments I have made,
I have sought
the most qualified men.
Robert Kennedy was in many ways a
crusader, that he saw
one of the gravest threats to
the United States
was organised crime.
Whether it was in New York City
or Chicago, in Las Vegas,
no matter who it was, he took it
as a mission to go
after organised crime.
Joseph Kennedy, Robert's father,
asked him not to go after the mob,
that it could be
a dangerous thing to do.
Sam Giancana hated the Kennedys
because he thought
he had done everything he
was asked to do for them,
and the reward for doing that is
that Robert Kennedy is going
after him and his Chicago outfit.
They had back
and forth arguments on camera.
Is it because you got the $500?
No, sir.
And with Sam Giancana,
who almost always pled
the Fifth Amendment,
Kennedy actually humiliated him.
He said, you know,
"You seem, when you answer that way,
sometimes you giggle.
"You know,
I thought only little girls giggled
"when they answer questions."
It was
a public humiliation of Giancana.
He had an absolute hatred of
Robert F Kennedy and John F Kennedy.
Do you plan to have any committees,
any witnesses, rather from New York
before the committee?
Yes. There'll be
a number of witnesses from
the New York City area and a number
of witnesses from New Jersey.
He got over 400 indictments
against mobsters
and sent many of them to prison
for very, very long prison terms.
Isn't that the reason
that you didn't take any action?
Don't you know that was the reason?
No, I know it was not.
Why didn't you take any action
the following morning?
As Robert F Kennedy's
crusade against
the mob draws dangerous attention,
Marilyn and JFK reportedly continue
their secret rendezvous at
the Los Angeles home
of Peter Lawford.
Peter Lawford's house
in Santa Monica
was absolutely glorious
and right on the beach.
It was famous
for its fantastic parties.
JFK stayed there quite a lot
because obviously his sister
was married to Peter Lawford,
so therefore it was a family house
and a sort of safe space,
I suppose, for him to meet
up with Marilyn.
So Marilyn would come over
for dinner and
would often stay the night.
Peter Lawford's house was bugged.
So therefore we have
stories about her having sex
with JFK in the shower
and her staying the night with him,
and then them going for a walk along
the beach.
Word spreads in powerful circles
that Peter Lawford's home has become
a playground for Hollywood stars
and Washington insiders,
making it and its guests,
including Marilyn Monroe
and John F Kennedy,
prime targets for surveillance
and blackmail.
One person allegedly
watching closely is
a man named Fred Otash.
Fred Otash was a private eye
who said that at various points,
he had worked wiretapping
and trailing people
for the FBI, CIA,
the Mafia. Tapping phones,
bugging rooms,
and reporting on celebrities
and reporting on politicians.
He was known to Sinatra.
He was known to DiMaggio.
He was likely a known associate
of some gangsters like Sam Giancana.
Fred learned quite early on how
to wiretap.
He bugs everybody.
He bugs Peter Lawford's home
because of the Kennedy thing.
He bugs him Marilyn Monroe's
apartments.
He's a major player,
feeding information.
Fred Otash apparently could make
a microphone
the size of a grain of rice.
He was the one who put all
the microphones in Marilyn's house.
He was supposedly sitting
outside most of the time
in some small van,
listening to what was going on
in Marilyn's house,
with great big tapes whirring.
There are lots of stories about
whether it was
the mob who'd paid
for him to bug Marilyn's house,
or whether it was the Kennedys
in order to get information,
or whether it was the FBI
or the CIA. I mean,
there were hundreds of people
who had interest,
but nobody quite knows
who actually came up with the cash.
Marilyn Monroe
now finds herself unknowingly
trapped in a web of intrigue,
caught between organised crime and
the President of the United States.
He was the most powerful man
in the world.
He was a very charismatic man.
She was the most desirable woman
in the world.
She was 35, going on 36.
The newspapers were already saying,
"How much longer could she go on?
"How much longer could she be
the great sex symbol?"
They were very derogatory
towards her.
The press was talking
about how she's finished.
This is the end for her,
which she read, which she saw.
So she was
in an emotionally very dark place.
On the set of Something's
Got To Give,
she flits off to New York
for a public televised event
for President Kennedy's birthday,
in which she, of course,
famously sings Happy Birthday,
Mr President.
The famous episode
where she sings Happy Birthday to
the President was embarrassing
to almost everyone involved.
Marilyn's entanglement
with the Kennedys
may have gone deeper
than anyone imagined,
and rumours persist to this day
that Marilyn also had
an affair with
the president's brother, Robert.
There's a story that,
when she's just about to go on stage
before she goes
to sing Happy Birthday,
Mr President,
that Bobby Kennedy
goes into her dressing room
and they supposedly have sex
before she goes on stage
to sing Happy Birthday
to his brother.
Other salacious stories arise
from that night.
The actress Shirley MacLaine
did once say
in an interview that the night of
the birthday celebrations for JFK,
she saw Marilyn in a room at
the after-party in a hotel room,
and she saw both brothers coming in
and out of the room and sharing her.
Despite the importance
of the occasion,
20th Century Fox
had explicitly forbidden Marilyn
from travelling to New York
for the event.
There was messages sent. You know,
"The president would
really appreciate
"if you let Marilyn Monroe go to
"New York for a couple
of days to sing Happy Birthday."
The studio feels
that they have grounds to drop her.
And it seems strange to fire
the most famous woman in the world,
someone who is still clearly liked
by the public.
She was getting a little bit older,
as ridiculous as it might seem,
she's dropped by the studio.
There was a party
after at the Madison Square Garden.
A lot of photos were being taken
at this party.
A few nights later,
the Secret Service came
and wanted to look at the photos,
and they took all the photos
where Marilyn Monroe
appeared with JFK.
There's only one now in existence.
They only didn't take one of them.
What we know about JFK,
he was very casual and blase about
the affairs he was having.
I mean, we know now the many women
that he was seeing,
and he wasn't always discreet.
Everyone in the mob knew
that John F Kennedy
was sleeping with Marilyn Monroe.
They also knew that he was
sleeping with Judith Exner,
who had been
a girlfriend of Sam Giancana.
So all of this was known
within the mob.
I don't think that, you know,
it crossed his mind that it
was going to be any trouble for him.
I think he was fond of Marilyn,
but, I mean,
he wasn't going to break
up his marriage over her.
There was really no place
for it to go.
When it started
to become too serious,
he was warned
that he had to back off,
and it was not a good time
for her to be rejected.
Though her affair with
the President has ended,
rumours swirl that Marilyn
is still involved
with his brother Robert.
Again, it took much more important
in her mind than in his.
And they've been advised to sort of
stay away from her because she
was very famous and very volatile.
Robert Kennedy started backing away
from her.
She was desolate at the idea
that both Bobby
and his brother had kind
of dropped her like
a sack of potatoes,
because they felt
that she knew too much.
She was just not in a good place.
It made a dark summer even darker.
Heartbroken, Marilyn once again
seeks solace with Frank Sinatra.
He invites her to his Lake Tahoe
resort, a glamorous
retreat he reputedly co-owns with
a dangerous business partner.
Sinatra connected as he is to Vegas
and both as an entertainer
and in terms of the nightclub,
underworld,
is good friends with Sam Giancana,
and they co-own
a Lake Tahoe ranch together,
which actually is divided by
the Nevada-California border,
which is great because you have
the legal gambling on one side
and there's this kind
of real anything goes wild west,
lawless frontier town vibe to it.
All sorts of degenerate behaviour
went on there.
That was a favourite place
for an awful lot of gangsters.
Marilyn has been fired
from Something's Got To Give,
and Frank Sinatra
is supposedly giving her
a weekend jolly to cheer her
up from having had
a run of very bad luck.
It turns out to be
the absolute opposite of that.
When Sinatra brings Marilyn to this
Lake Tahoe ranch, it is ostensibly,
one would assume,
with the desire to sort
of shield her,
but he is kind of bringing her
into the hornet's nest.
The sum total of it is
that she comes back
and she lands in Los Angeles
looking absolutely terrible.
She's barefoot, distressed, dishevelled.
She's clearly had something really
terrible happened to her.
Instead of a glittering escape from
the turmoil of Marilyn's life,
the infamous Cal-Neva
weekend is long rumoured
to have been a chaotic collision
of entertainers and organised crime.
It remains one of
the most scandalous weekends
in Hollywood history,
and just days later,
Marilyn Monroe will be dead.