Page 27 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

“I hear you’re a model,” he says. “Show me.”

She turns slowly in her nipped-in jacket and tight skirt.

“Good.” He nods. “You look smaller than you do on screen. But then you ladies always do. Now sit.” He indicates a padded armchair, then leans over his huge leather-topped desk and flicks a switch. “Hold all my calls,” he orders an unseen receptionist.

Marilyn’s heart stops. Her mouth is smiling. But inside, she is terrified.

“Now,” he continues, opening the top drawer of his desk. He pulls out a large photograph of an impressive-looking yacht. “Do you like boats?” He uses his fat hands to smooth down a photograph of a yacht. “You’re invited on board my yacht.” He walks behind her and gives her shoulders a painful squeeze.

“I’d love to join you and your wife, Mr. Cohn. What a delightful invitation.”

“My what?”

“Your wife.”

“Leave my wife out of this!” His cheeks puff as he hisses, “The boat leaves in an hour and we’re staying overnight.”

Marilyn doesn’t move. She sits with her back straight, staring ahead, her bottom lip quivering.

“This is a one-off invitation, Miss Monroe,” he barks. “Refuse me at your peril.”

CHAPTER 19

ON SEPTEMBER 9, 1948, Marilyn Monroe’s contract with Columbia expires. It is not renewed.

Harry Cohn is a brute—a powerful brute who has cut her professional pride deeply and pushed her to the brink of failure.

But there was something that would not let me go back to the world of Norma Jeane. It wasn’t ambition or a wish to be rich and famous. I didn’t feel any pent-up talent in me. I didn’t even feel that I had looks or any sort of attractiveness. But there was a thing in me, a craziness that wouldn’t let up. It kept speaking to me. Telling me. To keep going.

Marilyn has long hoped that Freddy Karger might propose.

He blames his indecision on the welfare of his son.

“It would be all right for me,” Karger says of their potentially marrying, “but I keep thinking of my son. If we were married and anything should happen to me—such as my dropping dead—it would be very bad for him.”

“Why?”

“It wouldn’t be right for him to be brought up by a woman like you,” he said. “It would be unfair to him.”

In return for Marilyn’s unconditional love, Karger commits only to paying her dental bill.

Now that her teeth are bleached and straightened, it’s time to smile and say good-bye. Marilyn gives Freddy Karger an extravagant Christmas gift—a $500 wristwatch engraved12/25/48.

“Why didn’t you have it engraved ‘From Marilyn to Freddy with love,’ or something?” Karger asks. He’s very touched by the present.

“Because you’ll leave me someday,” she tells him, “and you’ll have some other girl to love. And you wouldn’t be able to use my present if my name was on it. This way you can always use it, as if it were something you’d bought yourself.”

Karger is emotional over the gift but does nothing to dissuade Marilyn. She cries herself to sleep that night, knowing leaving him is the right decision.

Still, she’ll think of him every time she makes a watch payment—for the next two years.

On December 31, 1948, Marilyn and Natasha Lytess spend New Year’s Eve as guests of Sam Spiegel, a producer as famous for being unaffiliated with any studio as he is for hosting lavish parties in a borrowed house in Beverly Hills.

Anything might happen in the company of the man who in 1946 partnered with Orson Welles to make the Oscar-nominated postwar thrillerThe Stranger,as his friend Johnny Hyde, vice president of the William Morris Agency, soondiscovers. Hyde, barely five feet tall but one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, is instantly smitten by Marilyn when they meet at the New Year’s Eve party.

He’s sure she’ll be his next great success story. Born in Russia to circus acrobats, Hyde is slight of figure, frail in appearance, and chasing a receding hairline, but the fifty-three-year-old agent has experience steering the careers of major stars like Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth, and Bob Hope.

“You’re going to be a great movie star,” Hyde tells Marilyn. “I know. Many years ago, I discovered a girl like you and brought her to Metro—Lana Turner. You’re better. You’ll go farther. You’ve got more.”

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