The Wall of Life, a new book by Shirley MacLaine, includes a photo of the actress at a New York party with John F. Kennedy. “In 1962, at the famous celebration for John F Kennedy’s 45th birthday at Madison Square Garden, Jimmy Durante and I performed for the president and the crowd, but what most people remember is Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him,” MacLaine writes.
What Shirley said next is currently making headlines: “Afterward there was a private party at Arthur Krim’s home … Jack Kennedy had just walked out of the bedroom behind me, and Bobby Kennedy had just walked in. Marilyn was in the bedroom.”
So how true is this tawdry tale? It originated in MacLaine’s 2011 memoir, I’m Over All That.
“I never had any proof that the Kennedy brothers had intimate relations with Marilyn Monroe, but it wouldn’t be beyond the realm of probability. Once at Arthur and Mathilde Krim’s house in New York, I joined an impressive gathering of movie stars and politicians. Marilyn was there. I saw her go into a private room with Jack. They stayed awhile, until he came out another door. Immediately, Bobby entered the room and stayed until the song that Jimmy Durante was singing was over. I have a picture of that night on my Wall of Life. Of course, the Kennedy brothers and Marilyn could have been talking about world affairs and comparing notes, but most of us thought it was the other kind of affairs they were interested in.”
‘I never had any proof’ is the key phrase here, and the photo doesn’t prove anything either. Marilyn arrived at and left the party with father-in-law Isidore Miller, and by all reliable accounts, she stayed close to him throughout. Whatever Shirley MacLaine saw – or thinks she saw – her version of events is fanciful, especially when added to her other bizarre claims over the years.
In a 2013 interview for CNN, MacLaine talked about the gala itself – saying that Marilyn had refused to go onstage and Shirley was asked to stand in for her. However, the closing number was planned well in advance, with Peter Lawford introducing ‘the late Marilyn Monroe’ as a pun on her timing.
But Shirley’s tall tales don’t end there. In 2011, she claimed that Marilyn attended a 1960 preview of The Apartment naked under her fur coat, although photos of the event appear to show straps beneath the collar – possibly from the halter-necked dress she had worn to a press party earlier that year.
MacLaine has also said she ‘shared’ Yves Montand – Marilyn’s Let’s Make Love co-star, who accompanied her to the screening – with Monroe, implying she also had an affair with him. However, Montand’s authorised biography merely noted that they worked together on My Geisha (1962), and his wife Simone Signoret – who wrote candidly about Marilyn in her own memoir – didn’t mention Shirley at all.
Interestingly, the sole occasion when Monroe and MacLaine were allegedly spotted together – on Dean Martin’s yacht in 1961 – has been disputed by Shirley herself. Upon writing to MacLaine, a member of the Everlasting Star forum was told that she was not in the photo. It has also been suggested that the mystery woman might be French cabaret star Zizi Jeanmaire.
The Marilyn Report 