Peter Wolf is the former singer of the J. Geils Band – best-known for their hit single, ‘Centrefold’ – and as a solo artist, he sang on Artists Against Apartheid’s ‘Sun City.’ In his new memoir, Waiting on the Moon, Wolf looks back on his long career, and the many ‘artists, poets, drifters, grifters and goddesses’ he met along the way – beginning with a chapter entitled ‘I Slept With Marilyn Monroe (Miller and Monroe.)’
But don’t be alarmed, gentle reader – Wolf isn’t merely the latest grifter to claim he was Marilyn’s lover. Their dreamy encounter occurred while Marilyn was married to Arthur Miller, and Peter’s older sister Nancy was being treated for rheumatic fever at Rockefeller University Hospital in Manhattan.
With a few hours to spare between visits, Peter and his parents went into a nearby cinema where He Who Must Die, a French interpretation of the Passion of Christ, was showing.
Although Peter – born in 1946 – says he was ten years old at the time, He Who Must Die wasn’t released in the US until December 1958, so he was probably a little older. (And while Peter didn’t pay much attention to the movie, screenwriter Ben Barzman also had a prior connection to Marilyn – see here.)
“A woman in a mink coat and a tall man in glasses rushed into our row. When their view was obstructed by another couple who sat directly in front of them, they moved closer to us, until the woman was sitting next to me.
I was bored and restless, watching a lot of people jabbering away in French. As I munched away on M&Ms, I became aware of a pleasant and intoxicating aroma coming from the woman beside me. Her exotic scent was utterly captivating, though I had no experience of perfume and how enticing it could be. I accidentally dropped my box of candy, and as I bent down to pick it up, I noticed she was wearing house slippers with a fuzzy lining and under the mink coat, an ivory silk gown bordered in white lace. As I was looking for my candy under the seat, she moved it with her foot, picked up the box, and smiling, handed it back to me. She wore no makeup, and her skin, luminous in the dark, was pale white against her black sunglasses and kerchief, knotted tightly under her chin.
As the movie rolled on and my boredom intensified, I felt her head slowly come to rest on my shoulder. I didn’t mind, but I was afraid to move for fear it would waken this sleepy lady in her nightgown and sunglasses. I stopped eating my candy and sat there, rigid, but then relaxed into the headiness of her perfume, stronger and even more aromatic as she leaned in closer to me. I could feel my eyelids drooping, but I was determined not to move. I stared ahead, comfortable in her warmth, and as our heavy heads met, I, too, gave in to sleep.
Somewhere in my slumber, I seemed to hear from a far-off distance a gruff voice saying, ‘Honey, wake up. We have to leave now; the lights will be up in a minute.’ I awakened as the tall bespectacled man roughly jostled her. She seemed groggy and didn’t gather herself together as quickly as he had hoped. They stood to leave just as the house lights were coming up, and there in the cinema began a wave of ‘Look – it’s them,’ a murmuring that slowly built among the audience.
The tall bespectacled man hustled the woman quickly toward the aisle, tightly gripping her arm. She looked up and gave me a shy, bewildered smile as she pulled her fur coat close, rushing out, leaving behind only the lingering scent of that mysterious perfume.”
The Marilyn Report 