On May 19, 1962, during a fundraiser and early celebration of President John F. Kennedy birthday, Marilyn Monroe took the stage at Madison Square Garden, stripping off her glamorous fur to reveal a fitted dress with rhinestone inlays and approached the microphone. Story Behind JFK With Marilyn Monroe Affair. While rumors of a relationship between Monroe and John F. Kennedy have circulated widely Summers claims that Monroe was actually having an affair with Robert F. Kennedy in the summer of 1962, and that a sudden rupture between the couple led, at least in part, to her death.
“Happy birthday, Mr. President,” she hummed in her typical sensual but strangely childlike voice. “Happy birthday.” If audiences no longer believed the Hollywood sex symbol and commander-in-chief were secret lovers, Monroe’s sexy performance would make them the subject of intense speculation for decades to come and lead to incessant tabloid reports filled with lies and falsified photos. . of the two of them together, especially since Monroe would die only a few months later.
It was certainly an obscene thing to imagine; at the time they were two of the most famous (and most attractive) figures in the world, and rumors of the president’s extramarital affairs spread widely. But when it came to the alleged love affair Marilyn Monroe with JFK, how much truth was behind all the gossip? Not much, according to multiple sources, including historian Donald Spoto, author of the 1993 book Marilyn Monroe: The Biography. According to most accounts, JFK and Marilyn Monroe could have met only a few times in their lives.
In April 1957, Marilyn Monroe with JFK allegedly attended the April Ball in Paris at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, but they did not meet. After all, they were with their respective spouses (Monroe with playwright Arthur Miller and Kennedy, then a Massachusetts senator, with Jacqueline), and more than 1,000 people attended.
Four years later, in 1961, the actress and the newly elected president of the United States were said to have been to a dinner in Santa Monica, at the home of actor Peter Lawford. Lawford’s wife, JFK’s sister Patricia Kennedy Lawford, turned out to be a close friend of Monroe. However, although JFK attended a lunch at Lawford’s on the day in question, it cannot be confirmed that Monroe was also present, Buzzfeed reports.
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The most plausible night for an affair would have been March 24, 1962, multiple historians agree. Both Monroe and Kennedy are thought to have been at Bing Crosby’s Palm Springs, California, home for a party. In Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, biographer Donald Spoto quotes Marilyn’s close friend and masseur Ralph Roberts, who claims that while on the phone with Monroe that weekend, he heard what sounded like Kennedy’s voice. Monroe had called to ask for professional massage advice—Kennedy famously had a bad back—and Kennedy apparently even took the phone to talk to Roberts himself.
“Marilyn told me that this night in March was the only time of her ‘affair’ with JFK,” Roberts said. “A lot of people thought, after that weekend, there was something more. But Marilyn gave me the impression that it wasn’t an important event for either of us: it happened once, that weekend, and that’s it.
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Actress Susan Strasberg, daughter of Lee Strasberg and a close friend of Monroe, confirmed this story in her unpublished memoir. “It was okay to sleep with a charismatic president,” Susan said, “and Marilyn loved secrecy and drama, but Kennedy wasn’t the kind of man she wanted to spend her life with, and she made it very clear.”
If they were indeed together a Bing Crosby’s home on the date in question, it’s possible that Kennedy asked Monroe to sing at his birthday that very night. At the time of the celebration, Monroe was filming Something’s Got to Give and had been struggling with sinusitis and her dependency on barbiturates, both of which delayed the movie schedule, reports Karina Longworth in an episode of the podcast You Must Remember This.
She was well enough to fly to New York to fulfill her commitment to the president, but the studio used this pre-planned absence as an excuse to cancel the film while blaming Monroe and suing her for a breach of contract. In reality, it wasn’t all Monroe’s fault (and she had requested the time off to attend the gala in advance). The movie was already falling behind because the script kept getting rewritten. The fundraising birthday party was the last known night Kennedy and Monroe might have crossed paths. After singing the supposedly outrageous version of “Happy Birthday”, Monroe switched to a version of “Thanks for the Memory” with the lyrics she wrote for the man of the moment.
When JFK took the stage to thank her, he said, “I can now retire from politics after having had Happy Birthday sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way.” Following the event, White House photographer Cecil Stoughton snapped the only existing photo of the two figures—at a crowded after party held at movie executive Arthur Krim’s house.
Interestingly, before she went on stage earlier that night, the star was introduced as “the late Marilyn Monroe”—a crack at her frequent tardiness to film sets. But in hindsight, the title can be seen as a sad form of foreshadowing. Less than three months later, on August 5, 1962, Marilyn would be found dead of a barbiturate overdose in her Los Angeles home. She was 36. Although conspiracy theories persist, some involving the Kennedy family and an alleged cover-up, her death is widely accepted as a suicide or accident.
A year later, on November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. He was 46. And what about his alleged relationship? If nothing else, it was more of a one-night stand, according to most reports.
