Fifty
years ago today, on August 5, 1962, Marilyn Monroe, perhaps the ultimate sex symbol
of all times, was found dead in her home from an overdose of barbiturates. She was only 36.
The circumstances of her death are one of the
recurring fields for conspiracy theory. An FBI file, which was disclosed in 2006, contained
a report which speculated that then Attorney General Robert Kennedy had been
having an affair with Monroe and that he promised to leave his wife and marry
her. According to the report, when
Monroe decided that Kennedy had no intention of doing so, she threatened to
make the affair public. Since she had a
history of publicity-seeking suicide attempts, she was allegedly urged to do so
again, but this time she was allowed to die.
Not only Robert Kennedy, but actor Peter Lawford, Monroe’s psychiatrist,
and others were also named as conspirators.
The report notes that the source of the story was unknown and the
accuracy could not be authenticated.
This is only one of the many theories that add a provocative twist to
this sad chapter.
As
we’ve observed before in this blog, Monroe’s story really belongs mostly to
the 1950s. By 1962, she had developed
the reputation as difficult to work with and unreliable, and only two of her
movies were released after 1959. Her importance
to the story of the 1960s, aside from the historical significance of her death,
was as a transitional symbol. From the conservative,
“Ozzie and Harriet” 1950s to the sexual revolution, “Love the One You’re With”
of the end of the 1960s, Marilyn Monroe’s none-too-subtle sexuality clearly
represents an important intermediate step.
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