From left: Robert F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and John F. Kennedy.Photo: Cefcil Stoughton/The Life Picture Collection/Getty
What happened the night Marilyn Monroe died?
In the early morning hours of August 5, 1962, when the Hollywood icon was found dead in bed at her Brentwood, California home with her hand on her telephone, her shocking death immediately raised red flags.
The Los Angeles Police Department called her death “possibly accidental.” The Los Angeles Coroner’s Office ruled it a “probable suicide.”
Others thought the cause of her death was more sinister.
These are among the scintillating questions tackled in Netflix’s new documentary,The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes,which is now available to stream on the platform.
Based on investigative journalist Anthony Summers' updated bestseller,Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe,the documentary features never-before-heard recordings of interviews with those who knew her well.
“What I learned was information that changed completely what we thought we knew about her mysterious death,” Summers says in the documentary. “And suggests that the circumstances of her dying were covered up.”
Anthony Summers.Netflix
Famous voices from Monroe’s past, including Jane Russell, who co-starred with her inGentleman Prefer Blondes; John Huston, who directed her inThe Asphalt Jungle, and in her last completed film,The Misfits; and hairdresser-to-the-stars Sydney Guilaroff, are heard on tape sharing their memories of the sex symbol who rose to fame despite her troubled beginnings as “a waif,” as Monroe often referred to herself.
But it’s the interviews with figures who are less known that highlight some of the biggest bombshells Summers unearthed — including whether she actually died in her bed at home, who she saw in her last hours, and if her time of death was hours earlier than officially reported.
“The final acts of the film are incredibly exciting,” director Emma Cooper tells PEOPLE. “That timeline that Tony [Summers] walks us through gets me every time. It’s an investigation where everything we thought we knew is not really correct.”
Marilyn Monroe.Netflix
Monroe may have died much earlier than 3:50 a.m. on Aug. 5, 1962, when her doctor pronounced her dead, sources told Summers.
In the documentary, viewers will hear interviews with ambulance company owner Walt Schaefer, who confirms that on the evening of Friday, Aug. 4, 1962, Monroe was rushed to a local hospital, barely alive.
Writer John Sherlock revealed to Summers that her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, told him Monroe died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and that her body was brought back to her house.
“When you realize that she maybe had been taken out of bed, taken to a hospital and then put back into that bed naked,” says Cooper, “I find it truly heartbreaking.”
“If you then say to me, ‘Why were those circumstances covered up?’ I would say that what the evidence suggests is that it was covered up because of her connection with the Kennedy brothers.”
Nuclear Secrets
Both John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy cut ties with Monroe that summer, when the possibility of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union was heating up. She was said to have talked one of the brothers about the amorality of nuclear weapons.
The fear was that the Kennedys said something in their private conversations about nuclear weapons with Monroe that she could have mentioned to some of her left-leaning friends.
“Because she was in touch with people who were regarded as communists, all of whom were talking to Fidel Castro’s people,” Summers says in the film.
Netflix
Bugs in the Bedroom
Another jaw-dropping moment comes when famed private investigator to the stars Fred Otash matter-of-factly tells Summers that yes, Monroe’s bedroom was bugged — something Monroe fans had long heard whispers about but didn’t know for sure.
Monroe’s Legacy
“At the beginning of the process, when I went to L.A., I visited her grave,” she says. “I went to sort of say, ‘I’m going to try and speak your voice, your truth. I hope I represent you in a way that you would’ve wanted to be represented in 2022, and in fact, during your life.'”
For longtime Monroe fans and the new generation who will fall in love with her, Cooper says she wants them “to see that she was incredibly talented.”
“She was incredibly focused. She worked incredibly hard. She was a multidimensional, wonderful, amazing human being,” says the director.
“I was like, ‘I won’t, of course. I won’t. And then a few years later, I’m here with a tattoo of her on my arm. She’s a huge part of my life now. I adore her.”
source: people.com
