Tragic Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe and slain US president John F Kennedy are two of the most collectible figures in modern history.
But were they a couple?
It’s become a sort-of semi-accepted popular truth that they were.
We may get some answers about the death of President Kennedy soon, as President Trump promises to release the files relating to his (and his brother Robert’s, and Martin Luther King’s) assassination.
But what do we actually know about Marilyn and JFK?
And what should collectors make of claimed connections between the two?
A lock of Marilyn's hair from the night she sang for the President and fuelled a million rumours. Click the image to see more and to buy this memento.
Known knowns…
This can be murky stuff. To an extent you’re going to have to rely on your own instinct as you negotiate a world that is full of highly contested claims - perhaps conspiracy theories, perhaps what is now called parapolitics.
Collectors who want to shop around JFK and Marilyn should be aware that proof, provenance, and documented evidence are a big deal for buyers of historical documents.
Things are worth what you can prove them to be.
There is one known photograph of the President and the movie star together.
The attorney general, the film star and the President. One of the most famous pictures in history, and just about the only evidence we have of John F Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe together.
It was taken on May 19, 1962.
That night, Marilyn Monroe breathily sang “Happy Birthday Mr President” at a birthday rally in Madison Square Garden New York.
The dress she wore that night is the most valuable personal dress ever sold.
It was auctioned in 1999 for $1.3 million, and again in 2016 for $4.8 million when it became a record breaker.
That photograph is really the only concrete evidence connecting the pair.
In 2005 a Rolex watch was sold at auction for $120,000.
Its gold case was inscribed: “Jack, With love as always from Marilyn May 29th, 1962.”
A poem inside the watch case read:
"Let lovers breathe their sighs
And roses bloom and music sound
Let passion burn on lips and eyes
And pleasures merry world go round
Let golden sunshine flood the sky
And let me love
Or let me die!''
May 29th was JFK’s birthday. In 1962, he was 45, it was to be his penultimate birthday.
Reportedly, the watch was passed to Kennedy via his appointments secretary, Kenneth O’Donnell.
The supposed Monroe/Kennedy watch. It looks the part, but its authenticity isn't proved beyond doubt by any means.
“Get rid of it,” Kennedy is supposed to have told his aide.
But O’Donnell died in 1977. The murder of both Kennedy brothers affected him deeply, and he drank enough to cause his fatal illness.
He never told this story. A book about his life by his daughter doesn't seem to either.
So, it’s a claim.
If it could be proved beyond doubt that Marilyn Monroe gave John F Kennedy this gold Rolex it would be worth exponentially more than $120,000.
Stories, gossip, claims
So beyond that single encounter, all of the evidence we have of a Kennedy/Monroe connection is at best second hand:
Film and stage star Shirley McClaine, who was also at the birthday event and was also photographed with JFK there, claimed in a recent book that at a private party after the gala she saw the President leave a bedroom with Marilyn in it just before his brother, Robert F Kennedy, then the attorney general, entered it.
There's no doubt Shirley McClaine was at the May 1962 event, but what did she see?
That’s a fairly solid, if anecdotal, piece of evidence.
As to what other evidence of an affair or friendship between two of the most famous people in the world might exist.
One of whom has enormous power over mechanisms for keeping things secret.
Who knows.
Beyond an affair
Some claims about the Kennedy/Monroe relationships go well beyond an affair.
They include allegations that the Kennedy family either killed Marilyn or arranged her death (usually accepted as a suicide or perhaps an accidental overdose).
Some say their representatives arrived shortly after her death to destroy links to the dynasty (which may have included an abortion and affairs with both John F Kennedy and Robert F Kennedy).
No concrete evidence of any of this has ever been produced.
Hidden files
Marilyn's wedding to playwright Arthur Miller made her even more interesting to the FBI. Click the image to read more about this artefact of their marriage ceremony.
In his 2012 book, Enemies: A History of the FBI Tim Weiner wrote:
“Hoover’s knowledge of JFK’s private conduct and RFK’s political conspiracies were potentially lethal political weapons. He brandished them now. He let the president and the attorney general know that he know they had committed moral sins.”
And it’s accepted by mainstream historians that something like this is true: Hoover didn’t like Kennedy.
We also know Hoover used the FBI to surveil lots of people on fairly flimsy grounds.
It’s fairly likely he would have known more about Kennedy’s private life than anyone outside the President’s immediate circle.
And maybe those files exist somewhere.
We know that Marilyn had an FBI file.
Her second husband Arthur Miller, who she married in 1956, was one reason.
He had been investigated by the Feds for supposed communist sympathies.
His most famous play, The Crucible, uses the Salem Witch Trials in early English colonies in the United States as a model for the anti-communist mania of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s inquiries.
But her files predate their marriage, opening in 1955, when Marilyn reportedly applied for a visa to visit the Soviet Union.
Peter Lawford with Jack Kennedy. The actor, who was a member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack, linked his brother-in-law to Hollywood and showbusiness.
They close well after her death, addressing biographer Norman Mailer’s claim - for which he himself says he has “no evidence” - that Marilyn was murdered.
If you’d like to go further into this then there is material enough to engage you for years.
If we accept the Wikipedia editing process as something of a filter, then we might accept this footnote, which cites four biographers, as a decent record of accepted knowledge on the Kennedy/Monroe story:
“Monroe and Kennedy had mutual friends and were familiar with each other. Although they sometimes had casual sexual encounters, there is no evidence that their relationship was serious.”
The mutual friends include Peter Lawford, the British-born actor who as a Kennedy in-law linked the President’s young Camelot court to Hollywood. He’s said to have introduced Marilyn to Jack in 1954.
And Marilyn’s sometime press representative Patricia Newcomb also worked for Pierre Salinger, who was JFK’s press secretary. She later worked for Robert F. Kennedy.
Fiction from fact
There are real lives and real tragedies in these stories.
But they’re compelling in a way that invites a version that is better than the truth to be written.
A JFK-signed nuclear test ban document. His real life was extraordinary enough, do we need fiction? Click the image to read more about this amazing document.
So, you can find a whole host of tellings of these stories in non-fiction, para-fiction, faction, and straight-up fiction.
There’s lots of entertaining material out there.
Collecting genuine John F Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe memorabilia
Collectors in this area should take the usual precautions.
Nothing should be accepted to be more than it can be proved to be.
Both Marilyn and Jack are exciting and significant historical figures to collect, with considerable communities interested in each of them.
Anything to do with Marilyn brings collectors and usually high prices. Find out more about this shot for a costume test by clicking on the image. You could own it.
Marilyn is probably the most collectible film star of all time.
Kennedy is the most famous president of the 20th Century.
We have some Kennedy items here.
If you’d like more information like this. And the latest news from the collecting world, including first news of exciting new acquisitions at Paul Fraser Collectibles, then sign up for our newsletter here.
And look out for new FBI declassifications.
