On May 19, 1962, a star-studded, forty-fifth birthday salute to President Kennedy is under way at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Top-tier tickets to the Democratic fundraiser cost $1,000—nearly $8,500 today.
Peter Lawford, married to the president’s sister Patricia, is facing a demanding crowd and seems to be having an anxious moment as emcee. He’s trying—and failing—to call to the stage Marilyn Monroe, the entertainment headliner. The 35-year-old platinum blonde Hollywood screen siren is as notorious for pill-popping as she is for her chronic lateness to call times on set.
But Lawford is a very good actor. Tonight the joke is on the president, and the crowd of more than fifteen thousand is in on the gag. Finally, in the midst of Lawford’s third introduction, Monroe emerges from the wings. “Mr. President,” Lawford chuckles, “the late Marilyn Monroe.”
The audience roars with laughter at Lawford’s unwitting double entendre, little guessing that less than three months later, she’ll be dead.
But tonight, Monroe takes geisha-like steps to the podium mic, literally sewn into her skintight dress, a white mink wrap slipping from her bare shoulders. The audience gasps at her “beads and skin” gold rhinestone gown designed by Academy Award–nominated, French-born Jean Louis and said to have cost $12,000, enough to buy a dozen tickets to the show. In 2016, the dress became the “world’s most expensive” when Ripley’s Believe It or Not! acquired it at auction for more than $5 million.
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“It had been a noisy night, a very ‘rah rah rah’ kind of atmosphere,” recalls Life magazine photographer Bill Ray. “Then boom, on comes this spotlight. There was no sound. No sound at all. It was like we were in outer space. There was this long, long pause and finally, she comes out with this unbelievably breathy, ‘Happy biiiiirthday to youuuu,’ and everybody just went into a swoon.”
Despite raised eyebrows, Jackie tells her sister, Lee, “Life’s too short to worry about Marilyn Monroe.” Instead of attending Jack’s fundraiser, Jackie and the children are at the First Family’s Glen Ora estate outside Middleburg, Virginia, enjoying what she calls “a good clean life.” As spectators, including her husband, ogle Monroe at Madison Square Garden, Jackie is winning a third-place ribbon at the Loudon Hunt Horse Show.
Onstage, a giant birthday cake is rolled out as the president addresses the crowd. “I can now retire from politics after having had ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way,” he says, with the same mischievous grin he’s worn since Monroe sang her first note.
Later that evening, United Artists studio head Arthur Krim hosts a private reception for seventy-five at his townhouse at 33 East 69th Street, where official White House photographer Cecil Stoughton captures the only known photo of Marilyn, Bobby, and Jack together. Bobby is looking at Monroe’s face while the president’s back is to the camera.
Jean Kennedy Smith and her husband, Stephen, are in attendance at the Madison Square Garden event as well as at Arthur Krim’s reception, where White House photographers also capture Stephen posing alongside Monroe.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., special assistant to the president, recalls that night as the first he and Bobby met Marilyn Monroe. “I do not think I have seen anyone so beautiful,” he says. “But one felt a terrible unreality about her—as if talking to someone under water. Bobby and I engaged in mock competition for her; she was most agreeable to him and pleasant to me—but then she receded into her own glittering mist.”
The next day, Jackie is furious—not with the president, but with his brother. “My understanding of it is that Bobby was the one who orchestrated the whole goddamn thing,” Jackie tells her sister-in-law over the telephone. “The Attorney General is the troublemaker here, Ethel. Not the President. So it’s Bobby I’m angry at, not Jack.”
Excerpted from House of Kennedy by James Patterson. Copyright © 2020. Available from Little, Brown and Company, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
