New Book Reports that Marilyn Monroe was a Diagnosed Borderline Paranoid Schizophrenic

Caveat: I haven't read The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, and don't necessarily endorse claims made in it. This review is posted only as a notice that assertions have been made about two American icons and a tryst of some historical significance. - AC

JFK affair just a Marilyn fantasy, says new book
John Harlow - Sunday Times, London - 31 August 2009

LOS ANGELES: Marilyn Monroe only slept once with John F Kennedy and imagined she was having a passionate affair with then president, a biography claims.

The last words spoken by Monroe, recorded during a slurred phone call the night before she died from a drug overdose, were: “Say goodbye to the president” — a hint of her passion for Kennedy. Previous biographies of Monroe have all told of a “complex affair” but, according to FBI records unearthed by J Randy Taraborrelli, a Los Angeles writer, it was pretty much a figment of her imagination, as she lost touch with reality.

Taraborrelli, whose book, ‘The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe’, will be published in October, said aging and lonely Monroe was living in a fantasy world about herself and the president. He set out to write a book called ‘Monroe: The White House Years’. “But I found out there were no White House years, even months,” he said.

Dozens of FBI agents and informants would have revealed any evidence of an affair to J Edgar Hoover, the FBI director whose power was being challenged by Robert Kennedy, the attorney-general, who did not trust him. But none existed.

“Hoover wanted dirt on the Kennedys,” Taraborrelli said last week. “But even he couldn’t find a serious affair. Marilyn and JFK probably had one weekend at Bing Crosby’s home, maybe one night together. And then, that’s it. And there is even less evidence that she had an affair with JFK’s brother Bobby.” Despite a famous performance, where she sang happy birthday to Kennedy, Monroe was, at most, a brief fling.

Taraborrelli obtained her private medical records from a Los Angeles hospital where she was diagnosed as borderline paranoid schizophrenic shortly before her death in 1962.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/World/US/JFK-affair-just-a-Marilyn-fantasy-says-new-book/articleshow/4952426.cms