Marilyn's Last Sessions

Michel Schneider

Description

4.25 am, 5 August 1962, West Los Angeles Police Department'Marilyn Monroe has died of an overdose', a man's voice says dully. And when the stunned policeman asked 'What?', the same voice struggled to repeat 'Marilyn Monroe has died. She has committed suicide.'If life were scripted like the movies, this extraordinary phone call would have been made by the most important man in Marilyn Monroe's life - Dr Ralph Greenson, her final psychoanalyst. During her last years Marilyn had come to rely on Greenson more and more. She met with him almost every day. He was her analyst, her friend and her confessor. He was the last person to see her alive, and the first to see her dead. In this highly acclaimed novel, Marilyn's last years - and her last sessions on Dr Greenson's couch - are brilliantly recreated. This is the story of the world's most famous and elusive actress, and the world she inhabited, surrounded by such figures as Arthur Miller, Truman Capote and John Huston. It is a remarkable piece of storytelling that illuminates one of the greatest icons of the twentieth century.

Informations

• Publié par: Canongate Books
• Date de parution: 03 novembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781847679147
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published by Canongate in 2011
Copyright © Michel Schneider, 2006 English translation copyright © Will Hobson, 2011
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published as Marilyn dernières séances in France in 2006 by Editions Grasset, 61 rue des Saints-Pères, 75006 Paris
www.canongate.tv
The publisher acknowledges subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council towards the publication of this volume.

This book is supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of the Burgess programme run by the Cultural Department of the French Embassy in London ( www.frenchbooknews.com ).

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84767 051 9 eISBN 978 1 84767 914 7
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To Marilyn
‘There’s always two sides to a story.’
Marilyn Monroe
Contents
Los Angeles, Downtown, West 1st Street August 2005
Los Angeles, West Sunset Boulevard January 1960
Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard 1960
Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Roxbury Drive January 1960
Brooklyn, Brownsville, Miller Avenue September 1911
Hollywood, Beverly Hills Hotel, West Sunset Boulevard January 1960
Los Angeles, Downtown 1948
Santa Monica, Franklin Street February 1960
Fort Logan, Colorado, Army Air Force Convalescent Hospital 1944
Beverly Hills, Roxbury Drive November 1979
Santa Monica, Franklin Street March 1960
Santa Monica, Franklin Street Spring 1960
Hollywood, Santa Monica Boulevard 1946
Los Angeles–New York March 1960
Vienna, 19 Berggasse 1933
Beverly Hills Hotel Late April 1960
New York, Manhattan Late 1954
New York, Actors Studio, West 44th Street January 1955
New York, West 93rd Street February 1955
Hollywood, Century City, Pico Boulevard June 1960
New York, Gladstone Hotel, East 52nd Street March 1955
Phoenix, Arizona March 1956
Reno, Nevada Summer 1960
Los Angeles, Bel Air August 1960
Santa Monica, Franklin Street August 1960
Outskirts of London, Englefield Green July 1956
London, Maresfield Gardens August 1956
Colombo, Ceylon February 1953
Los Angeles, Beverly Hills Late August 1960
Santa Monica, Franklin Street Early September 1960
London, Maresfield Gardens Spring 1956
New York, Central Park West 1957
Pyramid Lake, near Reno, Nevada 19 September 1960
New York, Manhattan 1959
Los Angeles, Sunset Strip Late September 1960
Los Angeles, Westwood Village November 1960
Hollywood, Doheny Drive Autumn 1960
New York, YMCA, West 34th Street Winter 1960
New York, Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic February 1961
Los Angeles, Beverly Hills Hotel 1 June 1961
Santa Monica, Franklin Street Summer 1961
Los Angeles, Wilshire Boulevard Autumn 1961
Santa Monica, Franklin Street July 1961
Santa Monica, Franklin Street Late July 1961
Santa Monica, Franklin Street October 1961
Berkeley, California 5 and 27 October 1961
Santa Monica, Franklin Street Autumn 1961
Beverly Hills, Roxbury Drive Autumn 1976
Santa Monica, Franklin Street December 1961–January 1962
Brentwood, Fifth Helena Drive February 1962
Santa Monica, Franklin Street March 1962
Santa Monica, Franklin Street Late March 1962
Santa Monica, Franklin Street Early April 1962
Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive 25 March 1962
Santa Monica, Franklin Street April 1962
Beverly Hills, Roxbury Drive May 1962
Beverly Hills, Roxbury Drive 8 May 1962
Michigan, Ann Arbor University 1969
Hollywood Heights, Woodrow Wilson Drive April 1970
Los Angeles, Pico Boulevard May 1962
New York, Madison Square Garden May 1962
Beverly Hills, Roxbury Drive 21 May 1962
Hollywood, Pico Boulevard, Fox Studios 31 May 1962
Beverly Hills, Roxbury Drive 31 May 1962
Rome 1 June 1962
Hollywood, Pico Boulevard, Fox Studios 1 June 1962
Hollywood, Bel Air, Joanne Carson’s house August 1976
Westwood, Fifth Helena Drive 6 June 1962
Santa Monica, Franklin Street 11 June 1962
Hollywood, Warner Bros Studios December 1965
New York, Eighth Avenue Mid-June 1962
Los Angeles, University of California June 1966
Los Angeles, Hollywood Sign June 1962
Los Angeles, Pinyon Canyon Autumn 1970
Bel Air Late June 1962
Santa Monica Beach 29 June–1 July 1962
Santa Monica, Franklin Street 25 July 1962
Lake Tahoe, Cal-Neva Lodge 28 and 29 July 1962
Santa Monica, Franklin Street Late July 1962
Santa Monica, Franklin Street Early August 1962
Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard August 1962
Santa Monica, Franklin Street 3 August 1962
Brentwood, Fifth Helena Drive 4 August 1962
Brentwood, Fifth Helena Drive Night of 4–5 August 1962
Los Angeles County Coroner’s office, the morgue 5 August 1962
Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard, Schwab’s Drugstore 5 August 1962
Paris, Hôtel Lancaster – New York City 5 August 1962
Gainesville, Florida, Collins Court Old Age Home 5 August 1962
Beverly Hills 5 August 1962
Beverly Hills, Roxbury Drive 7 August 1962
Vienna, 19 Berggasse 1933
Beverly Hills, Roxbury Drive 8 August 1962
Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendon Avenue August 1984 and August 1962
Beverly Hills, Milton ‘Mickey’ Rudin’s law firm 6 August 1962
Santa Monica, Franklin Street August 1962–November 1979
Maresfield Gardens 1962–82
New York January 1964
Santa Monica, Franklin Street 8 August 1962
Santa Monica, Franklin Street 8 August 1962
Beverly Hills, Roxbury Drive November 1978
Los Angeles, Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery November 1979
Santa Monica, Franklin Street 8 August 1962
Downtown Los Angeles, West 1st Street April 2006
New York, April 1955. The writer Truman Capote is at a funeral with Marilyn Monroe.
MARILYN: ‘Seriously, though. It’s my hair. I need colour. And I didn’t have time to get any. It was all so unexpected, Miss Collier dying and all. See?’
She lifts her kerchief slightly to display a fringe of darkness where her hair is parted.
TC: ‘Poor innocent me. And all this time I thought you were a bona-fide blonde.’
MARILYN: ‘I am. But nobody’s that natural. And, incidentally, fuck you.’
Like Marilyn’s hair, this novel is a phoney of the bona-fide kind. It is inspired by actual events and, except where changes have been made to respect the privacy of the living, its characters appear under their real names. Locations are accurate, dates verified, and quotations from accounts, notes, letters, articles, conversations, books and films are the protagonists’ own.
But it is a work of fiction. The forger in me hasn’t hesitated to impute to one person what another has said, seen or experienced, to ascribe to them a diary that hasn’t been found, articles or notes that have been invented, and dreams and thoughts for which there is no source.
In telling this story, a loveless love story of two characters who became fatally embroiled in each other’s lives, my aim is not to find the truth, or probable truth, about Marilyn Monroe and her last analyst Ralph Greenson, but to observe a couple in the act of being themselves, and register their uncanniness as if it spoke to me of my own.
Los Angeles, Downtown, West 1st Street August 2005
REWIND


Rewind the tape. Rerun the story. Replay Marilyn’s last session. The end: that’s always where a story starts. I love movies that open with a voiceover. There’s almost nothing on screen – a pool with a body floating in it, the tops of some palm trees stirring in the wind, a naked woman under a blue sheet, splinters of glass in a half-light – and someone’s talking to himself so as not to feel utterly alone. A man on the run, a private detective, a doctor – a psychoanalyst, why not? – looking back, telling the story of his life. He says what’s killing him so you’ll know what he lived for. ‘Listen to me because I’m you,’ his voice seems to say. It’s always the voice that makes the story, not what it says.
I’m going to try to tell this story. Our story. My story. It would be an ugly little tale even if you could get rid of the ending. A woman, already half dead, drags along a sad little girl by the hand. She takes her to see the head doctor, the words doctor. He gives her his time, tells her her time is up, then listens to her with a sort of abject love for two and half years. He doesn’t understand a word she says and ends up losing her. Such a sad, grim story. Nothing could lighten its weight of melancholy, not even the smile that seemed to be Marilyn’s way of apologising for being so beautiful.
The title of this unfinished piece of writing was underlined three times. Handwritten and undated, it was found on his death among the papers of Dr Ralph Greenson, Marilyn Monroe’s last psychoanalyst. His was the voice that Sergeant Jack Clemmons, watch commander at West Los Angeles Police Department, had heard on the night of 4–5 August 1962 when a call had come in from Brentwood at four twenty-five a.m.
‘Marilyn Monroe has died of an overdose,’ a man’s voice had said dully. And when the stunned policeman had asked, ‘What?’ the same voice had struggled to repeat, virtually spelling it out syllable by syllable, ‘Marilyn Monroe has died. She has committed suicide.’
REWIND
The city seems to John Miner to sweat even more in August than it used to in spring. Pollution casts a pink veil wherever he looks and, even in the glare of the midday sun, the streets have a fuzziness to them, like the sepia haze of an old movie. Los Angeles strikes him as even more unreal than it had done forty years earlier. More metallic. More naked. More null and void. His eyes still smarting from downtown’s murky, oppressive reek, he enters the journalist Forger W. Backwright’s office in the Los Angeles Times building at 202 West 1st Street. Tall and stooped, he looks around constantly, as though he were lost. An old man of eighty-six come to tell an old story.
As head of th