While Marilyn
had seen Jack
Kennedy
only at
intervals since
their
first meeting in 1954, by early 1962 she
was trying
to be
with him as
often as
possible. They saw
each
other whenever
Jack
was in California,
and
on at
least
two
occasions during
the
spring
of 1962, Marilyn made
a special
trip
to New York
to be
with Kennedy.
The first was a black-tie dinner
party
in the
President’s honor given by
Fifi Fell, a socialite, in her
Park Avenue
penthouse.
Among the two dozen
guests were a number of
presidential aides, Ambassador Earl
Smith, Peter,
Milt Ebbins,
and
Marilyn. Around
seven
o’clock, Ebbins
and
Dave Powers were dispatched
to pick Marilyn up
at her
apartment and bring
her to the party.
“We
got
there at
about seven- thirty
— dinner was at eight
— and
she wasn’t ready,”
Ebbins recalled. “Powers
didn’t want to
wait
for
her,
so he
told
me to
stay and went back to
the
party, then sent the limousine back for us.”
As Ebbins sat and waited,
he noticed that
everything in the apartment
was white — the rugs,
the
ceilings, the walls, the furniture, even a piano.
At eight o’clock, Marilyn’s
maid
told
Ebbins that
her hairstylist,
Kenneth, was
finishing up Marilyn’s
hair. “She should
be out
very
soon.” At
eight-fifteen, the phone rang, and Ebbins
picked
it up. It
was Peter. “Where is
she? The President’s here.
Everybody’s waiting!”
“She’s not ready yet.
I’m
sitting
here
waiting
for
her.” “C’mon,” Peter shouted.
“Dinner’s
practically ready!”
At eight-thirty,
the
maid
announced to
Ebbins that
Marilyn was
done
with Kenneth
and
should be
out in just a few
minutes. By
nine o’clock, there
was still no Marilyn.
Peter
called
again.
“You son of
a bitch!” he screamed.
Ebbins could hear
Dave Powers in the background,
threatening
him with physical violence.
By nine-thirty, Ebbins
couldn’t
take
it anymore. He
opened
Marilyn’s door and walked
into
her bedroom. He
saw
her sitting
at her
vanity table,
naked, staring
at herself in the mirror.
“Marilyn,
for
crissakes,” he
said. “Come on!
The
President’s
waiting, everybody’s
waiting.”
Marilyn looked at
him dreamily. “Oh,”
she said finally. “Will
you
help
me on
with my
dress?”
“So I’m
watching this giant
international movie superstar standing
there stark
naked in her high heels,”
Ebbins recalled. “She puts
a scarf
over
her hair so it
won’t
get
mussed and pulls this beaded
dress
over
her head. This dress was
so tight
it took
me
ten minutes to pull it
down
over
her ass! She says,
‘Take
it easy.
Don’t
tear the beads.’
I’m on my knees inching this dress down over her
ass and my face is
right at
her
crotch. But
I’m
not
thinking of
anything
but getting
her to that
goddamn
party.”
Finally, at
ten o’clock, Monroe was
ready.
Ebbins was
astounded. “Whew,
did she look sensational
— like
a princess.
I said
to her, ‘Jesus
Christ, you sure are pretty.’
She just said, ‘Thank you.’”
Marilyn put a red wig
over
her hair, slipped on
dark glasses, and rode in the limousine with
Milt to
Park Avenue. When they
arrived, over fifty photographers
were
milling around
the
lobby
of the building, hoping
to capture
some of
the
celebrities
attending the party upstairs
as they
left. Not one
of them recognized Marilyn.
When
she got off the
elevator three
Secret Service
men watched her
slip
off
the wig, take off
the
glasses
and
become
Marilyn Monroe again.
As she and Ebbins
entered
the
apartment, Jack Kennedy had
his back to them. He
turned
around, smiled at
Marilyn, and said,
“Hi!”
She sashayed up
to him and he took
her arm. “Come
on,”
he said to
her.
“I want you to
meet
some people.” As
they walked
away, Marilyn
looked back at
Milt Ebbins
and
winked.
For a few
seconds,
Ebbins thought
he was in the clear. Then someone grabbed
him by the back
of the neck
and
pulled him into a bedroom.
It was Peter,
red
with fury.
“You son of
a bitch!” he hissed, and raised his
fist, measuring
Milt for a punch. Dave
Powers
grabbed Ebbins
by the collar
and
tore
open his
shirt
at the neck.
Ebbins managed
to calm
the
two
men down, and
it was then that
he learned that
there had
been
no dinner. “Everybody just ate hors
d’oeuvres
and
drank
and
got
blind
drunk
and
happy
as larks,” he
recalled being told.
“Nobody cared about
dinner after a while.
They told me
the
chef tried to jump out
the
window.
Here
he had
cooked a fabulous
dinner for the
President of
the
United
States
and
nobody ate it!”
