THE DEATH OF MARILYN MONROE

MARILYN MONROE, DESCRIBED BY THE TIMES NEWSPAPERS AS " NOT SO MUCH A HOLLYWOOD LEGEND AS THE HOLLYWOOD LEGEND," DIED  ON AUGUST 5, 1962.

In July 1962 Marilyn Monroe was sacked from the set of the film Something's Got to Give  for persistent absence. To the public she was still Hollywood's greatest star and one of the world's most desirable and highly paid women, but in private, things had fallen apart - her marriage third husband, Arthur Miller, had ended in divorce; her latest film, The Misfits, had flopped at the box office ( though it achieved cult after her death); and now she had lost the opportunity to show that The Misfits was a temporary aberration. The trajectory that had taken Monroe from poor orphan to "the most potent star attraction in the American cinema" had passed its zenith, and the plunge back down to Earth was a rapid one.

THE OVERDOSE

At about 8.00 pm on August 4, Marilyn's friend Peter Lawford spoke to her on the telephone and was so worried by her tone that he asked her lawyer, Mickey Rudin, to check on her. Rudin phoned at 9.30, but Marilyn's housekeeper, Eunice Murray, told him that everything was fine ; Marilyn was resting in her room. In fact, she was probably already dying. 

At about 3.00am. Murray woke sensing something wrong and noticed that Monroe's light was still on. The bedroom door was locked, so Murray went outside, reached through the window grille to part the curtains, 

and saw Marilyn lying face down on the bed with one hand on the telephone and a near-empty bottle of sleeping pills beside her. Murray had already phoned Marilyn's psychiatrist,  Ralph Greenson, who arrived at 3.40 am, closely followed by her doctor, Dr. Engelberg, who pronounce Monroe dead at the sence. Conspiracy theories have persisted ever since that her apparent suicide was in fact murder, with Marilyn's well-known sleeping problems providing the perfect cover for anyone intent on ending her life