Monroe Marilyn - Marilyn at Rainbows End: sex lies, murder, and the great cover-up

In 1950, while a schoolboy, Darwin Porter was introduced to a blonde starlet, Marilyn Monroe, by his mother, Hazel Triplet. The setting was the Helen Mar Hotel on Miami Beach. In charge of the hotel, Mrs. Triplet had been instructed by a fabled B-movie star, Ronald Reagan, to give Marilyn whatever she wants. He was picking up the tab, although discreetly staying in a suite at the more fashionable Roney Plaza Hotel nearby.

A fashion designer on the side, Mrs. Triplet designed and crafted a stunning white bathing suit for Marilyn to wear at poolside. It was very similar to a suit shed designed for Linda Darnel for the film, Slatterys Hurricane, shot the previous year in Florida.

When Marilyn walked out by the pool in that bathing suit, she created a sensation, Porter recalled. A star was born.

Years later, when Porter was an aspiring journalist and in college, Marilyn granted him a one-on-one interview when she flew to Florida to visit her former husband, Joe DiMaggio. It was the beginning of my lifelong association with Marilyn Monroe, Porter said.

After 1962, Porter began collecting and reading every bit of material he could on Marilyn, her life and death. While working for a television producer in Hollywood, Porter got to meet and know many of her friends and enemiesboth those who loved her and those who were highly critical, perhaps jealous. I ended up with enough material for ten volumes.

Today, Porter is one of the worlds leading celebrity biographers, having written books on such diverse figures as Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Howard Hughes, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Merv Griffin, Michael Jackson, the Kennedys, Frank Sinatra, and J. Edgar Hoover.

He is also the co-author of the popular Hollywood Babylon series, and is also the co-author of Damn You, Scarlett OHara, which exposed the complicated and deeply anguished private lives of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

Currently, Porter is working on Elizabeth Taylor: There is othing Like a Dame, scheduled for publication in October of 2012.

When he isnt traveling, Porter lives in New York City.

by Darwin Porter

Copyright 2012, Blood Moon Productions, Ltd.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
www.BloodMoonProductions.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-936003-29-7

Cover designs by Richard Leeds (Bigwigdesign.com)
Videography and Publicity Trailers by Piotr Kajstura
Special thanks to Photofest in New York City

Distributed in North America and Australia
through National Book Network (www.NBNbooks.com)
and in the UK through Turnaround (www.turnaround-uk.com)

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THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO:

James Bacon
Lem Billings
Jose Bolaos
Truman Capote
Jeanne Carmen
Sergeant Jack Clemmons
Constance Collier
George Cukor
Tony Curtis
Sammy Davis, Jr.
Brad Dexter
James Dougherty
Tom Ewell
Judith Campbell Exner
Charles Feldman
Carlo Fiore
Eddie Fisher
Sam Gilman
Milton Greene
Stanley Mills Haggart
Guy Hotell
John Huston
William Inge,
Norman Jeffries
Elia Kazan
Gene Kelly
Peter Lawford
Nino Minardos
Robert Mitchum
Florabel Muir
Eunice Murray
Kenneth ODonnell
Fred Otash
Sandy Paroe
Lena Pepitone
Liz Renay
Ralph Roberts
Mike Romanoff
Mickey Rooney
Sidney Skolsky
Robert F. Slatzer
Senator George Smathers
Whitey Snyder
Milo Speriglio
Bernard Spindel
John Springer
Robert Stack
Susan Strasberg
Frank E. Taylor
Billy Travilla
Hazel Washington
Billy Wilder
Tennessee Williams
Shelley Winters

I got a call from Life magazines bureau chief, Richard Stolley, at six that Sunday morning. Marilyn Monroes dead. Go to the morgue and shoot what you can.

I rounded up three bottles of the most expensive whisky I could find. It was a bribe to the guy in the morgue. Ever seen a dead body before?he asked before he led me to a steel-lined refrigerated corridor.

He opened a door to wheel out a corpse. A white sheet covered her body. He tied a tag to her left big toe. Its inscription read CRYPT 33MARILYN MONROE.

Photographer Leigh Weiner

SEX, LIES, MURDER,
AND THE GREAT COVER-UP

There are guilty pleasures. Then there is the master of guilty pleasures, Darwin Porter. There is nothing like reading him for passing the hours. He is the ietzsche of aughtiness, the Goethe of Gossip, the Proust of Pop Culture. Porter knows all the nasty buzz anyone has ever heard whispered in dark bars, dim alleys, and confessional booths. And lovingly, precisely, and in as straightforward a manner as an oncoming train, his prose whacks you between the eyes with the greatest gossip since Kenneth Anger. Some would say better than Anger.