RedHanded - ShortHand: The Death of Marilyn Monroe

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

Naked, clutching the telephone receiver, and with a stomach full of prescription meds, Marilyn Monroe was pronounced dead at 4:25am on the 5th of August 1962. Today, a century after her birth, the iconic “blonde bombshell” is still one of the most famous people who has ever lived. She epitomised Hollywood: the fame, the fortune, and the chaos. Rumours placed her in bed with two Kennedys – and under surveillance from the FBI and CIA. Marilyn Monroe was the tainted American Dream.Could someone so special really have died from something as simple as an overdose?--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

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I can't remember. This is a shorthand. Do we do that? Welcome to Shorthand. Okay. Hello, this is Shorthand. In the early hours of the 5th of August, 1962, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her bed.

Sprawled naked under a sheet, platinum blonde hair spilling over the pillow, one hand clutching and off-the-hook phone, and empty drugs bottles scattered all over her nightstand. Just 36. one of Hollywood's brightest stars had tragically fizzled out. Her death was ruled a probable suicide. But for years, people have suspected

there was more to this story than meets the eye. At the height of Cold War paranoia and with rumours that she'd bedded President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, but who hadn't? Everyone was fucking the Kennedys. Was Marilyn silenced for knowing too much? What started as whispers ignited into a wildfire of conspiracy theories that still hasn't died out to this day. Which isn't difficult when we've got the FBI, the CIA, the mafia and the Kennedys.

It's not surprising because they're in literally every single other one. Even in death, the blonde bombshell kept the spotlight firmly on her. But was her mysterious demise the result of suicide, an accident? an accident or an assassination. This is the star-studded shorthand. Have you, I know the answer, but I'm going to ask, is it no? Have you seen the TV show Smash? No.

I knew it. The concept of Smash is that Deborah Messing wants to make a musical about Marilyn Monroe. Basically, Catherine McPhee and Megan Hilty are battling it to the death to play Marilyn in this Broadway show, which they eventually call bombshell. Okay. Because she's not fragile like a flower. She's fragile like a bomb.

Got it. It's a good name. I love Smash. And may or may not sing it to my friend on the phone. What's so hysterical about Smash is that Megan Hilty is a Broadway star. Catherine McPhee was on American Idol. So trying to pitch them as equals is so hysterical so early on that the way the production team have to like jump around

to make it look like Catherine McPhee could even once take Megan Hilty. No, it's like, no, it is a drama but like because in reality

they are so mismatched in talent. I see. It's very interesting as the viewer to be like, how are they going to make it look that Catherine McPhee

is better than Megan Hilty? Because like she isn't. Sure. It's not even... Is it not an underdog story? Well, they're trying to make it an underdog story. But the underdog doesn't win.

Well, even when she does, you're like, but she can't. So, like, it adds this, like, element to the show, which makes it much more interesting than anything else in its field, I think. Okay. Because of poor casting. Well, there you go. Recommendations. Getting back to Marilyn, specifically, the bombshell.

The real one. At the heart of our story today. Before we get into her death, we should start by revisiting her life. Born Norma Jean Mortensen, on the 1st of June, 1926. A hundred years ago. Like Big Em. Today, if you are listening to this episode of Shorthand on the day of release,

which you bloody well should be, she was born in Los Angeles. And her early years were a world away from the glitter of the silver screen. Her single mum, Gladys, had schizophrenia and was institutionalised in 1934. After this, Norma Jean bounced between an orphanage and 11 different foster homes, where she alleged that she experienced sexual abuse. She escaped her turbulent home life by going to the cinema and dreaming of Hollywood.

When Norma turned 16, her foster carer set up a marriage with her and their 21-year-old neighbor, a man named Jim Doherty, in more of a sort of babysitting arrangement than a love match, which like, okay. Now while Jim served in the Pacific, Norma Jean worked at a munition. factory, where she posed for morale-boosting pin-up snaps. She joined a modelling agency, and one die job later, the blonde bombshell was born. In 1946, Norma signed a contract with 20th century Fox, ditching her first hubby and her old name to become the glamorous movie star known as Marilyn Monroe. Her real breakthrough came in 1953, with starring roles in Niagara,

gentlemen prefer blondes and how to marry a millionaire that all came out in the same year. Gentlemen prefer blondes is where diamonds are a girl's best friend comes from. That was our second film! Wild. Now these saucy roles cemented Marilyn's public image as the dumb blonde archetype that post-war America was going absolutely wild for. And her fame skyrocketed when she married retired Yankees player

Joe DiMaggio in 1954, becoming the nation's most beloved it couple. But their fairy tale romance was hiding friction from the start. Remember the iconic still from the seven-year itch, with Marilyn's white dress lifting up? Well, the director actually set up a publicity stunt to film the scene with over 100 male photographers gleefully taking snaps up her dress.

And Joe DiMaggio was absolutely fuming. He has an angry dance break in smash. After he allegedly flew into, a jealous rage and beat up Marilyn, the pair split and got a quicky divorce in Mexico after just nine months of marriage. But he loved her until the day he died. When he died, he said, I'm going to see Marilyn. And I feel like he's right to be angry, but he's wrong at who he's taking it out on. Yeah. Marilyn might have made her name as a sex symbol, but she wanted to prove that she was more than just a pretty face. In 1954, she studied at the actor's studio under method

acting guru Lee Strasbourg, and she was very keen to become a serious actress. She set up her own company and started a tug of war with Hollywood execs, who just wanted to cast her in sexy roles that made big bucks. Marilyn also raised eyebrows by dating playwright Arthur Miller, who was under scrutiny by the McCarthy regime for his rumoured communist sympathies. Do you know the story of when Marilyn goes to Arthur Miller's house to meet his parents? Oh, about the toilet. Yes.

Okay, never mind. The people might not have. Please tell them. She's so worried that they can hear her weeing that she runs the tap upstairs. And then they leave and Arthur Miller either rings his dad or sees him later and is like, what do you think of Marilyn?

He's like, nice girl, pisses like a horse. Anyway, this was right at the height of the red scare And if you seen Trumbo, you won't need this explaining to you, but studio bosses weren't thrilled to see their biggest name canoodling with an outspoken lefty because people were getting blacklisted and they were getting completely expelled from the industry and they still really needed to make films. As the FBI opened a file on Marilyn,

Fox executives urged her to dump Arthur Miller to protect the squeaky clean, apolitical image that they wanted from their stars. Marilyn refused, and she and Arthur Miller got married in 1956. She tried to start a family, but she tragically had two miscarriages, which were linked to endometriosis. Marilyn's struggles with infertility took a toll on her, with her friends later saying that she would have chosen to be her mum over stardom any day. By the late 1950s, Marilyn was a fully-fledged celebrity at the height of her fame. But behind closed doors, her personal life was on a downward. spiral. She started intense therapy to revisit childhood trauma, which combined with her method

acting classes, Gary Vitaco Robles, called a psychological recipe for disaster. Yeah, sometimes you can just leave the things in the box. Yeah, I agree. Just push them down like the rest of us, you know? Yeah, not everything needs to be explored. So mid-century psychotherapy treatment was seriously hardcore. There was no antidepressants, just dredging up trauma and stuffing the open scars with powerful barbiturate drugs. Marilyn had been taking sleeping pills for years to treat insomnia, leading to a growing dependency that snowballed into a full-blown addiction by the end of the decade. Marilyn's neuroticism derailed the filming of some like it hot, where she was chronically

late and obsessively did multiple takes until she was happy with her performance. Still, for a while, Marilyn could always deliver the magic when the cameras were rolling. But during filming for the misfits in 1960, the wheels well and truly fell off. On set in the sweltering New Mexico desert, Marilyn would turn up hours late in an almost catatonic state off her head on pills. Production even had to be halted mid-shoot for Marilyn to spend four days in rehab. And her relationship with Arthur Miller at this point also disintegrated.

He cheated on her during the shoot and they announced their divorce in November 1960. They would also, studios would periodically, yes, she did have a direct problem. Yes, she did need to go to rehab and yes, she did do those things mid-shoot and I'm sure that was very disruptive. But they would send her off mid-shoot so she would lose some weight also. They would literally just send her off to a rehab center and be like, come back when you've lost 10 pounds and then we can keep going. When thirst strikes and your energy begins to fade, one hero rises above the rest. Introducing the superpower smoothie from Zhu Booster. A bright sun-charged burst of mangoes, bananas and blue spirulina.

An out-of-this-world smoothie. Just in time for the new Supergirl movie. Discover your power and channel your inner superhero. Fly into your local Zhu Booster and experience it for yourself today. And see Supergirl, only in theaters June 26th. In early 1961, Marilyn psychiatrist Dr. Marianne Chris had her hospitalized at the Payne Whitney Clinic in New York City for depression. But an administrative cock up meant she was chucked into a padded cell with the

most severe psychotic cases that they had. I bet none of them actually believed who she was. Can you imagine? I'm Marilyn Monroe. So of course, this was, like most people's, uh, Marilyn's worst nightmare, given especially her mum's history. In the end, help came from an unexpected source, her ex-husband, Jo DiMaggio, who played the do you know who I am, card, and yanked Marilyn out of there. In 1961 in March, a newly divorced Marilyn moved back to L.A. looking for a fresh start. She found herself a new therapist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, whose unorthodox methods were controversial, even for the early 60s.

Calling her a waif who was acting out her orphan girl rejections, Dr. Greenson diagnosed that what Marilyn needed was the family she'd never had. So he essentially adopted her into his own. Feels like crossing a line. Yeah. Marilyn became a regular fixture at the dinner table and spent time with his wife and children alongside their intense psychoanalysis sessions.

Critics have slammed Dr. Greenson's unethical conduct as counter-transference, which is where a doctor projects emotionally onto their patient and blurs therapeutic boundaries, which is putting it mildly. And if you thought that was all bad enough, there's more. Dr Greenson was also prescribing Marilyn a lot, a lot, a lot of drugs. Dr Greenson shared Marilyn's medical treatment with her GP, Dr. Hyman Engelberg.

Keen to prevent Marilyn from pill shopping with different doctors, the two men teamed up in a bid to control her drug use by being her sole source. But they failed to communicate that plan with. each other. So what ended up happening was that Marilyn had double the drugs that she had in the first place. Some people reckon that Marilyn took over 900 pills in just a 90-day period. One doctor would give her an amputal, a powerful, obituate, and the other would give her chloral hydrate to wean her off those barbs. And those chemicals don't play nicely with each other. In short, Marilyn was necking a potentially lethal cocktail every single.

day. In early 1962, Marilyn bought her very first home in the quiet suburb of Brentwood. Dr. Greenson hired a woman called Eunice Murray to be a housekeeper for Marilyn, or rather keep tabs on her. With some biographers calling her a glorified spy. Meanwhile, Marilyn was shooting a movie called Something's Got to Give. Wasn't going well, Marilyn missed countless shooting days, claiming sickness, but the studio felt she was just taking the piss, especially when she skived off filming to fly to New York and verbally hump her way through the bars of Happy Birthday to President Kennedy that May. Fox sacked Marilyn from the film in June, slamming her as mentally disturbed. Which like For a start, what is going to market your film more than her

singing happy birthday to the president? I know. Give her a couple of days to go do it. Still, Marilyn was giving 10.000. Tell all interviews with top magazines to keep her star power burning. It seemed as though she wasn't giving up on Tinseltown without a fight. No, and I think like what everyone, because she tragically dies, it wasn't like there was only one Marilyn. Everyone looked like her. And like, she had to graft to keep it that way.

And she did by doing all of these things. And that leads us to Saturday the 4th of August, 1962, Marilyn's last day on Earth. Eunice Murray recalled that Marilyn woke up after a poor night's sleep at around 8 a.m. And had just a glass of grapefruit juice for breakfast. Also, anyone who says that she was size 16, no, she wasn't. That is as a, someone who has always been quite big. I think it sort of gets said like a, oh, well, you don't have to care about sizing because Marilyn Monroe was an international sexist when she was size 16.

No, she wasn't. Perhaps, like, surprise, clothing sizes aren't the same as they are now. and maybe some of her clothing was a size 16 in the 40s. To even allude that it is the same as a size 16 today as complete insanity, stopped doing it. Anyway, at around 9 a.m., photographer Larry Schilling came to show Marilyn some risque snaps that he'd taken on the set of Something's Got to Give

in a bid to relaunch her sex symbol status. Marilyn didn't eat anything at lunch, and she had an argument with her friend, and her PR agent Pat Newcomb, who had stayed over the night before. Marilyn's mental state deteriorated over the afternoon to the point that she summoned Dr. Greenson for a house call. Greenson got Pat to leave and then conducted a lengthy therapy session leaving at about 7pm with the opinion that Marilyn had calmed down a fair bit.

Still, he was worried enough to ask Eunice Murray to stay over and keep an eye on her. From about 8pm, Marilyn spent a while chatting on the phone in her bed. bedroom. She spoke to Joe DiMaggio's son and Dr. Greenson. Before, actor Peter Lawford, JFK's brother-in-law, called to check and see if she was coming to his dinner party later that night. Marilyn was slurring her words and sounded out of it, telling him, say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to Jack, JFK, and say goodbye to yourself because you're a nice guy. Worried, Lawford rang Marilyn's lawyer to ask him to check on her. The lawyer called the house's other phone line and spoke to Eunice Murray, who shrugged that nothing seemed to miss.

Marilyn had Sinatra crooning on her record player, and the telephone cord trailed beneath her closed bedroom door, just like always. But here is where things get a bit confusing. Essentially, Eunice Murray testified that she woke up at about midnight and noticed the light was still on under Marilyn's door, which was unusual and told her something was wrong. Later, she changed her statement to say that that happened at around 3.30 a.m. Whatever time it was, her spidey senses were tingling and she went outside to check on Marilyn

through her bedroom window, seeing her lying face down and naked in bed. Eunice called Dr. Greenson, who rushed over and used a poker to break Marilyn's window. He summoned Dr. Engelberg to officially pronounce Marilyn dead at about 350 a.m. The LAPD were called out at 4.25am, and they got there just five minutes later. Deputy Coroner Thomas Noguchi, who'd later get the nickname of Coroner to the Stars, estimated Marilyn's time of death to be between 8.30 and 10.30 p.m., based on Rigamortus. Her cause of death was ruled as acute, barbiturate poisoning. There were no signs of external trauma, and the administration of the fatal overdose was believed to be oral,

based on the empty bottles at the scene and her known drug habit. After reviewing Marilyn's mental health history, which included at least three pre-reliaments, previous attempts to take her own life with sedative drugs, the coroner's office ruled the manner of death to be probable suicide. The evidence pointed to Marilyn chugging several gulps of Nembutal solution over a period of just a few minutes, which she surely knew would lead to her o-deeing. While they couldn't state conclusively that it wasn't an accident, the authorities were satisfied that there was no foul play or any third parties involved. And on the 8th of August 1962, Marilyn Monroe was laid to rest in a surprisingly quiet funeral.

Just around 30 mourners present. At first, the official narrative of her death rested in peace too, but not for long. Do you know who bought the, because it's one of those like a filing cabinet that they have in America, where the caskets go in, one on top of the... Oh, yeah, yeah. Do you know who bought the one above Marilyn? Someone creepy. Hugh Hewner.

Oh, my... For exactly the reason you're thinking. Of course it is. You've probably been screaming at us this whole episode, but what about the Kennedys? They are the elephant in the room. They've already killed me once. They're probably going to do it again when I have a look at Bobby, but anyway. During her life, Marilyn was no stranger to gossip, with one of the most prevalent urban legends being that she was romantically involved with both Jack and Bobby Kennedy. Some took Marilyn's Husky birthday serenade of JFK in May, 1962, as confirmation.

that they were shagging, although there's no hard evidence placing them in the same room before that, except a single party in Palm Springs the march before. Far louder were the whispers that Marilyn was seeing the president's brother, RFK, with those claims actually corroborated by several people close to Marilyn. Even the FBI took an interest in the potential pillow talk. At a crisis point in the Cold War, the Bay of Pigs invasion, a loose-lipped politician could be a serious liability

if you believe that the Bay of Pigs was not entirely orchestrated by the CIA which it was. That's accepted fact, not a conspiracy. Well, it is a conspiracy. It's just conspiracy isn't a dirty word when it's the truth. Anyway, the Bureau ultimately concluded

that the nation's favourite blonde was not a national security risk even if she was banging the Attorney General who was just making Jimmy Hogarth offers life more difficult day by day until he ran off to Cuba. The FBI noted that while Marilyn's views were positively and concisely leftist, she didn't appear to be actively involved in the communist movement. Few. But, during the Cold War,

Maud really did stick and it planted the seed for an even wilder story. Enter the 1960s answer to Reddit forums, right-wing pamphlets. In 1964, a PI turned anti-quivist. communist activist named Frank Cappell published the first major conspiracy theory in a leaflet entitled The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe, which is just like clickbait, click, click, click, click, click, click, at the time, for sure. So Capel seized upon the potentially murky gap between when Eunice Murray supposedly found Marilyn's body and when the LAPD were actually called. There was an hour to a four-hour delay, which he reckoned proved fertile ground for a potential cover-up.

As for what was covered up, well, Cappell had his own agenda at play. The pamphlet spawned from meetings with police officer Jack Clemens, the first responder at the scene of Marilyn's death, and another far-right activist named Maurice Rice, who wanted to help Cappell take down the lefty Kennedys. Based on gossip they'd heard about Marilyn's alleged affair with RFK, the trio concocted a narrative where Bobby tried to break it off, and Marilyn threatened to expose explosive secrets

that he'd supposedly told her about the Cuban missile crisis. Realising his mistress had become a missile herself, Bobby ordered his communist pals to silence Marilyn forever, with a good old-fashioned murder staged as a suicide. It was a blatant political smear campaign, but it tore open the floodgates of Spectre. There's so many issues. I think the reason that theories like this get any airtime at all is because of how we perceive her now.

Sure. Yes, she was famous, but she wasn't an icon when she died. All of that happened after her death. So I can see why now it seems like, of course, fabulously for her death. famous woman shagging Bobby Kennedy has to be to do with Cuba because they're so high profile. But I just, I don't think so. I don't. I think Marilyn killed Marilyn.

I don't think she did it on purpose. I don't think it is anything to do with the CIA. And that is the only time you will ever hear me say that. Yeah, I think that whether she did it on purpose or not, I think the amount of drug she was consuming. I'm just like, how was this not going to happen at some point? And Bobby wasn't that much to do with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yes, he was secretly sent off to Turkey to like remove some nukes and nobody found out about that for decades. But it's not like she just wasn't a threat to anybody, not even Bobby.

Anyway, thinking that anybody in government in the early 60s gave a shit about what a woman had to say is wild. Ten years after Marilyn's death, famous writer Norman Mailer released a new biography that dropped some massive bombshells, including a claim that the CIA and the FBI were the most likely suspects to have ordered her murder. When have they ever worked together, first of all, that's a huge hole in that problem. Mailer based this speculation on the idea that FBI boss, J. Edgar Hoover, had beef with the Kennedys and he could have used Marilyn to get revenge on them. I'm sure Hoover had beef with the Kennedys, but just no one cared about Marilyn that much, you know? And unsurprisingly, because he was lying, Norman Mailer backtracked a lot after the book's publication

waffling on about how the book contained factoids, i.e. speculation that he just pulled out with ass rather than real facts. But the damage was done anyway, and a tidal wave of new conspiracies burst forth in its wake. Robert Slater invented a little red diary that Marilyn allegedly kept details of the Kennedy's political pillow talking

that was apparently juicy enough for them to kill her for. That's just, no one has ever, ever, ever spoken about that before. It didn't even exist, but it became a key part of Monroe conspiracy canon. Slater also made the bizarre claim that he had actually been married to Marilyn himself for three days back in 1952, although that was later debunked as horseshit. In 1975, journalist Anthony Scatudo added a new twist by claiming that the mafia

were responsible for taking out Marilyn in an apparent bid to frame Bobby Kennedy after he went after top mobsters like Jimmy Hoffer and Sam Gankana. Which Bobby Kennedy did do that. That's true. But the mafia were quite busy cooperating with JFK at the time. First responder, Jack Clemens, piped up again

amid the din making outlandish claims that he never reported at the time like how there was supposedly no drinking glass found at the crime scene for Marilyn to be taking an overdose with indicating foul play but you just have to look at the crime scene photos to see at least two big glasses in there. Throughout the 70s and early 80s pressure built on the LAPD to reopen the case.

Every Tom Dick and Harry who'd ever heard of Marilyn Monroe started coming out of the woodwork and claiming they'd heard explosive tape recordings of her trists with the Kennedys, although funnily enough, none of those tapes ever actually materialised. In the late 80s, a former L.A. coroner's office clerk named Linaw Grandison claimed that he saw the infamous little red diary in the morgue before it vanished, and that Marilyn's body was covered in bruises, and that he'd been forced to sign an altered death certificate.

Grandison was an especially dubious source. Not only was he just an admin assistant, and it also turned out that he'd been stealing from dead bodies whilst working where. It became an endless he-said-she-said chain of rumours based on very few hard facts. Still, in 1982, the DA's office bowed to public demand and conducted a three-month review to establish whether the case should be reinvestigated in light of these new claims. In a 29-page report, the assistant DA, Ronald Carroll, concluded that there was no credible evidence to support a murder investigation

and close the case for good. Throwing his hat in the ring, British journal Anthony Summers, published what he reckoned he went down in his 1985 book, Goddess, the Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe. Summers argued that nobody actually murdered Marilyn. The Kennedys just covered up the details surrounding her accidental overdose or suicide to avoid a scandal. Why would they care?

Like, uh, anyway. As with most of these theories, the dodgy's, timeline is what really shows it up. Summers claims that Bobby Kennedy actually visited Marilyn that day and tried to end their affair, which sent her into a spiral that led to her death by overdose.

He quoted private ambulance staff who claimed they took Marilyn to hospital closer to 10pm, but that she died en route and they were instructed to take her back to her house. This allegedly real timeline was corroborated by the widow of Marilyn's PR chief, Arthur Jacobs,

who insisted that they were out at concert when he was called away to deal with an accident involving Maryland at about 10pm. And then there's the secret helicopter logs, some are found, that appeared to show Bobby Kennedy being whisked out of L.A. in the early hours of the next morning, despite his official diary stating he was in San Francisco all weekend. The inflated timeline allowed those involved, including RFK and the sinister Dr. Greenson, to erase any trace of the Kennedys from Marilyn's final few hours. but they didn't really need to because they weren't there. But Summers has been criticised for basically asking any old Rando to tell their story,

so I really wouldn't give it a second of your time. So let's step away from the madness for a minute and look at the actual evidence. A lot of these murder claims hinge on supposed inconsistencies in Marilyn's autopsy. A biggie? The lack of visible pill residue in her stomach. Conspiracy theorists argue that the... This suggests that drugs were administered another way, since Nembutol would leave a distinctive yellow dye stain

and her body surely wouldn't have been able to dissolve all that vast quantity of pills that she apparently took in one go. Therefore, many speculate that she was either injected or given a fatal enema. But here's the thing. Dr. Nogoki found zero evidence of an enema in Marilyn's bowel, but he did find hemorrhaging in her stomach that supported oral ingestion.

there was also no visible injection marks anywhere on her body. The fact that the substance was found in such large quantities in Marilyn's liver was further proof that she ingested them orally, since a sudden dose, like a shot or an animal, would kill her before it reached her renal system. The doctor also clarified that Marilyn's long-term drug addiction explained how her body absorbed the chemicals so much faster than you might expect, leaving no residue.

So you might think it's boring, but you're wrong. All the physical evidence points to a solo overdose, admittedly enabled by her rogue doctors, and I think that's what's so sad, is that she thought she was getting better, she was doing what they were telling her to do. Later biographers tend to lay the blame for Marilyn's death squarely at the door of Dr. Greenson and Dr. Engelberg,

charlatans, who were supposedly treating Marilyn's addiction and her sizable mental health problems by prescribing the same pills that ended up killing her. In his 1993 book, Donald's first one, Spoto went one step further and argued that the two doctors, with the help of the slippery housekeeper slash spy Eunice Murray, actively covered up Marilyn's accidental death in the famous timeline gap, making it look like a deliberate and unavoidable overdose to dodge accountability. And I think I could buy that.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a grain of truth to that one. Honestly, though, the most fascinating part of the whole Marilyn Monroe death mystery is the fact that we still see it, as much of a mystery at all. Marilyn was a troubled soul who made no secret of her struggles to those close to her. She wrote in her diaries about feeling miserable and wanting to die, expressing suicidal thoughts, and even attempting to take her life on more than one occasion before.

She had a well-known pill addiction and being treated by anethical quacks who basically gave her all these pills on tap. As Marilyn's scholar, because that is a job that exists, Donald McGovern puts it, to think she wasn't capable of killing her. is really not accepting reality. Still, we reckon the conspiracy theories

will never quite fade away. Because the most likely story is that of a fragile woman destroyed by drug addiction and the pressures of fame. And that just feels far too ordinary to accept. And if there's one thing that Marilyn Monroe was never meant to be,

it was ordinary. And in Hollywood, they will pay you $1,000 for a kiss, and 50 cents for your soul. And there you go. That is the story of Marilyn Monroe on the anniversary of our 100th birthday. Yeah, and it's such a tragic story,

but I think, yeah, what everyone forgets is that just before she died, everyone thought she was over anyway. The way in which we think of her now is unique to the time in which we live, not the one she lived in. We'll see you next time for another shorthand. Goodbye.

The Kennedy's one nothing to do it. Bye.