john kennedy and jayne mansfield--11/18/24

18 Nov 2024

john kennedy and jayne mansfield--11/18/24

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Today's selection--from The Fixer by Josh Young and Manfred Westphal. A Kennedy tryst:

“Marilyn Monroe was certainly the most famous movie star ever recorded having sex with Kennedy, but she wasn't the first. That dubious honor went to fellow bottle blonde actress Jayne Mansfield. A close friend of Lawford, The Girl Can't Help It star was considered by some to be Monroe's competition at 20th Century Fox. After listening to Mansfield romping with Kennedy, Otash dutifully placed the recording inside his dossier for the Republican Party. At that time, the Democratic Party's political strategies remained the primary focus, but everything changed once Fred's associate John Danoff recorded Kennedy having sexual congress with Marilyn.

“In his recordings, [private investigator Fred] Otash noted: ‘Then Monroe became the central figure. The original electronics surveillance had nothing to do with her. But now, when it was established that Monroe was fucking Jack Kennedy, she became the one, the main figure, because she was the best known.’

“Marilyn had first met John F. Kennedy four years earlier in 1955 at a party held at the home of Charles Feldman, producer of her latest blockbuster, The Seven Year Itch. The first of her two outings with Oscar-winning filmmaker Billy Wilder, the romantic comedy based on George Axelrod's Broadway play centered on a middle-aged husband in New York who fantasizes about committing adultery with a young actress living in the apartment above him while his wife and young son are summering in Maine. A critical and commercial success, the film also produced one of the most iconic scenes in cinematic history: Marilyn, in her prime and wearing a white halter-top dress, stands with legs spread and knees locked over a subway grate as a sudden updraft sends her pleated skirt billowing in the breeze. She would later describe the resulting publicity photo exposing her legs, thighs, and crotch as ‘the last straw’ in her marriage to Joe DiMaggio, whom she divorced later that year, on October 31, 1955.

“DiMaggio had no desire to attend the party that night, nor did he want his wife there. But Marilyn, who had already set her sights on playwright Arthur Miller, defiantly went solo. While his exquisite wife of two years, Jacqueline, was back home in Boston, Jack Kennedy was in Los Angeles to visit his sister and brother-in-law, network with political allies, and ‘go hunting’ (his euphemism for bedding Hollywood starlets). While Kennedy showered Marilyn with attention that night, their friendship would remain platonic until one night after a party at Lawford's beach house two years later.

Marilyn Monroe stands in between Robert F. Kennedy (left) and President John F. Kennedy during a party at the home of movie executive Arthur Krim on May 19, 1962.

“Otash would be the first to admit that a private detective, much like a politician, required a certain ethical elasticity. But he also believed that a person seeking the highest office in the land should be held to a higher standard, especially if their infidelities posed the potential threat of blackmail ... and the Nixon camp wanted more.

“Otash would later clarify: ‘My job was to develop a file that would show Jack Kennedy to have serious moral failings. In other words, they wanted audiotapes of the guy f**king anyone other than his wife. I could make a file of any other sins I might discover, but adultery was enough to knock him out of the race.’

“Unlike today, if a presidential candidate was caught having an adulterous in flagrante delicto affair with a movie star in 1960, their political aspirations would be dead on arrival. Otash assumed the unknown source behind the original bugs that he detected in Lawford's house was also privy to the same bombshell intelligence; they had to be. Regardless, he was morally conflicted, as a scandal of this magnitude had the potential to wreak havoc on Marilyn's personal and professional life if it ever saw the light of day.

“The night before he would deliver the recording, Fred spent the evening dismantling his many memories of Marilyn over a bottle of scotch and too many cigarettes. He was grappling with remorse for what he knew in his heart was unavoidable: the first time he met the young Norma Jean at John Carroll's ranch; the day he gave her an impromptu tour of his security detail at the Hollywood Ranch Market; the countless afternoons they spent together with Sid Skolsky at Schwab's drugstore, where she invariably tried to elucidate the dizzying revolving door of men coming in and out of her life; his unrelenting solicitude for her since his early days on the LAPD, where he often fantasized what it may have been like to date Marilyn since, after all, her first husband was a police officer. Something had to give and Fred had a choice to make: either surrender to his conscience or do what was expected of him. Despite serious misgivings, the same stoic professionalism that had enabled Otash to circumnavigate the minacious depths of Hollywood's shark-infested waters ultimately prevailed. By the time he gave the tape to his powerful Republican clients, Fred had compartmentalized his personal feelings, because that's what the job required. Whatever they chose to do with the tapes was up to them, and if they came back to hurt Marilyn in some way, well, that was just part of the crazy mess that she had gotten herself wrapped up in.”