For almost all of this MOOC, this massive open online course so far, we've been focused on conspiracy theories involving national or global politics. The protocols of the elders of Zion, the alleged financial origins of US entry into World War one, McCarthyism and the Kennedy assassination. Now we're going to talk about movie stars and princesses AKA Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana of Wales. And I'm going to go through the highlights of what historian David Aaronovitch assembles regarding these two supposedly murdured women. And then I'm going to offer my own take on why so many people think they were murdered. By the way they were not murdered. Marilyn Monroe took her own life with barbiturates, may be deliberately maybe accidentally, maybe something in between. Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris. Now that you know where I'm coming from, let's begin with the movie star and first I have to tell you that I was a kid. I loved Marilyn Monroe. >> A kiss on the hand may be quite continental, but diamonds are a girl's best friend. A kiss may be grand. >> I don't even quite know why. It wasn't exactly what I thought she was sexy. I mean I was about seven when this infatuation hit me and there really was no libido in it. I think I just thought that she would make a really great babysitter or something. I don't know, Marilyn Monroe was born in Los Angeles in 1926, baptized Norma Jean Baker. Her mother was emotionally ill and may have tried to kill young norma at least once in a rage. She never knew her father, although she later claimed without any evidence that it was the actor Clark Gable. A family adopted her, then gave her up. So she wound up in foster homes. Her only way out, of course was marriage to the first guy who seemed even vaguely suitable. But baker insisted on working and not just becoming a housewife and World War two helped with this. She signed on for a stint in a munitions factory in Van Nuys California, where she was discovered by a photographer. At which point she changed her name to Marilyn Monroe. Then she was spotted by a movie studio and she wound up with some minor but noticeable roles in some pretty important movies. Such as a crime drama called the Asphalt Jungle and a Bette Davis movie called All About Eve. And a noir thriller called Niagara about a woman's plot to kill her husband with the help of her lover. These early movies poised Monroe to become a major Hollywood star associated with top level dramas. The kind of stuff that potentially could turn her into Lana Turner or Katherine Hepburn or Bette Davis. Those kind of iconic serious legend making movies, if you know what I mean. But by the mid 1950s an enormous wave of sexism encouraged by McCarthy, anti communism set in. And suddenly the only big ticket opportunities for women were in romantic comedies. And a generation of actors who had cut their teeth in interesting movies in the 1930s and 1940s now found themselves playing confused funny girls in search of husbands. This was the fate of Doris Day, who had started her career in amazing Alfred Hitchcock movies, like the man who knew too much. But now in the 1950s she was stuck flirting with Rock Hudson, James Garner or Cary Grant in flicks like pillow talking. That touch of mink or send me no flowers, prompting the standard joke about her. By the mid 19 sixties I knew Doris Day before she became a virgin. Not surprisingly, Monroe wound up in the same place. But even in her screwball comedies, she stood out for her acting and screen presence. Part of the reason for this was that Marilyn Monroe was super smart. She was a voracious reader of history and political science and philosophy. People don't know this. She loved to talk about writers like Goethe and James Joyce. You can see the ideas of philosophers like Karl Marx and Walter Lippmann and Erving Goffman in the things that she said. It's obvious when you read her interviews with journalists, which are an endless supply of great aphorisms. Here are some of them, Goethe said talent is developing privacy, and it's really true. There is a need for aloneness which I don't think most people realize for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on. Only for a moment when you're acting. Here's another comment that she made, the public scares me, but people I trust, my work is the only ground I've ever had to stand on. I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation, but I'm working on the foundation. This is a free and democratic country and no one has a monopoly on anything. I've never fooled anyone, I've let people fool themselves. And finally, her most famous quote, it takes a smart brunette to play a dumb blonde. Hungry for life, profoundly aware of her own brilliance Marilyn Monroe did what smart women did in the 1950s and early 1960s to compensate for their own career limitations. She married two smart guys. The first was Joe DiMaggio, the famous baseball center fielder for the New York Yankees. DiMaggio was an interesting, charming man in public and a total abusive jerk in private. But then after she divorced him, DiMaggio respected her more. He became her faithful friend. He cleaned up, stop drinking and at the end of her life they would hang out together and read poetry. The second hubby was the playwright, Arthur Miller whom she adored but who she lost as she became more and more dependent on drugs. Somewhere in the middle of these relationships, Marilyn Monroe also picked up a very charming acquaintance. Who had a lot of connections and a lot of influence. And she showed up for his birthday party in 1962. >> Mr President on this occasion of your birthday. This lovely lady is not only platitudinous but punctual. Mr. President Marilyn Monroe. [APPLAUSE]. A woman about whom it truly may be said. She needs no introduction. Let me just say, here she is. But I'll give her an introduction anyway. Mr. president because in the history of show business perhaps there has been no one female who meant so much, who has done more. Mr. President, the late Marilyn Monroe. >> Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday Mr. President. Happy birthday to you. Mr. President for all the things you've done. The battles batch of one where you deal with US still and our problems by the tongue. We thank so much everybody happy birthday. [MUSIC] >> Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. >> Thank you. I can now retire from politics after having had happy birthday sung to me in such a sweet wholesome way. >> So now you want to ask me, did Marilyn Monroe and John F Kennedy have an affair or both being very time management oriented people. Did they like just have sex with each other at some point? Well, let's take a look at this picture. I mean, I'm just saying, right? I mean, I'm not even just saying, I'm just saying, right? Who needs to say anything, right? Well, all suggestive gesticulating aside, the evidence that john F Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe actually had an affair. Or even had a one night stand is, to my mind pretty shaky. The earliest account of such a twist came from the writer and all purpose con artist Norman Mailer who wrote a biography of her in 1973. Mailer later admitted to a reporter that he made up the affair partly to sell the book because he needed some money probably for one of his divorces. He was married six times and had nine children speaking of affairs. Then came a similar account from an in my opinion, pathological liar named Robert F Slatzer. A gossip reporter who claimed to have been secretly married to Marilyn Monroe. And then wrote a largely fictional account of her life called The Life and curious death of Marilyn Monroe. Which was equally full of crap as far as I can tell. Then there was her quote biographer, unquote, Jeanne Carmen. Who totally made up an account that she had a secret thing with Kennedy at the democratic national convention in Los Angeles in 1960. Which makes total sense except for the part that she was in New York City at the time doing hair and makeup tests for her next picture, the misfits. Marilyn Monroe may have been addicted to various drugs, which ultimately did her in, but she was serious about her career. And despite all her personal impediments, she also wanted a family. It would have made absolutely no sense for her to risk everything for a quick jump in the sandbox with JFK and the consequent fallout. Now, admittedly people aren't rational about affairs, but the evidence for a quickie, it's really kind of spotty. There's a bunch of other supposed stuff, a telegram that suggests she met him at Hyannis port. One of those affluent Massachusetts summer areas for the rich. But the telegram is in fact a love letter to Joe DiMaggio saying her plane is delayed and she'll be late home. Which somehow got interpreted as a spousal lie message. There's speculation that they met at Bing Crosby's house in Palm Springs. A claim that one of JFK's Secret Service agents later said was untrue, never saw her. He said at a press conference and I was there a lot. And another account says they did meet, but nothing happened. And even that happy birthday event, which seems so spontaneous and naughty was in fact a carefully staged moment. Monroe and the band prepped for it the day before. Which leaves us with this photo again, which lots of newspapers cropped. So that it wouldn't show that she was hanging out with the Kennedy brothers in public. That nerdy looking guy on the right is the Kennedy advisor and historian, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Who I studied with at city university graduate center in New York city in the late 1970s. And spent most of his days with Kennedy by the way, he was a lot of fun to study with. But here's the thing, the sight of two hyper sexual, hyper powerful people like John F Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe together. In the same place at the same time was for millions of Americans all the evidence they needed that the two were having an affair. Everybody inside the Washington DC beltway knew that john F Kennedy was to put it very politely. A serial adulterer who slept with no less than mafia boss, Sam Giancana's girlfriend. Everybody inside the Hollywood c Nexus also knew that Monroe operated within half a degree of separation from the Kennedy circle. Close to Kennedy's brother in law, Peter Lawford. Everybody knew that Marilyn Monroe was a brilliant brunette, brilliantly playing a dumb blonde. When she was anything but that, she was a brainy, beautiful woman standing on the frisson of danger and power. Violating the cardinal rule of the 1950s and maybe a rule to this day, a woman can be beautiful and hot or she can be smart, but she can't be both. And if she tries to be both well, she just has to be punished. As is well known a coroner's report concluded that Marilyn Monroe's death was a probable suicide. That suggests to various historians and me that she either straight out killed herself. Or she took an overdose of drugs in the hopes that someone would rescue her at the last minute. But for millions of Americans, this was not an acceptable explanation. The gender politics of the 1950s and early 1960s precluded the possibility that Marilyn Monroe made this decision herself. In the next segment, we'll talk about the big Marilyn Monroe conspiracy theories.
