Hollywood icon reveals she saw filthy bedroom encounter between Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe on JFK’s birthday
Both JFK and Bobby Kennedy are known to have had concurrent affairs with Marilyn Monroe.
But in her new book, veteran actress Shirley MacLaine has revealed the two brothers were even closer than previously thought, leading the blonde beauty into the same bed one after the other, on the same night.
The night in question happened to be Jack’s birthday – after Monroe serenaded him with her infamous rendition of ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President’.
In her recently released coffee table book, The wall of lifeMacLaine, 90, writes: ‘In 1962, at John F Kennedy’s famous 45th birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden, Jimmy Durante and I performed for the President and the audience, but what most people remember is Marilyn Monroe saying “Happy Birthday ‘ sang to him.
‘Afterwards there was a private party at Arthur Krim’s home…’
“Jack Kennedy had just walked out of the bedroom… and Bobby Kennedy had just walked in. Marilyn was in the bedroom…’
Arthur Krim was financial chairman of the Democratic Party at the time.
In the caption of a black-and-white photo, which shows both her and JFK in the background, she writes, “Jack Kennedy had just walked out of the bedroom behind me, and Bobby Kennedy had just walked in.”
“Marilyn was in the bedroom…”
MacLaine also suggests that this was not the first time the “revolving door” into Marilyn’s bedroom had occurred.
In a later photo, from 1984, she writes, “Here I am telling Teddy Kennedy that story… and he’s laughing about how the boys got away with it all the time.”
In her best-selling book Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed, Dailymail.com columnist Maureen Callahan described the crossover relationships between JFK and his brother as an “incestuous sexual competition” between the two.
She even reveals that just 30 minutes before Marilyn appeared on stage to sing “Happy Birthday,” she had sex with Bobby in her dressing room.
“They spent 15 minutes alone together,” Callahan wrote.
The liaison made her late to the stage, where she arrived “drunk and red from the transgressive sex she had just had with Bobby, her dress so tight she could barely walk.”
Both John (right) and Robert (left) chat with Marilyn on the night of her infamous performance
Marilyn had simultaneous affairs with both Kennedy brothers
“Jack Kennedy had just walked out of the bedroom behind me, and Bobby Kennedy had just walked in,” MacLaine wrote. ‘Marilyn was in the bedroom’
Jackie Kennedy was “furious” after the performance, leaving JFK “slack-jawed” in the audience. And so, Callahan writes, Jackie gave her husband an “ultimatum,” telling him he could no longer see Marilyn or “she would divorce him—take the kids and cost him a second term.”
JFK agreed and never slept with Marilyn again.
However, according to MacLaine, he made that promise after a final meeting in the bedroom before handing the tortured actress over to his brother.
According to Callahan, the affair with Bobby continued – with Bobby even visiting her the night she died at her LA home, on August 4, 1962.
“The FBI and CIA, Bobby and Jack discovered, had tapped Marilyn’s home and phone line without her knowledge…Bobby did not leave without the tape recordings,” she writes.
“Where the hell is it?” Bobby asked. But Marilyn had “no idea” what he was talking about.
Bobby left empty-handed and Marilyn’s body was found early the next morning by her housekeeper. “She was lying face down on the bed, naked, with her phone still in her hand,” Callahan wrote.
Marilyn’s revelation isn’t the only surprising tidbit to emerge from MacLaine’s book of Hollywood memories
She also remembers the moment when she managed to escape Donald Trump after a ‘scary’ conversation with the former president.
“Probably in the 1980s I had contact with Donald Trump,” she writes. ‘I was at a party and when he came in he saw me and straightened up.
‘He started pulling at his tie, and I immediately saw that in his mind he started to take off my clothes… and his.
MacLaine’s on-screen chemistry with Jack Nicholson was electric, but she said he would make her laugh too much to be her real lover
John, Robert and Teddy Kennedy. Kennedy later jokes that the boys “always got away with that”
‘It was frightening how clear he was. He even found a way to keep me from leaving, but I had to get out of there.”
The Oscar-winning actress also reveals why she and her Terms of Endearment leading man Jack Nicholson never got together, despite their on-screen chemistry
“He made me laugh all the time. He was one of my favorite people.’ she says.
“I don’t think he would have been my type to have an affair with anyway.” I would laugh too much.’
And she reveals that – in a romantic history that included affairs with Robert Mitchum, Danny Kaye and Yves Montand – there was one iconic actor who remained immune to her charms.
Under a photo of herself with Morgan Freeman, she writes tantalizingly, “I proposed to him and he turned me down.”
Shirley MacLaine had an open marriage for 28 years to producer and alleged spy Steve Parker, whom she described as the love of her life.
The wall of life: Images and stories from this beautiful life by Shirley MacLaine is published by Crown