‘Blonde’: Inside Marilyn Monroe’s Real-Life Romances - Vanity Fair
During her five-year marriage to playwright Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe wrote in her diary, "I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone's wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really."
Whether Monroe's temporary musing or lifelong philosophy, that bleak ethos is imbued into Netflix's Blonde, an unsparing retelling of her story starring Ana de Armas. Directed by Andrew Dominik and based on Joyce Carol Oates's best-selling 2000 novel of the same title, the film peers into Monroe's lifetime of love affairs—both real and imagined. Bobby Cannavale plays "The Ex-Athlete," a likely reference to her second husband, baseball player Joe DiMaggio. Adrien Brody is "The Playwright," or Monroe's third spouse, Miller. And Caspar Phillipson brings "The President," or her rumored paramour John F. Kennedy, to life.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Oates compared Monroe to 19th-century literary character Emma Bovary in matters of the heart. "Both are young women who have a very romantic and probably unrealistic vision of love," she explained. "Marilyn was so insecure, so demanding, that it was hard for anyone to love her or even help her." Ahead, a look at the men who starred in her life, including an answer to the bizarre question the film presents audiences: Was Marilyn Monroe in a throuple?
James Dougherty
Long before Monroe's higher-profile marriages, she was betrothed to James Dougherty when she was 16—a period that Blonde skips entirely. Theirs was a union of convenience, orchestrated by Grace Goddard, Monroe's guardian and a friend of her mother's—who was institutionalized throughout her life. When McKee and her husband announced their move to West Virginia, they offered Monroe (then known as Norma Jeane) the choice between marrying Dougherty, a then 21-year-old son of a former neighbor, or returning to the orphanage where she had spent parts of her youth.
Monroe opted to marry Dougherty in 1942. "My relationship with him was basically insecure from the first night I spent alone with him," she would later write of her first marriage, as reported by Vanity Fair in 2010. The couple seemed to drift apart when Dougherty joined the Merchant Marines and Monroe began modeling. In 1946, she would file for divorce the same year she signed a studio contract at 20th Century Fox. Doughtery would later tell People in 1976, "If I hadn't gone into the Merchant Marines during World War II, she would still be Mrs. Dougherty today." He echoed the sentiment in his 2001 book, To Norma Jeane With Love, Jimmie.
Wait…Was Marilyn Monroe Actually in a Throuple?
One of the film's most controversial elements is the romantic entanglement Monroe enters with Charlie "Cass" Chaplin Jr. (Xavier Samuel) and Edward "Eddy" G. Robinson Jr. (Evan Williams) just as her fame begins to soar. The trio, who brand themselves "the Geminis" and declare that they "can't be divided" are just that when Monroe's talent agent urges her to keep the relationship a secret. But things don't officially end until Monroe becomes pregnant, then gets an abortion.
So…did any of that happen?
The short answer—no. Monroe's throuple was a creation for Oates's Blonde and neither Chaplin nor Robinson figure prominently in any of the icon's biographies, as noted by biographer Sarah Churchwell in 2004's The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe. However, Monroe is believed to have been romantically involved with both men separately at different points in her life. Chaplin made reference to their affair in his 1960 memoir, and biographer Anthony Summers details the relationship in 1985's Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe.
According to a close friend of Chaplin's, Arthur James, Chaplin and Monroe met in 1947. "She would cram into a single bed with him, while brother Sydney slept in his bed in the same room," Summers writes, sourcing James. "The romance ended one day when Charlie came home to find Marilyn in the wrong bunk—Sydney's." Robinson, who was reportedly introduced to Monroe through Chaplin, would begin seeing her during Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. "Any passion to the Robinson affair was soon spent, and turned to friendship," Summers wrote, before quoting James: "We three men [James, Chaplin, and Robinson] were a sort of trio, and Marilyn saw us all occasionally, together or separately, for the rest of her life. They were all depressives, Marilyn, Charlie, and Eddie, and they would hunt each other down when things were bad…. But Charlie and Eddie were suicidal, more so than Marilyn. They couldn't make it on their own, and they couldn't deal with their famous names. Sometimes it was Marilyn who literally kept them alive."
As for Monroe's alleged unplanned pregnancy, James said that it occurred in the winter of 1947 and was a "sad legacy of the affair with Chaplin." However, it has never been confirmed that Monroe had an abortion, or was pregnant at all, as a result of this so-called dalliance.
Joe DiMaggio
Enter New York Yankees baseball star Joe DiMaggio, "The Ex-Athlete" as portrayed by Cannavale in the movie. Six months into his retirement and up and coming in her career, with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire soon to premiere, DiMaggio and Monroe would meet on a date in 1952, which is recreated in Blonde. "I expected a flashy New York sports type, and instead I met this reserved guy who didn't make a pass at me right away," Monroe said of DiMaggio. "He treated me like something special." He saw her as "a beautiful blond showgirl who might double as a devoted mother and homemaker," Donald Spoto wrote in his 1993 Monroe biography, Marilyn Monroe.
That dynamic is reflected in the film. When Monroe voices her desire to flee Hollywood and study acting in New York, DiMaggio offers a disapproving look that suggests he'd prefer she run toward domesticity instead. In turn, Monroe shifts her aspirations. "It seems clear that Joe DiMaggio expected Marilyn to stop working," Monroe biographer Churchwell said in CNN's docuseries, Reframed: Marilyn Monroe. "It's less clear that Marilyn had any intention of fulfilling that expectation." Lopsided beliefs would reportedly become a central tension for the couple after marrying in 1954. In the posthumously published memoir, My Story, Monroe wrote that she and DiMaggio both "knew it wouldn't be an easy marriage."
They would divorce nine months after tying the knot with Monroe citing "mental cruelty" as her reason for filing. She later cited The Seven Year Itch's infamous flowing-skirt scene, "exposing my legs and thighs, even my crotch" as "the last straw." In Blonde, DiMaggio beats Monroe with a belt when she returns home from filming that very scene. Whether or not that event happened behind closed doors hasn't been confirmed, though DiMaggio's son has alleged his father was physically abusive toward Monroe. Three weeks later, their divorce was announced. "If domestic violence played a part in the ending of her marriage, that was not something that Marilyn Monroe had the option of saying [at the time]," Churchwell noted.
In the split's aftermath, DiMaggio and his confederates allegedly kicked in the door to a home where DiMaggio wrongfully believed Monroe was inside with another man, an event referred to as the "Wrong-Door Raid" in Confidential magazine. Nevertheless, the exes would remain in contact until her 1962 death—and even attended the premiere of The Seven Year Itch together, in the midst of their separation. When Monroe was committed to Payne Whitney's psychiatric ward in 1961, DiMaggio discharged her. After her overdose on barbiturates and her death, he "took charge" of the funeral and sent roses to her grave three times a week for two decades, according to The New York Times. In a letter found near Monroe's bed after her death, she wrote, "Dear Joe, If I can only succeed in making you happy—I will have succeeded in the bigest [sic] and most difficult thing there is—that is to make one person completely happy."
Arthur Miller
Monroe's dream of studying at New York City's Actors Studio would soon come true—and bring her into the arms of her third husband, Arthur Miller ("The Playwright," played by Brody). Blonde shows the pair meeting in 1955 when she performs one of his plays and Miller begins referring to Monroe as "my Magda" after his first love. In real life, they met on the set of 1951's As Young As You Feel through mutual friend Elia Kazan, whom Monroe is rumored to have been dating. Miller, the esteemed playwright behind Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, was married to his first wife, Mary Slattery, at the time. Monroe and Miller reconnected in 1956 and were wed in June of that year. She converted to Judaism and was given away by her acting teacher, Lee Strasberg. "This is the first time I've been really in love," Monroe declared at the time.
Miller pronounced his intentions to marry Monroe—reportedly before asking her himself—while being investigated for suspected Communist activity by the United States House Committee on Un-American Activities. Given her proximity to Miller, Monroe was herself categorized a suspected communist for a period. This isn't the only challenge they would face during their marriage. Monroe suffered multiple miscarriages and was hurt after finding Miller's diary entries in which he claimed to be "disappointed" in her and even sometimes embarrassed by her in front of his friends—all of which is depicted in Blonde.
The end of their relationship would coincide with production on 1961's The Misfits, a film in which Miller writes Monroe as the "wounded young woman, who falls in love with a much older man," drawing parallels to their real life. Miller would meet and fall in love with photographic archivist Inge Morath during filming. "I still feel hopeless," Monroe wrote in her diary around that time. "I think I hate it here because there is no love here anymore…" They would divorce ahead of the movie's 1961 premiere, just 19 months before Monroe's death.
"They were not matched," Rebecca Miller, the eldest of Arthur and Inge's children, told The New York Times in 2018. "They tried and they just bungled it. She was the rose and he was definitely the gardener. But he's more of a rose and he needed a gardener. People can only play the other part for so long." However, Miller himself would insist in 1987 that "the inappropriateness of our being together was to me the sign that it was appropriate." Monroe is thought to have inspired two of Miller's plays—1964's After the Fall, in which his protagonist is married to a famous actress who kills herself, and 2004's Finishing the Picture—which was inspired by the making of The Misfits. Oates recently told The New Yorker that she "felt it was a betrayal of intimacy" for Miller to write about Monroe, despite her wishes.
John F. Kennedy
The nature and extent of Monroe's relationship with the United States' 35th president is still largely unknown. But in Blonde, it serves as a backdrop for the film's most graphic scene. Upon landing in New York to visit JFK, Monroe is physically dragged to see him by a pair of Secret Service agents. "It isn't sexual, between the president and me. It has very little to do with sex," she says en route in the film. "It's a meeting of our souls." When Monroe finally reaches JFK stand-in "The President," (Phillipson) he shows her little regard, remaining on the phone as he commands her to pleasure him, the cartoonishly phallic Friendship 7 rocket launch playing on a nearby TV. Monroe is then shown giving Kennedy a blow job in extreme close-up before he presumably rapes her.
In reality, it has never been proven that Kennedy and Monroe engaged in a sexual relationship, let alone an abusive one. Ralph Roberts, her personal masseur, has said that the pair slept together at Bing Crosby's home in March 1962. Oates told The New Yorker, "She pinned a lot of hope on John Kennedy, which was such a fairy-tale idea." Monroe biographer James Spada said to People that "it was pretty clear that Marilyn had had sexual relations with both Bobby and Jack [Kennedy]." Some—including DiMaggio—have presented their own theories that the powerful family was involved in Monroe's premature death.
What can be proved is that Monroe sang a notorious rendition of "Happy Birthday" to the president at Madison Square Garden in May 1962. She wore a beaded, skin-tight gold dress that was sold to Ripley's Believe It or Not! for $4.8 million in 2016 and controversially worn by Kim Kardashian at the 2022 Met Gala.
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"The standard take on the aftermath is that JFK was publicly embarrassed and that he dumped her. She was heartbroken, calling him every five seconds and falling apart," Churchwell said on CNN's Reframed. "But her friends at the time said that she absolutely wasn't—that she wasn't in love with him and that she wasn't forlorn. But we insist on seeing Marilyn as a passive victim of the men around her. Nobody can seem to imagine a different version of this story—that she was a 36-year-old woman who clearly had a very pragmatic attitude to sex and that she could be getting a kick out of sleeping with the most powerful man in the world."
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