Free The Secret Letters of Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy by Wendy Leigh Page A

I just can’t help myself. If you knew him, I’m sure you’d understand. At least, I hope you would.
    Please write me soon and forget about that stupid last letter.
    Love,
    Martha
    P.S. Sometimes I just don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. Please forgive me.
    __________________________
     
    * The party, thrown in Marilyn’s honor by Charles Feldman, was a dinner for eighty guests. The guests included Darryl F. Zanuck, Samuel Goldwyn and Jack Warner, Humphrey Bogart, Gable, Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, and Loretta Young and Billy Wilder. On each round table, the centerpiece was a cardboard cut-out of Marilyn in the skirt-blowing scene from The Seven Year Itch.

1095 North Ocean Boulevard
     
    Palm Beach, Florida
    Martha Marshall
    8336 DeLongpre Avenue
    Hollywood, California
    January 8, 1955
     
    Dear Martha,
    Your letter was so interesting and descriptive—thank you. I adore my beautiful new Napoleon scarf and think of you every time I wear it. You were extremely kind and generous to have sent it.
    You will have realized from my last letter that your second letter, imploring me not to read the first, arrived too late. Consequently, I had, indeed, already read the first letter. But you must not reproach yourself for anything you wrote in it. It was sincere, heartwarming, and your secret is utterly safe with me—as I know all mine are with you—so please don’t feel anxious.
    You may think me presumptuous, but despite your reassuring words regarding Mr. G, I am still a trifle concerned that your new romance may, in the long run, have a negative impact on you. It would set my mind at rest, I think, if I knew more about him, his marital situation, and his intentions toward you. What is his profession? Does Mrs. G know of your relationship? Does he have any intention of leaving her and, now that you are free, marrying you? Are you prepared for the fact that, given that she is French, and probably Catholic, her religion will preclude divorce? I hope you will not consider thesequestions intrusive, Marilyn, but you know that I have your best interests at heart.
    On a lighter note, I was ecstatic to learn about your dance with Clark Gable and I am now uncontrollably impatient for you to begin filming with him forthwith! But even I, stuck here on the East Coast, know that things materialize relatively slowly in Hollywood and will thus endeavor to control my impatience!
    As for the benefits of televising our political proceedings—I am not convinced. Ambassador Kennedy’s creed, as he will have told you, is “It doesn’t matter who you are, it only matters who people think you are!” In the same vein, I fear that if the people one day get too close to the politicians who represent them, the entire process will be forever tarnished. I imagine that television will only ultimately benefit those politicians who are able to combine the showmanship of P. T. Barnun with the thespian ability of John Barrymore.
    Yesterday I read in the Palm Beach Daily News that you are now a corporation (along with Milton Greene). Congratulations! It all sounds wonderful and now that you are moving to the East Coast, I hope you will be happier.
    I am afraid I have to close this letter now, because Eunice, Jack’s sister (his favorite, although I can’t imagine why), has just materialized. If she chanced to learn the identity of my secret correspondent, her cackle would echo all the way to L.A. By the way, I am unable to conceive why most people are so enthralled by Jack having so many siblings. Now that I’ve been part of the family for a while, I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that large families are not so great at all. Jack is forever in his late brother Joe’s shadow, Eunice is in her late sister Kathleen’s, and all the other kids veer between being far too close to one another and being so virulently competitive that every single one of them would rather die than lose a cretinous game of touch football to