Netflix’s documentary The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes explores conspiracy theories and the murky circumstances that surround Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe’s 1962 death decades on.
The new film uses archival material belonging to investigative journalist Anthony Summers which he collated for his 1985 Monroe biography, Goddess, including previously unheard recordings of those who knew the legendary star well.
Summers explains how he was commissioned by a British newspaper editor to examine Monroe’s story in 1982, when the Los Angeles County District Attorney reopened the investigation into her death.
Delving into Marilyn’s fraught childhood, which was spent in and out of foster homes, and depicting a dark and sleazy Hollywood which exploited its female talent, the film also details her high-profile marriages and alleged relationships with Bobby and John F Kennedy.
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According to Summers’ interviews with federal operatives, intelligence agencies were also apparently concerned that Monroe had forged associations with communist expatriates connected to Cuba’s Fidel Castro to whom she might be divulging government secrets.
The documentary also features recordings of Marilyn throughout too, in which her love for cinema from a young age became clear, as she says Jean Harlow was her inspiration.
Contributing voices include that of her psychiatrist Ralph Greenson and his family, actress Jane Russell, filmmaker John Huston and director Billy Wilder.
Here are the theories surrounding Monroe’s death that the film explores…
Marilyn Monroe died by overdose
In August 1962, an official coroner ruled Marilyn Monroe’s untimely death at 36 as an overdose and possible suicide. Monroe was found unresponsive in her bed next to a bottle of sleeping pills and a telephone off the hook beside her at her 12305 Fifth Helena Drive home in Los Angeles.
After the case was reopened in 1982, the original finding remained unchanged, with a district attorney stating that Monroe either took her own life or died accidentally. The case was closed.
Journalist Summers believes that Monroe either died by suicide or from an accidental overdose but suggests that it’s possible FBI investigators cleared her home to remove anything that would indicate Monroe’s alleged involvement with Bobby and John F Kennedy.
Possible Kennedy brothers connection?
There are inconsistencies with the time, location and who exactly was at the scene of Monroe’s death.
According to surveillance expert Reed Wilson, Bobby Kennedy called Monroe on the night of her death, who claimed that the actress told him to leave her alone.
Marilyn Monroe’s housekeeper Eunice Murray claimed to have found Monroe’s body around 3am, but the widow of Monroe’s publicist Arthur Jacobs Natalie Jacobs says her husband was called with the news she had died around 11pm.
The documentary also alleges that an FBI investigator arrived at her home shortly after her death to clear her house and remove anything that could compromise the Kennedy brothers.
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Other inconsistencies around time are detailed, with senior FBI agent Jim Doyle telling Summers that the federal officials arrived long before police came to her home at the reported time of 4:25am.
“There were some [Bureau] people there that normally wouldn’t have been there,” Doyle says. “They came on the scene immediately. Before anybody even realised what happened. It had to be instructions from someone high up, higher than [then-Director of the FBI J Edgar Hoover]. The [attorney] general or the president.”
Even stranger are claims from paramedics called to the scene that Monroe was comatose but still alive when they found her, and that they transported her by ambulance to an emergency room in Santa Monica.
“No, she wasn’t [dead at home],” says ambulance company owner Walter Schaefer.
One of Schaefer’s former drivers, Ken Hunter, had been dispatched to Monroe’s home on the night of her death, with Schaefer claiming that Monroe was alive when he arrived.
Journalist and writer John Sherlock also said that Monroe’s psychiatrist Greenson told him that she died en route to the hospital, and was returned back to her home.
“She died in the ambulance,” Sherlock alleges in the documentary. “Then they took her back to the house. [Greenson] told me he was in the ambulance.”
Law enforcement informant Harry Hall suggests that Monroe’s death became a “hush hush” matter.
“The man that was really involved was the boss [Bobby]. He was the attorney general of the United States, so he’d have the FBI do anything,” Hall claims.
“People that knew, knew that they didn’t want Bobby Kennedy’s name brought into this, because his brother was the president. They had done everything to hush this up.”
Marilyn Monroe was murdered?
Despite all the murky circumstances surrounding her death, journalist Summers believes Monroe died of suicide or an accidental overdose.
“I did not find out anything that convinced me that she had been deliberately killed,” he concludes.
There’s still so much that is not known about Monroe’s last moments, with a haunting audio recording of Monroe ending the documentary: “The true things rarely get into circulation. It’s usually the false things.”
The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes is streaming now on Netflix.
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