Eunice Murray
Encyclopedia
Eunice R. Murray is notable for being Marilyn Monroe
's housekeeper
who was present in the actress' house at the time she died there. Eunice Murray has been accused by many tabloid authors and LAPD
Sergeant Jack Clemmons
of being involved in a cover-up of Monroe's death. No one has proven such innuendo or explained what motive she might have had for conspiring with police officials, U.S. government officials or criminals.
and raised in Urbana
, Ohio
, as a Swedenborgian
. She was educated at the Swedenborgian Urbana School and Academy until she dropped out at age sixteen in 1918. In 1921, she married John Murray and went on to have three children with him: Jaquelyn, Patricia and Marilyn. By the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Murrays were living in Santa Monica
in a Monterrey
-style five-bedroom house, which, after she and her husband separated, Eunice sold to psychiatrist
Ralph Greenson
in 1946. Greenson and other psychiatrists subsequently hired Eunice Murray as a support worker for some of their most prestigious client
s. Murray never identified any psychiatrists for whom she may have worked besides Greenson, nor is it known which prestigious people, if any, she may have helped besides Monroe.
in which Monroe was to spend the last months of her life. After Monroe moved into it, Murray began spending many nights there, although she kept an apartment in nearby Santa Monica
. Murray began (according to the testimonies of Monroe's friends) reporting to Greenson on the actress' daily activities. Murray accompanied Monroe on her publicized visit to Mexico
in February 1962, even introducing the star to some openly communist people south of the border whose association with Monroe caused the FBI to investigate the actress as a possible risk to national security. In addition to Churchill Murray, the group of displaced communists with whom Monroe interacted included Frederick Vanderbilt Field
.
Although Monroe was photographed with the Mexican filmmaker Jose Bolanos at the Golden Globe Awards shortly after she returned to Los Angeles from Mexico, author Anthony Summers claimed the group of American communists disliked Bolanos. Eunice Murray and others described Bolanos as a playboy who sought publicity for self-aggrandizement, not for a political cause.
Part of tabloid speculation was that in an attempt to assert her independence from Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn Monroe fired Eunice Murray in May 1962 but shortly afterward rehired her. However, in August 1962 when Murray requested a month's holiday, Monroe granted it, paid her, and one writer added that she asked her not to return. After spending Friday night, August 3, 1962 at her apartment, Murray arrived at Monroe's house the next day for her last contracted day of work, just hours before Monroe died. Murray said consistently to police and reporters in 1962 and to author Robert Slatzer in 1973 that she and Monroe, the only people in the house, retired to their separate rooms late Saturday evening with Monroe aware that she would be spending the night. When Murray awoke at approximately 3:00 a.m. and knocked on Monroe's door, the actress did not answer. In a 1975 memoir, Murray changed her story slightly, recalling that the sight of a telephone extension cord running under Monroe's bedroom door caused her, at approximately 3:00 a.m., to use another extension to call Dr. Greenson. (In 1962 she had told police that she had contacted Greenson after becoming alarmed by Monroe's bedroom light shining through the space under the door.) In 1985 Murray made major changes to her story by claiming that Robert Kennedy was in the house at some point on Saturday and that "the doctor" arrived to help Monroe while she was unconscious but alive. Murray never said, however, that Monroe might have wanted her out of the house.
Murray never wavered in her claim that during her telephone conversation with Greenson, he instructed her to go outside and look through Monroe's bedroom window. Murray then supposedly (not verified) saw the actress lying "in an unnatural position," reported this to Greenson and he arrived at the house, broke the window and entered Monroe's room aware that she was dead.
Many days later, when Murray attempted to cash her last paycheck from Monroe, it was declined and marked "deceased." This check, one of the last that Monroe ever wrote on her Roxbury Drive Branch account at City National Bank in Beverly Hills, is today on display at the Hollywood Heritage Museum
.
After Monroe's death, Murray lived quietly in various locations in West Los Angeles. From the mid 1960s until the mid 1970s, Murray rented a guest cottage
in Santa Monica
from relatives of the actor, Richard Cromwell
, who had died in 1960. While there in 1973, she was interviewed by Robert Slatzer. In a photograph of them together that is published in his 1974 book The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe, Murray appears to be laughing.
During her years in the guest cottage she pursued her many interests, including sewing
, macrame
, horticulture
, astrology
, and tutoring. In the late 1970s she married Franklin Blackmer, a Swedenborgian minister, and moved east with him to Bath, Maine
. After his death, she returned to her family in Southern California
, living close to Monroe's former home in Brentwood. A crew from the BBC
videotaped Murray talking inside "a rundown apartment in Santa Monica" in 1985, according to Anthony Summers
, who was interviewing her. Later, Murray lived with her daughter in Tucson, Arizona
, until her death in July 1993.
After Slatzer found her and talked with her, Eunice Murray published a 1975 memoir, Marilyn: The Last Months (co-authored by Rose Shade) and later talked with other biographers and journalists, including Anthony Scaduto, about Monroe. It was not until she met Anthony Summers, however, that she admitted that Marilyn Monroe
had known the Kennedys or that "the doctor" had been in the star's house while she was unconscious but alive. Donald Wolfe, an author who began work on The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe shortly before Murray's death, theorized that everything in her story was a lie, including her retiring for bed late Saturday evening (with Monroe's approval) and the 3:00 a.m. awakening and phone call to Dr. Greenson. Wolfe based the theory on an interview he conducted with a man who had been Murray's son-in-law in 1962 and had participated in the remodeling of Monroe's home that went on for months.
This man, Norman Jeffries, was working on Monroe's kitchen floor on Saturday morning, August 4, 1962 when Monroe walked over to him looking as if she were ill or suffering from insomnia
, according to a story he told Anthony Summers
in the early 1980s. (Monroe's third husband Arthur Miller
said about her after her death, "Sleep was her demon.") In 1992, at which time Jeffries was using a wheelchair
in his Arkansas
home, he gave Donald Wolfe many more details about August 4, continuing the story with what he recalled about the afternoon and evening. He died in 1993 within a year of his conversation with Wolfe. Jeffries had divorced Murray's daughter many years earlier and remarried another woman. Eunice Murray died in 1994 before any writer could confront her with Jeffries' allegations of a murder and cover-up. Jeffries claimed Murray was innocent of murder but she participated in the cover-up by talking openly to police officials, newspaper reporters and book writers while Jeffries remained silent until Anthony Summers located him.
Donald Spoto
, working on a Monroe biography in the early 1990s and Rachael Bell, making a television documentary years later, both speculated without proof that Murray was covering up an inadvertently fatal dose of a sedative that a well-meaning person had given a despondent Monroe by enema
. Although Spoto and Bell did not investigate the story together, they agree that Murray had no connection to U.S. government officials or criminals. Barbara Leaming, whose Monroe biography came out within weeks of Wolfe's, does not believe that Eunice Murray played a sinister part in the events surrounding Monroe's death.
Eunice Murray initially repeated the same story she had told Robert Slatzer in 1973 and the police in 1962. She apparently noticed the camera crew starting to pack up and then said, "Why, at my age, do I still have to cover this thing?" Unknown to her, the microphone was still on. Murray went on to admit that Monroe had known the Kennedys. She volunteered that on the night of the actress' death, "When the doctor arrived, she was not dead." Murray died on March 5, 1994 without revealing further details.
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
's housekeeper
Maid
A maidservant or in current usage housemaid or maid is a female employed in domestic service.-Description:Once part of an elaborate hierarchy in great houses, today a single maid may be the only domestic worker that upper and even middle-income households can afford, as was historically the case...
who was present in the actress' house at the time she died there. Eunice Murray has been accused by many tabloid authors and LAPD
Los Angeles Police Department
The Los Angeles Police Department is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. With just under 10,000 officers and more than 3,000 civilian staff, covering an area of with a population of more than 4.1 million people, it is the third largest local law enforcement agency in...
Sergeant Jack Clemmons
Jack Clemmons
Jack Clemmons was a police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department. He was the first to arrive at the death scene of Marilyn Monroe on 5 August 1962. He was with the LAPD for 20 years, from 1945 to 1965. Clemmons thought that Monroe was murdered and that her room was a staged death scene...
of being involved in a cover-up of Monroe's death. No one has proven such innuendo or explained what motive she might have had for conspiring with police officials, U.S. government officials or criminals.
Early life
She was born Eunice Joerndt in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and raised in Urbana
Urbana, Ohio
Urbana is a city in and the county seat of Champaign County, Ohio, United States, west of Columbus. Urbana was laid out in 1805, and for a time in 1812 was the headquarters of the Northwestern army. Urbana was named after the town of Urbanna, Virginia. It is the burial-place of the Indian fighter...
, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, as a Swedenborgian
Swedenborgian
A Swedenborgian is the doctrines, beliefs, and practices of the Church of the New Jerusalem, and is an adjective describing a person or an organization that understands the Bible through the theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg....
. She was educated at the Swedenborgian Urbana School and Academy until she dropped out at age sixteen in 1918. In 1921, she married John Murray and went on to have three children with him: Jaquelyn, Patricia and Marilyn. By the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Murrays were living in Santa Monica
Santa Mônica
Santa Mônica is a town and municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil.-References:...
in a Monterrey
Monterrey
Monterrey , is the capital city of the northeastern state of Nuevo León in the country of Mexico. The city is anchor to the third-largest metropolitan area in Mexico and is ranked as the ninth-largest city in the nation. Monterrey serves as a commercial center in the north of the country and is the...
-style five-bedroom house, which, after she and her husband separated, Eunice sold to psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...
Ralph Greenson
Ralph Greenson
Dr. Ralph Greenson was a prominent American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. While working with Mrs Eunice Murray, Greenson is famous for being Marilyn Monroe's psychiatrist. and the basis for Leo Rosten's 1963 novel, Captain Newman, M.D...
in 1946. Greenson and other psychiatrists subsequently hired Eunice Murray as a support worker for some of their most prestigious client
Customer
A customer is usually used to refer to a current or potential buyer or user of the products of an individual or organization, called the supplier, seller, or vendor. This is typically through purchasing or renting goods or services...
s. Murray never identified any psychiatrists for whom she may have worked besides Greenson, nor is it known which prestigious people, if any, she may have helped besides Monroe.
Her husband and brother-in-law
It is not clear what Eunice's husband John Murray did for a living or when he died, although it is known he had a brother named Churchill Murray who joined, sometime before 1962, a group of openly communist Americans who relocated to Mexico. Churchill Murray met Monroe and Eunice Murray during the two women's visit there in 1962, but it is not known whether John Murray was alive at that time, whether he was still married to Eunice or whether his career had any connection to Eunice's interest in introducing Monroe to people who did not work in the movie industry.Eunice Murray and Marilyn Monroe
In 1961, it was speculated Dr. Ralph Greenson advised Marilyn Monroe, then living in an apartment on North Doheny Drive in Beverly Hills, to recruit Murray as a housekeeper/companion. When Monroe decided to buy a house, it was believed by some that Murray located the small dwelling, which had no closets, on Fifth Helena Drive in BrentwoodBrentwood, Los Angeles, California
Brentwood is a district in western Los Angeles, California, United States. The district is located at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains, bounded by the San Diego Freeway on the east, Wilshire Boulevard on the south, the Santa Monica city limits on the southwest, the border of Topanga State...
in which Monroe was to spend the last months of her life. After Monroe moved into it, Murray began spending many nights there, although she kept an apartment in nearby Santa Monica
Santa Mônica
Santa Mônica is a town and municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil.-References:...
. Murray began (according to the testimonies of Monroe's friends) reporting to Greenson on the actress' daily activities. Murray accompanied Monroe on her publicized visit to Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
in February 1962, even introducing the star to some openly communist people south of the border whose association with Monroe caused the FBI to investigate the actress as a possible risk to national security. In addition to Churchill Murray, the group of displaced communists with whom Monroe interacted included Frederick Vanderbilt Field
Frederick Vanderbilt Field
Frederick Vanderbilt Field was an American leftist political activist and a great-great-grandson of railroad tycoon Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt, disinherited by his wealthy relatives for his radical political views. Field became a specialist on Asia and was a prime staff member and supporter...
.
Although Monroe was photographed with the Mexican filmmaker Jose Bolanos at the Golden Globe Awards shortly after she returned to Los Angeles from Mexico, author Anthony Summers claimed the group of American communists disliked Bolanos. Eunice Murray and others described Bolanos as a playboy who sought publicity for self-aggrandizement, not for a political cause.
Part of tabloid speculation was that in an attempt to assert her independence from Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn Monroe fired Eunice Murray in May 1962 but shortly afterward rehired her. However, in August 1962 when Murray requested a month's holiday, Monroe granted it, paid her, and one writer added that she asked her not to return. After spending Friday night, August 3, 1962 at her apartment, Murray arrived at Monroe's house the next day for her last contracted day of work, just hours before Monroe died. Murray said consistently to police and reporters in 1962 and to author Robert Slatzer in 1973 that she and Monroe, the only people in the house, retired to their separate rooms late Saturday evening with Monroe aware that she would be spending the night. When Murray awoke at approximately 3:00 a.m. and knocked on Monroe's door, the actress did not answer. In a 1975 memoir, Murray changed her story slightly, recalling that the sight of a telephone extension cord running under Monroe's bedroom door caused her, at approximately 3:00 a.m., to use another extension to call Dr. Greenson. (In 1962 she had told police that she had contacted Greenson after becoming alarmed by Monroe's bedroom light shining through the space under the door.) In 1985 Murray made major changes to her story by claiming that Robert Kennedy was in the house at some point on Saturday and that "the doctor" arrived to help Monroe while she was unconscious but alive. Murray never said, however, that Monroe might have wanted her out of the house.
Murray never wavered in her claim that during her telephone conversation with Greenson, he instructed her to go outside and look through Monroe's bedroom window. Murray then supposedly (not verified) saw the actress lying "in an unnatural position," reported this to Greenson and he arrived at the house, broke the window and entered Monroe's room aware that she was dead.
Many days later, when Murray attempted to cash her last paycheck from Monroe, it was declined and marked "deceased." This check, one of the last that Monroe ever wrote on her Roxbury Drive Branch account at City National Bank in Beverly Hills, is today on display at the Hollywood Heritage Museum
Hollywood Heritage Museum
The Hollywood Heritage Museum, also known as the "Hollywood Studio Museum," is located on Highland Ave. in Hollywood, California, USA.The museum is opposite the Hollywood Bowl and is housed in the restored Lasky-DeMille Barn, which was acquired in February 1983 by Hollywood Heritage, Inc., and...
.
After Monroe's death, Murray lived quietly in various locations in West Los Angeles. From the mid 1960s until the mid 1970s, Murray rented a guest cottage
Cottage
__toc__In modern usage, a cottage is usually a modest, often cozy dwelling, typically in a rural or semi-rural location. However there are cottage-style dwellings in cities, and in places such as Canada the term exists with no connotations of size at all...
in Santa Monica
Santa Mônica
Santa Mônica is a town and municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil.-References:...
from relatives of the actor, Richard Cromwell
Richard Cromwell (actor)
Richard Cromwell, born LeRoy Melvin Radabaugh , was an American actor. His family and friends called him Roy, though he was also professionally known and signed autographs as Dick Cromwell. Cromwell's career was at its pinnacle with his work in Jezebel with Bette Davis and Henry Fonda and again...
, who had died in 1960. While there in 1973, she was interviewed by Robert Slatzer. In a photograph of them together that is published in his 1974 book The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe, Murray appears to be laughing.
During her years in the guest cottage she pursued her many interests, including sewing
Sewing
Sewing is the craft of fastening or attaching objects using stitches made with a needle and thread. Sewing is one of the oldest of the textile arts, arising in the Paleolithic era...
, macrame
Macramé
Macramé or macrame is a form of textile-making using knotting rather than weaving or knitting. Its primary knots are the square knot and forms of "hitching": full hitch and double half hitches...
, horticulture
Horticulture
Horticulture is the industry and science of plant cultivation including the process of preparing soil for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings. Horticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of plant propagation and cultivation, crop production, plant breeding and genetic...
, astrology
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
, and tutoring. In the late 1970s she married Franklin Blackmer, a Swedenborgian minister, and moved east with him to Bath, Maine
Bath, Maine
Bath is a city in Sagadahoc County, Maine, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 9,266. It is the county seat of Sagadahoc County. Located on the Kennebec River, Bath is a port of entry with a good harbor. The city is popular with tourists, many drawn by its...
. After his death, she returned to her family in Southern California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, living close to Monroe's former home in Brentwood. A crew from the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
videotaped Murray talking inside "a rundown apartment in Santa Monica" in 1985, according to Anthony Summers
Anthony Summers
Anthony Bruce Summers is the non-fiction author of seven best-selling investigative books. He is an Irish citizen, and has been working for some twenty years with Robbyn Swan, who is now his co-author and fifth wife...
, who was interviewing her. Later, Murray lived with her daughter in Tucson, Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
, until her death in July 1993.
After Slatzer found her and talked with her, Eunice Murray published a 1975 memoir, Marilyn: The Last Months (co-authored by Rose Shade) and later talked with other biographers and journalists, including Anthony Scaduto, about Monroe. It was not until she met Anthony Summers, however, that she admitted that Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
had known the Kennedys or that "the doctor" had been in the star's house while she was unconscious but alive. Donald Wolfe, an author who began work on The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe shortly before Murray's death, theorized that everything in her story was a lie, including her retiring for bed late Saturday evening (with Monroe's approval) and the 3:00 a.m. awakening and phone call to Dr. Greenson. Wolfe based the theory on an interview he conducted with a man who had been Murray's son-in-law in 1962 and had participated in the remodeling of Monroe's home that went on for months.
This man, Norman Jeffries, was working on Monroe's kitchen floor on Saturday morning, August 4, 1962 when Monroe walked over to him looking as if she were ill or suffering from insomnia
Insomnia
Insomnia is most often defined by an individual's report of sleeping difficulties. While the term is sometimes used in sleep literature to describe a disorder demonstrated by polysomnographic evidence of disturbed sleep, insomnia is often defined as a positive response to either of two questions:...
, according to a story he told Anthony Summers
Anthony Summers
Anthony Bruce Summers is the non-fiction author of seven best-selling investigative books. He is an Irish citizen, and has been working for some twenty years with Robbyn Swan, who is now his co-author and fifth wife...
in the early 1980s. (Monroe's third husband Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...
said about her after her death, "Sleep was her demon.") In 1992, at which time Jeffries was using a wheelchair
Wheelchair
A wheelchair is a chair with wheels, designed to be a replacement for walking. The device comes in variations where it is propelled by motors or by the seated occupant turning the rear wheels by hand. Often there are handles behind the seat for someone else to do the pushing...
in his Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
home, he gave Donald Wolfe many more details about August 4, continuing the story with what he recalled about the afternoon and evening. He died in 1993 within a year of his conversation with Wolfe. Jeffries had divorced Murray's daughter many years earlier and remarried another woman. Eunice Murray died in 1994 before any writer could confront her with Jeffries' allegations of a murder and cover-up. Jeffries claimed Murray was innocent of murder but she participated in the cover-up by talking openly to police officials, newspaper reporters and book writers while Jeffries remained silent until Anthony Summers located him.
Donald Spoto
Donald Spoto
Donald Spoto is an American celebrity biographer, Catholic theologian, and former monk. He is best known for his best-selling biographies of film and theatre celebrities such as Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, Ingrid Bergman, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly,...
, working on a Monroe biography in the early 1990s and Rachael Bell, making a television documentary years later, both speculated without proof that Murray was covering up an inadvertently fatal dose of a sedative that a well-meaning person had given a despondent Monroe by enema
Enema
An enema is the procedure of introducing liquids into the rectum and colon via the anus. The increasing volume of the liquid causes rapid expansion of the lower intestinal tract, often resulting in very uncomfortable bloating, cramping, powerful peristalsis, a feeling of extreme urgency and...
. Although Spoto and Bell did not investigate the story together, they agree that Murray had no connection to U.S. government officials or criminals. Barbara Leaming, whose Monroe biography came out within weeks of Wolfe's, does not believe that Eunice Murray played a sinister part in the events surrounding Monroe's death.
Eunice Murray initially repeated the same story she had told Robert Slatzer in 1973 and the police in 1962. She apparently noticed the camera crew starting to pack up and then said, "Why, at my age, do I still have to cover this thing?" Unknown to her, the microphone was still on. Murray went on to admit that Monroe had known the Kennedys. She volunteered that on the night of the actress' death, "When the doctor arrived, she was not dead." Murray died on March 5, 1994 without revealing further details.
Further reading
- Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, by Donald Spoto (1993)
- Marilyn: The Last Months, by Eunice Murray, with Rose Shade (published in paperback by Pyramid Books, 1975)
- The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe, by Robert Slatzer, published in hardback by Pinnacle Books, Inc., 1974. Includes a 1973 photograph of Murray with Slatzer.