Marilyn Monroe’s confidante reveals full story behind ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’
Happy Birthday Mr. President #HappyBirthdayMr.President
There was hardly anything to it: a few piano chords and a handful of lyrics delivered in halting, breathy tones. All in all it lasted less than 30 seconds but, five decades on it remains the most famous version of the song ever.
It is 52 years since Marilyn Monroe stole the show at Madison Square Gardens with her version of Happy Birthday. She performed in front of an audience of thousands at the birthday gala held for President John F Kennedy. But she sang only for him; a solitary figure in the spotlight, shimmering with desire.
Now, one of Marilyn’s closest friends, Marie Irvine, a woman who was by her side in the hours leading up to that famous performance, has broken her silence to speak publicly for the first time to top celebrity interviewer and television executive producer, Daphne Barak.
Notorious: Marilyn Monroe’s rendition 52 years ago to the day of Happy Birthday for JFK became one of the most famous performances of all time. Now a confidante has revealed the events leading up to it
Close: Marie Irvine, above, was Marilyn’s make-up artist on the day of the performance. She revealed Marilyn’s nervousness, loneliness and absolute determination to wow JFK and get close to the President that evening
Talented: Marie started working as a make-up artist for Elizabeth Arden and met Marilyn on one of their shoots
During the exclusive television interview, Marie, who was Marilyn’s make-up artist and confidante, has given a rare and poignant insight into the most desired woman in the world.
She has revealed the hours of anxious rehearsal that preceded Marilyn’s performance. She has told of the star’s longing for a child, spoken fondly of a woman desperate for affection and insecure in her own beauty and talent and told how Marilyn risked her movie career to take to the stage that night.
She has rejected the notion that Marilyn took her own life and, 52 years on, she has revealed the last minute panic that threatened to derail that famous May 19 performance.
Marie Irvine’s interview will be screened later this summer as part of a global television special on the last months of the 35-year-old star’s life.
Speaking to Barak, the small town girl from upstate New York recalled how her involvement that night began with a telephone call from Marilyn herself.
She said, ‘She always called me herself, without any secretaries. She said she was coming to perform for President Kennedy’s birthday…Of course I read about the upcoming big birthday, and that Marilyn was supposed to be one of the stars attending, but it was exciting to be a small part of all that.’
‘She always called me herself, without any secretaries. She said she was coming to perform for President Kennedy’s birthday… it was exciting to be a small part of all that’
The day itself didn’t get off to the most auspicious of starts. Marie recalled, ‘I arrived to Marilyn’s home early in the morning as she asked. Nobody opened the door. I kept knocking. After an hour the door opened. Marilyn was standing there so apologetic.
‘She said she arrived on a late flight from LA and fell asleep. She felt so bad for me waiting that she went and squeezed fresh orange juice for me, and then went back to sleep.’
Marie had first met Marilyn as one of photographer Richard Avedon’s favorite make-up artists.
Born and raised in the tiny town of Pawling, New York, Marie had first arrived in the city with the intention of becoming a secretary. But she found the work boring and isolating and soon took a job as a treatment girl at Elizabeth Arden’s ‘Fifth Avenue Red Door Salon.’
She said, ‘I was so young and ignorant I wasn’t even scared.’ She soon became Arden’s confidante and was the last make-up artist trained by the great woman herself.
Her new position brought sudden glamour to her life. She was regularly on the set of shoots for magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, which is how she came to know Richard Avedon who asked for her services again and again.
Late call: Marie (pictured her at work) turned up to find Marilyn still in bed around midday on the day of the show
Insecure: According to documents uncovered by Barak, Monroe paid $5,000 for five tickets for the same show she was singing at – to ensure that she was invited to the after party where she spoke to JFK, above
Perfect: Monroe’s receipt for Marie, above. Marie said that Monroe practiced all day long so that her stage show was flawless
Revelations: Marie Irvine has broken her silence after all this time to top interviewer Daphne Barak (right) for a television special on the 35-year-old star’s life
Marriage and the birth of her daughter meant Marie had to leave her job with Arden but, she remembered, ‘the photographers kept demanding my services.’
It was how her friendship with Marilyn blossomed.
She explained, ‘I received a call from Richard Avedon. He said that he was shooting a special project for Life magazine with Marilyn Monroe. It was called The Look Alike project.
‘Marilyn would be dressed and made up as different legendary actresses. He told me that Marilyn was between movies.
‘She was living in New York with her husband Arthur Miller and she agreed to do the project whenever she had time.’
Recalling the first time she set eyes on Marilyn, Marie said, ‘How can I forget?! We were waiting at Richard’s studio. I was a bit nervous. She came covered with a big coat, so not to be recognised in the elevator.
‘When she entered, she took off her coat. I was taken by her smile – such perfect white teeth. Her hair was so light, her skin was perfect. She just looked at me and giggled.’
Ultimately that project took three months. Over that time Marie came to know Marilyn who was, she recalled, very much in love with her husband Arthur Miller at that time.
Marie said, ‘We could shoot it only when Marilyn felt like it. Sometimes it was in the middle of the night with a short notice. One time it was such a short notice, that I couldn’t find a baby sitter so Marilyn said, “Bring your baby to the set.”
‘I did. Marilyn was playing with her. She posed for photos with her. That is how my daughter has photos with Marilyn Monroe, taken by Richard Avedon. By that time we became friendly. You know, it was only Richard, his helpers, Marilyn and me.
‘So it was like a family atmosphere. She told me how much she wanted a baby. I heard she had lost one. She said she was trying to have a baby.’
At times Marilyn would produce bottles of champagne – sometimes half-drunk and recorked, ‘Can you imagine?’ ’ Marie laughed. ‘We could never figure out how she managed to put the cork back and keep the champagne bubbly.’
It is one of the reasons Marie doesn’t believe Marilyn had a drinking problem. If she did, she asked, ‘Would she have any unfinished bottles at home?’
At the time, Marie recalled, Marilyn and Miller ‘were so in love.’
‘Sometimes he would accompany her to the studio and watch her being made up and photographed. Other times he would show up at the end to pick her up and take her home.’
Intimate: Among a treasure trove of documents relating to Monroe, Barak has discovered this hand-written note next to the date of the fateful show at Madison Square Garden
Marilyn’s home, as Marie remembered it, was a very ‘feminine’ space. She said, ‘After the divorce from Miller she stayed at the same home and didn’t change anything. It was all in grey and light beige colors…like her hair.
‘She had a small white piano and there was a coffee table she had borrowed from a friend in France. It was a mirror and the chairs reflected in it. She wanted to buy this table so much but her friend wouldn’t sell it. So one day she told me, “You know what? I will copy the table.” And so she did.’
On the day of the birthday gala performance Marilyn finally surfaced from her sleep around noon. The day itself was one filled with distress for the star.
Marie revealed, ‘I was sort of putting her make up on for half a day, in between of her being on the phone because she was so upset. She said that (20th Century) Fox was threatening to suspend her from the movie, “Something’s Got to Give,” if she went to New York to perform at the president’s birthday.
‘Putting make up on her was easy because she had this perfect skin. She did use false eye-lashes that I sued to curl and prepare ahead. But she never talked about a sexy look. She was just “it,” – naturally sexy’
‘She kept saying, “I don’t understand why I agreed to perform for John (Kennedy) before I signed the contract with Fox. It was in my contract that I needed to be in New York for John’s birthday.’
Marie said, ‘She was fired (by Fox) afterwards.’
Entries in Marilyn’s meticulously kept diary, seen by Daphne Barak, show just how significant this performance was to the star.
Throughout the document her neat schedule is printed by her secretary. The only entry which merits a hand written note from Marilyn herself is May 19 ‘For Birthday Ball.’
Poignantly she seems to have harbored uncertain hopes that she might spend some time with the President.
In contrast with her otherwise rigid schedule the date of her return flight from New York is left vague: “May 20th? May 21st?” she wrote.
Marilyn’s affair with the President had ignited just three months earlier when the British actor Peter Lawford and his wife, Pat – JFK’s sister – invited her to a New York dinner party being held towards the end of February in the President’s honor.
The pair had met twice before, and their obvious frisson of flirtation had drawn comments from onlookers, but it was at that Manhattan dinner that they spoke in depth for the first time. At the end of the evening the President asked for Marilyn’s number and he called her the very next day suggesting that she join him on a trip to Palm Springs on 24 March.
He made a point of informing her that Jackie would not be present. But, according to Florida Senator George Smathers, a good friend of Kennedy’s, ‘Jack was pretty much done with her after Palm Springs. JFK told me that they were talking and he happened to say something like, “You’re not really First Lady material, anyway, Marilyn.” He said it really stuck in her craw.’
Rejection was never something Marilyn could handle and on the 19 May her desperate need to be wanted was laid bare in the spotlight as she sang to the President, seated in the balcony above the orchestra.
Throughout the day, Marie said, ‘She kept practicing on her little piano, with a coach singing, “Happy Birthday. Mr Presidennnt.” She took a break when Nicky came and did her hair or, when I put more make up on. But the rest of the time she kept practicing. She wanted to be perfect. I heard this song so many times that day.
So in love: Marie first met Marilyn when she was married to Arthur Miller. Marie said: ‘Sometimes he would accompany her to the studio and watch her being made up. Other times he would show up at the end to pick her up and take her home’
‘And then came the dress…designed by Oscar winning designer Jean Louis. It was layers and layers of material. Each one was see-through but all together, you didn’t see anything. It fitted perfectly to her body.’
The dress in nude-coloured mesh and marquisette, embellished with 2,500 rhinestones. It was so form hugging that Marilyn had to be sewn into it.
‘Well Marilyn was a loner. That is why she was so many hours on the phone. She would call people during the night’
Surprisingly, Marie revealed, despite her starring role in the evening, Marilyn bought five tickets – at $1000 a head- to the gala event. It was the only way to guarantee an invite to the private supper afterwards, and an indication of just how insecure the star was in her own charms.
On the night itself she cut a solitary figure – accompanied by only her then father-in-law Arthur Miller’s father.
Marie said, ‘Well Marilyn was a loner. That is why she was so many hours on the phone. She would call people during the night.’
Moments after Marilyn left to head to the venue Marie noticed that she had forgotten the drop earrings that completed her look that night.
She said, ‘Marilyn didn’t like lots of jewelry, but this time the earrings were part of the whole look. So I grabbed a cab and rushed to Madison Square Garden. Go only knows how I convinced the security to let me inside but I made it in.
‘Backstage I saw several stars lining up waiting for their turn to perform. Only Marilyn had a dressing room, no-one else!
‘I remember Harry Belafonte standing outside her dressing room. I walked in. Marilyn was along. She turned, looked at the earrings and smiled. She said, “I knew you would come.”
‘That was the last time I saw her. She died several weeks afterwards.’
And however lonely a figure Marilyn evidently cut in the months across which Marie knew her, the make-up artist cannot believe that she committed suicide.
‘No way,’ she said. ‘I think she might have been confused, disoriented? Maybe she forgot how many pills she took.’
Naturally sexy: Marie recounts: ‘Putting make up on her was easy because she had this perfect skin. She did use false eye-lashes that I sued to curl and prepare ahead. But she never talked about a sexy look’
It is clear that the years have done nothing to diminish Marie’s memory or affection for the star she knew all those years ago and for whom being ‘sexy’ came effortlessly, though so much else in her life caused such anxiety.
She recalled, during the exclusive interview with Daphne Barak: ‘Putting make up on her was easy because she had this perfect skin. She did use false eye-lashes that I ued to curl and prepare ahead. But she never talked about a sexy look.
‘She was just “it” – naturally sexy.’