This Sunday marks the anniversary of the Aug. 5, 1962, death of Marilyn Monroe, after a barbiturate overdose in her home in the exclusive Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Her sudden death at just 36 years old shocked the nation — in part because just three months prior she had given one of her most famous performances. Decked out in a skin-tight, nude-colored dress, she sang “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy, who was turning 45 later that month, at a rally at Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962.
The performance remains a cultural touchstone decades later, and is also noteworthy because that event produced what is considered the only known photograph of Monroe and Kennedy together.
“[I]t was Marilyn who was the hit of the evening,” according to TIME’s recap of the concert in 1962. “Kennedy plainly meant it when he said, ‘I can now retire from politics after having had Happy Birthday sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way.'”
The performance added to rumors that both Kennedy brothers were having affairs with the actor. Among the JFK files released to the public last year was the FBI’s warning to Bobby Kennedy about an upcoming book that was going to say the two had an affair. “It was pretty clear that Marilyn had had sexual relations with both Bobby and Jack,” James Spada, one of her biographers, told People on the 50th anniversary of her death. (Any claims that the brothers had a role in her death, he clarified, were unsubstantiated.)
According to another biographer, Donald Spoto, Monroe and JFK met four times between October 1961 and August 1962. Their only “sexual encounter”
is believed to have taken place two months before the concert in a
bedroom at Bing Crosby’s house on Mar. 24, 1962, her masseur Ralph
Roberts has said.
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