THE ICONIC MYSTERY

Spotlight

At around 3:30 A.M. on August 5, 1962, Mrs. Eunice Murray, house keeper at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, in Los Angeles, awoke to find the light on in her employer's bedroom. A little while later, she has said, she pushed back the curtains to peek through a window, spying a body splayed across the bed with a hand sitting atop the telephone. Sergeant Jack Clemmons was the first policeman to arrive on the scene, quickly becoming party to knowledge that would shock the world: Marilyn Monroe was dead atthe age of 36.

With toxicology tests indicating an overdose of barbiturates, the coroner's office ruled the screen siren was a probable suicide. But as besets many a high-profile death, conspiracy theories soon jostled for prominence. One scenario points to an unholy alliance of Monroe confidants, including her psychiatrist, the actor Peter Lawford, and, ultimately, the president's brother Robert Kennedy, suggesting that Monroe was a target after threatening to go public about her affair with R.F.K. Many have questioned her trip to Lake Tahoe, where she is thought to have passed the weekend before her death in the company of Frank Sinatra and gangster Sam Giancana. And so on.

Her death, whatever the cause, assured her stature in the annals of Hollywood legends too young to die. Just as James Dean is permanently logged in our collective psyche, stretched out in a convertible, Marilyn Monroe will forever be poised atop that subway grate, white dress aflutter, the sex symbol's smile suggesting so much more.

JACK DELIGTER