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1960

The filming of Let’s Make Love, directed by George Cukor, with Yves Montand (suggested by Arthur Miller after Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, Charlton Heston, and Rock Hudson had all withdrawn). Marilyn had an affair with the French actor.

March 8, 1960

Marilyn won the Golden Globe for best actress for her performance in Some Like It Hot.

July 18 to November 4, 1960

The filming of The Misfits in Nevada.

November 11, 1960

Press announcement of the separation of Marilyn and Arthur Miller.

February 7 to February 10, 1961

Against her will and following a “misunderstanding.” Marilyn was forcibly admitted into Payne Whitney psychiatric unit in New York on the recommendation of her current analyst, Dr. Kris. Lee and Paula Strasberg, whom she called for help, couldn't legally intervene, as they were not family members. Only DiMaggio was able to effect her release. She then spent three weeks at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center undergoing a rest cure.

November 19, 1961

Marilyn met John Kennedy at his brother-in-law Peter Lawford’s Santa Monica house.

February 1962

Marilyn bought a house in Brentwood, a fashionable neighborhood in Los Angeles.

April 23, 1962

The filming of Something’s Got to Give, directed by George Cukor and produced by Henry Weinstein, began. Because Marilyn was repeatedly late or absent, production stopped on June 8. The film was never finished.

May 19, 1962

President John Kennedy’s birthday gala was held at Madison Square Garden in New York. Marilyn made a memorable appearance.

June 23, 1962

Marilyn began the long photo shoot for Vogue with Bert Stern that came to be known as “The Last Sitting.”

August 3, 1962

Marilyn appeared on the cover of Life magazine.

August 5, 1962

Marilyn Monroe died at night at her house in Brentwood.

Karen Blixen (1885–1962)

On February 5, 1959, a luncheon was organized at Carson McCullers’s house in Nyack, New York, with Karen Blixen, who, on a lecture tour of the United States, had expressed a desire to meet Marilyn Monroe. She wrote to the American writer Fleur Cowles Meyer on February 21, 1961: “I think Marilyn is bound to make an almost overwhelming impression on the people who meet her for the first time. It is not that she is pretty, but she radiates, at the same time, unbounded vitality and a kind of unbelievable innocence. I have met the same in a lion-cub, which my native servants in Africa brought me. I would not keep her, since I felt that it would in some way be wrong…I shall never forget the most overpowering feeling of unconquerable strength and sweetness which she conveyed. I had all the wild nature of Africa amicably gazing at me with mighty playfulness.”

Truman Capote (1924–1984)

The author of In Cold Blood met Marilyn in 1950 on the set of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle. They became close friends, and in Music for Chameleons, Capote dedicated a magnificent short story to her, entitled “A Beautiful Child.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967)

Carson McCullers met Marilyn through Arthur Miller in New York in 1954 and afterward saw her regularly. She described her memories of these meetings in her unfinished autobiography, Illumination and Night Glare.

Norman Mailer (1923–2007)

Norman Mailer lived in the same brownstone in Brooklyn as Arthur Miller and had a house not far from Marilyn and Arthur’s in Roxbury, but despite his many sollicitations, he never met Marilyn. After her death, Mailer devoted two biographical essays to her, the first, Marilyn, in 1973, and the second, Of Women and Their Elegance, in 1980.

Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)

Maugham wrote to Marilyn to express his delight at the news that she was to play the part of Sadie Thompson in an adaptation of his short story “Rain,” which Lee Strasberg hoped to direct for NBC, but the movie was never made.

Arthur Miller (1915–2005)

Marilyn met her future husband, along with Elia Kazan, in Hollywood in 1952. She was photographed by Ben Ross that same year, reading a book by Miller. When she