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Flashback: Marilyn Monroe Mentally Ill in Manhattan

By

Jen Carlson

Published Oct 2, 2009

Modified Oct 2, 2009

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Producer Kermit Bloomgarden (R) visiting with playwright Arthur Miller (C) & his wife Marilyn Monroe, in their apartment. Circa 1958.

 

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By

Jen Carlson

Published Oct 2, 2009

Modified Oct 2, 2009

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For the non-hardcore Marilyn Monroe fans, maybe you didn't know that the actress spent some time at NYC's Payne Whitney Hospital in 1961, just a year before her fatal overdose. That year her psychoanalyst, Marianne Kris, committed Monroe; "Knowing the star would never go to a psychiatric hospital on her own— Monroe was terrified of sanitariums because her mother lived in one for most of her life and her grandmother had died in one— Kris told her that she was going to a private hospital for some rest and relaxation." The ol' R&R bait and switch!

By February 5th, the starlet was in a padded room with barred windows; she told friends, "I'm locked up with these poor nutty people. I'm sure to end up a nut too if I stay in this nightmare. Please help me." One author has taken to task the retelling of this time in a new book called The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, even talking to a Payne Whitney intern "who visited Monroe after she tried to break down the bathroom door in her room." She told her: "You are a very, very sick girl. And you've been sick for a long time.” Indeed, Monroe's mother was a paranoid schizophrenic, and now there is "evidence that suggests that, beginning in her late teens, Monroe heard voices and believed she was being followed." Sigh. Here's some video, along with the photographs, of Monroe in New York City during happier times.

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Marilyn Monroe

Payne Whitney

psychiatric hospital

Jen Carlson

Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.

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