The Marilyn Tapes

Questions Still Remain About The Movie Star's Death

(CBS) 
48 Hours has spoken with a former Secret Service agent who says a relationship between the president and Marilyn was common knowledge among his colleagues.

Marilyn's friend, actress and model Jeanne Carmen, says she knew firsthand about an intimate relationship between the president and Marilyn unfolding at the beach house.

"President Kennedy and Marilyn were in bed when I went in to take my shower, just, cuddle, cuddle, cuddle," Carmen recalls.

JFK had an image as a faithful family man, married to Jacqueline and father of two children. Summers says it was the "required image."

Back then, the public had no idea what was apparently happening behind Camelot's idyllic scenes.

Asked whether the president had told Marilyn he loved her, Carmen says, "He did tell her that. You know how men are."

"In her mind, though I’m sure that it seemed like a thing that might change her life and that she might one day marry John F. Kennedy. She spoke like that," says Summers.

According to Marilyn's published letters, on Feb. 1, 1962, Marilyn was invited to the Lawford beach house for dinner, but this time, it was to meet Bobby Kennedy.

"They just clicked. Marilyn and Bobby just clicked right in the beginning," says Carmen.

Bobby Kennedy had an equally pristine public image as a civil rights crusader and devoted father.

But Carmen says Bobby was soon a guest at Marilyn’s house.

No one can say for sure if the friendship between Marilyn and Bobby evolved into something more.

"The evidence about Marilyn Monroe and Robert Kennedy is not nearly as clear cut as much of the evidence about Marilyn and the president," says Summers. "That they were having some sort of close emotional relationship does become clear from talking to the witnesses."

Whatever the tangled relationships were, they were all about to end. In April 1962, Marilyn began working on what would be her unfinished movie, "Something's Got To Give."

"She really was at her best in acting. She was gorgeous. She’d never been more beautiful," remembers Carmen.

But the camera didn’t catch the trouble brewing. Others say Marilyn was unraveling.

"She had been seeing a psychiatrist constantly," explains Summers. "Almost as a daily session. Sometimes more than once. She was taking sleeping pills all the time."

Marilyn was constantly calling in sick at work, creating costly production delays. Producers were further outraged when she decided to fly to New York to sing the infamous "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" song for JFK at Madison Square Garden.

"I think that Monroe wanted to tell the world about the relationship," says Summers. But, according to Summers, Marilyn knew that night the president was moving away from her. "She was looking into the lights at a man who she had believed in, hoped that something real might come of. But it was gone," he says.

Back in Hollywood, Marilyn was soon fired from "Something's Got To Give" for putting the production so far behind schedule.

She fought hard to get her job back, posing for publicity photos, and in July taped an interview for Life Magazine.

"I am working for one thing and that is in giving a performance, but I am not at a studio at any time for discipline or to be disciplined," she said during the interview.

Marilyn’s campaign worked. On Aug. 1, 1962, she struck a new deal with 20th Century Fox.

But just a few days later, she would play out her final scene.