My journey ends here...


  •          HOME PAGE
  • BIOGRAPHY
  • FILES
  • BOOKS
  • LINKS
  • COMMENTS
  • S

MURRAY Eunice

 
Born Eunice Marjorie Joerndt.

Date of birth : March 3, 1902, Chicago, Illinois.

Date of death : March 5, 1994, Tucson, Arizona.

 

Portrait 

,,,;,,,

    

Addresses  

1930 : 1968 Avon Street, Los Angeles ().

1937 : 2151 Park Drive, Los Angeles.

1940 : 703 74ème Rue, Santa Monica 

.

1942 : 740 26ème rue, Santa Monica ().

1947 : 902 Franklin Street, Brentwood.

1950 : 431 West Rustic Canyon Road, Santa Monica Canyon

1962 : 933 Ocean Avenue, Appt 11, Santa Monica ().

 

Occupation Marilyn's housekeeper for the last 9 months of the actress life.

 

Story

Her parents, William Henry Joerndt (October 18, 1862, Illinois-April 29, 1946, Los Angeles) and Mary Miller (June 15, 1864, Illinois-?), were fervent Jehovah's witnesses. They married on November 28, 1888 in Chicago.

She was the last daughter of a 6 children family, whise last one had died aged 3 () :

Harriet Mae (December 1st, 1890, Chicago-March 27, 1971)
Wilbur Allison (September 20, 1895, Chicago-January 20, 1976, Annaheim, California)
Frederick Miller (May 2, 1897, Chicago-September 5, 1983, Tampa, Florida)

Carolyn Allison (September 14, 1899, Chicago-October 19, 1972, Maine)

Carolyn married Franklin Blackmer (March 6, 1899-?) on June 25, 1924, Ohio ().

Eunice Marjorie
Marshall W (September 1905, Chicago-October 15, 1908, Chicago).

The family left to Ohio, where she attended  the grammar-school of the village, ran by some Swedenborgian sect disciples.


In 1917, aged 15, she attended the Swedenborgian Urbana School and Academy where her sister Carolyn, 

4 years elder than her, was a boarder (). 

Recently settled in Los Angeles, the parents learned that Carolyn had contracted the Spanish flu and that a doctor had been called. 
Angry that the religious proscriptions about the medical care had been broken, the Joerndt legally disowned their daughter Carolyn, who, to them, didn't exist anymore. When the school learned about it, a tutor of the institution took care of Carolyn for a while.

Eunice escaped the flu and so the family abandonment. She loved her sister to who she considered herself as a pale reflection.

She was deeply affected by her parents violent reaction, and since this time, began to suffer from emotional disorders, mainly an inability to differentiate herself from her sister, as from her other friends, and a panic-fear of abandonment.

She left school in this year of 1918, before her 16th birthday, apparently because of her psychological and emotional fragility.

In 1918, on the school records, Eunice was domiciled in Los Angeles and Carolyn in Chicago.


The Swedenborgian Religion influence on the two girls was significant. The 40 boarders of the Urbana high school had to try hard to imitate the founder (Emmanuel Swedenborg, Swedish savant and theosophist of the 18th Century), and they were encouraged to "constantly think about God, to salvation and man's spiritual illnesses, while following an arts and morale teaching". The ideal was to reach marriage which was supposed to last for eternity.

The 2 sisters close complicity lasted and at the beginning of 1924, they announced at the same time, their engagement.

Her sister ,

Grateful to the institution kindliness and faithful to the Swedenborgian principles, Carolyn married Franklin

Blackmer, an eminent priest of the sect who ran for 6 years the Urbana high School (,

,,,,).



She also taught there from 1921 until her wedding, and continued to exercise a great influence until her death in 1972, despite her husband's death.

In 1929, she opened a small nursery in Urbana, a testimony of her love for children and her passion for a precocious and well-understood education.


Eunice met her future husband, John Maer Murray (May 15, 1896, New York-November 21, 1958, El Paso. 

;).

He was son of a Swedenborgian Minister (;). He studied himself theology in Cambridge,

Massachussetts in 1917 ().

In February 1920 he lived in New York, and applied for a passport in order to attend the Convention of American

Exporters in Mexico(,,,).

On March 3, 1924 Eunice married John Murray, in Illinois.

They had 3 daughters : Marilyn (born on December 1, 1924 in Chicago)(,), and the twins Patricia (died on February 15, 2017, Los Angeles)(who would marry Norman Jefferies

,) and Jacqueline (born on March 20, 1928 in Los Angeles).

On July 3, 1937, she was one of the witnesses of her brother's wedding (,).

Having left school early, Eunice couldn't devote herself to teaching, but she continued to love and imitate her sister insomuch to define herself as "nursery nurse" or more simply "nurse", an identity she persisted in using it in Los Angeles, where this profession appeared in the phone book under her name.

Without any other skills than her experience as a mother, Eunice admired and idolized through her whole life her sister Carolyn and her brother-in-law, Franklin Blackmer.

In the 30's and 40's, John Murray criss-crossed the USA, went as far as Mexico, organized the carpenters trade unions and left Eunice raising their 3 children. They lived in different houses in Los Angeles, and during the Second World War (John was too old to be called up), they lived in Santa Monica while their house on Franklin Street was being built, a plan they supported for years.


He had a brother, Churchill Joseph Murray (1904, Mexico-January 5, 1976, Mexico); this one ran a radio station in Mexico; he had many political contacts, notably within the Cuban and Soviet Embassies.

They knew the Kris and the Greensons.

The construction of their Colonial-styled house located 902 Franklin Street, in Santa Monica, was completed in  1946. Four months after their moving in (going through a serious conjugal crisis), they couldn't afford anymore the drafts and put their house up for sale.

John was an absent father and husband, and Eunice hadn't have enough money to repay the loan.

Dr Greenson purchased it in 1947 for the amount of 16 500$.

On December 4, 1946 she was one of the witnesses of the wedding of her niece Meryl (daughter of her own

sister Harriett)(,).
On January 12, 1952, she was once again the witness of her niece second marriage ().

 
Eunice and her husband separated from each other shortly after the house sale and divorced in 1950. 
Eunice lived it as a failure, a serious sinning to the principles instilled by her Swedenborgian education.

She wandered, penniless, solitary and aimless : her job beside Greenson saved her.


John Murray re married, settled in Texas, then in New Mexico, and died in 1958.

Sentimentally very attached to her house, Eunice kept friendly relationships with the Greensons and even askedsome work to the psychiatrist.

He immediately hired her and placed her to his most important patients where she was kind of a guardian, companion and mother hen, a role for which she hadn't any skills and experience. 
He obtained her some work to his most famous patients. Conscientiously, as Greenson demanded it, she reported the slightest actions and gestures of his clients.

In his autobiography, she said that Greenson sent her to people "seriously ill, suffering from depression or schizophrenia, or to others, like Marilyn, who had suffered from traumatic experiences and only needed help".

The most widespread opinion is that Eunice spied on Marilyn on Dr Greenson's behalf : she reported him everythings she saw or heard at his patients home.*

According to Philippe Laclair, Eunice's son-in-law : " She did that for money. Her situation was hard after her husband's leaving - she hadn't nor nurse training neither had studied at the university - but she was nice and became a major asset for Greenson. She had always faithfully followed his orders".

In November 1961, on Greenson's recommendation, Marilyn hired her : she used her as a housekeeper, a female companion, driver, nurse and intendant; Marilyn lived at that time at Doheny Drive.

In February 1962, she found the house of 5th Helena Drive for Marilyn, and continued to be her housekeeper. Marilyn purchased this house because it looked like Dr Greenson Spanish-styled house.

Letter to Marilyn -

Letter to Marilyn dated February 5, 1962 about the house ,.


Letters to Marilyn during her stay in Mexico
;

Letter to Marilyn, about Maf

Memo to Marilyn

She went with Marilyn in Mexico. She took advantage to visit her brother-in-law, Churchill Murray, who lived in Mexico City.

Back from Mexico, Marilyn lived for a week at the Greensons home, waiting for her house to be ready.

In May 1962 Marilyn's circle was relieved to learn that, Greenson being travelling for 5 weeks, Marilyn dismissed Eunice. But back from New York, where she had sung for John Kennedy at the Madison Square Garden, Marilyn found Eunice at home.

This one claimed that her dismissal wasn't definite, but only for Marilyn's stay in New York.

Memo from Cherie Redmond dated July 27, 1962 .

She had planned to travel to Europe since August 6, 1962, with her sister and her brother-in-law; she would have told Marilyn on August 1, in the aftermath, Marilyn would have given her a check, asking her not to come

back in September .

 

According several biographies, Marilyn had already contacted one of her former employees (Hattie Stevenson or Florence Thomas according the sources) to replace Eunice Murray.

Marilyn's friends considered Eunice's leaving as a positive fact (the evidence that Marilyn wanted to lead her life on herself) and as the first sign of her detachment from Greenson.

On August 4, 1962, Eunice reported for duty at 8.00 AM. No biographer contests the fact that she remained with Marilyn during the whole day, and that, curiously, she spent the night in Marilyn's house rather than going back home, in Santa Monica.

During the whole day, she took the phone calls during Marilyn's psychoanalysis sessions with Greenson, at her home.

She accompanied Marilyn on the beach in the middle of the afternoon, then they came back so that Marilyn could follow her therapy. She kept on screen the phone calls, including those of very close friends of Marilyn who had understood that Marilyn wasn't well. She gave the most various answers not to give the calls to Marilyn.

In her official statement to the police about Marilyn's death, she declared that she woke up at 3.00 AM and saw the light under Marilyn's bedroom door, but that strangely, the door was locked. Worried, she called Dr Greenson who asked her to go out and to try to look through the curtains. She reported him that Marilyn was lying in the bed, naked, in a few natural position. He arrived, broke the bedroom's window and found Marilyn dead.

There are many contradictions in this testimony : the thick wall-to-wall carpet Marilyn had made posed in her bedroom couldn't let the light pass under the door. Later, she said she was alarmed by the phone ringing.
More strangely, about the fact that the bedroom's door was locked,some biographers claims that this door couldn't be locked and that Marilyn always slept, whatever the place, the door open.
Since her hard experience at the Payne Whitney Hospital, she hated the locked doors.

The chronolgy of the events has also some improbabilities : she would have declared to Jack Clemmons, the first police officer arrived on the scene, that she had informed Greenson at midnight, and not at 3.00 AM as she later pretended it.

He asserted that when he arrived, at 4.40 AM, Eunice Murray was doing the cleaning : she had made a laundry and was cleaning the house.

 

On June 1, 1962, Marilyn's birthday on the set of  "Something's Got to Give" ,


On August 5, 1962

,,,,,;


On August 7, 1962, at Helena Drive

,-,,,,,;,


On August 8, 1962 

;

 

After Monroe's untimely death, Eunice lived quietly in various locations in West Los Angeles and Santa Monica, and at one time rented a guest cottage from the Stocking family. According to members of the Stocking family, Murray rented the bungalow behind their home near Santa Monica College from the mid-1960s until the mid-1970s. There, Murray pursued her many interests, including sewing, macrame, horticulture, and corresponding with friends and relatives across the country.
According to the Stocking family, Murray sometimes cared for the Stocking's grandchildren and for Ethel Stocking, who had suffered several heart attacks. 

After the death of her sister in 1972, Eunice married her brother-in-law Franklin Blackmer, a minister of the Swedenborgian Church on March 19, 1976 in San Francisco.

Since Marilyn's death and the rumors suspected the Kennedy's brothers, the attention was focused on Eunice Murray. In 1985 she claimed to a team of filmmakers who directed a documentary for the BBC that Robert Kennedy had actually come in the afternoon of August 4, 1962. But then she foreswore, under the pretext that she was 82 years old, and that things became confused.

She lived her last years with her daughter in Tucson, Arizona, where she died.


Bibliography

"Marilyn : the Last Months", Eunice Murray et Rose Shade, New York, Pyramid Books, 1975.  


                                                                                                                                              BACK TO ALPHABETICAL INDEX                                                                                                                                                                  NEXT FILE

K&K- 04/2006 - Contact