MURRAY Eunice
Born Eunice Marjorie Joerndt.
Date of birth : March 3, 1902, Chicago, Illinois.
Portrait
Addresses
* 1928 : 1214 Harper Street, West Hollywood
* 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 ().
Profession Marilyn's housekeeper for the last 9 months of the actress life.
Story
Her parents, William Karl Henry Joerndt (October 18, 1862, Illinois-April 29, 1946, Los Angeles) and Mary Miller (June 15, 1864, Illinois-July 28, 1948, 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 ().
* Mary Harriet (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 Henry Blackmer (March 6, 1899, Massachussetts-September 8, 1977, Maine) on June
* 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.
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.
He was son of a Swedenborgian Minister (;). He studied himself theology in Cambridge,
In February 1920 he lived in New York, and applied for a passport in order to attend the Convention of American
They had 3 daughters :
* Marilyn (born on December 1, 1924 in Chicago)(,)
* Patricia (March 20, 1928, Los Angeles ()-February 15, 2017, Los Angeles)(who would
marry Norman Jefferies ,)
* 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.
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.
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$.
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.
John Murray re married, settled in Texas, then in New Mexico, and died in 1958.
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.
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.*
Letter to Marilyn dated February 5, 1962 about the house ,.
Letters to Marilyn during her stay in Mexico ;
Letter to Marilyn, about Maf
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.
According several biographies, Marilyn had already contacted one of her former employees (Hattie Stevenson or Florence Thomas according the sources) to replace Eunice Murray.
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.
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
According
to the Stocking family,
After the death of her sister in 1972,
Eunice married her brother-in-law Franklin Henry Blackmer, a minister of the
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.
Bibliography
"Marilyn : the Last Months",
Eunice Murray et Rose Shade, New York, Pyramid Books, 1975.