In the posthumously published Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love, Clem Heymann presented Kurt Lamprecht as a person who just knew Arthur Miller, an acquaintance of the playwright, not a chum; but evidently, Kurt was chummy with Truman Capote and Will Fowler; and Kurt was also chummy with Marilyn Monroe.

Even though Kurt was living in the United States, he had been born in Germany, but Clem did not provide the place or date of Kurt’s birth, a strategic omission, and a stratagem of deception often utilized by Heymann. About Kurt Lamprecht, the preceding is all the detail that Clem Heymann provided for his readers.

Through Arthur Jacobs,1The Arthur P. Jacobs Company became Marilyn’s press agent in 1955 after she formed Marilyn Monroe Productions with Milton Greene.Kurt arranged to interview Marilyn for the German press. She was extremely popular across all of Europe; and since principle photography for Bus Stop had wrapped on May the 16th in 1956, the actress had the time to sit for an interview, that is, according to Clem. Kurt’s interview, which marked his initial meeting with America’s most famous comedienne,2Don Murray, who costarred with Marilyn in Bus Stop, once opined, a large part of Marilyn’s allure and fame derived from the fact that the world loves and cannot resist an adorable, beautiful clown.began sometime in early June and transpired over several days in Marilyn’s Sutton Place, Manhattan apartment—that is, according to Clem.

The biographer did not provide any firm dates or times or the names of persons who might have been present during Marilyn’s interview, like possibly Milton Greene, Marilyn’s business partner, manager and adviser at that time, or Amy Greene, Milton’s wife and Marilyn’s friend. Are we to assume that Marilyn was alone in her apartment with Kurt Lamprecht during the interview? Was a photographer present? I have not been able to locate any photographs that resulted from Lamprecht’s Marilyn interview. Why would any journalist interview Marilyn Monroe without obtaining at least one photograph with her; but then, perhaps Milton Greene snapped some photographs that have remained undiscovered for nearly seven decades. Was Arthur Miller present during any of Marilyn’s interviews? Arthur Jacobs? We just do not know due to Clem’s sleight of limiting any significant or verifiable detail.

During the interview, Marilyn admitted to Kurt that she doubted her abilities as an actress. Although her studies and classes with Lee Strasburg at the Actors Studio had helped her, she said, she still suffered from fear and anxiety before she performed. According to Heymann according to Lamprecht, Marilyn revealed that before performing a scene for the Actors Studio with Maureen Stapleton from Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie, she became so nervous she peed in her panties. ”And I don’t usually wear panties,” she added (Heymann: Legends, 202).3The scene with Maureen Stapleton occurred on February the 17th in 1956 (Vitacco-Robles: ICON, v1, 547).I find it difficult to believe that Marilyn would have revealed such a personal embarrassment; and certainly if she had, her words would have been repeated in various media outlets and publications across the country, even the globe. Many times, those present on-set, biographers and other writers reported that Marilyn became so nervous before scenes that she became physically ill and often vomited; but I do not know of any other occasion when reports of her anxiety, reports by Marilyn or persons present on-set, included a loss of bladder control, evidently an occurrence that Marilyn only reported to Kurt Lamprecht; but after all, Marilyn and Kurt were such good friends

In Lamprecht’s opinion, according to Heymann, Marilyn wanted to marry Arthur Miller as a validation of her intellect. Other journalists have offered similar observations and opinions regarding why Marilyn gravitated toward certain types of men, those with the standing of power and discernable intelligence; but Kurt did not stop with his opinion regarding why Marilyn had chosen the respected playwright as a husband, and, of course, a lover, an opinion that Heymann interpreted as follows: the Miller’s relationship was also highly or favorably sexual.

Heymann was unclear regarding the number of days Lamprecht’s interview with Marilyn actually consumed; and the biographer implied that Marilyn actually sat for two separate interviews with the German-born writer. Several days after his first interview with Monroe, Clem Heymann wrote, Lamprecht accompanied the couple to lunch at Sardi’s (emphasis mine). During that lunch, Lamprecht observed that both the playwright and the actress looked suffused with a glow that was evidence of a highly charged sexual relationship. It was obvious to Kurt that sexuality represented an important factor for both (Heymann: Legends, 202); however, Kurt, who maintained a long-term, lasting friendship with the world’s most famous blonde, according to Clem, visited Marilyn in Los Angeles after she divorced Miller.4In Juarez, Mexico, on January the 20th in 1961, Judge Miguel Gomez Guerra, without contention, granted Marilyn her divorce from Arthur. Pat Newcomb and Marilyn’s attorney, Aaron Frosch, arranged for the divorce hearing to transpire on the day John Kennedy took The Oath of Office of the President, because the press and the whole country would be looking at that, and we could slip away and return unnoticed (Spoto 455), which is exactly what transpired. Marilyn’s divorce from Arthur Miller became final on January the 24th in 1961.

According to Kurt, according to Heymann, Arthur Miller was the topic of discussion during the friend’s Los Angeles encounter; and Marilyn didn’t have many positive things to say about Miller, though she seemed fond of his kids. Miller and Monroe were apparently sexually incompatible, and she constantly referred to him as a “mama’s boy” (Heymann: Legends, 299). The implication in the preceding quotation is that Marilyn divorced Arthur because of a sexual incompatibility. Certainly relationships change as the dynamics within them change; but, did Arthur transform into a objectionable mama’s boy after his marriage to the overtly sexual Marilyn Monroe; how were they otherwise sexually incompatible; how did the highly charged, glow suffusing sexual relationship, visible during lunch at Sardi’s and reported by Lamprecht, how did a highly charged compatibility develop into an incompatibility; or did their sexual incompatibility always exist? Perhaps I am just being obtuse, but for me, the contradiction is clearly evident.

Furthermore, I find it difficult to believe that Marilyn would have offered any type of negative comment or assessment regarding Arthur Miller, especially to a journalist. It is a known fact that she distrusted journalists. When pressed by pushy reporters to comment about Arthur, Marilyn invariably declined, which was her normal tactful position. As Donald Spoto observed, Marilyn confided only in discreet friends she knew she could trust: justifying herself to a member of the press was not important to her. Spoto wrote:

As for her comments on Arthur Miller, Marilyn displayed her customary dignity when publicly discussing former husbands or lovers. “It would be indelicate of me to discuss this. I feel it would be trespassing,’’ she said. ‘‘Mr. Miller is a wonderful man and a great writer, but it didn’t work out that we should be husband and wife. But everybody I ever loved, I still love a little.’’ Typically, there was no bitterness, no rancor toward those from whom she felt estranged, even from those she felt had in some ways abused, demeaned or been faithless to her (Spoto 455).

Forgive and allow me to digress momentarily and comment on what appears to be Clem Heymann’s obsession with Truman Capote or at least the biographers apparent willingness to plagiarize the author of In Cold Blood. In the section dedicated to Elizabeth Okrun, who appeared in RFK: A Candid Biography as a Kennedy paramour, I denoted one instance where Heymann plagiarized Capote, misquoted him and then also used the quotation in completely differing circumstances involving Ted Kennedy. The reference to a sexual glow, contained in the paragraph immediately preceding, is reminiscent of a comment Truman Capote included in a letter that he wrote to the photographer Cecil Beaton,5Cecil Beaton photographed Capote on several occasions in the late 1940s.a known Capote friend:

By the time you get this, Marilyn M. will have married Arthur Miller. Saw them the other night, both looking suffused with a sexual glow; but can’t help but feeling this little episode is called: “Death of a Playwright” (Vitacco-Robles: ICON, v1, 584).

Truman Capote died on August the 25th in 1984 at the age of 59. Clem Heymann published his Robert Kennedy biography fourteen years later in 1998, and fourteen years would elapse until he wrote Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love in 2012, published posthumously two years later. Evidently, though, Clem was not satisfied with just helping himself to Capote’s words: the plagiarizer granted one of his characters, Kurt Lamprecht, a friendship with Capote. According to Heymann, Lamprecht had

[…] spoken to Truman Capote concerning Arthur and Marilyn, and he suggested that Miller was all but addicted to her—he was not merely besotted with her, he was smitten. Like Joe DiMaggio, Miller was in love, seriously, completely, with the full force of a man trapped in quicksand. Capote said to me, ‘If you ever write a book about the two of them, you ought to call it Death of a Playwright’ (Heymann: Legends, 201).

Interesting, is it not, that Lamprecht received a recommendation regarding a possible topic and a possible title for a possible book from an author, and not just any author, the world famous Truman Capote, the darling of the beautiful people who inhabit high society and also a friend of Marilyn’s, about whom Capote had already written. And it’s also interesting, is it not, that the Beaton letter to Capote actually contained the possible title, or the recommended title that is, for the book. Speaking only for me, of course, I consider the entire Capote episode to be greatly outside the realm of possibility; and considering that Kurt Lamprecht was a Heymann creation, the entire Capote episode becomes impossible theater.

Returning to Lamprecht’s alleged visit with Marilyn in Los Angeles, post her divorce from Arthur Miller, Heymann interjected the journalist Will Fowler into his peculiar visitation anecdote. When Kurt visited his actress friend, Will tagged along. I had a writer friend named Will Fowler, Lamprecht purportedly reported to Heymann, and he’d met Marilyn several times, so I invited him along when I went to see her. During their visit, Marilyn traipsed around in a terry cloth robe; but then, she suddenly treated Kurt and Will to a display of non-sexual but innocent and non-seductive nudity. Nudity per se meant little to Monroe, Heymann announced. She had few inhibitions so far as her body was concerned. Without warning, Marilyn removed her robe and began to walk around in the nude. No explanation, nothing, and we certainly weren’t going to complain, Kurt Lamprecht humorously commented. The odd thing is there was nothing sexual about it (Heymann: Legends 299). For my dime, the absence of any sexual overtones or activity would have been the male’s actual complaint!

The preceding scenario is very reminiscent of what Anthony Summers reported in his Marilyn pathography, Goddess. Summers used Will Fowler as his source for a nudity anecdote, but the ubiquitous Robert Slatzer, Fowler’s Hollywood friend, appeared in the Summers anecdote. Summers proclaimed:

Fowler’s account of an evening at Marilyn’s apartment suggests that, whatever her shyness in some situations, she was now using her body as a banner to amuse male friends. “She was stoned,” Fowler recalls. “She just took off her clothes. She liked to show her body off to men. It was her suggestion as much as ours, not even a sexual thing as far as that evening was concerned.” (Summers 32: 1985 ed. / 48: 2012 ed.).

An exciting story, to say the least, and one that fulfilled a wild male fantasy for true; but the story has a major problem: Will Fowler contradicted both Slatzer and Anthony Summers. In Fowler’s August the 7th 1991 letter written to Howard Rosenberg regarding the many lies Slatzer had written and uttered about Marilyn Monroe, Fowler asserted the following, all misspellings repeated:6William Randolph Fowler Collection (WRFC), Box 24, Folder 2, page 42.

I had an unfortunate phone interview with Anthony Summers, Goddess (New Mercury Library, 1985), asking me about MM seen in the nude at a parth, and about the musterious, never seen marriage license. I told Summers it was Slatzer who had told me he’d seen MM nude at some party; that it was Slatzer who described the marriage license to me. It came out, in his avarice, that Summers quoted me, as if I had been the witness. This was the first and last time I allowed any interview on the MM subject.

In a series of notes entitled, Will Fowler addition to the Marilyn Monroe case, developed during his involvement helping Donald Spoto with Robert Slatzer’s 1994 defamation lawsuit, which Slatzer brought against the imminent biographer, Fowler noted, with, once again, all misspellings repeated:

I had asked Slatzer to see a copy of his marriage license from Tiguana, Mexico. He kept putting it off, but told me it ‘looks like a high school deploma with a gold seal on it.’ (A Mr. Summers, interviewed me over the phone in, I think, 198?. He was writing a book which was published with the title “Godess.” I told him Slatzer informed me about the marriage license, and that I had not seen it. And, also, that in 1946 or 1947, Slatzer had seen Marilyn walk about at a party in the nude. This became the last interview I would have about Marilyn Monroe because Mr. Summers, in his book, quoted me as having seen the marriage license and been at the party in the 40s with Robert Slatzer. Not true. I never even met Marilyn Monroe.7Ibid.

It is therefore clear, if Will Fowler never even met Marilyn Monroe, then what Summers wrote in 1985 and Heymann repeated in 2012, published posthumously in 2014, simply cannot be factual, simply cannot be the truth.

To reinforce Kurt’s purported friendship with Marilyn, a friendship according to Clem Heymann, that is, the author had Marilyn telephone her journalist chum during Senator John Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign. During that telephone call, Marilyn allegedly did not request a donation from her friend: she demanded a donation:

“As usual,” said Kurt Lamprecht, “Marilyn telephoned about two in the morning. If it had been anyone else, I’d have hung up. She said, ‘Kurt, you’ve got to send a donation to John Kennedy. For the good of the nation, we’ve got to defeat Richard Nixon.’ I told her I normally voted Republican, but if she thought Kennedy a better bet, I’d vote for him—and of course I’d contribute. Naturally, I didn’t know that Marilyn and Kennedy had shared the same bed” (Heymann: Legends, 266-267).

According to Donald Spoto, Marilyn dispatched a letter to Lester Markle in late March of 1959, a New York Times editor who she had met earlier that year: she was in the process of surveying and measuring and thereby learning the political landscape. Marilyn wrote:

At this time, however, [Hubert] Humphrey might be the only one. But who knows, since it’s rather hard to find out anything about him … Of course, [Adlai] Stevenson might have made it if he had been able to talk to people instead of professors … and there hasn’t been anyone like Nixon before, because the rest of them at least had souls! Ideally, Justice William O. Douglas8Regarded as the Supreme Court’s most liberal justice ever, William Douglas sat on the bench from 1939 until 1975, over thirty-six years, the longest tenure in Supreme Court history. He was married and divorced three times.would be the best President … and how about Kennedy for Vice President? But they couldn’t win, because Douglas is divorced. I don’t know anything about Kennedy. Maybe this ticket is hopeless, too. But it would be nice to see Stevenson as Secretary of State (Spoto 418).

Clearly Marilyn had little confidence in John Kennedy and evidently, at that time, did not support him for president. By 1960, she had slightly adjusted her measurements of the political landscape. According to Ralph Robert’s memoir, Mimosa, published in November of 2021, he and Marilyn watched the DNC while he gave her a massage in her Manhattan apartment. She then supported Adlai Stevenson. We watched the proceedings, Ralph recalled, and as it became increasingly clear that Stevenson was losing to Kennedy, she became more and more tense. Marilyn informed Ralph: I worship Mr. Stevenson. I know practically nothing of Mr. Kennedy (Roberts 32).

Regarding the journalist’s friendship with the actress, there is no evidence whatsoever to support Clem Heymann’s assertion. Besides, if Marilyn phoned Lamprecht in the small numbers of the morning sometime in 1960, then he must have been listed in her personal books of important addresses and telephone numbers, meaning her friends. She simply did not memorize those numbers. According to biographer Gary Vitacco-Robles, Kurt Lamprecht does not appear in Marilyn’s accounting of her friend’s important numbers. In a recent email, Gary reported: Lamprecht doesn’t appear anywhere under Ls in the 1962 address book. The listings were alphabetized. I searched each page and it was not handwritten as an insert after the pages were typed. In my opinion, Kurt’s absence from Marilyn’s address and telephone book is definitive evidence and virtually undeniable proof that he was not Marilyn’s friend; and there is but one conclusion available: she never telephoned him. But then, how could she have telephoned the journalist? Kurt Lamprecht never existed.

Prior to the June 29th press conference, which transpired at Arthur’s farmhouse in Connecticut, a tragic automobile crash resulted in the death of Princess Mara Scherbatoff, the New York bureau chief for Paris-Match magazine.9Mara Scherbatoff was born in Russia on the 24th of July on 1908. Essentially, she died on June the 29th in 1956 while lying on the roadside in Roxbury, Connecticut. She was slightly over three weeks away from her forty-eighth birthday. I have not been able to locate a substantial amount of information about Mara; but according to an article in The Boston Globe, published on July the 2nd in 1956: The Princess, a native of St. Petersburg, now Leningrad, Russia, was the daughter of Prince Alexander Scherbatoff, an Admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy, and Princess Sophia Wassilgchikoff. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the family fled first to Germany and then to France.According to Heymann, Associated Press asked Marilyn for a comment; she replied: It’s more than sad that Miss Scherbatoff should have perished in pursuit of a news story as trivial as my third marriage. It once again demonstrates the very arbitrary and futile nature of existence (Heymann: Legends, 204). The paucity of information Heymann provided about Marilyn’s philosophical observation is downright breathtaking and that, in and of itself, prompts many questions, like which AP journalist, for example, asked Marilyn for a comment? On what date and during which interview, precisely, did Marilyn utter her observation; and in which newspaper or magazine article was Marilyn’s comment initially reported? Not one of the media reports I located about the June 29th press conference following the death of Princess Mara Scherbatoff, mentioned any comments by Marilyn pertaining to the arbitrary nature of life and death.

The newspaper and magazine articles pertaining to Marilyn’s impromptu press conference held on June the 21st in 1956,10Link to video of June 21st press conference:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDhl-OLpweA&t=4s>the second press conference held with Arthur Miller on June the 22nd11Link to video of June 22nd press conference:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgqvPG-8T7Y>or the couple’s promised and scheduled press conference held seven days later on June the 29th,12Link to video of June 29th press conference after death of Mara Scherbatoff:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_P2FFIVV8A>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av2iTWyVp5Q>articles written contemporaneously or currently, not one contained any of the quotations attributed to Marilyn as allegedly reported by Kurt Lamprecht to Clem Heymann. Additionally, according to Heymann:

Marilyn Monroe remained in her New York apartment and watched the proceedings on television. Before the [HUAC] hearing began, ABC-TV aired a brief interview conducted several days earlier with Monroe, in which she vigorously defended Miller, proclaiming him “the only man I ever loved” (Heymann: Legends, 202).

Despite my ardent efforts, I have not been able to locate the referenced ABC interview with Marilyn before Arthur’s HUAC hearing began. However, on the 23rd of May in 1957, Marilyn appeared before what can only be described as an obnoxious press as Arthur Miller’s Contempt of Congress trial began. Toward the end of the interview, which was brief, while standing just outside the Washington DC home of Joseph Rauh, Miller’s attorney, Marilyn commented: I would like to say that I’m fully confident that in the end my husband will win this case. When pressed for additional comments, Marilyn simply walked away.13Link to video:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY7DHZ4oDzI>

Donna Morel notified me that she could not […] find a “Kurt Lamprecht” referenced in any book about Monroe, DiMaggio, or Miller, including the six listed books previously provided. Additionally, Donna noted, Mr. Lamprecht is not mentioned in any of Heymann’s previous books.14Donna provided me with a summary of C. David Heymann’s invented persons, sources who appeared in and Heymann quoted in Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love.Following her lead, I consulted ten Arthur Miller biographies; not one mentioned Kurt Lamprecht. Also, I consulted ten publications pertaining to Joe DiMaggio’s life and twenty-two publications pertaining to Marilyn’s life; not one mentioned Lamprecht. I searched several newspaper archives; not one contained an article or story written by Kurt Lamprecht, not at any time and not at any locale.

Additionally, Donna Morel informed me, that during her many hours at Stony Brook reviewing Heymann’s archives and files, she did not find a taped Capote interview or any evidence whatsoever that Heymann ever spoke to Truman Capote. Toward the end of his life, Capote lived with Joanne Carson, Capote’s close friend and Johnny Carson’s former spouse. Donna Morel spoke at length with Joanne and also received a recorded message from her. In the email to me, the one to which Donna attached the recorded message, she noted about Joanne: We had a good long conversation about Heymann’s claims and she was adamant Heymann lied about interviewing Capote. I have listened to Joanne’s message to Donna several times: Joanne out-of-hand dismissed Heymann’s assertions about and attributions regarding Heymann’s alleged interview with Truman Capote. Joanne also commented that she arranged her friends interviews and that she had never heard of C. David Heymann; she also expressed doubt that Truman had ever heard of Heymann, either, much less actually spoke to him.

And finally, I have not located any information whatsoever about Kurt Lamprecht’s life or his death, no obituary, nothing. If he ever existed, he has been successfully eradicated from history, given the same type of eradication the Egyptians attempted with Pharaoh Akhenaton in the years following the pharaoh’s death around 1330 BC.