The Purported Interview with Peter Lawford
When did Clem Heymann interview Peter Lawford? In the 1989 Mike Wilson article published in the Miami Herald, previously cited, Heymann asserted that he interviewed Peter Lawford in early 1984.1However, Heymann testified to Anthony Summers that the Lawford interview transpired in late 1984. But wait. There’s more. Donna Morel advised me that a USA Today article published on September the 15th in 1998 reported this Heymann assertion: the author interviewed the English actor in 1983. Should we therefore assume that Clem interviewed Peter three times?—once in 1983 and twice in 1984, early that year and then also later, a remote possibility that the author never declared.
Adding to the confusion, Heymann frequently asserted that he tape recorded all his interviews; but then he also asserted that he did not tape record his interview with Peter Lawford. In the Miami Herald article, for instance, Wilson noted: Heymann stated that he did not tape the interview [with Lawford]. Heymann also stated that he had a researcher with him [when he interviewed Lawford] but would not say who it was.2Odd. Why not? It is also worth noting, in a Spokane Chronicle article, Mike Wilson asserted that he conducted a 45-minute phone interview with Heymann: the dubious biographer said that he had most of the interviews on tape. Then, refusing to answer any more questions, he hung up.3Wilson then added: Heymann’s publicist, Sandra Bodner, said later that The Miami Herald is “attacking the author’s credibility on really peripheral issues.” She said that, “unless someone sues him, Heymann will not play his tapes for the Herald or anyone else.”4The position assumed by Bodner and Heymann seems unnecessarily combative with an intent to keep unrevealed Heymann’s unsavory or dishonest literary shenanigans. The entire issue of Clem Heymann’s credibility, certainly more central than peripheral, could have been resolved by merely playing a few select reel-to-reel or cassette tapes, assuming, of course, that Clem Heymann actually possessed tape recordings of his interviewees that he could have played.
The Purported Lawford Interview Transcript
Even though he contradicted himself regarding whether or not he taped his purported face-to-face interview with Peter Lawford, when Donna Morel visited Stony Brook University and inspected Heymann’s archive, she did not uncover a tape of that purported interview. Marilyn biographer, Lois Banner, also visited Stony Brook and searched for a tape of Heymann’s interview with Peter Lawford. She, likewise, did not uncover such a tape. When I went through Heymann’s papers at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Banner wrote in her Marilyn biography, I found a transcript of the tape, but not the tape itself (Banner 422). The biographer reported that she telephoned Heymann and asked him to play the tape for her: of course, he refused, using as his reason the more than gossamer assertion that he was planning to use it in his next book (Banner 422). Evidently, Patricia Seaton demanded, through her attorney, that Heymann provide her with the tape of Peter’s interview, a demand prompted by Patricia’s unhappiness with the way Clem portrayed her in RFK: A Candid Biography of Robert Kennedy. As you might have anticipated, Clem ignored Patricia’s demand. She threatened to force him into providing the tape by suing the wealthy author, but she never did so. According to David Johnston according to Patricia Seaton, Heymann fabricated his interviews with her dead husband. She also stated that Heymann could not have interviewed her husband on any of the occasions he cited because he [Lawford] was under her care around the clock. When asked if Heymann could have arranged and conducted an interview without her permission or knowledge, she answered that Lawford was close to death and hardly able to make coherent statements, much less conduct a lengthy interview.5
The interview transcript mentioned by Lois Banner was also uncovered by Donna Morel during her inspection of Heymann’s archive. Banner did not provide a description of that transcript; but, Donna, who had obtained a copy of it from Stony Brook University’s Department of Special Collections, allowed me to review it.
Speaking only for me, of course, when I envision an interview transcript, I visualize a question and answer session during which questions posed by an interviewer are directly answered by an interviewee. The Lawford interview transcript, on the other hand, merely consists of six pages, hand-written notes, obviously edited by Clem Heymann. I cannot reproduce the transcript in its entirety or publish the original without violating copyright laws, unfortunately; but what follows is a brief quotation, an example of that transcript:
So everybody for one reason or another was bugging Marilyn’s house [story re. bugging by Mafia should appear]. In addition, Marilyn was making her own tapes. This was being done done done at the instigation behest of Dr. Ralph (?) Greenson, her long-time psychiatrist. Greenson, (at that time) one of the best-known shrinks shrinks shrinks in the country (at that time) had suggested that Marilyn tape her daily thoughts while riding around (to and from appointments) in the back of her limousine.
Certainly, any reasonable, critically thinking person would recognize immediately that the preceding excerpt has clearly been edited, certain words stricken, the words displayed in pink, and new words added, the word instigation replaced in favor of the word behest, the phrase at that time following the word country moved to follow the word Greenson. Also, the phrase to and from appointments, obviously added by a Heymann edit, replaced the word around. Therefore, Heymann wanted the third sentence to read as follows:
This was being done at the behest of Dr. Ralph Greenson, her long-time psychiatrist. Greenson, at that time, one of the best-known shrinks in the country, had suggested that Marilyn tape her daily thoughts while riding to and from appointments in the back of her limousine.
The preceding is but one example lifted from the alleged transcript; and the first question that came to my mind was this: which words did Peter Lawford actually speak? Did he say instigation or behest? Did he say around or did he say to and from appointments? Considering that Heymann wrote the word shrinks three times, was he searching for a less pejorative term for a psychiatrist. In my opinion, though, Peter probably would have used the word shrinks. Also, Dr. Greenson was not Marilyn’s long-time psychiatrist. He became her therapist in January of 1960. Did Peter Lawford advise Clem Heymann to include the Mafia bugging story in his book about Jackie Kennedy? How would Lawford know that Marilyn was making her own tapes? How would Lawford know exactly what Dr. Greenson had suggested or what he wanted his patient to do as a form of therapy? It is worth noting here: nothing in the alleged transcript is a response from Lawford to a question actually posed by Clem Heymann.
The entire transcript contains 597 total words. One lengthy Lawford quotation that spans two pages in A Woman Named Jackie contains more words than the transcript—626 words; and not one topic or thought or idea presented in those 626 words can be found in the 597 words on the six hand-written pages that Lois Banner evidently accepted as a transcript of C. David Heymann’s interview with Peter Lawford. Besides, as noted by David Cay Johnston in his Newsweek article: A handwriting expert said Heymann’s handwritten notes of the purported Lawford interview bore a striking resemblance to the writing in Heymann’s purported Hutton notebooks,6which Hutton’s inner coterie of friends testified never existed.
I could continue along the road charted by the preceding examples of C. David Heymann’s dishonesty; but doing so would be tantamount to hitting a house fly with a ball-peen hammer. There are many other examples of created people: Chuck Pick, an alleged bar tender who allegedly witnessed Marilyn and Robert Kennedy together at a wild Lawford party; husband and wife, Mike and Jane Duffy, who allegedly encountered an obviously hammered Marilyn Monroe at Jackie Gleason’s 1955 birthday party. There are additional examples of obviously fabricated testimony that Clem attributed to actual flesh and blood persons into which I could delve: Lotte Goslar, a dancer who instructed Marilyn in body movement and mime; Rose Fromm, a therapist who purportedly treated Marilyn prior to 1955 who Heymann alleged was also friends with reporter James Bacon and Marilyn’s friend, Sidney Skolsky; Dom DiMaggio, Joe’s brother, a very private person who invariably protected his brother and never granted interviews; Tommy Heinrich, Joe’s Yankee teammate who was also known as Mr. Reliable; and Ralph Roberts, Marilyn’s close friend and personal masseur who never spoke openly about his friend or granted interviews to the media. Each of the preceding persons either directly contradicted what Clem Heymann said they said or left behind memoirs that contradicted what Heymann asserted about their relationships with Marilyn. As Donna Morel noted, along with David Johnston, most of what Heymann wrote about Dr. Fromm is biographically incorrect; and she did not mention James Bacon, Sidney Skolsky or Marilyn Monroe in Sztetl, the doctor’s autobiography.
To bring this section to a close, before appending a brief summary, what follows hereafter is an interesting yarn woven by Clem Heymann, one that illustrates and elucidates his peculiar propensity for fabrication and involves the beloved Prince of Camelot.
