Monroe hoped to marry JFK ? Read on

AFP

LOS ANGELES: Marilyn Monroe, who notoriously had an affair with John F Kennedy, apparently believed she was going to marry the president, even phoning the White House to tell his wife.

The story, reported in a new book out on August 6 by journalist Christopher Andersen, asserts that Jackie Kennedy

even told Monroe that the screen siren was welcome to take over her role as first lady.

“And you’ll move into the White House and you’ll assume the responsibilities of first lady, and I’ll move out and you’ll have all the problems,” she reportedly told Monroe.

The incident is just one layer of the complex marriage in the year before the president was assassinated, according to the new account.

The book chronicles how Jackie was begged to stay by her husband even in the face of a nuclear strike, how the couple withstood the death of their newborn son Patrick, as well as how they weathered JFK’s many extramarital affairs.

It aims to answer whether the pair, 33 and 46 when JFK was killed, who captured the hearts of the nation, truly loved one another.

According to Andersen’s research, Jackie was well aware of her husband’s many infidelities, but was only upset over Monroe — not because of the affair, itself, but because the first lady feared the scandal set her up for public ridicule.

These Precious Few Days: The Final Year of Jack with Jackie also recounts how the couple mourned their third child, Patrick Bouvier, who died two days after being born on August 7, 1963.