Bombshell by Max Collins (most life changing books .TXT) 📗

Later that same October, a trip to China proved revealing to Khrushchev, the premier receiving so cool a reception from Mao Tse-tung that he might well have longed for the hospitality of Mayor Poulson of Los Angeles. Although the Chinese of course insisted that the attempt on the premier’s life was not sanctioned by their government—and was in fact the action of renegade, self-interested agents—Khrushchev knew better.

At the conclusion of her Disneyland adventure with the Russian premier, Marilyn Monroe returned to New York to a broken marriage, which she and Arthur Miller held temporarily together only out of the necessity to complete their collaborative movie, The Misfits, to be shot in the blazing Nevada desert.

Now and then, during that troubled, oppressive production, she would hear from Nikita—letters forwarded to her on the set by the State Department in Washington, courtesy of a gracious Jack Harrigan. And after the completion of The Misfits, she and Nikita kept in touch, mostly by phone, often talking for hours.

Marilyn, living alone now in the Manhattan East 57th Street apartment, would ask Nikita about his wife and children and grandchildren, always interested in what they were doing. And Nikita would continue to try to persuade her to abandon America for Russia, where she could better pursue her artistic muse, creating motion pictures that she could be proud of, without studio interference.

Sometimes, in spite of suspicions that the phones were tapped—by both governments, and maybe someone else’s—their conversations would venture into politics, Marilyn as always interested in world affairs. Once, when the movie star extolled the virtues of America’s new president, John F. Kennedy, Nikita agreed wholeheartedly with her assessment, and recounted his first meeting with the man, at a Foreign Relations Committee Reception, when Kennedy was still a senator.

“I liked his face,” Nikita told her, in a 1961 phone call (declassified in 2001), “sometimes stern but, often, would break into big, good-natured smile. I could tell he was interested in finding peaceful solution to world problems.” Nikita had paused, then added, “I help put him in office, instead of that puppet Nixon.”

“Whatever do you mean, Nikkie?” Marilyn had asked him breathlessly.

“You remember this U-2 pilot of yours—this Gary Powers?”

“The one who crashed in Russia and got captured—sure.”

“Yes, this one. Well, I wait until after the election to release him.” Nikita chuckled. “This way Nixon cannot claim that he could deal better with Russians than JFK.”

“Well,” she laughed, “I can see how that might have given Jack the edge to win.”

“By at least half million votes,” Nikita said proudly.

“Nikkie, you’re a genius.”

“Da.”

Khrushchev was vacationing with his family in the Crimea, on August 5, 1962, when he received word that Marilyn Monroe was dead of a drug overdose. Devastated, he took to his bed.

Newspaper accounts that were brought to him attributed the movie star’s death to probable suicide or at best an accidental fatal self-medication; but Nikita suspected otherwise. In her last phone call to him at the Kremlin, made in July of 1962, she had been enthusiastic about the Kennedy brothers, and her newfound opportunity to “really get involved in politics.” He wondered perhaps if, finally, Marilyn had gotten too involved in politics.

A request by Nikita to the State Department to retrieve his personal letters to her was unsuccessful; no correspondence of the premier’s was ever found among her belongings … or so the State Department claimed (Harrigan in 1961 had returned to the Secret Service, retiring during President Clinton’s first term).

Khrushchev’s after-hours visit to Disneyland slipped past the media and through the cracks of history; but it was nearly otherwise, thanks to Walt Disney.

Despite the U.S. government’s efforts to keep the episode under wraps, Disney—who may have been a loyal American, but was after all the king of a magic realm—decided in 1960 to make a movie on the subject. Disney assigned one of his top scriptwriters to a film that would be called Khrushchev in Hollywood, and signed Peter Ustinov for the part, despite the actor’s reluctance to shave his head.

In Disney’s re-imagining (which skirted the espionage realities of the event), Khrushchev defied the State Department and visited Disneyland in secret, in various comical disguises, ducking both U.S. officials and anti-Russia demonstrators.

But it wasn’t till 1965 that the screenplay was in shape and Ustinov could make time in his schedule, and so, in the end, Walt Disney pulled the plug.

When his associates, knowing how keen Walt had been on this picture, asked why he had at this late date nixed the project, Disney had only shrugged and said, “Old news.”

Khrushchev, after all, was out of power.

In October of 1964, after a disastrous harvest had sent his popularity plummeting, the premier’s enemies finally brought him down, though without any Stalin-esque bloodshed. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev resigned from office at the age of seventy, retiring to a dacha outside Moscow, where he wrote his memoirs, living peacefully until his death in 1971.

A TIP OF THE COONSKIN CAP

Despite its extensive basis in history, Bombshell is a work of fiction, and liberties have been taken with the facts, though as few as possible, reflecting the needs of the narrative as well as conflicting source material.

This novel expands upon a short story by Barbara Collins, “Da Svidaniya, Khrushchev,” published in Marilyn: Shades of Blonde (1997), edited by Carole Nelson Douglas. The invitation to write this story—taking advantage of Barbara’s longtime interest in Marilyn Monroe—came from Ed Gorman and Marty Greenberg. Our thanks to Carole, Ed, and Marty.

Among the sources for the characterization of Nikita Khrushchev were: Khrushchev Remembers (1970), Nikita Khrushchev; The Space Race (1962), Donald W. Cox; Inside Russia Today (1958), John Gunther; Khrushchev: The Years in Power (1978), Roy A. Medvedev and Zhores A. Medvedev; and Life in Russia (1983), Michael Binyon. Contemporary accounts consulted regarding the Khrushchev visit included: Time magazine, September 28, 1959; Newsweek magazine, September 21, 1959, and September 28, 1959; and Life magazine, January 13, 1958, January 20, 1958, September 28, 1959, October 5, 1959, and October 19, 1959.

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