New Book: Marilyn Monroe Had Lesbian Affairs

Marilyn Monroe was, and in many ways remains, the preeminent sex symbol of American culture. Beautiful, funny, famous, rich, she was all any man could hope for. Her known romantic entanglements include everyone from Joe DiMaggio, to Marlon Brandon, to president John F. Kennedy.

But until now, fewer knew she also had affairs with women. Radar Online reports that Monroe already allegedly admitted to encounters with movie stars such as Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich and Elizabeth Taylor, she also seduced a 16-year-old girl who ran her fan club.

Author Tony Jerris wrote the book “Marilyn Monroe: My Little Secret, told by Jane Lawrence,” which includes the allegations of Monroe’s lesbian affair. Monroe met Jane Lawrence when Lawrence was 12, and the two bonded over having similar troubled family pasts. Lawrence struggled with her sexuality, but Monroe gave her comfort.

“She told her, ‘Whatever your sexual preference is, it means nothing — love is love,'” Jerris told Radar Online.

Monroe was 29 when the two first shared a sexual experience. Lawrence was 16.

“The next few minutes became hazy, surreal and dream-like. My pulse leaped as Marilyn kissed my thigh again… she then leaned in and kissed me full on the lips, very softly and very slowly. I was nearly hyperventilating,” said Lawrence in the memoir.

Another book, “Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox,” by Lois Banner claims that Marilyn Monroe wondered if she may have been a lesbian.

“She had affairs with many eminent men — baseball great Joe DiMaggio, playwright Arthur Miller, director Elia Kazan, actor Marlon Brando, singer Frank Sinatra, the Kennedy brothers –- and she married DiMaggio and Miller,” Banner writes, as reported by the Huffington Post. “Yet she desired women, had affairs with them, and worried that she might be lesbian by nature.”

Lawrence claimed the experience with Marilyn Monroe helped confirm her own sexuality, but she does not think the famous blond bombshell as herself gay.

“She was just a free spirit,” wrote Lawrence. “She was a very open person.”