A classified file released by the FBI shows how the agency tracked Marilyn Monroe’s suspected ties to communism in 1956. The agency documented an anonymous phone call to the New York Daily News that year warning that playwright Arthur Miller was a communist and Monroe had ‘drifted into the communist orbit’ after her marriage to him earlier that year.
The file is just one piece of the puzzle about what the FBI knew about the actress when she died in August 1962. The Associated Press waging an ongoing campaign to have more of the FBI documents released by the agency, coinciding with the 50th anniversary Monroe’s death.
The redacted document reveals that on July 11, 1956, the agency got a tip that an anonymous male caller phoned the Daily News to report that the actress’s company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, was ‘filled with communists’ and that money from the company was being used to finance communist activities.
The caller said Miller’s marriage to Monroe during a Jewish ceremony less than a months earlier was a ‘coverup.’ Miller, the man said, ‘was still a member of the CP (communist party) and was their cultural front man.’ The FBI has long made portions of its documents about Monroe public, but most of them are heavily redacted.
However, the FBI claims it has lost its files on the actress and cannot release them. Finding out precisely when the records were moved – as the FBI says has happened – required the filing of yet another, still-pending Freedom of Information Act request. The most recent version of the files is publicly available on the bureau’s website, The Vault, which periodically posts FBI records on celebrities, government officials, spies and criminals.