Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas with Jennifer Lopez. Credit: Instagram @egt239
Marilyn Monroe’s death is back in the spotlight after Jennifer Lopez’s producing partner, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, claimed a Hollywood insider confessed the star was “killed.”
Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas’s debut novel, Climbing in Heels, reportedly blends fiction with her real-life experience of her climbing the ranks of Hollywood’s male-dominated structure in the 1980s.
In a recent interview with People, the Jennifer Lopez producer recounted a chilling moment from her early days working at the William Morris Agency, when a mysterious visitor made a bombshell remark about Monroe’s 1962 death.
“He said to no one in particular, ‘They killed Marilyn.’ I said, ‘Excuse me?’” she recalled.
According to Goldsmith-Thomas, the man then added:
“‘I didn’t want it to happen. I really liked the kid. She called me Uncle Milty. But she was just getting out of control… so they killed her.’”
Later, her boss identified the man as Milt Ebbins, the former manager of Peter Lawford, who was famously connected to Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and John F. Kennedy’s family.
Hollywood’s dark past
While Climbing in Heels is technically a work of fiction, much of it is based on Goldsmith-Thomas’s own shocking encounters as a young woman in showbiz. In interviews with People and Page Six, she pulls back the curtain on the abuse of power that defined the industry.
Some of the most disturbing revelations include:
- A mailroom trainee being “rewarded” by listening via intercom as his boss had sex with auditioning actresses.
- Being offered a suspicious private meeting with Bill Cosby at his hotel after he reportedly “took an interest” in her – which she narrowly avoided after a warning from a colleague.
- Secretaries being encouraged to send cocaine cross-country in a “New York pouch” system.
- Male colleagues routinely asking for oral sex as a joke, with comments like “Well, you don’t ask, you don’t get.”
“There was blow and blow jobs – and a lot of sex. It was the ’80s,” she said bluntly to People.
She also revealed that women were pressured to look pretty, wear skirts, and avoid ambition. Secretaries weren’t allowed to become agents, and asking for equal opportunities was laughed off.
Goldsmith-Thomas rose to the top, becoming a senior vice president and later a successful producer alongside Jennifer Lopez, with whom she’s worked on Hustlers and the upcoming Kiss of the Spider Woman.
Lopez encouraged her to write the book, and now Climbing in Heels is being adapted into a TV series by Sex and the City creator Darren Star.
Climbing in Heels is out now – that’s my holiday read sorted!
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