When Fred Karger was born in 1916, he made his debut with a Hollywood pedigree. His father, Maxwell Karger, was a founding member of Metro, later MGM, and his mother was Vaudeville performer Ann Conley of Ann & Effie Conley Sisters.
By the time he was employed at Columbia Pictures as a vocal coach in 1948, he was recently divorced and living at his mother’s house with his young daughter Terry. His sister, Mary, was also divorced and living in their mother’s home with her own children.
When Columbia assigned Fred to work with newly signed starlet Marilyn Monroe, it wasn’t long before the professional relationship turned into something more. For her part, Marilyn quickly fell head-over-heals in love and, despite having been married once before, would forever after refer to Fred Karger as her first real love.
Soon enough, Marilyn was eager to become the next Mrs. Karger and confided to her drama coach Natasha Lytess that “Freddy is the man of my dreams.”
After their first date, Marilyn had Fred drop her off not at her real home, the Studio Club, a dormitory for young women in the entertainment industry, but instead at a recently vacated hovel of an apartment. This, she told him sadly, was her home and all she could afford. Her ploy worked. Fred brought her to his mother’s and Marilyn made herself at home with the Karger clan.
Once entrenched with the Kargers, Marilyn dutifully pitched in with chores around the house, determined to prove that she was wife and stepmother material. Ann and Mary, Fred’s mother and sister, immediately took to their houseguest. For Marilyn it must have seemed like a welcome relief from loneliness and the grief she was experiencing from recently losing her guardian “Aunt” Ana Lower.
Ann and Mary liked Marilyn so much, in fact, that her friendship with them would outlast her relationship with Fred. Fourteen years later they would be among the handful amount of guests permitted by Joe DiMaggio to attend Marilyn’s funeral in 1962.
With the Kargers, Marilyn was in the early stages of forming what would be a lifelong pattern. As an adult, the once-lonely orphan would ingratiate herself into someone else’s family, effectively creating a surrogate one in place of the real one she lacked.
But her newly found security and happiness was short-lived. The Studio Club called Columbia to inquire about where she was and soon enough Fred returned her to the club. At first successful, her ploy had backfired. She later said, “[Fred] said that because I lied about this, he couldn’t trust me with anything. He didn’t think I would be a good example to the children in his family. It made me feel pretty rotten.”
Unfortunately for Marilyn, Fred was in no hurry to tie the knot again any time soon—and certainly not with Marilyn. Ten years his junior and not well-educated, Marilyn Monroe did not fit the proper wife and mother bill as far as Fred Karger was concerned.
“Most of his talk to me was a form of criticism,” Marilyn later said. “He criticized my mind. He kept pointing out how little I knew and how unaware of life I was.” He also told Marilyn: “You cry too easily. That’s because your mind isn’t developed. Compared to your figure, it’s embryonic.” Marilyn later said she felt like she couldn’t argue because she had to look “embryonic” up in the dictionary.
Natasha Lytess encouraged Marilyn to end the relationship with Fred, but her advice fell on deaf ears. She continued trying to win him over, hoping that he would love her as much as she loved him.
And here Marilyn was establishing another pattern that she would frequently repeat: picking a man who was highly critical and often distant toward her. Many of Fred’s actions were at once helpful and destructive. She began a rigorous study program after negative comments regarding her lack of education. She began making changes to her wardrobe at his suggestion. He paid for her to have cosmetic dental work performed to perfect her teeth.
Despite all her efforts to please him, Fred remained emotionally unavailable. Consequently, the more he remote and critical he became, the more it exacerbated her insecurities and desperate need for his love. By Christmas of 1948, their romance was fizzling out, just a few months after it began. Years later, Marilyn was still making payments on an expensive gold watch that she had purchased on credit for Fred, a continuing sad reminder of her failed first love.
In 1952, Fred Karger did finally take another Mrs. Karger—actress Jane Wyman, who would divorce Fred a few years later…then remarry and divorce him again. Marilyn was still smarting a few years after her own breakup from Fred, as she showed up unannounced to the Mr. and Mrs. Karger’s wedding reception to congratulate the happy couple. Her friend Sidney Skolsky later said that it was the “one bitchy thing” he had ever seen her do.
Fred Karger passed away on August 5, 1979—17 years to the day after Marilyn’s own passing.
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