Frank Lloyd Wright: Marilyn Monroe, Ann Baxter and His Death

One of my jobs, for a couple of weeks, was cleaning Mr and Mrs Wright's living room.  Cleaning there one day, I saw Mr Wright approach from another part of his quarters.  I was standing off to the side and he did not see me. One of the family's grey Weimaraner dogs was lying across the threshold of the opened glass door leading into the living room.  Mr Wright stopped an inch or two from the dog and looked down.  The dog did not move.  Mr Wright then peered up and around, looking to see if anyone could witness what he intended doing.  He didn't see me.  Then this ninety year old man pulled one leg back, and kicked that dog as hard as he could.  The dog let out a yelp and jumped away. 

I laughed, and then Mr Wright saw me.

He smiled and said, "That dog is always in the way, too stupid to move."

On the weekends, the time was ours of course.  On Saturday night we had a special supper served in the underground theater, after which we saw a first line movie, often before it had hit the theaters.  I don't know how this was managed.  I remember one night we saw a western, and after the movie Mr Wright stood up and said, with a twinkle in his eye, "Well, boys, a good western needs lots of shooting and horses, great scenery, and my granddaughter (Ann Baxter)."  Then he laughed and moved out of the theater.

On Sunday nights we also ate in the theater and afterward we had classical music for awhile, sometimes though in the Pavilion and occasionally by a world renown pianist.  "Boys, you'll never hear Schubert played better than you did tonight..."

Before I arrived at Taliesin, Marilyn Monroe and her husband came to Mr Wright to have him do a house for them.  (He designed a wonderful circular\rectangular structure, which, however, was not built)  The story goes that Mr Wright was so taken with Marilyn that he allowed no one--not even Mrs Wright--to be in the room with him when he talked with Marilyn.  Even at his age, he could still appreciate a beautiful woman.

It was a few days before Mr Wright's death that we had the big gala Easter celebration at Taliesin West.  Many people were invited and we set long tables out on the beautiful graveled walk which extended outside, in a L shape, from the far end of the drafting room to the steps and terrace outside the living room, around the little reflecting poor.  On the terrace were set a few other tables, the one for the Wrights with  a large umbrella shading it.

Everyone was invited to the affair, including Mr Wright's granddaughter, the actress Anne Baxter.  There was enough space for all, including all of the members of the Fellowship.  Special food was served, a certain amount of it foreign in origin (Mrs Wright was a native of Montenegro); and all the people were dressed to the teeth.

Later I saw Mr Wright sitting under the umbrella, and I saw him raise his hand several times and lower it to the table in a gesture of impatience and fatigue (Mrs.Wright had kept this man up until eleven or twelve each night entertaining guests, for several nights, this man who usually went to bed around 7 p.m.), and then I heard him say to no one in particular, "Let's get the show on the road; let's get the show on the road."  He looked tired.

The following Thursday Mr Wright was admitted to the hospital and died four days later from complications arising from the operation for an intestinal obstruction.  He died on April 9, 1959, two months from his 91st birthday.

We had already packed up to move back to Wisconsin, since we were to spend the next six months there, before coming back to Arizona.  We had a short funeral service there in Arizona and were instructed to un-pack.  Then Mrs Wright had Wesley Peters and Gene Masselink take the coffin containing the remains of Frank Lloyd Wright, and, while she and several members of her inner group flew back to Wisconsin, the body of Mr Wright was bounced to Wisconsin in the back of a pickup truck.

Mr Wright had demanded to be buried next to Mamah Cheney, his (I suspected) one true love.

If you haven't heard the story of Mrs Cheney I give you the nut-shell version: Mrs Cheney had been a client of Mr Wright's in 1910 or so.  He fell in love with her--and visa versa; each asked their spouses for a divorce.  Mr Wright's wife refused to grant a divorce and that is why Mr Wright and Mamah Cheney could not marry.  Mr Wright and Mamah moved to Germany for a year, where Mr Wright oversaw the printing of a fine edition of prints of his buildings.  When they returned to America, Mr Wright moved from Chicago to Spring Green, Wisconsin, to the 160 acre farm his mother had given him, and he built a home, Taliesin North, for he and Mrs Cheney and her two children.  Two years later, a servant from Barbados who worked for Mr Wright, went berserk one weekend when Mr Wright was in Chicago checking on a building he was doing.  The deranged man nailed all the exterior doors shut, except the lower half of a dutch door, and then he set the house on fire.  Anyone who tried to crawl out the dutch door, he be-headed with an axe.  Seven people were killed in the terrible massacre, including Mrs Cheney and her two children.  Mr Wright and his "house of sin" became instantly infamous--to say the least.

And Mr Wright was buried next to his Mamah Cheney.