In May 1957, Marilyn Monroe slept on a sofa bed in a den at 3625 Appleton Street NW, on a residential block in Forest Hills. She rode a bicycle around the neighborhood in sunglasses and pedal pushers, read books, and sat by the backyard pool.
She was in town to support her husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, who was on trial in federal court for contempt of Congress. They were staying with Miller’s lawyer, Joseph L. Rauh Jr., and his family. For much of the visit, the neighbors had no idea she was there.
The streetcar footage from the 1950s gives you a look at the Washington she visited. But Monroe spent much of her visit at the house, following Miller’s case away from the crowds.
A movie star at the front door
On Thursday, May 23, 1957, the front lawn at 3625 Appleton Street filled with reporters and photographers. A neighborhood tip and a small item that morning in the Evening Star had blown her cover. Less than two hours before she was due at Union Station to catch a 6 p.m. train back to New York, Monroe walked out to face the press in a tight-fitting brown-and-white knit dress.
She praised Washington but declined to confirm that she was pregnant.
“I love your city. I think it’s the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. I’ve never been here before.”
That was her review of Washington. She added that they had driven down to Monticello the day before, that yes she liked it, and that next to Lincoln, “it’s Thomas Jefferson for me.”
A Star photographer caught her on the front walk, surrounded by neighborhood kids, smiling and waving. The next day’s Evening Star ran the photo across the top of page A-2 under the headline “A Visitor Says Good-By.” The caption read: “Marilyn Monroe, who stayed at [3625] Appleton street N.W. for seven days, says good-by to neighborhood youngsters who gathered in front of the house.”
Why she was there
Arthur Miller had testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee on June 21, 1956. He was willing to talk about his own past attendance at Communist meetings in New York in the 1940s. He refused to name anyone else.
Miller’s refusal led to two counts of contempt of Congress. HUAC was investigating Communist misuse of American passports, and Miller had a passport application pending. He said his conscience would not let him identify other people who had attended meetings.
Miller and Monroe had married on June 29, 1956, eight days after his HUAC testimony. Less than a year into their marriage, they came to Washington for his trial.
The lawyer in Forest Hills
Miller’s lawyer was Joseph L. Rauh Jr., one of the most prominent civil liberties attorneys in the country. Rauh had clerked for Supreme Court Justices Benjamin Cardozo and Felix Frankfurter, served in the Roosevelt administration, and in 1947 co-founded Americans for Democratic Action with Eleanor Roosevelt, Walter Reuther, and Hubert Humphrey. He spent the McCarthy years defending the people McCarthy wanted to destroy.
He lived at 3625 Appleton Street with his wife, the former Olie Westheimer, and their two sons. The older one was at the University of Michigan. The younger one, Carl, was sixteen and a junior at Woodrow Wilson High School, a few blocks north of the house.
Monroe wanted to avoid the press and fans who would gather at a hotel. When Miller asked Rauh about somewhere to stay, Rauh offered the sofa bed in his den. Ann Kessler recounts the arrangement in her history of the visit for Forest Hills Connection.
The girl on the bike
Carl Rauh drove to Union Station to pick Monroe up. He was told to look for “a woman wearing a dark wig, a head scarf, and sunglasses.” He found her, drove her home, and went back to school the next morning without telling his classmates.
Monroe did not attend the court sessions. At the Rauh home, she read books, newspaper reports, and court records to keep up with the case. “So you see I knew a good bit about what’s going on,” she told the Star.
She borrowed a bicycle and rode it around Forest Hills. The whistle from a passing driver, she told the Star, was not because anyone recognized her. “Well, one man did blow his horn and whistle, but that was only because he saw a girl riding a bike.” She sat by the Rauhs’ backyard pool and put her feet in the water. The next-door neighbor, Mrs. Victor N. Jaffe, had no idea who was over there. Her six-year-old daughter Vicki had noticed the visitor.
“I saw her sitting by the pool, swishing her feet in the water. I thought she was real pretty.”
While the adults next door were unaware that Monroe was still at the house, six-year-old Vicki had noticed the visitor by the pool.
The Millers had left the house and then returned, which helps explain the neighbors’ confusion. People who had spotted Monroe during the earlier visit assumed she was gone.
The trial downtown
Federal Judge Charles F. McLaughlin heard Miller’s case. The prosecution argued that the names Miller withheld were relevant to the passport inquiry because they could verify his account of attending Communist meetings. Rauh challenged the connection to passports and argued that the committee chairman had agreed to defer the question about names. Assistant United States Attorney William Hitz prosecuted.
Oral arguments wrapped up on Thursday, May 23. Judge McLaughlin gave both sides until the following Wednesday to file additional briefs before issuing his decision. That same evening the Millers walked through Union Station and boarded a night train home to New York.
On May 31, 1957, McLaughlin convicted Miller on both counts.
What stayed in Forest Hills
Miller’s conviction was reversed on August 7, 1958. The appeals court found that the committee chairman had agreed to defer the question and never clearly renewed the direction to answer it. The court ordered Miller acquitted.
The marriage lasted beyond both the trial and the appeal. Miller and Monroe divorced in January 1961, and Monroe died in August 1962.
Rauh kept practicing. He represented the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic Convention, fought for the Civil Rights Act, and stayed at it for the next three decades. He died on September 3, 1992 at age 81. President Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom the following year. The Rauh family home at 3625 Appleton Street is still standing, a brick house on a residential block in Forest Hills.
The sofa bed, the borrowed bicycle, and the afternoon by the pool are what make this visit memorable. Away from the cameras, Monroe was a houseguest waiting for news from court.
In 1956, another celebrity had passed through this part of Northwest: Elvis Presley appeared on Jimmy Dean’s WMAL-TV show on Connecticut Avenue. His interview was considerably shorter than Monroe’s lawn-side news conference.
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