LOS ANGELES -- Marilyn Monroe adored fellow screen legend Clark Gable as a father figure, fretted over a relationship with then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and had a one-night stand with actress Joan Crawford that left her cold.

Monroe also thought sex with former spouse and playwright Arthur Miller was just "so-so" and maintained a deep affection for ex-husband Joe DiMaggio. But she credited her psychiatrist with teaching her how to achieve orgasm.

The Los Angeles Times revealed these and other glimpses into Monroe's mind Friday in excerpts of tape recordings the sex symbol and actress is said to have secretly made for her psychiatrist in the days before she died at the age of 36 in 1962.

The Times said it obtained a written record of the tapes from the only person still alive who claims to have heard them -- former prosecutor John Miner, 86, who says the recordings support his belief that Monroe was a victim of foul play.

Miner took "extensive" and "nearly verbatim" notes from the tapes when they were played for him by Monroe's psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson, now deceased, while Miner was investigating her death.

Monroe's nude body was found on Aug. 5, 1962, in her Los Angeles home. An autopsy concluded she died of barbiturate poisoning, and the death was ruled a probable suicide.

Conspiracy theories abounded for decades suggesting Monroe was murdered. Prosecutors reexamined the case in 1982 but decided there was insufficient evidence to warrant a new criminal investigation.

The Times story was published as dozens of fans gathered, as they have for decades, near Monroe's burial site to mark the anniversary of her death and the unanswered questions surrounding it.

"She was enormously desirable and enormously vulnerable," said Stanley Rubin, who produced the 1954 film "River of No Return," starring Monroe and Robert Mitchum.

Miner told the Times he examined the tapes in a bid to determine Monroe's state of mind and came away believing the recordings showed the actress was anything but suicidal.

According to excerpts, Monroe started off the recording -- a kind of self-analysis through free association -- by thanking her doctor for helping her regain "control of myself, control of my life."

"You are the only person who will ever know the most private, the most secret thoughts of Marilyn Monroe," she says.