Editor's note: ESPN.com is running excerpts from Richard Ben Cramer's Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life recently published by Simon & Schuster. This is the third of three parts from Chapter 14, when a retired DiMaggio stays in the limelight, thanks to the luminous glow of Marilyn Monroe.
Marilyn had boxes stuffed with letters from a year ago, and two years back. (Joe's advice? Throw 'em in the trash. But she could never do that.) She'd hired her old guardian, Grace Goddard, to file, or try to answer some -- just the most important ones. Sometimes, Marilyn and Grace would work half the night, with Marilyn signing hundreds of photos (for big wheels -- the studio would provide a list), and Grace stuffing envelopes, to send them off to the favored fans. Grace Goddard was hardly a professional business manager. But she knew who was who. She'd toiled around the studios forever (since the 1920s, when she'd worked in the film labs with Marilyn's mother, Gladys Baker -- that was how she had come to know and care for little Norma Jeane). It was Grace who first told the wide-eyed girl that she would be a star, Grace who made the movies "more real than real life." So this was her dream come true, as well.
And who else did Marilyn have? Who else would be loyal to her? Natasha, by that time, was only feeding Marilyn's uncertainties about her own worth. On the set of How to Marry a Millionaire, Marilyn would finish a take, then instantly shield her eyes from the lights and squint through the darkness beyond for Natasha. Until she got the nod from her coach, Marilyn would demand retake after retake -- for hours -- till everybody else was limp and disgusted. "Well, I suppose that wasn't bad, dear," Miss Lytess would say, with disapproval soaking every word. "But I thought you could do better." It was like some pathetic hostage scene -- with Marilyn powerless to break free. And this tired drama was replayed on every film: sooner or later, the director would banish Natasha from the set. Then Marilyn could not go on -- she was unable even to leave her dressing room. She'd send out word that she was ill, and production would stall . . . until Natasha was reinstated -- always at a higher wage.
As the agent Charley Feldman summed up the problem of Marilyn and her coach, in a memo to his staff: "First of all Monroe cannot do a picture without her. I am convinced of this. . . . Incidentally, Lytess wants a helluva lot of dough."
Feldman tried earnestly throughout that year to act on Marilyn's behalf -- though he had no contract with her, and no guarantee he would ever see a dime for himself or his company, Famous Artists. She'd dumped her old agent-firm, William Morris, but still, mysteriously (inexplicably, from Feldman's point of view), avoided signing the new agency contracts he had (gently) proffered three or four times. When Marilyn's mother had to go back into a hospital, Feldman loaned "the girl" money (that didn't do the trick); he stepped in to get Natasha reinstated (no help -- save to Miss Ly-
tess); he adjured his staff to "stay with this girl and see her as often as possible. Don't wait for her to call you, but call her and discuss her matters with her. . . . Too much attention cannot be given to this girl at this critical stage of her career, and she will need it."
|  | | The baseball hero and the Hollywood heroine after the brief wedding ceremony. |
What C. K. Feldman saw in "this girl" (this client -- or not quite) was, to a man of his town, trade, and stature, irresistible. Here was a new fascination on screen (already, as he reminded his staff, "the most important personality on the lot") who had nobody to represent her interests. Here was an emerging megastar whose three films in release that year would bring almost thirty million dollars into the till at Fox -- who was "being grossly underpaid, and up to now there has never been any indication from the studio that they want to adjust her contract." Here was, withal, a young actress who was painfully confused about her future (she didn't want to be the next Betty Grable -- why, Feldman couldn't quite figure) . . . who would answer her own phone when he called at night, talking like she was underwater (she had to take pills to get any sleep, after she'd worked through her lines with Natasha) . . . who was in tears, exhausted, in ill health, when one of his agents came to see her on the set (she'd pushed herself to the breaking point for three months on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Feldman had to send a man to the studio to get her four days off between pictures).
Like other men of his age and attainment, Feldman cast himself as Marilyn's protector. "We must concentrate our efforts in talking with this girl at all times and constantly seeing her," he wrote in a memorandum to the staff. ". . . We can be very forceful and direct with the studio in this situation. We can be the heavy. . . ." But as Feldman gradually learned, that role was taken.
Joe DiMaggio didn't like to go to the studio with Marilyn. All he could do was stand around all day, drinking coffee, while the crew pestered him for autographs. He liked even less accompanying Marilyn to some movie business party or banquet. That would be just another crowd of phonies. If he was in L.A., Joe preferred to hang around her two-room apartment on Doheny Drive (he'd moved her out of her hotels -- photographers always lurking around) . . . stretched out on the couch, smoking, watching TV, and waiting for his girl. Nevertheless, he had particular and definite ideas about her business. In fact, with Joe they were certainties.
They were giving her lousy parts. They just wanted her on screen to wiggle her ass in front of the whole country. They dressed her like a slut, and gave her come-on lines to say, and made her act like she didn't know what she was saying. They worked her all the time, they didn't care about her. They were using her. She was making millions for them, and where was hers? She wanted respect -- money was respect. She ought to marry him and quit the goddamn business. But if she didn't, she had to stop being a chump. . . .
Little by little, Joe's contempt for the business, steady as the drip of an old faucet, wore the shine off her pride in all her achievements. Over time, an acidulous drip like that can cut through rock -- and Marilyn was no rock. By the summer of 1953, his certainties had become her anguished fears. As Marilyn's most recent biographer, Barbara Leaming, pointed out: one thing Joe and Marilyn shared was "a thick streak of suspiciousness."
If Charley Feldman wondered why Marilyn wouldn't sign on as his client, he need only have asked what her Slugger advised. (Why should that guy make a buck off your life?) . . . Or if Feldman couldn't figure why she didn't want to be the next Betty Grable, it was because he'd never heard Joe on the topic. (They used up Grable until she's too old. Now they want to put you into her spot in the lineup.)
By the end of that summer, Feldman had figured out that the best way to get "the girl" to consider an idea was to tell it to "her lawyer," Loyd Wright. But Wright was, in point of fact, DiMaggio's lawyer. When Wright and Feldman cooked up a deal for Marilyn to buy the screen rights to a novel, have a script written from it, and then make the studio buy it at a huge profit, it was Feldman who'd have to put up the money (for the rights, and the writer). But the man who would select Marilyn's first screen property was that noted judge of literature, Joe DiMaggio. (Maybe he read the book, Horns of the Devil. More likely, he got Georgie to read it, or Jimmy Cannon.)
In August, Marilyn was on location in the Canadian Rockies for her third picture that year, River of No Return. When she ran afoul of her director -- it was actually the Marilyn-Natasha drama that pushed Otto Preminger to ugly rage -- Marilyn fell back on her oldest trick. (Oh, darn, she'd hurt her leg! It might be broken! She'd have to wear a cast. She couldn't work.) . . . This time, she also called Charley Feldman to intervene with the studio. But the first call she made was to Joe DiMaggio. She complained that the picture was stupid and they were horrible to her -- they threw water on her all day and screamed at her, and she was in tears. . . . So, the Yankee Clipper showed up in Jasper, Alberta, with the lame explanation (for the waiting press) that he was just on a fishing and hunting trip, with his friend Mr. Solotaire. (Georgie had never hunted anything wilder than a corned beef on rye. But he didn't mind a little camping. For Georgie, anything outside New York -- even Pittsburgh -- was camping.)
Now that Joe had the girl seeing things his way, he moved in as full-time consigliere. He would stay as long as it took in Jasper -- and then move on, with cast and crew, to Banff -- to make sure Miss Monroe wasn't bothered. (He also meant to make sure she didn't get too chummy with her co-star, Robert Mitchum.) . . . Joe would stay till location shooting was finished. It was he who would fly with her back to L.A. And when the studio shooting was done, by the end of September, it was he who'd whisk her out of town, to San Francisco. There would be no more motion pictures for Miss Monroe that year. Joe would see to that, too.
The studio boss, Darryl Zanuck, wanted to put her, right away, into another musical. The Girl in Pink Tights was the title this time. Everything else was an unformed mess. The working story was particularly harebrained: Marilyn would be a prim schoolteacher who needs money to launch her boyfriend's career, so (Gosh!) -- she ends up singing torch songs as a cabaret artiste. Marilyn spotted it right away as "another Betty Grable part." (It was, in fact, a remake of a Grable pic from 1934.) Marilyn didn't think it was good for her. But Joe was adamant about it: they were just going to put her out there half-naked, and make her look stupid again. If she would only marry him, she could tell 'em to shove pink tights up their ass.
He was as certain that they must marry as he was about everything else. . . . In San Francisco, there was no counterbalance to Joe's will -- except her own hunger for respect. Joe told her, you talk about respect -- how about the money? Sinatra's the boyfriend in that picture. Sinat's getting five grand a week. And they're paying you a quarter of that -- twelve-fifty. Fuck 'em and feed 'em fish! . . . In Los Angeles, Famous Artists sent word to Twentieth Century Fox that Miss Monroe would have to see a script before she could consent to do the picture. And that sent the boss, Darryl Zanuck, marching around his office, swinging his polo mallet in fury. Why show her a script? He had picked the scripts that made her a star! She couldn't refuse an assignment. They had a contract! . . .
But Joe had Loyd Wright working with Feldman to rewrite Marilyn's contract entirely. Now she was the biggest star at the studio -- they needed her -- it was time to cash in. Marilyn wanted control of her scripts, directors, cinematographers. (And, of course, she wanted her coach.) But DiMaggio wanted money for the girl -- big-league dough. And fewer pictures: they worked her like a slave. Joe was in this deal up to his elbows, had to know everything -- and no mistakes! It had to be just right. He wanted her new contract done in February. That's because the book he'd picked out for her, Horns of the Devil, was bought in August. She had to hold the rights on that book for six months, before the studio bought it from her -- so the money would be a capital gain (a lower tax rate) -- that was important. (To Joe, taxes were like publicity: a little bit was unavoidable, maybe even a good sign, but anyone who walked around looking for more was a busher.) . . . And, in the meantime, there would be no Pink Tights -- no pictures at all! . . . Why should the studio negotiate, if they had a backlog of her movies to release?
Marilyn agreed with everything he said -- while he said it. But it scared her, too. No pictures? . . . It wasn't that long ago when she didn't have anything, and "no pictures in the works" was the story of her life. In November, Marilyn had to go to L.A. for the premiere of Millionaire -- and some retakes in the studio for River of No Return. And the longer she was there, the more she wavered. Maybe she could do Pink Tights (if the studio would get Gene Kelly for her co-star) . . . or they could put her into another picture. She'd love to play the harlot, Nefer, in that big costume project, The Egyptian. (That sent Zanuck into another rage: he was saving that part for his mistress, Bella Darvi.)
Feldman was no help. He was stuck in Switzerland, where his ex-wife was undergoing an operation. From there he sent memos to his staff -- with orders to read them to "the girl." But he had nothing to say. He couldn't get her that Egyptian part, even if he camped at Zanuck's door twenty-four hours a day. As for Pink Tights, she could do the film, or not -- either way was fine with Charley.
And Natasha was horrid. First, she tried to convince Marilyn that she had to do Pink Tights. Otherwise the studio would put her on suspension . . . and what would happen to Natasha's job? Then she demanded five thousand dollars -- right away, or she'd walk! Marilyn had to sell the mink stole that Johnny Hyde had given her. (Even so, she could only raise a thousand -- Natasha was still pressuring her.)
Strange to say, it was the holidays that rescued Marilyn from the griddle. She had to fly to San Francisco, for Thanksgiving -- a real family Thanksgiving, this time. Marie was cooking for a houseful of DiMaggios . . . and three days later, when Marilyn flew south again, she had one with her. She brought back to L.A. her own cleanup hitter. And that would make all the difference.
When the studio ordered Marilyn to report for reheasals on The Girl in Pink Tights, Joe told Marilyn to ignore the call.
Two days later, Zanuck himself was on the phone to Famous Artists -- and in a famous rage. Monroe's contract had no script approval! What the hell did she mean by this? He'd made her a star! He threatened "drastic measures." Joe told Marilyn to let him stew.
The next day, Zanuck tried another tack: he ordered Marilyn in to redub a song for River of No Return. That was a serious matter -- a film she had agreed to do, that had to be completed. But Joe said it was only a trick. And Marilyn stayed home.
Then, Natasha was on the phone to the agents, demanding that Marilyn report to work immediately. (Why yes, she'd had a visit from Mr. Zanuck, but that wasn't the point. The point was Marilyn's selfishness!) . . . The staff at Famous Artists dialed faster than Natasha, and got Marilyn on the phone. By the time Natasha got her call through to the apartment on Doheny Drive, it was DiMaggio who picked up, to inform the coach that Miss Monroe was unavailable.
Then, Zanuck dispatched a man from the publicity department, Roy Craft, to visit Miss Monroe at home. Marilyn always loved publicity. She would let Craft in -- Zanuck was sure. But Marilyn didn't answer the door. DiMaggio answered it -- in fact, he filled the door -- and told Craft he could get the fuck away from it, too!
The standoff continued through most of December. By the time it was over, there were legal documents ordering Miss Monroe back to work; there was a nighttime escape (by Cadillac) up the coast to San Francisco; there were code names ("Mr. Robin calling") to alert Marie to put the agents through; there were retakes (whole new scenes!) for River of No Return, ordered by Zanuck, so Marilyn would have to come back to the studio. There were secret calls from pay phones, nighttime meetings with the agents on the street in front of the Knickerbocker Hotel, ferocious cables back and forth from Switzerland . . . and through it all, profuse threats from Zanuck. He was going to take this story to the press! Louella! Hedda! And all the rest. They would ruin the girl! "They will assassinate her! Even if I have to destroy an asset, they have got to do it!" Zanuck roared. (Of course, the asset was Marilyn.) ". . . This will be the Goddamnedest story I have broken in this Goddamn town! It will be all over the Whole Damn INDUSTRY!"
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We knew it wouldn't be an easy marriage. On the other hand, we couldn't keep on going forever as a pair of cross-country lovers. It might begin to hurt both of our careers . . .The public doesn't mind people living together without being married, providing they don't overdo it. . . . ” |
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— Marilyn Monroe telling columnist Ben Hecht why she and Joe married. |
But all his splenetic bluster could not fetch Marilyn back to the fold. She was (and always had been) her own asset. When she was with Joe, she never doubted that -- he wouldn't let her. By the end of December 1953, she made her escape, flying north (incognito) as Miss Norma Dougherty, to the safety of the house on Beach Street, San Francisco.
And it was wonderful, hiding out there, the way the family took care of her. Some brother or sister was always coming by, for coffee, or just to say hello. (And bringing kids!) . . . Marie turned away all the calls from reporters. Joe would go out for anything they needed. (Or anything Marilyn even talked about wanting.) . . . For Christmas -- the best Christmas ever -- there was a big tree, for her and Marie to decorate. And under it, on Christmas morning, Marilyn found her gift from Joe -- a mink! And not a stole, like the horrid Natasha had made her sell -- but a lustrous, enveloping black mink coat, from Maximilian -- it must have cost ten thousand dollars. Just to put it on was an embrace. Marilyn modeled it all around the house, and said she would wear it forever.
But all the excitement (and all the DiMaggios) couldn't protect her forever. Right after Christmas, the agents called and said production was scheduled on Pink Tights. This wasn't a rehearsal call. On Monday, January 4, they'd be on the set, shooting. (Zanuck was pulling the trigger.) . . . And Marilyn was ordered to appear.
Joe said, what could they do without her? It's another trick. They'll back down. And Marilyn stayed in San Francisco.
Monday, the phone on Beach Street was ringing off the hook. All reporters . . . and Marie relayed their news -- an announcement, from Twentieth Century Fox: Marilyn Monroe had breached her contract. Miss Monroe, her pay and privileges, and all her movie projects, were suspended.
She was all right that day, with the calls bringing news, and the radio announcing her name -- and she had to think about the statement Loyd Wright would release to the press. (She wanted it known that she was not fighting over money -- she just wanted to see the script, to make sure it would be a good picture.) . . . But in days to come, the house grew quiet. And she was quiet, fearful.
She saw the terrible things they wrote in the San Francisco papers. Louella Parsons was in there, with a line about Frank Sinatra flying all the way from Rome, to be on time. But not La Monroe -- she couldn't be bothered! . . . Marilyn knew the studio fed that to Louella. They were trying to assassinate her.
And she knew how they worked. They could make her nothing! . . . What if they wouldn't make a new contract? They could keep her out of work forever. Or for four more years -- she'd be old, thirty-one! -- everything could be over by then, for Her. Everything she'd worked for could be gone, ruined. Maybe she had ruined it already. Who was going to take care of Her?
There was no one. She hadn't felt it coming -- the aloneness -- it just happened: people left her, all at the same time.
In September, poor Grace had found out she had cancer of the uterus, and she'd swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. Grace was the first one who ever believed in Marilyn -- now, she was gone.
And Natasha had shown she was a betrayer. (Had she ever really believed in Marilyn, like she said?) . . . Who did believe?
Now, there were only men, fighting about "the girl." Charley Feldman had finally come back to America. But only to New York. He called in and said he'd talked to the studio president, the money man, Spyros Skouras. But Skouras could do nothing about "the Coast." That was Zanuck -- and he was vicious -- he was trying to kill off Marilyn Monroe. There was Loyd Wright, but he mostly listened to Joe. And Joe -- he didn't want her to be . . . Her. He never did. He couldn't.
He did love her. But he only wanted to marry her, bury her. That's why she never would -- though he asked all the time. And she knew he was hurt when she said no. But how could she say yes? He didn't care about her acting, or the movies, or anything she'd done. He didn't care now, when everything was ruined . . .
He didn't understand.
But he did understand. And he told her about a time -- it was fifteen years ago, in that same house -- when he thought that everything he wanted, everything he had, all he had worked for, could be gone. They would take it away. Because he said he wouldn't go to play ball, unless they gave him what he deserved. And all of a sudden, all the things people said and wrote about him, all the big things he'd done -- that all felt like it must have happened for somebody else. Because he was here, all by himself, and not so big, and scared.
She asked him, what happened? And he laughed and said he lost. . . . But he didn't lose for long. He came back bigger than ever. And they did pay him -- more than he ever dreamed he could have. And in the end, when he walked away they were begging him to stay and take more. He got what he wanted. And so would she.
And he asked her again, to marry him.
And she said yes.
In the long years afterward, it was fashionable (even among Joe's pals) to maintain they were always ill-suited. Marilyn and Joe -- how could that ever work? . . . She knew nothing about his game; he had only contempt for hers. What could they ever have in common? . . . How could that old-world Italian -- so conservative, shy, and inward -- get along with a wife who didn't wear underpants?
But they missed the point.
Joe and Marilyn had one big thing in common. In fact, they may have been the only two people in the country, at that moment, who could understand each other. Because both were living inside the vast personages that the hero machine had created for them. And inside those personages -- those enormous idols for the nation -- these two, Marilyn and Joe, were only small and struggling, fearful to be seen. And alone -- always. They were like kids, left in a giant house, and they must not be discovered. Or it would all come crashing down. In their loneliness, they might have been brother and sister.
Joe's insistence made them husband and wife.
Looking back, she remembered it as mostly about her career -- and what the public thought of the Giant Goddess she was supposed to be:
"Joe and I had been talking about getting married for some months," she told Ben Hecht. "We knew it wouldn't be an easy marriage. On the other hand, we couldn't keep on going forever as a pair of cross-country lovers. It might begin to hurt both of our careers.
"The public doesn't mind people living together without being married, providing they don't overdo it. . . .
"One day Joe said to me:
" 'You're having all this trouble with the studio and not working so why don't we get married now? I've got to go to Japan anyway on some baseball business, and we could make a honeymoon out of the trip.'
"That's the way Joe is, always cool and practical . . .
"And so we were married and took off for Japan on our honeymoon.
"That was something I had never planned on or dreamed about --
becoming the wife of a great man. Any more than Joe had ever thought of marrying a woman who seemed eighty percent publicity.
"The truth is that we were very much alike. My publicity, like Joe's greatness, is something on the outside. It has nothing to do with what we actually are."
When Joe got the green light, he turned it on like he would rounding first base -- speed, smooth power, and no wasted motion. Reno Barsocchini got a judge who was a pal, Lefty O'Doul got another seat on the plane to Japan, Joe got three white orchids. Day and a half after she said yes, they were at City Hall. It was January 14, 1954.
Of course, there were about a hundred reporters and photographers, too. Someone tipped 'em. But Joe didn't mind. He kept them frozen in Judge Charlie Peery's outer office. Meantime, Joe and his girl signed the registry, and went inside. Joe entered his age, thirty-nine. But twenty-seven sounded old to Marilyn: she signed in at age twenty-five.
The wedding party was Joe's big brother Tom, Mr. and Mrs. Reno Barsocchini, and Mr. and Mrs. Lefty O'Doul. They were the only guests, too. The reporters were frustrated by the frosted glass in the judge's door. But one of them, Jerry Flamm, from the Call, was six feet four, so they hoisted him up, to peer through the clear-glass transom.
"Do you, Norma Jeane Mortenson Dougherty . . ."
Flamm was barking out a running play-by-play.
"Promise to love, honor, and cherish . . ."
(No obey!) . . .
Flamm kept it up, until Joe said, "I do." But when he saw the man from the Daily News sprinting for a phone, Flamm started hollering to get down, too.
It didn't matter -- it was over in three minutes. Joe and Marilyn came out, and there were two hundred newsmen of every stripe, and court clerks, bailiffs, jury members, witnesses -- five hundred people pushing in the corridor.
KISS 'ER, JOE!
They kissed for the camera.
DO IT AGAIN!
They kissed again. Marilyn made such a darling bride, in a brown suit with a little white Peter Pan collar (right up under her chin).
Y'WANT KIDS?
"I'd like to have six," Marilyn said.
"One." That was from DiMaggio.
WHERE YOU GONNA LIVE?
"Here, San Francisco," DiMaggio said.
"I'm going to continue my career," said Marilyn. Then she saw the look from Joe. "But I'm looking forward to being a housewife, too!"
As the Examiner reported: "Joe gave his blonde bride a playful pat, and almost growled, 'Let's go.' " He had to push through the crowd into the hallway -- took a wrong turn and ended up in a dead end at the assessor's office, and had to turn back -- running now, colliding with photographers, Marilyn behind him, trying to keep up -- and giggling . . . as the elevator doors closed.
Joe didn't even have a smile. This was supposed to be a strictly private affair!
Marilyn knew better. An hour before she went to City Hall, she'd called the studio -- the publicity department -- and told the boss there, Harry Brand: "Harry, I promised I'd tell you first, if I ever got married. I'm being married to Joe this afternoon."
Marilyn understood publicity and its power. Within hours, Twentieth Century Fox had issued a statement, to wish the newlyweds well . . . and to announce that the suspension of Marilyn Monroe was now revoked.
By that time, Joe's blue Cadillac was parked outside the Clifton Motel, in Paso Robles -- a little coastal town three hours south of San Francisco. Joe had rented a room for six and a half dollars. He said he wanted a double bed. And he wanted a TV.
Click here for next excerpt.
From JOE DIMAGGIO by Richard Ben Cramer. Copyright ® 2000 by Richard Ben Cramer. Reprinted by persmission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Richard Ben Cramer is the author of the bestselling What It Takes: The Way to the White House, which was acclaimed as one of the finest books ever written on American politics. His journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Time and Newsweek. His dispatches from the Middle East for the Philadelphia Inquirer won the Pultizer Prize for International Reporting in 1979. with his wife and daughter, he lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore. | |
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DiMaggio book: Joe and Marilyn play dating game
DiMaggio book: Marilyn struggles with Joe's jealousy
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 Richard Ben Cramer says Joe DiMaggio was a nearly impossible subject to write about.
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Richard Ben Cramer talks about DiMaggio being a cultural icon.
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Richard Ben Cramer says DiMaggio was a product of his own fame.
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DiMaggio became America's guest for over 60 years, says Richard Ben Cramer..
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