Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love

by C. David Heymann

  “So here’s Staff Sergeant Joseph Paul DiMaggio, without the familiar number five on his back, and the instant he arrives,” said Dario, “they pile him into a jeep and drive him to Honolulu Stadium and shove a baseball bat into his paws. His Yankee teammate Charles ‘Red’ Ruffing is pitching. There are twenty thousand fans, mostly military personnel, in the stands, and he steps to the plate and belts Ruffing’s first pitch a country mile, way over the left-field bleachers, out of sight and onto the street, and everybody goes nuts. And the next time up he stretches a double into a triple and slides into third so hard you’d think he was Ty Cobb. But that’s how he played the game. I’m glad we were on the same team. I mean, we’re not fighting the Nazis, but we’re at least entertaining the boys. And then after a couple of months, Joe’s duodenal ulcer kicks up, and he spends the rest of the war in and out of military hospitals.”

  “Right,” responded DiMaggio, “and when I’m not playing ball or convalescing in a hospital bed, I’m playing pinochle and poker with four- and five-star generals. It was boring as hell, but it’s not my fault they didn’t ask me to drop bombs on the enemy. I’d have gladly obliged.”

  “Like Ted Williams,” said Dario. “Now, there’s a war hero for you.”

  “Listen,” said DiMaggio, “Pee Wee Reese and Johnny Mize played exhibition ball for the navy during the war, and nobody said a word. It’s not my fault they handed me a bat and mitt instead of a machine gun.”

  Marilyn liked the give-and-take. And she enjoyed the stream of men that flocked to Joe’s table to shake hands with the Clipper and ogle his date. Nor did she mind the autograph collectors with their ever-ready supply of pens and notepads. For them it was a double bonanza: the baseball immortal and the Hollywood glamour queen. Approaching DiMaggio when he sat alone (or with his coterie of followers) would have been out of the question, but in Monroe’s presence, he became more serene and more human. Joe took immense pride in having this utterly beautiful woman on his arm, knowing that every man in the room envied him, wanted to be him. It was true. Let them covet their secret dreams of what it must be like to fall into bed with her. Let them gaze upon her and wonder. Look but don’t touch. For once he wasn’t even distressed by the omnipresence of the press, the loathsome scribes who tailed them from place to place, reporting on their daily doings as if they were the two most vital personages on the planet. He smiled for the paparazzi—as well as the legitimate lensmen—who hovered round like flies at a beach resort. This was the new DiMaggio. It was different from the stardom he’d enjoyed as a ballplayer. It was love, and he loved it.

  Given the enormity of DiMaggio’s ego, it is easy to imagine the thrill he experienced at the end of the day when he and Marilyn returned to his hotel suite to spend the night together. And she, too, took great pleasure in being with Joe at a point when everything still seemed so simple, so wonderful. She was a person with human relations problems, worries, fears, inadequacies, and insecurities, but everything she was beginning to feel for Joe—trust, gratitude, admiration, even adulation—helped combat her shortcomings and frailties. And then too, as she later informed Truman Capote, DiMaggio, with his amazing physique and staying power, had all the makings of a superb lover. She called him “Daddy” and “Pa” as well as “Slugger,” and in extolling his sexual prowess to Capote, she remarked, “Joe’s biggest bat isn’t the one he used at the plate.”

  Yet from the beginning of their relationship, there were moments and incidents that must have raised red flags in Marilyn’s mind. One of these incidents took place the night they celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday with George Solotaire at Le Pavillon, then New York’s finest (and most expensive) French restaurant. On being introduced to Solotaire, whom Marilyn hadn’t as yet met personally, she said: “So you’re the fellow who runs interference for Joe and pries the girls loose when they become inconvenient.”

  “I guess that’s me,” agreed the Broadway ticket broker.

  Comparing notes, it developed that Solotaire, like Marilyn, had spent several years of his childhood in an orphange. Their shared experience created an immediate and lasting bond between them. Of DiMaggio’s pals, Solotaire remained the one to whom she always felt closest.

  During the meal, an elderly gentleman approached them from another table. His name was Henry Rosenfeld. A wealthy clothing manufacturer, Rosenfeld had known Marilyn since 1949, when she arrived in New York to help promote Love Happy, a Marx Brothers comedy in which she’d been handed a small role—one of her first—as the dumb blonde. From the way Marilyn and Rosenfeld spoke to each other, it became obvious to DiMaggio that the pair had once been on intimate terms.

  Rosenfeld’s brief appearance at the table sent DiMaggio into a tailspin. He stopped speaking. Matters grew worse when Solotaire, making idle conversation to fill the void, told Marilyn he’d known Johnny Hyde, the powerful William Morris Agency vice president and agent largely responsible for launching Monroe’s film career by landing her roles in The Asphalt Jungle, directed by John Huston, and All About Eve, directed by Joe Mankiewicz. Her skillful performances in these projects led to a studio contract and more vital roles in future films.

  Hyde noticed several minor cosmetic imperfections in Marilyn’s face and paid to have them corrected, most notably the removal of a sliver of cartilage from the actress’s nose and a slight enhancement of her chin and cheeks to improve her close-ups. It can be said that without Johnny Hyde, whom she’d met at the Racquet Club in Palm Springs in 1949, there would have been no Marilyn Monroe. More than twice her age, he fell passionately in love with her, fled his family (including a wife of long standing), and set up a household with Marilyn on North Palm Drive in Beverly Hills. Repeatedly, persistently, he’d asked her to marry him, but, just as persistently, she declined, insisting she loved him but wasn’t in love with him. He nevertheless wooed her by being kind, talking to her openly about his intimate life, and listening to her stories about hers. Above all, she stayed with him because she felt he really needed her. Then in December 1950 Hyde suffered a massive heart attack and died. Once again a father figure had vanished into thin air.

  The mere mention of Johnny Hyde’s name by Solotaire brought tears to Marilyn’s eyes and concomitantly caused DiMaggio to explode in a fit of anger of the sort that was fast becoming all too familiar to Monroe.

  “Do we need to discuss all of her fucking ex-lovers?” he yelled. “This Hyde jerk sounds like just another Hollywood vulture out to get laid.”

  Marilyn had heard enough. Now it was her turn to vent. “Johnny Hyde was a lovely, warm, caring man,” she said. “He gave me more than his kindness and love. He was the first man I’d ever known who tried to understand me. How dare you question his integrity?”

  Then, with neither malice nor regret, Marilyn embarked on a lengthy account of the men in her life that had played instrumental roles in her personal and professional development. The list—from Joseph Schenck, cofounder and chairman of the board of Twentieth Century–Fox, to Fred Karger, her former vocal coach and lover—seemed endless to DiMaggio, but having been properly and thoroughly chastised by Marilyn for his outburst, he sat there and listened. “He took it like a man,” George Solotaire later told his son. “Then again,” he added, “what choice did he have?”

  As her most intense liaisons—and even some of her nonsexual interludes—demonstrated, Marilyn usually sought out older, stronger, more distinguished, and powerful male figures as opposed to those who were solely interested in debauching her. These were the very qualities she found so appealing in Joe: his quiet strength, his resoluteness, his seeming desire to love and protect her. Equally important, through her association with DiMaggio, she could transport herself to new heights of popular acceptance. The Yankee Clipper, after all, was no ordinary citizen. Even if he hadn’t flown bombing missions during the Second World War, Joe DiMaggio was regarded as nothing less than a national hero. That Ernest Hemingway had mentioned him in his latest novel, The Old Man and the Sea, only seemed to con
firm DiMaggio’s status as a notable personage on the American landscape.

  Marilyn spent most of June and July commuting back and forth between Buffalo and New York, seeing Joe on nonproduction weekends and shooting Niagara during the week. One Saturday night they drove to Coney Island for a dinner of hot dogs, corn on the cob, and clams on the half shell. Another time, when the Yankees were out of town, she accompanied him to a golf club in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where he rented an extra set of clubs and attempted to introduce her to the game. And then there was the day they visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue. DiMaggio described the latter outing (for George Solotaire’s benefit) as “excruciating.” “Art,” he proclaimed, “bores me to tears.”

  During one three-day stretch in mid-July, Joe joined Marilyn on location at Niagara Falls. They ate dinner together each night at a corner table in the Red Coach Inn. It was there that Monroe introduced DiMaggio to Natasha Lytess, her personal drama coach. Lytess had initially coached Marilyn in 1948 when she was under contract to Columbia Pictures and had been given a small part in Ladies of the Chorus. They had worked together since then and even lived together for several months. Marilyn convinced Twentieth Century–Fox to pay Natasha’s salary, a major concession on the studio’s part considering that Monroe hadn’t as yet attained star billing.

  Lytess, an out-of-the-closet lesbian, made no secret of her feelings for Marilyn, more than once letting her pupil know she’d fallen in love with her. “Don’t love me, Natasha,” Marilyn cautioned her, “just teach me.” Lytess voiced her disapproval of Marilyn’s personal involvements with men. She particularly disliked Joe DiMaggio, who seemed to be usurping her own role as Marilyn’s close advisor. “You’d have been better off with Joan Crawford than the baseball player,” Lytess told Monroe, referring to the time in 1951 when Crawford all but propositioned Monroe and got turned down. When DiMaggio and Lytess encountered each other on the set of Niagara, they traded insults. It appeared that as Marilyn’s relationship with Joe deepened, her bond with Natasha deteriorated. Joe tried to convince Marilyn that her drama coach was living off her—her salary exceeded Marilyn’s, and the studio now wanted Monroe to contribute her own money to support Lytess. Like everyone else in the film business (according to DiMaggio), Lytess was using Marilyn, enhancing her own reputation at Monroe’s expense. And who the hell is this woman, anyway? What are her credentials? The next time DiMaggio spoke to George Solotaire, he referred to Lytess as a “goddamn bull dyke.” “She thinks,” he said, “that she’s Marilyn’s husband. And she’s convinced that since they’re filming at Niagara Falls, they’re on their honeymoon.”

  In July Marilyn attended the New York premiere of Don’t Bother to Knock. Portraying a lonely, emotionally disturbed babysitter, Monroe gave one of her best and most underrated dramatic performances. “The role is right up my alley,” she told her costar Richard Widmark. “I modeled myself after my mother.”

  Unfamiliar with Marilyn’s familial background, Widmark had no idea what she meant. “I must have given her a blank look,” he said, “because she explained that her mother suffered from schizophrenia and had spent years in a mental hospital. I knew Marilyn’s childhood had been difficult, but I didn’t realize just how difficult it must have been. In any case, she did a first-rate job with her role. I always felt she had talent, but had been misused by Hollywood because of her good looks. I told her I thought she’d do well in a dramatic role on Broadway, and she seemed deeply appreciative of the compliment.”

  Joe DiMaggio wasn’t in town for the premiere, having traveled to Chicago to appear in a magazine ad for the Buitoni pasta company, the sponser of his television show. In light of his friend’s absence—and after clearing it with DiMaggio—George Solotaire offered to take Marilyn for drinks after the movie. They met in the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel.

  Over drinks and a late dinner they discussed Marilyn’s future acting obligations. She revealed that she’d been offered the part of Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which would be directed by Howard Hawks and would start shooting in mid-November. Jane Russell had also been signed to appear in the film, and Marilyn had heard good things about her. She could hardly wait to begin.

  Not unexpectedly, Solotaire brought up her relationship with Joe DiMaggio.

  “Joe’s crazy about you, but I suppose you know that by now,” he said.

  “And I’m crazy about Joe,” answered Marilyn.

  “Trouble is, he’s Italian,” said Solotaire. “He’s jealous of every man you’ve ever known—and half the men you never met.”

  “Do you want to know something?” said Marilyn. “When I lived with Shelley Winters, I made a list one night of the men I most wanted to sleep with. At the top of my list was Albert Einstein. If I ever told Joe about it, I’m sure he’d make Einstein duke it out in an alley someplace.”

  “Either that or he’d challenge him to a home run hitting contest,” Solotaire countered.

  “Exactly,” said Monroe. And yes, she conceded, she’d availed herself of the casting couch syndrome to further her career. She’d earned her kneepads. “It was part of the job,” she explained. “They aren’t making all those sexy movies just to sell popcorn. They want to sample the merchandise. If you don’t play along, there are a thousand other girls who will.”

  Changing the subject, Solotire asked Marilyn whether she’d been introduced to “Little Joey—Joe’s ten-year-old son.”

  Monroe looked perplexed. “Little Joey?” she inquired. “I didn’t know Joe had a son.”

  Now it was Solotaire’s turn to look perplexed. “How about Dorothy Arnold, the boy’s mother? Did he mention her? They’ve been in and out of court for years quibbling over child support.”

  “Never mentioned her either,” said Marilyn. “But then that’s so typical of Joe. Let’s face it: he doesn’t like to talk about himself.”

  • • •

  What wasn’t typical of Joe DiMaggio is that late in 1936, following his first year with the New York Yankees, he agreed to accept a small film role in Manhattan Merry-Go-Round, a frothy musical designed as a showcase for Cab Calloway and his Cotton Club Orchestra. Playing himself, DiMaggio delivered a self-conscious monologue on baseball and even sang a lyric or two. During filming in Astoria, Queens, the ballplayer happened to meet a young actress, Dorothy Arnold, whose name didn’t appear in the credits but who was one of the girls in the chorus line. “The thing I do is never fall in love,” DiMaggio had boasted to a reporter for the New York World Telegram. “I just talk a good game with women.” Despite his claim, Dorothy Arnold soon became Joe’s first serious love interest.

  She was born Dorothy Arnoldine Olson on November 21, 1917, in Duluth, Minnesota. Her mother, a schoolteacher, was of Norwegian descent. Her father, an official with the Northern Pacific Railroad, was half Norwegian and half Swedish. Eager to make a name in show business, Dorothy was only fifteen when she signed up to travel on the Balaban & Katz vaudeville circuit as a singer and dancer. At age eighteen, she moved to New York, where she took acting lessons while performing on the radio and in nightclubs, modeling for ladies wear ads, and working at NBC as a staff singer. Her good looks—she was blond and cuddly—attracted a talent agent who suggested the name change and then talked Universal Studios into offering her a stock contract at $75 a week, plus moderate expenses. She made her acting debut in Manhattan Merry-Go-Round. Like Marilyn Monroe after her, Dorothy Arnold had never heard of Joe DiMaggio, though when she met him, he’d been in the majors for only two seasons.

  Prior to Dorothy Arnold and even while dating her, DiMaggio socialized mostly with showgirls and club hostesses. Dom DiMaggio, his younger brother, recalled how Joe lost his virginity. “There was a brothel in North Beach,” he said, “and all of us, all the DiMaggio boys, frequented the place at one time or another. Being de-virginized in this locale became a kind of family ritual. I remember Mike taking Joe the day after his fourteenth birthday. The woman must have been around forty-five,
and, believe it or not, was the same one I wound up with two years later. A buxom brunette, her claim to fame was her expertise in the French arts. She could swallow anything in the room, if you know what I mean. After he had her, Joe told me, ‘You can be with a million broads, but you never forget the first one.’ ”

  Besides the showgirls and club hostesses he met in New York, Joe DiMaggio’s chief source of women were the young ladies he encountered when the Yanks were on the road. When the ball club traveled, Joe roomed with Vernon “Lefty” Gomez, the ace Yankees pitcher. “Lefty had created a name for himself as the team clown,” said Dom DiMaggio. “My brother felt comfortable around him. Lefty would act out the goofy things Joe could never permit himself to do. Joe liked to read comic books, for example, and he’d send Lefty out to the newsstand to pick them up for him because he didn’t want to be seen buying them. Anyway, Lefty and Joe had this groupie thing going for them. As soon as the team checked into a hotel, the phone would start ringing in their suite. There’d be a couple of girls in the lobby, and they’d want to come upstairs to meet Joe and Lefty. The desk clerk would send them along, and if they were decent-looking, Joe would grab one and Lefty the other. Joe would disappear into the bedroom with his chick, while Lefty entertained his in the sitting room. They were like rock stars. Not that this sort of behavior was unheard of in the world of baseball, but Joe made a science of it. He had a dozen groupies in every port of call. He led the league in groupies. The bad thing is he carried on in this fashion long after he married Dorothy Arnold.”

  During their two-year courtship, DiMaggio continued to compile Herculean statistics on the ball field while Dorothy Arnold toiled away with little success in her chosen career. Between 1937 and 1939, she appeared in no fewer than fifteen films, the most noteworthy of which were The Phantom Creeps and The House of Fear, but her roles were often uncredited and always minor. Joe DiMaggio made it known that if she wished to marry him, she would have to give up her present livelihood and agree to become a housewife, his housewife. Unlike Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy was only too happy to comply. It was she, for that matter, who proposed—not the other way around.