Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love

by C. David Heymann

  In the memoir Marilyn wrote with the help of Ben Hecht, she observed: “I had never planned on, or dreamed about, becoming the wife of a great man any more than Joe had thought about marrying a woman who seemed eighty percent publicity. The truth is that we were very much alike. My publicity, like Joe’s greatness, was something on the outside. It had nothing to do with what we actually were.”

  On Tuesday night, January 12, her last evening in Los Angeles before departing for San Francisco, Marilyn called Anne Karger, Fred Karger’s mother, with whom she’d remained on close terms long after her early romance with Fred ended. She told Anne and Anne’s daughter, Mary Karger, about her plans to marry Joe. She also contacted Whitey Snyder to tell him. “It seemed only fitting,” he said. “I’d been pushing for the marriage for months. I wished her all the best and told her to name their first kid after me.”

  The next day, January 13, Marilyn flew to San Francisco in full disguise and spent the night at the home of Tom and Louise DiMaggio. The civil wedding service took place on Thursday, January 14, 1954, at San Francisco’s city hall. It began at 1:48 p.m., in the chamber of Municipal Court Judge Charles Perry, the chief city officer, and lasted all of three minutes. They exchanged rings—Joe gave Marilyn a platinum eternity band set with thirty-five baguette-cut diamonds—and then he took Marilyn in his arms and kissed her. Among the handful of guests were (best man) Reno Barsocchini and his wife, Tom and Louise DiMaggio, George Solotaire, Lefty O’Doul, and his wife, Jean. Marilyn wore a very natty but proper chocolate-brown broadcloth suit with small rhinestone buttons and a white ermine collar. With the help of another former lover, fashion guru Billy Travilla, she’d bought the outfit the week before off the rack at Saks in Beverly Hills. Joe, having presented his bride with a corsage of three white orchids prior to the ceremony, wore a dark blue business suit and the same polka-dotted tie he’d donned when they first met. On the city register, Joe wrote his age (thirty-nine) and provided his signature; Marilyn gave her legal name, Norma Jeane Dougherty, and noted her age as twenty-five, reducing her actual age by two years.

  The group remained in the chamber for another quarter hour, chatting and embracing and wishing the newlyweds well. As Joe and Marilyn left the room, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by the press. More than a hundred reporters and photographers had invaded the lobby and corridors of the building. The couple agreed to pose for one picture. As fifty flashbulbs went off, Joe planted a kiss on Marilyn’s lips. Could they do it again, please? They complied.

  Before they could push and shove their way to freedom, they were asked to give the briefest of press conferences. One reporter asked Marilyn what she wanted out of the marriage. “I’ve got what I wanted,” she ventured. “I’ve got Joe.” And what did DiMaggio think of his new bride? “Marilyn’s a quiet girl,” he said. “She likes what I like.” Another reporter wanted to know if they planned to have children—and if so, how many? “A half dozen,” responded Marilyn. “At least one,” said Joe. And finally, somebody asked Marilyn if she felt excited about being married. “You know,” she said, “it’s much more than that.”

  With George Solotaire, Lefty O’Doul, and Reno Barsocchini running interference, the newlyweds, trailed by dozens of reporters and a crowd of five hundred spectators, left city hall through a basement exit and headed for Joe’s Cadillac, which they’d prepacked with suitcases. Joe had asked Solotaire to be his best man, but not knowing if he could get there on time, George had willingly surrendered the honorary spot to Reno Barsocchini. Lefty held the car door open for DiMaggio, while Reno and George helped Marilyn into the passenger’s seat.

  As the couple sped off, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle asked Solotaire where the newlyweds were planning to honeymoon. “I have no idea where they’re headed,” he said. “I’m not sure they know.” This exchange, as Monroe biographer Fred Lawrence Guiles accurately assessed it, seemed an “apt description” of a marriage slated to last little more than nine months.

  They headed for Paso Robles (translation: “Pass of the Oaks”), a hilly village three hours south of San Francisco. They stopped long enough to fill a thermos with hot coffee and exchange wedding presents. Joe gave Marilyn a full-length black sable coat. She handed him the twenty nude transparencies taken of her in 1949 by photographer Tom Kelley, including the one that had become the “Golden Dreams” calendar shot. The transparencies were considered too graphic for calendar use; they showed Marilyn’s pubic hair before she began bleaching the area to match the bleached blonde hair on her head. “When Joe told me about the gift,” remarked Whitey Snyder, “I said, ‘Well, you can always airbrush the photos and hang them in your den.’ I was kidding, of course, but he didn’t see it that way. He refused to speak with me for a good six weeks.”

  At six in the evening, they pulled into the Clinton Motel in Paso Robles, where DiMaggio had reserved room number 15 at the rate of $6.50 per night. They ate dinner by candlelight at a steakhouse across the street from the motel. After their meal, they checked into their room with two bottles of champagne, a box of imported French crackers, and two tins of caviar. Ernie Sharpe, the motel proprietor, later told the Los Angeles Times that the couple spent fifteen hours in the room, which came equipped with a double bed, a small refrigerator, and a TV. They checked out at noon the next day. Marilyn looked “radiant.” Joe appeared “solemn and tired.” “We’ve got to put a lot of miles behind us,” he said as they climbed into the car.

  They pushed on in a southeasterly direction and continued straight through until they reached their destination: a quiet hideaway mountain lodge outside Idyllwild, near Palm Springs. The lodge belonged to Loyd Wright, DiMaggio’s and Marilyn’s attorney. For their convenience he’d filled the refrigerator with food and stocked the liquor cabinet. Tired from the drive, DiMaggio went to bed. Marilyn stayed up and made several telephone calls, one to reporter Kendis Roehlen. “I finally did it,” she told Roehlen. “Except for Joe, I’ve sucked my last cock.”

  The next morning, Marilyn received a call from Loyd Wright. He informed her that news of her marriage to DiMaggio had made headlines all over the world and that they were being heralded as the ideal couple. One newspaper dubbed them “the Legend and the Goddess.” Wright also wanted Marilyn to know that in recognition of her marriage and as a gesture of good faith, Twentieth Century–Fox had lifted her suspension, placing her back on payroll and even agreeing to pick up Natasha Lytess’s salary. The only condition was that Marilyn had to return to work—rehearsals for Pink Tights were scheduled to begin on January 20. DiMaggio was outraged. He informed Wright he had no intention of allowing his wife to appear in that movie or in any movie that called for her to run around half naked, playing a woman of easy virtue.

  Monroe’s attorney advised Fox of the couple’s decision. The studio renewed her suspension. Unwilling to ruin her honeymoon, Marilyn deferred to her husband. She and Joe had struck a bargain whereby she could continue her career so long as he had an active voice in choosing her roles. They didn’t argue about it. For once they didn’t argue at all. They played a lot of billiards at a nearby bar. They took long early-morning walks in the mountain snow, Marilyn in boots, jeans, and her new sable coat. They built a snowman and had playful snowball fights. They occasionally drove into Palm Springs for dinner, always at small, out-of-the-way restaurants so as to avoid being recognized. Except for Wright’s periodic updates, they spoke to no one. The press reported that they’d “dropped off the face of the earth.” Marilyn later said the best part of it was that Joe never once turned on the TV set.

  Their honeymoon didn’t end at Loyd Wright’s mountain lodge. The couple returned to San Francisco at the end of January after stopping off in Monterey. With Lefty and Jean O’Doul in tow, Joe and Marilyn boarded a Pan American airliner headed for Tokyo, Japan. The Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun had invited the Yankee Clipper to help launch the Japanese baseball season, and DiMaggio had seized the opportunity to extend his honeymoon by taking along
his bride as well as the O’Douls. Jean and Marilyn could shop and go sightseeing together while Joe and Lefty, both of whom had visited Japan in 1951, occupied themselves with baseball-related matters.

  As Marilyn depicted it in her personal memoir, the Japanese leg of her honeymoon began on a questionable note. They were still airborne when General Charles Christenberry, a high-ranking US Army officer, came over to introduce himself. After ascertaining that the couple would be staying in Japan for the rest of the month, he asked, “How would you like to visit Korea for a few days and entertain the American troops currently stationed in Seoul as part of the UN occupation force?”

  “I’d like to,” Joe DiMaggio answered, “but I don’t think I’ll have time this trip.”

  “I don’t mean you, Mr. DiMaggio,” the general replied. “My inquiry was directed at your wife.”

  “She can do anything she wants,” said Joe. “It’s her honeymoon.”

  “I’d love to do it,” said Marilyn. “What do you think, Joe?”

  Joe shrugged. “Go ahead if you want. As I told the gentleman, it’s your honeymoon.”

  General Christenberry took down the name of their hotel in Tokyo and promised Marilyn he’d be in touch. DiMaggio, forever conscious of his public image, had consented but only because to do otherwise would have seemed unpatriotic.

  Thousands of fans greeted the plane when it landed at Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport. It soon became apparent that they had come to see Marilyn Monroe rather than Joe DiMaggio. As much as the Japanese loved baseball, they absolutely revered Hollywood movie stars. So eager were they to catch a glimpse of Marilyn that the police, fearing a riot, insisted that the honeymooners depart the plane through the cargo hatch and hide out in the customs office until the crowd dispersed. In Tokyo, the DiMaggios and the O’Douls were given adjoining suites at the five-star Imperial Hotel. The day after their arrival, Joe and Marilyn agreed to a hastily arranged press conference in the hotel lobby. The questions ranged from the risqué to the ridiculous. A reporter for the paper that had invited DiMaggio to Japan asked the actress how and when she’d developed her famous wiggle walk.

  “I started when I was six months old, and I haven’t stopped yet,” she answered. The same journalist wanted to know what Marilyn hoped to do while in Japan.

  “I’d like to find a good Japanese restaurant. Any suggestions?”

  Another reporter noticed that Monroe had a small splint on her right thumb and asked how she’d injured it.

  “I fell out of bed,” she quipped. “How else?”

  Commenting on Marilyn’s arrival in Tokyo, an observant Japanese film critic wrote, “Marilyn Monroe’s greatest artistic achievement is the creation of Marilyn Monroe. She is the reincarnation of herself. She is truly an original.”

  Besides Tokyo, the DiMaggios and O’Douls visited the Japanese cities of Kobe, Osaka, and Yokohama. While at the Imperial Hotel, Joe and Marilyn drew vast crowds whenever they came or went. Hundreds of curious locals gathered on the street in front of the hotel each morning and chanted Marilyn’s name until she emerged on the balcony of her suite, like a monarch greeting her subjects. She and Joe were followed around Tokyo by dozens of reporters and news photographers. Although Marilyn assured journalists she was there only in a supporting role and that “marriage is now my main career,” the press described her as “Joe DiMaggio’s greatest catch” and “America’s most famous actress.” They labeled her “the Honorable Buttocks-Swinging Madam” and irreverently referred to Joe DiMaggio as “Mr. Marilyn Monroe” and “the Forgotten Man.” If Joe hadn’t previously understood just how big a star he’d married, he realized it now, and it didn’t altogether please him. At times he became surly. And silent. At other times he became pushy. “We’re not going shopping today—the crowds will kill us,” he told his wife. She obeyed.

  At a cocktail party thrown in their honor by the international set of Tokyo, which included several high-ranking US Army officials, they once again encountered General Christenberry. He told the couple he’d completed arrangements for Marilyn’s Korean visit with the troops. DiMaggio informed the general that Jean O’Doul would accompany Marilyn on the trip. “That’s fine,” said Christenberry. “We’re all extremely grateful for your wife’s service to the country.” Cholera and yellow fever shots were administered to both women, and they were issued visas for the trip.

  On February 16, Marilyn and Jean O’Doul were flown by helicopter from Tokyo to the First Marine Division base in Seoul. They were received by a USO representative and several military officials, among them George H. Waple, who’d been assigned the enviable task of looking after Marilyn for the duration of her Korean tour. Their first stop was a US Army medical facility in Seoul, where Marilyn hobnobbed with American soldiers, many of them wounded in the Korean War, which had ended in July 1953. Following the hospital visit, Marilyn and Jean were issued combat boots, long johns, and GI trousers and taken by helicopter to an advance base outside the capital city.

  Their living quarters consisted of a couple of cots in a small room in a makeshift barracks. “Marilyn never complained,” Waple noted in his report on her stay. “She seemed to like the basic living arrangement. Her only quibble was with the weather. She hadn’t expected it to be so cold and snowy. I told her I could give her an electric blanket for her cot, but she declined. She also turned down a small electric space heater for the room, saying she didn’t want to be the cause of any concern I might have had for her welfare. She was unspoiled to the nth degree.”

  Once they reached their room, Marilyn asked Waple to help her out of her combat boots and baggy trousers. He followed orders, relieved (he wrote) that she didn’t force him to take off her long johns.

  In a period of four days, Marilyn gave ten performances for legions of American troops, representing every branch of the military. Wearing a low-cut, plum-colored, sequined gown (with nothing underneath), she sang and danced, creating “a frenzy of excitement,” Waple wrote, “an outpouring of adulation.” The lyrics to one of her songs, George Gershwin’s “Do It Again,” were deemed “too suggestive” by the commanding officer of the base. Acting as her own editor, Marilyn altered Gershwin’s original to “Kiss Me Again.” Between performances, Waple drove her around to meet the troops personally. Following her last show in front of the Forty-Fifth Division, the actress blew kisses to an audience that cheered and applauded her for half an hour. “This is the best thing that ever happened to me,” she told them. “Come see me in San Francisco.”

  Before she left, the military brass gave her a farewell party, presenting her with an olive green GI shirt that could be worn as a jacket. She told them she was sorry she hadn’t seen more of the country, but if they ever needed her services again, she would be there for them.

  Marilyn was glowing when she and Jean O’Doul returned to Japan. “It was so wonderful, Joe,” she told her husband. “You never heard such cheering.” Her brief, throwaway remark hit a nerve, reminding DiMaggio that his bride had surpassed him in popularity and renown. His response, though understated, came across with a resounding thud. “Yes, I have,” he said. “I’ve heard it.”

  She subsequently came down with a fever and a hacking cough. A doctor in Tokyo diagnosed her illness as a mild form of bronchial pneumonia. She lay in her hotel room at the Imperial for three days, taking antibiotics, arguing with Joe. It seemed to her that he looked on women in one of two ways—they were either housewives or whores, nothing in between. Any time a man looked at her with anything other than casual disinterest, he bristled, accusing her of acting in a provocative manner. At the same time she knew he loved her and would do anything to protect her. He’d been the first man who cared enough to point out that the roles they offered her at Fox were always those of “the dumb blonde.” He stood with Marilyn in her battle to attain dignity and acclaim in a business that all too often seemed cruel and indifferent.

  Before flying back to the States, Joe and Marilyn received a number of gifts
from local government officials, including matching handmade fishing rods. The Emperor of Japan presented Marilyn with a vintage pearl necklace with a diamond clasp, valued in excess of $100,000, which she gave eventually to Paula Strasberg, her then acting coach. She would give Joe Jr. the GI shirt she’d received in Korea. While still in Tokyo she bought silk kimonos for friends, one of which she presented to Lotte Goslar, who happened to be in San Francisco when the couple arrived there in late February.

  “Shortly after they got back,” recalled Goslar, “Joe DiMaggio had to leave for New York on business, so Marilyn and I went out for lunch in downtown San Francisco. Marilyn spoke about her tour of Korea. ‘Before I went over there,’ she said, ‘I never really felt like a star. Not really, not in my heart. I felt like one in Korea. It was so great to look down from the stage and see all those young fellows smiling up at me. It made me feel wanted.’ ”

  On March 1 Marilyn sent Joe an incredibly loving two-page, handwritten letter, mailing it to him at the Madison Hotel in New York. In it, she addressed him as “Dad,” one of her nicknames for Joe. “I want to be near you,” she wrote, “and I feel so sad tonight. Darling, please don’t leave me anymore.” She signed it simply, “Love, Marilyn.”

  Joe DiMaggio couldn’t have hoped for a more endearing letter had he written it himself.

  • • •

  In a true sense, Joe and Marilyn’s honeymoon had been both a beginning and an end. While DiMaggio tried to come to grips with the realization that his newlywed wife had no intention of giving up her career, Marilyn grappled with the notion that her husband would never be satisfied unless she gave it up, or at least reduced it to such an extent that it practically didn’t exist. Somehow DiMaggio couldn’t comprehend just how much Marilyn, in her difficult journey through life, had come to rely on her acting as a means of self-identification. Their differences (and similarities) also became more pronounced. He craved privacy and hoped to simplify his existence. She couldn’t get enough publicity and saw life as an endless labyrinth. He was as neurotically neat and organized as she was scattered and messy. He was introverted, practically repressed. She was hyper and at times manic. They were both stubborn and proud. Both were quick to anger. And they were both stars, but her stardom was here and now; his was a remembrance of days gone by.