Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love

by C. David Heymann

  The service, as stark and poignant as DiMaggio had envisioned it, ended with Lee Strasberg’s eulogy, which began: “Marilyn Monroe was a legend. In her own lifetime she created a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived background could attain. For the entire world she became a symbol of the eternal feminine. But I have no words to describe the myth and the legend. I did not know this Marilyn Monroe . . .”

  As the guests filed out of the chapel and into the bright California sunlight, Joe DiMaggio approached Marilyn’s casket. He knelt beside it and kissed Marilyn’s lips for the last time, then placed three long-stemmed red roses in her folded hands. Although no direct source is cited, Richard Ben Cramer writes in his DiMaggio biography that Joe’s final words to Marilyn were “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

  The casket, now shut, was carried two hundred yards from the chapel to crypt number 24 amidst a tranquil setting of grass and trees, an oasis in the center of a jumble of steel-and-cement high-rise office buildings. Throngs of onlookers lined the stone walls that ran along the edge of the cemetery. There was some running and shouting, even some laughter and the sound of transistor radios. A contingent of young, burly policemen stood guard along the interior of the wall. A mountain of flowers from all over the world was piled high in front of the vaultlike crypt. No bouquet was larger or more impressive than Joe DiMaggio’s heart-shaped arrangement of roses. A half dozen cemetery workers attired in black lifted the casket and slid it into place. The crypt was closed and locked. From beginning to end, Marilyn Monroe’s funeral lasted less than thirty minutes.

  The mourners, among them Joe and his son, left soon after, as did the cemetery workers and the police. Now the crowd that had gathered behind the surrounding walls descended and headed straight for Marilyn’s crypt. Surging forward like a swarm of locusts, they grabbed each and every flower, tearing them off the mountain until not a single blossom remained. Watching the carnage from afar, Joe DiMaggio surmised that maybe Marilyn would have enjoyed the spectacle, just as she’d adored the adulation of thousands of American servicemen when she performed for them in Korea during their honeymoon in early 1954. The problem, DiMaggio later told his son, was that what Marilyn needed was less adulation and more of what is real.

  • • •

  To avoid the press, if for no other reason, Joe DiMaggio decided to leave the country. On Friday evening, August 10, he joined Harry Hall and Harry’s crony Sugar Brown on a ten-day road trip to Mexico. On their way out of town, the trio stopped off at Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery, where Joe went over a few of the thousands of condolence cards and telegrams that had poured into the cemetery office during the past two days, along with hundreds of fresh bouquets of flowers. Joe arranged with the office manager to have Inez Melson come in and pick up the cards and telegrams. Given what had taken place after Marilyn’s funeral, he authorized the cemetery to donate the flowers to nursing homes and hospitals in the area.

  While Harry and Sugar returned to the car to wait for him, Joe walked out to the crypt for a good-bye visit with his beloved. The cemetery had closed for the night, and Joe had Marilyn all to himself. He’d already made plans with a nearby florist to deliver fresh roses to the crypt twice a week for years to come. He’d also ordered a bench to be made and installed in front of the crypt so that visitors could sit and soak it all in.

  In the gathering dark, with only a sliver of moon in the sky, Joe stayed only for a minute. Overcome by sadness, he vowed never to return. It was too upsetting for him.

  Before rejoining his friends in the car, Joe stopped back in the cemetery office. He told the office manager he had one final request. He wanted to pay the cemetery to have a plaque of white marble permanently affixed to crypt number 24, and it should read simply, “MARILYN MONROE, 1926–1962.” The cemetery consented, and the plaque was attached to the crypt. With the passage of time, the white marble gradually turned gray.

  Chapter 21

  NEVER FOR A MOMENT DID Joe DiMaggio consider the possibility that Marilyn Monroe’s death had been an intentional act. Nor, as so many conspiracy buffs wanted to believe, that she was a murder victim. She had simply miscalculated, forgotten the number of pills she’d already consumed when, unable to sleep, she decided to take more medication. She had done it before—not once, not twice, but on a number of occasions. The potential for something going drastically awry had always existed. It could happen to almost anyone. Depressed and confused, perhaps somewhat inebriated, Marilyn had taken one tablet too many. Only this time, unlike others, there was nobody around to save her.

  What distressed DiMaggio wasn’t so much the way Marilyn died—he could somehow rationalize her multiple addictions. Nor was it even the individuals he held indirectly responsible for her death: the Kennedys, Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, the bosses and leeches at Twentieth Century–Fox who’d used and abused her. Rather, he was distraught over the medical supervision she’d received in the final months and weeks of her life. According to invoices received by Inez Melson (after MM’s death), Marilyn had consulted with Dr. Greenson twenty-seven times over a span of thirty-five days (July 1 to August 4); she’d seen Dr. Engelberg on fifteen separate occasions during the same period. DiMaggio concluded, not unjustifiably, that Marilyn’s fame had served to seduce both physicians, rendering them incapable of saying no to their star patient.

  In search of answers, DiMaggio eventually contacted Dr. Marianne Kris, Marilyn’s therapist prior to Dr. Ralph Greenson. Joe wanted to know if Kris felt Marilyn had been well served by Greenson and Engelberg. In response, Kris insisted that “under difficult circumstances” the two doctors had “done their best.” DiMaggio had his doubts. If a coroner’s inquest and grand jury investigation had taken place, he told Kris, Greenson and Engelberg would both have had to account for their questionable dealings with the actress. “I doubt they’d still be in business,” he said. “Greenson all but kidnapped Marilyn, and Engelberg gave her injections of God-knows-what. And what took them so long to notify the police the night Marilyn died? What was that all about?”

  Dr. Kris agreed with at least one of DiMaggio’s contentions. There ought to have been an official investigation into Marilyn’s death. It would have cut short all that speculation as to who or what contributed to Marilyn’s end: all the chatter about hit men, enemas, and executions. It would have provided ample evidence that Marilyn, whether accidentally or on purpose, had been her own assassin.

  Following Marilyn’s death, after returning to New York from Mexico, Joe DiMaggio gained entrance to her Manhattan apartment in order to retrieve some of his own personal belongings, including a blue shoe box that contained a half dozen of his love letters to Monroe. The one item he missed was a crucifix that had belonged to his mother. While still in the apartment, he came across several hypodermic syringes, three vials containing some kind of powder, and other drug paraphernalia. The discovery upset DiMaggio, though he’d never known Marilyn to use hard drugs. He suspected she might have been keeping the powder and syringes for one of her friends, possibly Montgomery Clift.

  “Marilyn didn’t disclose everything to me,” DiMaggio told George Solotaire, “but I seriously doubt she resorted to illegal drugs, with the possible exception of an occasional joint. She sometimes did pot when she got depressed. It didn’t help much. If anything, she became even more depressed. And when she became depressed, she tended to withdraw. She’d go into that darkened bedroom of hers in New York and stay in there for days. She was moodier than anyone I ever knew. She’d say, ‘I feel blue today.’ She used the word blue to describe how she felt, and it was the darkest shade of blue you could possibly imagine. On the other hand, I laughed more and harder with Marilyn than I ever have with anyone. She would rebound from her dark moods as easily as she fell into them. A week before she died, she said to me, ‘Things are looking up. I feel I’m just getting started.’ And then that damn funeral!”

  George Solotaire had last spoken with Monroe a month or so before she died. In keeping with he
r habit of late-night calls, she phoned him around midnight (three o’clock in the morning, New York time) and chatted with him for more than an hour. Much of their conversation centered on Joe DiMaggio. “I’ve known Joe for more than ten years,” she said. “I guess I know him as well as it’s possible to know him. The point is, I don’t know if I really know him at all. I don’t know if anybody knows him, or if he even knows himself.”

  Joe DiMaggio’s best friend felt certain that whatever else one might conclude about MM’s liaison with Joe, it was by far the most sexually stimulating and satisfying relationship she’d ever had. “Above all,” said George Solotaire, “they enjoyed each other physically. We all know that over the years Marilyn had numerous affairs. Going to bed with a man was her way of saying thank you. It didn’t mean much to her. That wasn’t the case with respect to Joe. That part of their relationship continued long after their divorce and in a sense never ended.”

  As if more proof were needed of Marilyn’s sexual awakening, particularly at the hands of Joe DiMaggio, one of the stream-of-consciousness tapes she made for Dr. Greenson touched precisely on this subject. “I could count on one hand the number of orgasms I had in previous years,” she ventured. “But of late I’ve had lots of orgasms—not only one but two and three with a man who takes his time. I never cried so hard as I did afterwards. It was because of all the years I had so few of them. What wasted years!”

  • • •

  If Marilyn Monroe’s death sealed Joe DiMaggio’s fate and solitary state forever, it had an equally devastating effect on the life and career of Dr. Ralph Greenson. Haunted by the sight of Marilyn nude in bed, alone, at night, her bedroom lights ablaze, bedroom door locked, forty to fifty Nembutal tablets in her system, Greenson never succeeded in putting Marilyn’s death behind him. Lambasted by press and public alike, as well as by the majority of his colleagues, Greenson at first attempted to justify his unorthodox psychiatric approach to Marilyn by writing an article for the Medical Tribune, which he began the day after Marilyn’s death and completed several weeks later: “My particular method of treatment for this particular woman was, I thought, essential at that time. But it failed. She died.”

  Anna Freud, one of Greenson’s few supporters, wrote to him from London on August 6, 1962, two days after Marilyn’s death, to say how sorry she was. “I know exactly how you feel,” she wrote, “because I had exactly the same thing happen with a patient of mine.” She went on to say that she believed that sometimes psychiatry was inadequate to the task of fixing “wounded psyches.”

  On August 20, in response to Anna Freud’s letter, Greenson wrote: “I cared about her, and she was my patient. . . . I had hopes for her and I thought she was making progress. And now she’s dead and I realize that all my knowledge and desire and strength were not enough.”

  Dom DiMaggio recalled hearing from his brother several weeks after Marilyn’s death. “Joe had invited Dr. Greenson and the doctor’s family to Marilyn’s funeral,” said Dom, “but in truth they were no longer on decent terms. Joe had come to the realization that Greenson’s therapy sessions and technique had done Marilyn more harm than good, and he regretted not having done more to encourage Marilyn to find another shrink. He spread the word on Greenson, telling everyone what an unprofessional creep he turned out to be. When Greenson heard what Joe was saying about him, he retaliated. He told a reporter that Joe and Marilyn were ill suited and that she would have been better off staying with Arthur Miller, who at least satisfied her intellectual curiosity.”

  Formerly regarded as one of the country’s leading psychoanalysts and therapists, Ralph Greenson’s reputation plummeted following Marilyn Monroe’s death. In late August 1962, hidden behind a newly grown full beard, Greenson departed for New York, where he visited with Dr. Kris and underwent his own series of therapy sessions with Dr. Max Schur, a colleague and old friend. Depressed and disillusioned, Greenson returned to Los Angeles two months later. His troubles continued to mount until, in 1970, another patient, thirty-five-year-old actress Inger Stevens, who looked like Monroe, also committed suicide. Increasingly Greenson began to miss appointments with his remaining patients. He suffered bouts of aphasia, where he lost his ability to speak or comprehend, and he sought refuge from the outside world behind the locked doors of his study. In essence, he became another person.

  “It seemed as though he wanted to escape from himself,” said Hyman Engelberg. His friendships waned, and he became something of a recluse. I saw less and less of him as time went on, partially, I suppose, because I left the medical offices we shared and moved to a new address. A frail and broken man, haunted by his failed efforts to save Marilyn Monroe, Ralph Greenson died in 1979. Frankly, I don’t think there’s anything that anyone, including Ralph Greenson, could have done to rescue Marilyn. One way or the other, she had made up her mind by this juncture to end her life.”

  • • •

  On September 15, 1962, less than a month after Marilyn’s death, Rebecca Miller was born to Arthur and Inge Morath Miller, whom the playwright had married following his divorce from Marilyn Monroe. Still conflicted and embittered over their divorce, Arthur Miller later told Christopher Bigsby, his biographer, that he hadn’t been able to mourn Marilyn when she died; it was twenty years after her death before he could cry at the thought of her death.

  On first hearing of his former wife’s demise, Arthur Miller wrote to Joe Rauh, his longtime attorney: “I guess you’re as stunned as I’ve been about Marilyn. It’s still hard to accept although I’d always worried that she’d step over the line. I don’t think she meant to. And that’s even more terrible.” Miller later gave an interview to the New York Post in which he seemed to contradict what he’d written earlier to Joe Rauh. According to the Post interview, Miller wasn’t at all “shocked” by Monroe’s death. “It had to happen,” said Miller. “I don’t know when or how, but it was inevitable.”

  In 1966 Arthur and Inge Miller had a second child, a son named Daniel. Because the child suffered from Down syndrome, and because the Millers weren’t able to care for the child, they placed him in an institution. “As I heard it,” reported Norman Mailer, “Inge Morath often visited the child, whereas Arthur never visited, never so much as mentioned his son. That’s who Arthur Miller was. He couldn’t deal with problematic situations. Nor could he deal with people who had problems, which is why he couldn’t handle Marilyn Monroe. She was too much for him. She frightened the hell out of him.”

  • • •

  Marilyn Monroe’s will was admitted to probate on October 30, 1962. The actress left $100,000 in a trust fund for her mother, the annual interest from which (approximately $5,000) would be used for Gladys Baker’s maintenance and upkeep in a mental institution. Clearly, mental illness had been on Marilyn’s mind during the last year of her life. To their immense surprise, she left $20,000 to Dr. Hohenberg and $10,000 to Dr. Kris; she also left Anna Freud $10,000 to continue her work with troubled children. Xenia Chekhov, the widow of Michael Chekhov, Marilyn’s drama coach, received $2,500 per year for the remainder of her life. Marilyn bequeathed $10,000 to her half sister Berniece Miracle. She left the Rostens $5,000 to be used for the college education of Patricia Rosten, their daughter. There were other bequests of varying amounts, but the bulk of the Monroe estate (including all of Marilyn’s personal possessions) went to Lee and Paula Strasberg, presumably to be used for their ongoing work with the Actors Studio.

  In the last months of her life, Marilyn had expressed an unmistakable desire to excise the Strasbergs from her will, primarily because she had grown apart from them and had never fully forgiven them for their involvement in having her placed in the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in New York. Having heard Marilyn’s lament, Inez Melson, her former business manager, contested the will on the grounds that when it was written, Marilyn had been under the direct influence of Lee Strasberg. Melson’s claim was eventually dismissed. The situation concerning the Strasbergs and Marilyn Monroe’s last will and te
stament became increasingly controversial. Paula Strasberg died in 1966 at age fifty-seven. A year later, Lee Strasberg married Anna Mizrahi, a television actress from Venezuela who happened to be thirty-eight years younger than her newlywed husband. When Lee Strasberg died in 1982, Anna inherited everything, including the Monroe trademark and everything connected to it. Anna Strasberg never met Marilyn Monroe, yet she became extraordinarily wealthy as a result of MM’s legacy.

  • • •

  More than two years after Marilyn Monroe’s death, wealthy businessman Louis Wolfson sponsored a social function in San Francisco to which he invited his old pal Joe DiMaggio as well as Sam Yorty, mayor of Los Angeles from 1961 to 1973. “Yorty, a baseball fanatic, had always wanted to meet DiMaggio,” recalled Wolfson. “So I introduced them at the party, and the two of them went off into a corner to talk. Apparently Yorty told Joe he’d read all the police reports, and there was no question but that on the last day of her life Marilyn received a visit from Bobby Kennedy. I’m not certain if Joe knew about the visit, because he didn’t like to talk about Marilyn. I do know he loathed the Kennedy family. I can vouch for the fact that he shed no tears when JFK got assassinated. I saw Joe the day after the assassination of President Kennedy. ‘The bastard got what he deserved,’ he snarled. I guess if I’d been in Joe’s shoes, I might have felt the same way.”

  Louis Wolfson remembered a DiMaggio-RFK incident that took place in the mid-1960s: “Robert Kennedy was guest of honor at the annual New York Yankees Old Timers’ Day game. Had DiMaggio known that RFK would be there, I’m certain he wouldn’t have participated. Joe assured me he didn’t know until he found himself on a reception line with the other old-timers, and here comes Bobby Kennedy walking along, shaking every old-timer’s hand one by one. When he reaches DiMaggio, there’s no one there. Joe had stepped off the line and turned his back on Kennedy. I don’t know how many people picked up on it. ‘What’s the big fucking deal?’ I said to him afterward. ‘Shake his hand and be done with it.’ And he says, ‘I wouldn’t shake that little prick’s hand for all the money in the world.’ ”