And the Rest Is History (22 page)

25

1952

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
n front of a camera, Monroe was nonparalleled; on the baseball diamond, DiMaggio was peerless. However, their tragedy involved their ignorance of their emotional needs; only too late did the Blonde Bombshell and the Yankee Clipper understand that their path to salvation lay with one another.

Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio was the son of Sicilian immigrants, and his father hoped his five sons would follow in his fisherman footsteps. When young Giuseppe explained that the smell of dead fish nauseated him, the elder DiMaggio pronounced his son lazy and good for nothing. At seventeen, Giuseppe started playing baseball with the San Francisco Seals, wherein he became a Bay Area celebrity. A year later the New York Yankees purchased his contract; when he appeared in the stadium for his debut game, twenty-five thousand cheering, flag-waving Italian-Americans showed up to welcome him. He Americanized his name, which led to his moniker “Joltin' Joe” when he led his team to the World Series. Upon his retirement, the Yankees retired his number five in tribute.

Joe's destiny, Norma Jeane Mortenson (baptized Baker), was born in Los Angeles; her early years made her a poster girl for a Dickensian childhood. Because her father was AWOL and her paranoid schizophrenic mother was often a resident of Agnews State Hospital in San Jose, she was sent to a number of foster homes; in some of these she was sexually molested. At sixteen, as a means of escape, she married Jim Dougherty. When her husband was in the Marines, Norma Jeane worked in a munitions factory, where an army photographer spotted the young beauty and placed her picture in
Yank
magazine. After, on his recommendation, she approached the Blue Book Modeling Agency, who said they would accept her on the condition she lighten her hair. The new blonde became their top model, a fact her husband discovered when he saw his shipmate drooling over a sexy photo of her. Another who took notice was Ben Lyon, a 20th Century Fox executive, who, after giving her a screen test, remarked, “It's Jean Harlow all over again.” He disliked her name and Norma Jeane became Marilyn Monroe.

A photograph led to the phenomenon of Marilyn Monroe, and another led to her falling in love with a fellow icon. DiMaggio spotted a picture of Marilyn clad in the shortest of shorts, wearing a baseball cap and high heels, playing baseball with two Chicago White Sox. Armed with his mythic status, he was able to contact her agent, who arranged a blind date. Marilyn was thrilled at the opportunity. She didn't know much about baseball, but as a yet-unknown actress and model she knew about publicity and was enthusiastic about appearing on the arm of an all-American hero.

The first time Joe met Marilyn was on March 15 in a booth in the Villa Nova restaurant on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard. The time for the blind date was six thirty; Marilyn showed up two hours late. Her first comment was, “There's a blue polka dot exactly in the middle of your tie knot. Did it take you long to fix it just that way?” Marilyn was surprised when Joe turned out to be not the conceited sports figure; she was also taken aback that everyone, including Mickey Rooney, was awed by him. She said of this, “Sitting next to Mr. DiMaggio was like sitting next to a peacock with its tail spread. ... No woman has ever put me so much in the shade.” Joe commented that Marilyn was “like a good double-play combination.” The next night a blue Cadillac with the license plate JOE D was parked outside Marilyn's apartment. Marilyn remarked of her beau, “I don't know if I'm in love with him yet but I know I like him more than any man I've ever met.”

Joe proposed on Christmas, and they arranged for a private civil ceremony. The retired DiMaggio saw Marilyn as Norma Jeane, a grown-up orphan wanting to be a cherished wife and mother. The former New York Yankee was about to enter the toughest game of his life.

On January 14, 1954, Joltin' Joe (Marilyn's nickname for him was “Slugger”) wedded Marilyn at San Francisco City Hall; Marilyn, who at this time, thanks to an appearance on Playboy's debut cover, packed a mean jolt herself, was dressed, uncharacteristically, non-provocatively. She sported an eternity band, and in her hands she carried three white orchids; when they began to wither, she asked Joe to place flowers on her grave every week after she died, as William Powell had done for Jean Harlow. DiMaggio sported the same polka-dot tie he had worn on their blind date. The bride and groom stated that they were very happy, as were the hordes of reporters who had converged outside the building. The “private” ceremony had attracted about five hundred people who had managed to hear about it in time to turn the corridor outside the judge's court into bedlam. Joe had planned the event with the secrecy of an atomic test; however, Marilyn had made the “mistake” of calling her studio, which “off handedly” mentioned it to all the major news services. The private Joe was not thrilled with the public spectacle. As Cinderella and her Prince Charming made their escape, Marilyn called out that she had forgotten her coat, which she didn't return to retrieve. The judge remarked that Joe's oversight was even greater; he had forgotten to kiss the bride. The DiMaggios spent their first wedded night at the Clifton Motel in Paso Robles.

For a business/honeymoon trip, Joe took Marilyn to Japan; at the Tokyo airport the photographers were so frenzied that the couple had to escape through a baggage hatch. There was such Marilyn-mania that fans pushed each other into hotel pools and became jammed in revolving doors to see, as the Japanese newspapers wrote, “the Honorable Buttocks-Swinging Actress.” At a cocktail party, a general asked Monroe to entertain the troops stationed in Korea. Marilyn was ecstatic at the opportunity; Joe was less enthusiastic. The star performed in front of thousands of soldiers, clad in a scanty dress despite the frigid temperature. She sang “Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend” and, in between songs, made wisecracks: “You fellas are always whistling at sweater girls. Well, take away the sweaters and what have you got?” The next morning, instead of saying
Sayonara
she said,
“Eleewah,”
Korean for “Come here,” which triggered a mad stampede. She later quipped, “I'll never forget my honeymoon with the 45th division.”

When she was reunited with her husband, she described the crowds: “Joe, you never heard such cheering,” to which the famous player replied, “Yes, I have.” Later Marilyn remarked of her need for adulation, “I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.”

Upon her return home Marilyn told a reporter, “Marriage is my main career from now on,” and the couple took up residence in San Francisco. However, unable to ignore the siren call of Hollywood, Marilyn returned to her studio. When she left, DiMaggio became convinced she was seeing other men. One night Joe and his buddy Frank Sinatra broke down the door of an apartment where they believed Marilyn was having a sexual tryst. Instead they found a terrified middle-aged woman, alone in bed, hysterical at the sight of two Italians storming into her room. The lawsuit was settled for $7,500.

However, the affair came full circle when the romance, begun by a photograph, ended with one. Producer Billy Wilder, for a publicity shot for
The Seven Year Itch
, positioned Marilyn above a subway grate, legs akimbo, where the air from below raised her white dress to reveal what lay beneath. Although the scene was shot at two a.m., there was a crowd of a hundred reporters, thousands of cheering onlookers, and one irate husband who kept muttering, “What the hell.” The iconic photograph was perfect for Marilyn Monroe, but not at all appropriate for Mrs. Joe DiMaggio. Wilder, who caught a glimpse of DiMaggio, remarked that his expression resembled a “look of death.” That evening, in their St. Regis hotel room, a screaming match ensued and divorce followed. The slugger never lost his love for the star and never remarried. One of his friends said of his enduring love, “He carried a torch bigger than the Statue of Liberty.”

Monroe had once remarked to a reporter, “To know that Joe is there is like having a life guard,” and after the separation, she needed him more than ever. During the 1961 filming of
The Misfits
she was locked away in a psychiatric ward, a fate that had been her mother's own. She finally admitted the hollowness of fame that Joe had warned her about: “Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you $50,000 for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I know because I turned down the first offer and held out for the fifty cents.” DiMaggio secured her release, and there were rumors of a remarriage.

The couple never got their second chance; in 1962, Marilyn died of an apparent drug overdose. DiMaggio claimed Marilyn's body from the morgue and made the funeral arrangements, in which he barred the Hollywood elite who “had only hurt Marilyn.” He arranged for her to be clothed in her favorite green Pucci dress. DiMaggio spent the entire night beside her casket in the chapel.

The funeral took place on the same day rumored to have been the remarriage of Joe and Marilyn. Strains of “Over the Rainbow,” one of Marilyn's favorite songs, echoed through the mortuary. DiMaggio stooped over her casket, overcome with emotion, kissed her, placed three roses in her coffin, and whispered, “I love you. I love you.” For the next twenty years he had roses placed in the urn next to her crypt three times a week.

When Joe DiMaggio passed away, his last words were, “I'll finally get to see Marilyn.”

26

1955

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A
s Grace Kelly she had caught the heart of Hollywood; as Grace Grimaldi she had caught the heart of a prince. What followed was a modern-day fairy tale, complete with a pink palace overlooking the Mediterranean.

Grace Patricia Kelly was born in Philadelphia, one of four children. She was named after an aunt who had died young, as well for the day of her birth: “Tuesday's child is full of grace.” Her father, Jack, was the son of Irish immigrants and the scion of a brick empire—his family lived in a seventeen-room mansion, replete with tennis court. Much to Grace's parents' chagrin, despite their wealth, they were denied blue-blood status by their city's WASP upper crust because they were Roman Catholics and their money was not of the old variety.

Grace's personal pain came from the fact that her father (who had won three Olympic gold medals in rowing) preferred her more outgoing, athletic siblings. Grace chose to go her own route, and rather than settle for being a Philadelphia princess, at age eighteen, she determined to follow her first love: acting.

Armed with prodigious talent and ethereal beauty, Grace starred in MGM's
Mogambo
, filmed in Nairobi. There she embarked on what was later to be called in the press “L'Affaire Gable.” This cat was let out of its bag when a member of the cast accidentally wandered into Clark Gable's tent and found Clark and Grace sharing the same sleeping bag; he reported that they were “both of them starkers.” Her response: “What else is there to do if you're alone in a tent in Africa with Clark Gable?” This began Grace's pattern of bedding Hollywood's leading stars, many of them older and sporting wedding bands.