Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love (14 page)

During the making of the film, which was shot in Hollywood and New York, Doris spent a considerable amount of time with Marilyn and came to know her well despite Monroe’s forever shifting moods and personality changes. “I’m not the first person to point out that
Marilyn was a highly complex individual,” noted Doris. “She could tell you a very revealing story about herself in the morning, and in the afternoon she’d relate the same story but with completely altered details. You never got the same story twice. In other words, the earth was forever shifting under her feet—and yours, if you were in her company. There was a mercurial quality to her sensibility that made it impossible to pin Marilyn down.”

According to Doris, Joe DiMaggio marched to his own drummer. “He was carved of granite and never changed. He was set in his ways. That’s not to say he wasn’t an intriguing man. He was intriguing because he revealed so little of himself. Marilyn told you everything, and DiMaggio told you nothing, but ultimately they were both hieroglyphics. It was difficult, if not impossible, to read either one of them.”

DiMaggio came and went during the filming of
How to Marry a Millionaire
, leaving Los Angeles on junkets to New York and Chicago, on business trips to San Francisco. Doris Lilly remembered that he visited the set only once. He stood in the back, hidden in the shadows, watching Marilyn like a hawk. Afterward they engaged in a loud argument in her dressing room. He felt her outfits in the film were far too revealing. Marilyn told Doris he’d voiced the same objection on the set of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
It seemed to Doris Lilly as if Joe wanted to put Marilyn in a birdcage, to possess her, and the more he tried to curtail her freedom, the more she rebelled. He resented anyone he perceived as standing in the way of his relationship with her. One name on his enemies list was that of Natasha Lytess. Natasha was at Marilyn’s side every night helping her rehearse her lines for the following day’s shoot. Doris Lilly happened to be at Marilyn’s Doheny Drive residence when DiMaggio confronted Lytess and said to her, “Why don’t you find yourself another victim—haven’t you stolen enough of Marilyn’s money?” On a separate occasion when Lytess called the actress, he picked up the phone and told her, “If you wish to speak to Miss Monroe, contact her agent—don’t call here.”

Natasha Lytess told Doris Lilly that Marilyn needed her as a coach
and that the actress lacked the confidence to “stand up” to DiMaggio. Joe countered Natasha’s argument by pointing out that Marilyn didn’t have enough faith in her own convictions and depended too heavily on coaches and would-be friends, anyone willing to offer advice of any kind. Doris more or less shared DiMaggio’s view, attributing many of Monroe’s difficulties on the set to her lack of discipline. She consistently showed up late for shooting, upsetting the director, the producer, and everyone else associated with the film. “They’d start shooting at eight in the morning,” said Lilly, “and Marilyn would be at home sitting in her bathtub or getting dressed and applying makeup. And half the time she didn’t have her lines memorized. One of the problems was that she couldn’t sleep at night. She started taking sedatives, and we all know how that turned out. She became addicted and she began drinking, and the combination of alcohol and pharmaceuticals screwed her up. She never appeared in a film after
How to Marry a Millionaire
that finished shooting on schedule. It wasn’t just her tardiness. It was also that she insisted on retake after retake. Each scene had to be shot over and over again. What saved her is that she had that ‘certain something’ that God gave her—it’s what made her a star. Whatever it was, you had to adore her for it.”

Above all, Marilyn was a free spirit, unrestrained by the conventions that dictate the behavioral patterns of so many others in her profession, especially those whose careers were inextricably tied to the studio system. “I’d never met anyone like her before,” said Whitey Snyder, “and I knew almost all of Fox’s leading female players. Long after she became an established star, she’d do things like jog to the Fox studio along Santa Monica Boulevard in a pair of baggy jeans, a scarf tied around her hair, and her face smeared with cold cream to prevent wrinkles. ‘I don’t know,’ she’d joke, ‘nobody stops for me. I can’t get a ride.’ She was quite the character. Add this to her acting, her beauty, her being, her story, and her legacy, and you have the Hollywood immortal that she eventually became.”

In April Joe DiMaggio met in New York with Walter O’Malley,
owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. To Joe’s surprise, O’Malley offered him a contract to become manager of the team. O’Malley reasoned that with his super-celebrity status, DiMaggio would help draw fans to the ballpark. Joe declined the offer. He didn’t want to be associated with another baseball organization located in the same city as the Yanks. He also wanted to spend more time with Marilyn, and becoming a manager would be more than an all-encompassing commitment. He had signed on to become West Coast vice president in charge of public relations for the Buitoni company, a fancy title that paid well but demanded little of his time. Essentially, he served as a greeter at the company’s twice-annual national sales conference, with a few other mundane duties thrown in for good measure.

“While in New York or wherever else he had to be,” said Doris Lilly, “DiMaggio called Marilyn ten times a day. He demanded to know what she was doing and whom she was seeing. He didn’t trust her, and probably for good cause. There were always men around yearning to get into her panties, which she purportedly didn’t wear. And many of them succeeded. I know for a fact that while DiMaggio was courting Marilyn, she was playing the field with men like Mel Tormé, Eddie Robinson Jr., Nico Minardos, Elia Kazan, and Twentieth Century–Fox fashion designer Billy Travilla. There were others as well, especially earlier in her career, pre–Joe DiMaggio, when men were constantly propositioning her, promising to put her in their films in exchange for a roll in the hay. According to Charlie Feldman, Marilyn had been pregnant on more than a few occasions and had undergone a number of abortions and miscarriages. “Over the years, I’ve read various psychological exposés exploring the reasons behind Marilyn’s promiscuity. One book suggested she sought self-respect through the men she was able to attract and that she usually went with men she could look up to. Another book attributed her hypersexuality to her lifelong search for a father figure. A third said she bedded so many men because they afforded her a sense of completion, filling a void that had been with her since childhood. To my mind, all that analytic theorizing is nothing more than a
lot of swill. The truth of the matter is that Marilyn just happened to have a healthy appetite for sex, maybe not with everyone, certainly not with the old oxen she slept with in order to advance her career, but in general it seems to have given her great pleasure. She wasn’t at all uptight when it came to sex. I mention this because of something she said to me. ‘There are times,’ she observed, ‘when all a girl wants and needs is a nice big stiff cock, no more and no less.’ ”

This is not to suggest that Marilyn couldn’t differentiate between love and lust, desire and fulfillment. Although she claimed to enjoy her intimate encounters with Joe DiMaggio, she told Shelley Winters that she couldn’t achieve a climax with him. “That’s something very few men can seem to give me,” she said. “Porfirio Rubirosa [the swarthy Dominican playboy] went at me all night, but even he didn’t succeed. The only climax I usually get is the one I give myself.” Marilyn confided in Truman Capote that DiMaggio was able to satisfy her orally. Whatever the extent of her fulfillment with him, it’s clear that the sexual attraction between them provided a powerful link. She compared the perfection of his body to Michelangelo’s David. He thought hers was, as he once told George Solotaire, “something only God could create.”

Nevertheless one of the “few men” able to completely satisfy Marilyn sexually, an unlikely candidate at that, was Wall Street tycoon Paul Shields, whose stepdaughter “Rocky” had married actor Gary Cooper. Shields, born in 1889, had turned sixty-four by the time he met Marilyn in New York in 1953 at a birthday party for columnist Walter Winchell. He saw her again in Los Angeles during a period when Joe DiMaggio had meetings in his hometown in conjunction with the founding of the Fisherman’s National Bank of San Francisco, a project that never quite materialized.

In 1955 Marilyn told Truman Capote about her “two-night stand” with Shields, who had a well-deserved reputation in Hollywood as a bon vivant. A wealthy man (he owned a yacht and a private plane), Shields sat on the boards of a half dozen banks and, as Capote acknowledged, “
probably busted up more marriages than Casanova. Marilyn went with him because she knew of his reputation. She wasn’t disappointed. She couldn’t believe that a man his age could be so energetic and accomplished. She proclaimed him the best lover she’d ever had. Of course, she made the same declaration regarding Joe DiMaggio. So who’s to say?”

Joe, meanwhile, indulged in his own abbreviated sexual interlude, probably the only one he had during his courtship of Marilyn. Ironically, it took place at nearly the same time as Marilyn’s fling with Frank Shields. Amy Lipps (not her real name), a twenty-two-year-old graduate student from Ocean Grove, New Jersey, had flown to San Francisco to spend a few days with an older brother then residing in Northern California. In the course of her visit, Amy, who, uncoincidentally, bore a striking resemblance to Marilyn Monroe, happened to meet Joe DiMaggio.

Recalling the episode, Lipps said she and her brother had spent the afternoon sightseeing in San Francisco and wound up eating dinner at the DiMaggio-owned family restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf. “Growing up in New Jersey,” she remarked, “my brother had always loved the Yankees, so when Joe DiMaggio came over to our table and introduced himself, my brother nearly fell off his chair. I wasn’t into baseball, and although I’d heard of Joe DiMaggio, I knew very little about him. He seemed cordial enough. He said the way I looked reminded him of film actress Marilyn Monroe, which is something I’d been told numerous times. One thing led to another, and my brother and I spent the rest of the night barhopping with Joe, listening to him reminisce about his days as a ballplayer. At the end of the evening, he asked if he could see me again the following day and take me to dinner. My brother didn’t seem to mind, so I agreed to meet him. The dinner turned out to be at his house near the restaurant. We had a lot to drink, and I ended up spending the night. He was a good lover—very determined, and he took his time. In the morning, he asked if I could stay a day longer, but I’d already booked my return flight. We exchanged a few telephone
calls, but then my brother called from California to tell me he’d seen a news item as to how Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were considering marriage. I wrote Joe and asked him to explain himself. I never heard back. Until my brother called, I had no idea Joe and Marilyn were involved. He’d mentioned her, but only in passing. I suppose it explains why he was attracted to me.”

•  •  •

On May 30, 1953, Memorial Day, an event took place that would play an instrumental role in the DiMaggio-Monroe relationship. While fishing by himself at Bodega Bay, a shallow, rocky inlet of the Pacific Ocean an hour north of San Francisco, Michael Frank DiMaggio drowned. His body was found floating alongside his fishing boat, a hundred yards from shore. He was forty-five, six years older than Joe. Like his father, Michael was short but stocky, with muscular arms and legs. Although no autopsy was performed, a police report filed by local officials indicated that he might have suffered a heart attack before hitting his head against the side of the vessel and plummeting unconscious into the sea.

Joe was vacationing in Mexico when the accident occurred. His sister Marie reached him by telephone, and he made immediate plans to return to San Francisco. He called Marilyn in Los Angeles, where she was about to celebrate her twenty-seventh birthday with Bebe Goddard. Marilyn flew north the following day and joined Joe at his Beach Street home. The house became a virtual funeral parlor, with waves of friends and family drifting in and out, speaking Sicilian Italian and broken English, smoking Italian stogies, and drinking homemade Italian wine. Of the immediate family, nobody took Mike’s death harder than Joe. Overnight he seemed to age twenty years. He couldn’t sleep, nor could he hold down his food. Marilyn hadn’t seen the vulnerable side of Joe before. In her eyes, his weakness became his strength. She consoled him. It was almost a reversal of roles. His family members looked on as she sat in his lap, her arms around his shoulders,
her head nestled gently against the side of his face. The certitude and self-assuredness he’d demonstrated since meeting Marilyn had for now been replaced by self-doubt and indecision. When she returned home to North Doheny Drive, Joe went with her. He gave her a belated and unlikely birthday present: a set of golf clubs. He told her that Mike had been a great golfer, and had he wanted to play baseball, he would’ve been better than the three brothers who did play the game. Marilyn felt touched. For the first time, she began to take seriously his offer, which he’d made more than once, that they get married.

Joe Jr. and his friend George Millman, the son of Mort Millman, Dorothy Arnold’s agent, met Joe and Marilyn at the airport in a limousine when they returned from San Francisco. George, three years older than Joey, observed that the relationship between Marilyn and Joe Jr. seemed “extremely warm and affectionate. They were unusually close. Joey and his father, however, didn’t get along. They didn’t understand each other.” Yet, as Millman recalled, when Joe and Marilyn arrived in Los Angeles from San Francisco following the death of DiMaggio’s brother, Joe appeared to have changed. He seemed to have softened. It was as if a wall had come down.

Their reconciliation, if it can be called that, didn’t last long. Within a week or two, the wall went back up. DiMaggio returned to his old form, constantly criticizing Joey. Nothing Joe Jr. did measured up to his father’s high standards. He wasn’t tall enough or strong enough or aggressive enough. He was ten pounds overweight, which in his father’s eyes made him “fat.” Encouraged by Marilyn, Joey had begun to lift weights. Joe insisted he wasn’t lifting enough weight to make a difference. “DiMaggio men are always muscular,” Joe chided his son. “So get with the program.”