Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love (15 page)

In mid-June Joey went off to summer camp on Catalina Island. As he’d done many times before, he had to shoulder the burden that came with having a family name like DiMaggio.
Ned Wynn, grandson of the comedic actor Ed Wynn, attended the same camp and remembered Joey as “a roly-poly kid . . . who was expected to be the best
softball player of all the campers, but because he was only average, he was razzed. Even though I was supposed to be his friend, I found myself standing on the sidelines razzing him with the rest of the campers.”

“As a teenager,” said Joe Jr., “you never become entirely inured to that kind of treatment, though I’d certainly experienced enough of it—having my belongings stolen, being pushed and and poked whenever I stood on a line, being heckled and jeered and laughed at. Kids can be very cruel. This is the kind of stuff that went on in camp all the time. It helped that Marilyn wrote to me and sent care packages filled with candy, cookies, cashews, and paperback books. ‘I’d send you comic books,’ she wrote, ‘but I don’t want you to read junk. It’s bad enough your father’s addicted to them.’ ”

Joe DiMaggio likewise sent his son a care package that summer. It consisted of a deck of cards, a copy of
Lucky to Be a Yankee,
his 1946 “autobiography” (prepared with the help of a ghostwriter), a new baseball mitt, and a published guide to the martial arts that he’d inscribed, “To Joey, Don’t let anyone ever pick on you. Love, Dad.”

In the summer of 1953, Doris Lilly telephoned Marilyn from New York to find out how things were going with Joe DiMaggio and to say she’d seen a recent cover story on Monroe in
Cosmopolitan
magazine and another by Bennett Cerf in
Esquire
. Marilyn told Doris that Joe “was up to his old tricks.” He’d sneered condescendingly at the
Cosmo
and
Esquire
articles because neither magazine had paid Marilyn. “Where’s the money?’ he’d asked her. He said the same thing every time a periodical ran a profile of her. He even called Harry Brand, publicity director at Fox, and asked him why Marilyn never got paid for these articles, and Brand had patiently explained that it simply didn’t work like that. And then, in addition, Joe continued to harp on Marilyn’s attire. Her blouses were too tight and her dresses too revealing. Where were all the clothes he’d bought for her? But the biggest bone of contention between them involved the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case.

The Rosenbergs had been put to death on June 19 because they’d been convicted of slipping the Soviets top-secret documents related to
the construction of the atomic bomb. It was that whole Red Scare–Cold War controversy. The Rosenbergs had two small boys. Marilyn didn’t believe Ethel Rosenberg had a hand in it or that Julius Rosenberg had access to the kind of information the government claimed he did. “What he gave the Russians,” she said, “wasn’t enough to build a firecracker, no less an atomic bomb.” By contrast, Joe DiMaggio couldn’t stop fuming about “those two goddamn commie pinkos. They should’ve chopped off their arms and legs and put their corpses on display at Yankee Stadium for the whole world to see what we do to spies and traitors.”

The Yankee Clipper’s bullying tactics and volatile nature came in handy that August when Marilyn found herself on location at Jasper National Park in Banff, Canada, immersed in the shooting of a contrived, cliché-ridden Western,
River of No Return
, costarring Robert Mitchum, whom she’d known casually while involved with Jim Dougherty. From the start, the film was fraught with personality conflicts, particularly between Marilyn Monroe and Otto Preminger, the notoriously controlling and surly director, quoted by Hedda Hopper as saying, “Directing Marilyn Monroe is like directing a dog. You need fourteen takes to get the desired results.” When Marilyn read the quote, she cried.

Marilyn intensely disliked both Otto Preminger and her role as a guitar-strumming frontier dance-hall girl. Preminger found little to admire about Monroe and felt the film failed to measure up to his talents. Most annoying for the director was the presence of Natasha Lytess, whom Preminger tried, unsuccessfully, to have banned from the set. Monroe’s contract stipulated that Lytess was to have the right of “approval” for every take that involved Marilyn. Unable to rid himself of the drama coach, Preminger took out his hostility on Marilyn, subjecting her to angry tirades and loud outbursts. Talking to Whitey Snyder (who was on the set with his wife, Twentieth Century–Fox wardrobe chief Marjorie Plecher), Marilyn referred to Preminger as an “insufferable ass” and said he belonged in a stable. Preminger called Marilyn
“a big-bosomed pain in the butt.” As for Natasha Lytess, Preminger dubbed her “an absolute know-nothing. The only thing she’s taught Monroe is that lips-apart, eyes-half-shut facial expression, which is supposed to connote sexiness but which to me looks like a half-assed imitation of Greta Garbo.”

That was the least of it. Preminger terrorized Marilyn to total immobility. She became convinced that Preminger didn’t want her in the picture and would do or say anything to get rid of her. She later told Shelley Winters that he began using obscene language, implying that she lacked talent, and the only reason she’d been suggested for the film was that she’d “sucked and fucked” half the executives at Fox. It reached the point where Marilyn became convinced that Preminger planned to do away with her while she was going over some rapids on a raft. Usually stunt men and women performed these dangerous action shots at the end of the picture, but Preminger decided to do them at the beginning using the actors themselves. Marilyn became suspicious.

One morning Marilyn slipped on a pier and tore a ligament in her left leg. She claimed she couldn’t walk. Filming had to be suspended. Marilyn called Joe DiMaggio in New York, and the next day he arrived in Banff, accompanied by George Solotaire. Not knowing Monroe had invited DiMaggio, Whitey Snyder thought he’d come ostensibly to keep an eye on Marilyn and the handsome Robert Mitchum. However, he soon realized that Joe’s purpose for being there, aside from spending time with the girl he loved, was to keep Otto Preminger in check and to stop him from continuing his abusive verbal attacks on Marilyn. Indeed, after DiMaggio’s arrival, Preminger calmed down and ceased his public remonstrations against the actress.

Doctors placed Marilyn’s injured leg in a walking cast, gave her a cane, a pair of crutches, and a wheelchair. DiMaggio became her health attendant, squiring her from their bungalow to medical offices and whisking her by waiting photographers. Marilyn convinced him to pose with her for a camera crew from
Look
magazine. After she recovered sufficiently to go back to work, DiMaggio and Solotaire spent their days
fishing for salmon, canoeing, and golfing. Joe steered clear of Natasha Lytess, but he befriended eleven-year-old Tommy Rettig, a child actor in the film. Initially, Rettig, who later found fame playing Timmy on the television series Lassie, avoided Marilyn off the set (allegedly warned to keep away from her by his priest), but he couldn’t resist the urge to meet DiMaggio, and relations with Marilyn improved gradually. When the entire cast and crew moved from the bungalows they’d inhabited in Jasper National Park to the Mount Royal Hotel in Banff, Joe, George, Marilyn, and Robert Mitchum became permanent fixtures in the card room playing board games and gin rummy. When the picture ended, and Joe and Marilyn got back to Los Angeles, they occasionally socialized with Mitchum and his wife. Mitchum was one of the few Hollywood actors DiMaggio appeared not to resent. Mitchum, in turn, a true baseball fiend, held DiMaggio in high esteem. As for Marilyn, he termed her a “kind of child-woman, but a delightful one at that.”

Whitey Snyder admired Joe DiMaggio as well and felt he was good for Marilyn. “My wife and I always had great affection for both Joe and Marilyn,” said Whitey. “Marilyn was enormously giving. I recall when somebody at Fox, a worker, needed money for an operation to save his kid’s eyesight, she immediately wrote a check for $1,000 and handed it to him. She always supported the underdog. Joe saw past her glittering façade and appreciated her for her fine inner qualities, which wasn’t the case with most of the men she knew. He could be difficult at times. He felt people exploited her and that she was gullible enough to let them step all over her, which in a way was true. But in trying to protect her, he went too far. He tried to control her, and of all the people in the world, she was the one person you couldn’t control, certainly not by force.”

One day Whitey and his wife went on a train ride through the Canadian Rockies with Joe and Marilyn. “It was one of those tourist deals, two railroad cars and a caboose,” said Whitey. “The scenery was breathtaking. At a certain point I said to Marilyn, ‘Do you see those mountains, darling? If you and Joe went to the other side of those mountains
and built a cabin and had some kids, you’d both live happily ever after.’ I meant it because I felt Marilyn truly loved Joe, and I didn’t think she felt all that fulfilled by the film business. She didn’t say anything right away. She didn’t want Joe to hear her. But then she leaned over and whispered in my ear. ‘I wish I could, Whitey,’ she said. ‘But I can’t do that. I just can’t.’ ”

Although Monroe and Otto Preminger never resolved their differences, they managed to coexist long enough to complete
River of No Return.
Years later, a reporter for the
Los Angeles Times
asked Preminger if he would ever make another film with Monroe. “No,” he stated emphatically, “I would not—not for any amount of money.” Asked by the same journalist whether she’d ever agree to work with Preminger again, Marilyn responded, “I would, but only if he were the last director left in Hollywood. If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t.”

•  •  •

Joe and Marilyn spent four days in New York in early September before heading back to Los Angeles. Their first night in town, Toots Shor gave a private reception for them in the party room over the tavern. One of the guests was Joe McCarthy, DiMaggio’s manager when he first joined the Yanks. McCarthy told Marilyn, “It’s a pity you never saw Joe play ball. You missed something. He was the best, the absolute best.” The next day the couple attended a ballgame at Yankee Stadium. There they met up with Paul Baer, a friend of Joe’s, and Paul’s brother, Rudy Baer. Born in Milan, Italy, Paul Baer owned a porcelain factory in Lower Manhattan and played golf with DiMaggio whenever the ballplayer happened to visit New York. He’d known DiMaggio since the days of his marriage to Dorothy Arnold. He also knew Joe Jr., who was the same age as his own son.

“I hadn’t met Marilyn Monroe before,” said Paul Baer, “but I can vouch for her beauty. We were seated in the boxes directly behind the Yankee dugout. Rudy and I arrived first. Joe and Marilyn didn’t get there until the third inning. When they walked in, the stadium erupted
like a volcano. The pandemonium didn’t cease until Joe and Marilyn both stood and acknowledged the crowd. And then for the duration of the game, many of the Yankee players would stand on the dugout steps facing the crowd for a better view of Marilyn. Not that Joe DiMaggio was exactly a slouch. Here’s a guy who floated across the baseball diamond like a butterfly. One season he struck out only seven times. Can you fathom that? That’s almost as astounding as his fifty-six-consecutive-game hitting streak. Bob Feller, the great Cleveland Indians Hall of Fame pitcher, used to autograph baseballs by signing his name under the phrase ‘I struck out Joe DiMaggio.’ Joe and the blonde made some kind of team. Never mind that Marilyn didn’t seem to understand the finer points of the game. I think she tried to please Joe, but she just couldn’t get into baseball the way he would’ve wanted her to.”

As the game progressed, random kids, mostly young boys, kept drifting over for Joe’s autograph. “Joe was very accommodating,” said Baer. “He was always nice with kids, always patient, always gave them a smile and a pat on the back. His problem in life was that he couldn’t do the same for his own kid. I never understood it. He was wonderful to all his little fans, but on a more personal level, he was the worst father God ever created. And to be honest, Joey Jr.’s mother wasn’t much better.”

While in New York, Joe met with Bernie Kamber. He told Bernie he loved his son and was concerned because Dorothy Arnold had a new man in tow every other week. He felt Joey would be hurt and confused by her carousel of lovers. “I told him,” said Bernie, “Joey would be less confused if he could spend more time with his father. In fact, Joey was in New York at that time visiting with a friend of his from military school. His school didn’t start until mid-September. On their last afternoon in the city, Joe and Marilyn took the boy to
Rumpelmayer’s, a fancy pastry shop on Central Park South. Joe was too cheap to buy Joey an ice cream soda. He wanted to go to a regular coffee shop. So Marilyn slipped the kid a twenty-dollar bill. Joe saw the transaction and told Marilyn off. She didn’t know the value of money and so forth. When I heard the story, I took a deep breath. ‘What a pisser!’ I thought.”

Every October Black-Foxe Military Institute sponsored an annual Parents Day, when the parents of students visited the campus and sat in on classes. “Everyone came,” said Joe Jr. “I saw Jerry Lewis and Dorothy Lamour, whose sons attended the academy. Neither my father nor mother ever showed up for that particular event. It bothered me.”

After Marilyn Monroe entered the picture, Dorothy Arnold, perhaps out of guilt, perhaps out of jealousy, made a bit of an effort to see her son, even if she didn’t visit him on Parents Day. She and Lillian Millman, her agent’s wife, would occasionally take Joey and George along on overnight trips to
Baja California. “My mother had some friends down there,” said Joey, “and at night they’d all go out drinking. My mother would come back roaring drunk. She’d get loud. She’d start singing, telling stupid jokes, and begin flirting with any man who passed her way. Back home in LA, she’d continue to drink. She’d show off, do handstands in front of my friends. But she wouldn’t be wearing any panties. She’d be naked from the waist down. It was humiliating. I couldn’t figure out if my mother was trying in some fashion to compete with Marilyn Monroe. It was ironic. Here was Marilyn, sex symbol of the century, and by comparison to my mother, she seemed demure and innocent. I hate to admit it, but my mother was little more than a tramp.”