Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love (19 page)

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.

Before meeting Joe in San Francisco, Marilyn arrived in Los Angeles for an appointment with Charles Feldman and Loyd Wright to discuss her career options. While in town, she saw Joe Jr. and took him to dinner at Romanoff’s, in Beverly Hills. She also saw
Sidney Skolsky and told him, rather matter-of-factly—and her recent love letter to Joe notwithstanding—that she had every intention of marrying Arthur Miller. Taken aback by her proclamation, Skolsky reminded her that she’d just returned from her honeymoon with DiMaggio. How, he asked, had she come up with this latest bombshell? She explained that before marrying Joe, she’d obtained a post office box so she and Miller could correspond.

During her trip to Japan, Miller had sent her a note suggesting that in the near future he anticipated leaving his wife. Marilyn assured Skolsky she had far more in common with the playwright than she did with the ballplayer. Joe didn’t want her to be a movie star. He wanted her with him at all times. He didn’t approve of the women she portrayed on film. He didn’t like it when she had to perform a romantic scene and kiss the leading man. He didn’t like anything about Hollywood or the studio system. “Show business isn’t any business for a girl like you,” he’d maintained. How could she possibly stay with Joe? Skolsky listened in semidisbelief. Hadn’t Marilyn known all this when she married DiMaggio?

Although at this point Joe knew nothing of Arthur Miller, he couldn’t help but sense Marilyn’s urgent desire to resume her film career. He took it as a personal rejection. When she rejoined him in San Francisco, he accorded her the same “silent treatment” he’d so often bestowed upon Dorothy Arnold. He’d done it before with Marilyn, but on this occasion, he carried it a step further. He began sleeping in a separate bedroom at the Beach Street house. Marilyn rebelled, telling her husband
she knew it was chic for a husband and wife to maintain separate sleeping quarters, but she was an “old-fashioned” girl—she
believed a married couple should share the same bedroom and bed. When DiMaggio offered the lame excuse that his present bed was too confining and that he had trouble sleeping, she hired a carpenter to construct a bed seven feet wide and eight feet in length. He resumed sleeping by her side.

In fact, it was Marilyn, much more than Joe, who had trouble sleeping. When she’d torn a ligament in her leg during the production of
River of No Return
, a Canadian physician placed her on Demerol to help relieve the pain. The pain had long subsided, but she’d become addicted to the drug. To combat her insomnia, she procured a prescription for Nembutal. She was currently addicted to both medications, giving DiMaggio something new to vent about. If her profession caused her such pain and anxiety, perhaps she ought to consider doing something else. After all, he reasoned, he’d quit baseball when his injuries became too acute to continue. Marilyn’s solution was simply to get hold of more pills. Sidney Skolsky visited from Los Angeles and brought along a satchel of pharmaceuticals. Marilyn dubbed Sidney her “pill pal.”

Possibly to appease Joe, if for no other reason, Marilyn told him she’d been thinking of going to school in New York to study history and literature. “I’d love to learn how things get to be the way they are,” she said. They could move to Manhattan and start a family while she pursued adult extension courses at Columbia University or NYU. But later that month,
Modern Screen
magazine named her one of Hollywood’s five most popular actresses—along with Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly—and
Photoplay
presented her with a Best Actress award for work she’d done in 1953. She and DiMaggio turned up in Los Angeles in March to collect the latter prize, and while there, they sat down with Charles Feldman to discuss further the ongoing negotiations with Fox.

DiMaggio advised Feldman to insist on a partial “creative control” clause in Marilyn’s next contract. Such a clause, not uncommon in the case of leading box office names, would at least entitle her to
exercise a certain degree of control in the selection and scripting of future films. Although Marilyn’s existing seven-year contract could not be completely overturned, it could at least be altered to include raises in salary and a modification of certain individual clauses.

True to his word, Joe supported his wife financially during the period she remained out of work, deciding what to do next. One of the obstacles he encountered, as he told George Solotaire, was that Marilyn was a “bog of contradictions.” It was nearly impossible to make concrete plans with her because she constantly shifted directions. She was prepared to go back to school one minute, and the next she had an entirely different idea, one of which entailed starting her own film production company. She and Joe explored the possibility.

From DiMaggio’s perspective, it wasn’t an ideal solution, but it seemed preferable to being an indentured slave at Fox and having to comply with the whims and fancies of various studio bosses. The main problem with such an undertaking was that it demanded far more knowledge of the film industry than either DiMaggio or Monroe possessed. It might also call for the investment of large sums of private capital, an eventuality that almost certainly didn’t appeal to DiMaggio. Moreover, if Marilyn attempted to start her own film production company, she would no doubt face legal action on the part of Fox, which would attempt to invoke the seven-year contract she’d signed with them long before she emerged as a full-blown star.

The couple spent much of the spring in San Francisco, Marilyn seated in a back booth of the DiMaggio restaurant while Joe stood in front greeting customers, many of whom came in with the hope of spotting Marilyn. “She used to sit back there and read, waiting for Joe to finish up,” said Dom DiMaggio. “She was reading James Joyce’s
Ulysses
. She told me she’d started it months earlier but couldn’t get a handle on it. She always had a notebook with her as well, which she filled with lists. She had a list of actors, a list of foods, a list of cities around the world she planned on visiting, and a list of movies and plays she wanted to see. I recall her making a list of composers and their
best-known pieces of music: Bach, Bartok, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Mozart, Ravel, Stravinsky. She asked me to name my favorite composer. I told her I wasn’t up on composers. ‘I thought all Italians loved music,’ she said. ‘You know—wine, women and song. Or is that a myth? I’m beginning to think Italian men are all cranky and overpossessive, like Joe, and the rest is just a lot of self-promotion.’ I’m not sure what I said in response. I didn’t tell Joe what she’d said. I didn’t want to upset him any more than he already was.”

Over spring break, Joe Jr. visited Marilyn and his father in San Francisco. As usual, Joe DiMaggio had little to do with his son, leaving him in Marilyn’s care. “Marilyn and I went on long walks together,” recalled Joey. “She wore dark glasses that fooled no one. On a few occasions we were followed. One evening we walked to Coit Tower, a well-known tourist site shrouded in fog and mist, and some weird-looking homeless character trailed after us. We visited the San Francisco Zoo, and this creepy guy shadowed us until we managed to lose him in the House of Reptiles. Another day we drove to San Mateo and walked to Seal Point, which is in a park with miles of hiking and biking trails. She took me to the Cliff House for lunch, a landmark eatery in an old chateau, and made me promise not to tell my father because he’d be insulted we hadn’t dined in the family restaurant.”

At least one harrowing episode took place during Joey’s stay in San Francisco. Late one night he heard a loud argument coming from the top floor of the house. “I was asleep downstairs,” he said, “and I woke up to the sound of my father and Marilyn screaming at each other. I couldn’t make out the words, but it had all the makings of a violent argument. After a few minutes I heard Marilyn race down the stairs and out the front door and my father running after her. I looked out the window, and I could see Marilyn, in a bathrobe, heading away from the house. My father caught up to her and grabbed her by the hair and sort of half-dragged her back to the house. She was trying to fight him off but couldn’t. The next morning Marilyn looked ragged. Her eyes were all red and her face swollen. My father wasn’t around. I don’t think
Marilyn realized I’d witnessed the episode. I asked her what happened. ‘Nothing happened, Joey,’ she said. ‘Everything’s fine, just fine.’ ”