Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love (23 page)

Charles Feldman toasted Marilyn, calling her “the eighth wonder of the world.” She drank champagne and danced with Gable, Zanuck,
and Bogart. She sang a duet with Mrs. Billy Wilder and apologized to Billy for her constant tardiness during the filming of
The Seven Year Itch
. Photographer Sam Shaw saw her home at the end of the evening. A new acquaintance, Shaw had been hired by Fox to shoot a set of publicity stills of Marilyn. In his spare time he’d been teaching her how to use a camera that Joe DiMaggio had given her as a present.

Two days after the Wrong Door Raid and a day after her “coming out” party, Marilyn entered Cedars of Lebanon to undergo corrective surgery for her ongoing gynecological condition. She hoped the procedure would enable her to have children. Joe DiMaggio drove her to the hospital. Dr. Leon Krohn performed the operation on November 8. Marilyn remained at Cedars for five days, DiMaggio by her bedside. He stayed with her after she returned to North Palm Drive. On November 25, still recuperating from her surgery, she celebrated Joe’s fortieth birthday by taking him to the Villa Capri for dinner. Joe used the occasion to ask her to come back and start again. It was the one birthday present she wasn’t able to give him.

Joe DiMaggio returned to San Francisco the next morning. Reached at his Beach Street home by a local reporter, he offered a brief comment blaming the film industry and Twentieth Century–Fox for their sexploitation of Marilyn Monroe, ruining her reputation and in turn their marriage.

When
Roy Craft, a leading member of Fox’s publicity department, read DiMaggio’s unflattering characterization of the studio, he decided to issue his own statement to the press: “Marilyn Monroe had a flamboyant reputation when Joe DiMaggio married her. The point is, if you build a home behind a slaughterhouse, you don’t complain when you hear the pigs squealing.”

M
ARILYN MONROE HAD BECOME THE
world’s number one female box office attraction. That fact notwithstanding, she remained, as Joe DiMaggio had constantly reminded her, a hapless victim of the pernicious Hollywood system. Twentieth Century–Fox continued to dictate her selection of films, roles, costars, producers, and directors. Moreover, although she’d recently received an increase in salary, it didn’t come close to the pay base commanded by other high-visibility stars. While she and DiMaggio had discussed the possibility of her breaking away from Fox and starting her own independent film production company, nothing had come of the idea. Ultimately, it was Milton H. Greene, a young, opportunistic magazine photographer, who persuaded Monroe to take matters into her own hands.

Marilyn first met Greene in September 1949 at a Beverly Hills house party. He’d come to town to put together a photo essay for
Life
magazine on promising Hollywood starlets. Johnny Hyde, with whom Monroe was then living, had gone to Palm Springs for the week on a business-related matter.

Attracted to the vibrant, darkly handsome, twenty-seven-year-old photographer—and hoping to be included in his photo essay—Marilyn spent two nights with him at what he referred to as “my West Coast house,” the Chateau Marmont, overlooking Sunset Boulevard. After
his return to New York later that month, he received a playful telegram from Marilyn addressed to Milton “Hot Shutter” Greene:

. . . .

It’s that I think you are superb –

And that, my dear, is not just a blurb. . . .

Marilyn and Milton didn’t meet again until October 1953, when he returned to Hollywood with Amy Greene, his newlywed bride, a former New York fashion model. In the interim, Greene had moved from
Life
to
Look
magazine. Monroe again spent time with the couple in September 1954, during the New York location filming of
The Seven Year Itch
.

Like Joe DiMaggio, Milton felt strongly that Twentieth Century–Fox had exploited Monroe and that she possessed far more promise and talent than the studio seemed willing to admit. Frank Delaney, Greene’s lawyer, read Marilyn’s contract with Fox and contended that it was basically a “slave labor agreement” and therefore invalid. By December 1954, encouraged by Milton Greene, whose judgment she’d come to trust, the “not-so-dumb blonde” had made up her mind to sever her connections with Fox and to leave Hollywood altogether and relocate to New York.

In the back of her mind lurked the enticing figure of Arthur Miller, who worked and lived in New York. But there were other considerations as well. Her old flame Elia Kazan had often spoken to her of the Actors Studio, located in Manhattan, which he had cofounded and which acting guru Lee Strasberg ran.

The school taught the Method approach to acting, and it had earned a reputation as the country’s leading training ground for both novice and experienced performers. The school would be an ideal place for Marilyn, insisted Kazan, since it represented an extension of the acting style she’d previously studied with Michael Chekhov. While still in Los Angeles, Marilyn Monroe met with Paula Strasberg, Lee’s wife, and she, too, offered encouragement, suggesting Monroe could refine her
acting skills by taking courses at the Actors Studio at the same time as she launched her film production company.

To expedite Marilyn’s move to New York, Milton Greene flew to Los Angeles and helped her pack. On her last night in Hollywood, she and Greene went nightclubbing with Sammy Davis Jr., Mel Tormé, and Shelley Winters, who’d studied at the Actors Studio and gave it high marks. The entire group, including Greene, assured Marilyn she’d made the right decision. The next day, escorted by Milton Greene, she flew to New York.

In early January 1955, having checked into a sixth-floor suite at the Gladstone, an apartment-hotel on Fifty-Second Street, off Park Avenue, Marilyn held a press conference announcing the establishment of
Marilyn Monroe Productions, Incorporated (MMP). Not surprisingly, she named Milton Greene as the other major partner in the corporation. Marilyn, as president, controlled fifty-one percent of MMP’s 1,012 shares, which went public that spring. Greene quit his $50,000-a-year job at
Look
in order to devote more time to the new project.

Fox executives were outraged by what they regarded as Marilyn Monroe’s blatant refusal to live up to her existing contractual obligations. They threatened to sue and vowed that she would never again appear in a Hollywood film, depicting her in the press as a talentless floozy who dared to make preposterous artistic demands on the greatest and noblest of Hollywood’s film studios. “It was as though,” wrote one film critic, “Cinderella had betrayed her fairy godmother.”

Marilyn’s bold step pleased Joe DiMaggio. He congratulated his former wife and complimented Milton Greene for having liberated Marilyn from the Fox “salt-mine,” a feat even he had not been able to accomplish. He did, however, take some satisfaction in the knowledge that his constant badgering had evidently played some role in Marilyn’s decision to part company with the studio. It must also have occurred to him that if Marilyn were to remain in New York, he might stand a reasonable chance of getting her back. Lest one forget, New York belonged to Joe DiMaggio.

Retaining her suite at the Gladstone, Marilyn began spending time at the Greene residence on Fanton Hill Road in Weston, Connecticut, an hour from Midtown. For her part, Amy Greene seemed blithely unaware—or unwilling to concede—that her husband and Marilyn had been sexually involved. Even harder for her to believe was the possibility that they were still lovers, though years later she would describe Marilyn to author Donald Spoto as a “home wrecker” and her husband as a cagey, elusive man, “given to excesses and indulgences he seemed unable to control,” one of which was evidently a long-term addiction to pharmaceuticals. In fact, he soon replaced Sidney Skolsky as Marilyn’s “candy man,” regularly supplying her with pain pills and barbiturates. He had no problem getting prescriptions, as several members of his family were physicians.

Despite her ongoing affair with Milton, which ended only that spring, Marilyn managed to establish a close friendship with Amy. They often drove into New York together to shop for clothes at Saks and Bonwit Teller, Marilyn hidden under her usual disguise of sunglasses and a black wig. With her background in fashion, Amy helped Marilyn put together a “proper” New York wardrobe, a collection of outfits of which even Joe DiMaggio would have approved.

Marilyn became very much a member of the Greene household, claimed Amy. The Greenes had an infant son, Joshua, for whom Marilyn often babysat. She enjoyed bathing and feeding the young child, and she frequently bought him presents, including a large stuffed bear named Socko. She told Amy that more than anything she wanted to have children of her own but feared that she couldn’t, having undergone a number of early “two-dollar” abortions.

As Marilyn’s latest confidante, Amy heard stories about the failed marriage to Joe DiMaggio, a marriage that might have succeeded had he permitted her to get on with her career. “I don’t know whom he thought he was marrying when he married me,” she told Amy.

Marilyn characterized her marriage to DiMaggio as “a sort of crazy, difficult friendship with sexual privileges.” Later in life, it occurred to
her that that’s what marriages often turn out to be. At another point, she maintained that she never should have married Joe—she never could have been the Italian housewife he wanted her to be. She’d married him, she said, because she’d felt sorry for him; he seemed so lonely and sad. A number of years later, she would describe her marriage to Arthur Miller in much the same way.

As Amy Greene saw the marriage to DiMaggio, “Joe never fit into her life, and she never fit into his. They were in love, but unmatched, except sexually. They fucked like bunny rabbits.”

Joe and Marilyn’s friendship had not ended. In late January, Milton Greene and Marilyn traveled to Boston to meet with Henry Rosenfeld, the wealthy dress manufacturer who’d once had a brief interlude with the actress. Presently in Boston to open an apparel factory, he’d contacted Marilyn and invited her to join him to discuss the possibility of his investing a large sum in MMP. He hadn’t counted on her bringing along her business partner. Nor did he realize that Marilyn was still involved with Joe DiMaggio.

The ballplayer happened to be visiting his brother Dom and Dom’s wife at their home in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Marilyn called DiMaggio at his brother’s and said she wanted to see him. He picked her up at her hotel, and they spent the next five days together at Dom’s house.

“The instant the
press got wind that Joe and Marilyn were staying together, they were on top of us,” recalled Dom DiMaggio. “We couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without the press coming along. One evening we drove to Boston and went out to dinner. As we were finishing our meal, a journalist came over to the table. He wanted to know if Joe and Marilyn were reconciling. Joe looked at Marilyn. ‘Are we, darling?’ he asked. Marilyn paused, then said, ‘Let’s just call it a visit.’ ”

Several days later, a half dozen press cars sat across the street from Dom DiMaggio’s house. They’d been there for hours waiting for Joe and Marilyn to emerge. One by one they began to leave. Ed Corsetti, a reporter for the
Boston Herald American
, sat behind the wheel of a
brand-new, black-and-white Ford with photographer Carroll Myett. They, too, were about to leave when the door to Dom’s house opened, and out walked the celebrated couple. Marilyn wore a big floppy hat and sunglasses. Without a word, they climbed into a Cadillac convertible and drove off. Corsetti and Myett followed them.

“DiMaggio must have driven five miles before he realized we were behind him,” said Corsetti. “We were on Route 9, headed west. I didn’t know where he was going. Maybe he was going back to New York. Carroll had his camera, one of those big old cameras, up by the windshield. I didn’t know for sure if DiMaggio, looking through the rearview mirror, saw this car following him with this guy with a camera. But he put on the gas. And I mean, he took off. We were following him and he had to be doing eighty miles per hour! Carroll kept saying, ‘You’re going to get us killed!’ I was hoping like hell the state troopers would show up and stop him. As I was trying to pull alongside him so Carroll could get his shot, he pulled his car to the left. I had to brake and back down. We must have chased him for fifteen or twenty miles. He put it in overdrive. He had to be going a hundred miles per hour. I said, ‘This is crazy. We’re driving a Ford, and he’s driving a Cadillac.’ We let him go. I’ll give him credit—he was a hell of a driver. And the two of them were as big as anything in the country at the time.”

Ed Corsetti had been correct. Joe and Marilyn were indeed en route to New York. He dropped her at the Gladstone Hotel and headed straight to Toots Shor’s, where he bumped into Red Smith and Lou Effrat, a sportswriter for the
New York Times
. Elated by the five days he’d just spent with his former wife, Joe intimated that he and Marilyn might soon embark on a second honeymoon.

That DiMaggio remained hopeful regarding a possible second marriage is evidenced by entries he made at this juncture in an ongoing series of notebooks he had begun keeping in the late 1940s, a kind of chronological journal of his comings and goings. A second set of notebooks—twenty-nine of them—covering the years 1962 to 1999, were even more impersonal than the first set and made no mention at all
of Marilyn. Both sets served primarily as a daily reminder of appointments as well as a detailed record of DiMaggio’s expenditures—how much he’d spent and where. Yet buried within his first set of jottings are two pages devoted to Marilyn.