The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Joe DiMaggio

Joltin’ Joe. The Yankee Clipper. No matter the nickname, few major-league baseball players in history had as much of an impact on our culture as the famous Joe DiMaggio. In the view of some historians, though, he may be as well known for his relationship with Marilyn Monroe as for his skill as a New York Yankees center fielder (for his entire professional career, 1936 to 1951).

Born Giuseppe Paolo (Joseph Paul) DiMaggio Jr. on November 25, 1914, Joe was the eighth of nine children of Sicilian immigrants in the small town of Martinez, California. When he was a year old, the family moved to San Francisco. He was raised with strict Catholic values in a household that stressed a strong work ethic and, above all, pride in their Sicilian heritage. At the same time, like most children of immigrants back then, the DiMaggio children were taught by their parents that nothing was more important than successfully merging into the American culture and being thought of as American. When he was a young boy, around six, he was forced to wear a leg brace due to a congenital weakness in his ankles. When the brace came off after two years, he was shy and withdrawn but also determined to excel at some physical activity. His brothers Vincent and Dominic played baseball—both went on to the pros—and he was thus inspired to also play the game. Joe dropped out of high school in the tenth grade—like Marilyn. His father, Giuseppe, had wanted him to be a fisherman—crab fishing had been a family trade for generations—but Joe couldn’t stand the smell of fish and cleaning them made him sick to his stomach. For many years, his father would view him as “good for nothing” as a result of his decision to do something other than fishing for a living. Joe’s brother Vince played for the San Francisco Seals, and it was he who persuaded the team’s management to bring Joe, then eighteen, on as a shortstop in 1932. He wasn’t such a great shortstop but he could definitely hit. By the age of twenty-one, he was batting .398. It wasn’t long before he became known as a reliable hitter for the team. He made his major-league debut with the Yankees in 1936, batting ahead of Lou Gehrig. From the start, he was a wonder on the field. It had been four years since the team had been in the World Series, but thanks in large part to DiMaggio, the Yankees would find themselves winning the next four fall classics. Joe joined the team in 1936 amid a great deal of publicity and attention. He was viewed as the greatest thing to happen to the sport in a long time. Paid $15,000 a game, he used the money to set his family up in a nice home as well as to invest in his own seafood restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf called Joe DiMaggio’s Grotto. He had a fifty-six-game hitting streak, from May 15 to July 16, 1941, that is thought of as the greatest in baseball history. Then, after going hitless for one game, he bounced back and hit in the next sixteen games for a total of seventy-two out of seventy-three.

Joe DiMaggio was more than just a baseball player, though. He was a cultural icon during the Great Depression, a desperate time in our history during which Americans sought out public figures for inspiration and motivation. He elevated the sport, but he also elevated the country. Watching DiMaggio in action was a thrill because of his grace and agility, but also it felt like a validation of the American dream. Injuries got the best of him, though, and by the late 1940s there were times when he could barely walk, let alone play the sport. Still, in 1949, he signed a contract with the Yankees for $100,000—an enormous amount of money in the sport at that time. He was deeply depressed after surgery on his foot and the breakup of a marriage—his first, which brought forth one child, a son named Joe Jr. So his heart wasn’t really in the sport at this time. Still, even in his darkest hours, he was an amazing player. That year he had four home runs in three games and was rejuvenated. He went on for another year or so playing the game in historic ways as the country watched, mostly amazed by his exploits: He played in 139 games in 1950, scoring 114 runs and three home runs in a single contest! By 1951, though, his injuries (as well as persistent ulcers and painful arthritis) began to take a toll on him. He announced his retirement at the end of 1951 at just thirty-six. By the time he gave up the sport, he had the fifth most career home runs (361) and the sixth highest slugging percentage (.579) in history. He’s the only player in baseball history to be selected for the All-Star Game in every season he played. He’s still considered one of the best professional baseball players to ever walk out onto a field.

Joe DiMaggio was a complex person, a study in contrasts. Like many celebrated people, he could be charismatic in a room full of people yet distant and sullen behind closed doors. Also, like many celebrities—especially in the sports world—he was accustomed to getting whatever his heart desired when it came to the opposite sex.

What follows is the oft-reported story of how Marilyn Monroe met Joe DiMaggio. It’s true that the two did meet at this time; however, new interviews for this book reveal that this really was not the first time they met.

First, the accepted story:

After seeing Marilyn in a dazzling series of photos she made with the White Sox, Joe decided that he wanted her. Or at least he wanted to meet her, and then take it from there. Marilyn had done the photo shoot with the Sox during their spring training that year at Brookside Park in Pasadena as a publicity gimmick set up by the studio. She posed with popular baseball player Gus Zernial in one of the pictures. After Joe determined that he wanted to know Marilyn, he contacted a mutual friend, David March, and the date was set for March 8, 1952, at Villa Nova, an Italian restaurant. ^*

Marilyn wasn’t exactly eager to meet Joe. She didn’t quite know who he was, and didn’t much care. She figured he was just an egotistical baseball player—or maybe a football player, she wasn’t sure—and since she knew little about the sport she couldn’t imagine what they would have in common. So while Joe DiMaggio sat waiting with David March and an actress named Peggy Rabe, Marilyn did what she did best in these kinds of social situations—she was late. (“It was a balmy night, and I was late, as usual.”) In fact, she kept them waiting for almost two hours. Of course, when she appeared, the table was more than happy to see her, especially given that she had on a revealing, low-cut white blouse and a tight little blue skirt that made sitting down just a tad perilous. She didn’t know it, but DiMaggio was apprehensive about meeting her.

Marilyn later said that if she hadn’t known he was a baseball player, she would have picked him out as “either a steel magnate or a congressman.” He was quiet and thoughtful, not at all the boastful sports hero she had expected. He didn’t say much. Instead, he just stared into his glass of vodka, straight with lime. “You know, there’s a blue polka dot right there in the middle of your tie,” she mentioned, trying to make small talk. “Did you fix it so that it would be like that—right in the middle like that?” He shook his head and tried to avoid her steady gaze. She later recalled thinking that he was adeptly playing one of her best games—the one where she is enigmatic and elusive, and as a result inspires great curiosity from everyone in her midst. However, she did wonder how two could play such a game and quickly concluded that not much would ever be said between them.

What most impressed Marilyn about Joe on this night was that despite his quiet, almost sullen demeanor, he somehow still managed to command the table. In fact, the whole room. Sitting there in his white silk shirt, pearl-gray silk tie, and black trousers, he seemed more like a movie star with the golden tan of a playboy than some jock from New York. He wasn’t good-looking: His face was all sharp angles, his teeth not only bucked but haphazardly arranged, his eyes too close together. He was lanky and spindly. He didn’t walk, he lumbered. It didn’t matter, though. He was still power personified; it seemed to emanate from him, that’s how much attention he generated just by his mere presence in a booth in the back of the restaurant. Marilyn was used to getting that kind of rapt attention from onlookers, but on this night she was just… another fan. Or, as she so perfectly put it, “Sitting next to Mr. DiMaggio was like sitting next to a peacock with its tail spread, that’s how noticeable you were.” There was no doubt in her mind that she was fascinated.

After their meal, Marilyn apologized, said she was exhausted and needed to get to bed. “I have to be at the studio in the morning,” she explained. When Joe offered to walk her to her car, she didn’t turn him down. In fact, she hoped it might give her a little more time to learn more about him. A bevy of smiling faces saw the couple out of the restaurant, all fans of Joe’s—a few of Marilyn’s too, but hers seemed a lot less excited than his.

Once in the parking lot, Joe asked her to drive him back to his hotel, the Knickerbocker. In her memoir, she recalls that she eagerly agreed because she didn’t want the evening to end just yet. She remembered that when they got back to the hotel, they agreed that it had been such a lovely evening, it was a shame to end it. So they tooled around Beverly Hills for three hours—and anyone who knows Beverly Hills knows that it’s not exactly a metropolis. Indeed, any two people driving about there for three hours are not looking at the sights but rather are preoccupied with each other.

For the record, the two had actually met a couple years earlier. Back in 1950, when Marilyn was with Johnny Hyde, his nephew, a young William Morris agent named Norman Brokaw, booked her on an NBC program called Lights, Camera, Action, a thirty-minute variety show hosted by actor Walter Wolf King. Marilyn had a brief walk-on part in a sketch—it was just a way for Brokaw to get some televised footage in order to possibly secure future bookings for her. After the show, Norman and Marilyn walked down Vine Street from the affiliate KNBH studio—now KNBC in Los Angeles—to the famous Brown Derby restaurant. As they had dinner, the actor William Frawley (Fred Mertz from I Love Lucy) came over to the table. After Norman introduced him to Marilyn Monroe, Frawley said, “You know, I’m sitting over there with Joe D. He really wants to meet this young lady. But he’s very shy…” Norman said, “Sure. On our way out, we’ll come by and say hello.” After Frawley left, Marilyn turned to the agent and said, “So, who’s Joe D.?” He said, “That’s Joe DiMaggio, one of the greatest baseball players of all time.” It meant nothing to her. Then he said, “But I guarantee you that if I introduce you to him, he’s going to want your telephone number. Is that okay?” She said it was fine. As they were leaving the Derby, Norman took Marilyn to Joe’s table. “Joe, this is Marilyn Monroe,” he said, “a young lady we have a great feeling about for the future. I think she’s going to be a big star.” Joe looked at her warmly, but he was clearly bashful. Barely able to meet her gaze, he said, “Well, listen, you’re in the right hands with Norman. He’s a great agent.” They shook hands, said goodbye, and that was the extent of it.

“Sure enough, the very next morning, one of my first calls was Joe DiMaggio wanting her telephone number,” Brokaw recalls. “I gave it to him. Then I called her up and said, ‘Marilyn, what’d I tell you. I just gave your telephone number to Joe D.’ ” It is not known whether Joe called her.

After their dinner in 1952, something began to stir in Marilyn Monroe. She’d never really experienced it before, at least to hear her tell it. She most certainly hadn’t been in love with Jim Dougherty. Joe Schenck was kindly and influential, but that wasn’t love either. And as much as she wished she could have been in love with Johnny Hyde, the emotion simply never materialized for her. However, the sudden warmth for and pull toward this new fellow, Joe DiMaggio, felt different, unlike anything she’d ever experienced with any other man. Indeed, with this one, it would definitely be… different.