The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Mrs. DiMaggio

Marilyn Monroe knew that she would be put on suspension by Fox for not showing up for work on the set of The Girl in Pink Tights. She didn’t care. She was exhausted by the last year. It had been one drama after another. What was done was done, she decided. She had taken a firm stand against the studio and wasn’t going to now look back with regret. She knew that her Aunt Grace would have wholeheartedly approved of the way she’d handled Darryl Zanuck. Grace would not have wanted Marilyn to stand by and just allow Zanuck to walk all over her, “I don’t care who he is.”

Marilyn would later say she felt sure that she needed a new beginning, a fresh start in the new year of 1954. Was it to be with Joe? She felt that he was all she had, now that Grace was gone. That night, at 11:45, Marilyn took a plane to San Francisco—to Joe.

Once safely ensconced in San Francisco, Marilyn stayed with Joe and his sister, Marie DiMaggio, in Joe’s home. She fit in well with the family, eager to help out around the house—washing dishes, cleaning up with Marie after Joe and his brother Dom; whatever was necessary was what she wanted to do. Indeed, whenever a family environment presented itself to Marilyn and she was asked to join in, she was eager to do it. One morning, she prepared a big breakfast for Joe and his family members and friends—and it was good, too. Marie had given her a lot of assistance. This was the Marilyn Joe DiMaggio wanted her to be—domesticated, calm, and at peace with her household chores and wifely duties. Of course, this was just a fantasy life for Marilyn. She may have been unhappy with the way her career had been unfolding lately, but there was no possibility of giving it up. Still, this was a good time and there was no point in her reminding Joe that it was all just temporary. She enjoyed seeing him happy and noticed that when she was relaxed, he was as well. They went fishing together, washed his car, took long walks. It was a wonderful week. Then, on New Year’s Eve 1953, Joe asked her to marry him. It was easy for both of them to forget their differences in the idyllic world they had created that week. It must have felt to them that they were completely compatible. It was all an illusion, though. In the romantic moment, of course Marilyn said yes, she would marry him. They decided to keep the news of their engagement a secret from the media for the time being and just enjoy their private time with Joe’s family, all of whom were delighted by the news.

Fox finally relented and sent Marilyn the script to The Girl in Pink Tights. This was a little victory for her. It was probably the first time she’d gotten her way with Darryl Zanuck. However, as expected, when she took a look at the script, she realized that her instincts were right. It was ridiculous and cliché-ridden and she didn’t want to do it. As soon as she informed Fox of her decision, the studio put her on suspension, meaning she would not be getting her salary. She could live with that; it wasn’t as if they were paying her a mint, anyway.

Meanwhile, Marilyn began work on a three-part magazine article with writer Ben Hecht. Hecht went to San Francisco to interview the star over a period of four days for a piece about her life—or, really, the story of her life as she wanted to present it at the time—for Ladies’ Home Journal. Eventually, Hecht’s notes would end up in book form and be touted as Marilyn’s memoir, My Story, published many years after her death (and in fact, after Hecht’s death).

My Story is not a terrible book, though it’s disjointed and filled with inaccuracies. The reader gets the sense, however, that Marilyn wanted to be thought of as a victim, and she framed her stories with an eye toward that goal. One anecdote that was excised from the book upon its release was that Marilyn said she had tried to commit suicide twice—both times over relationships with men. One episode may have been a reference to the incident with Johnny Hyde when she was saved by Natasha Lytess. The other remains mysterious to this day, although she told Hecht that she was very angry when she was saved the second time because she definitely wanted to die. “But now I’m glad it happened the way it did. I’m glad I’m alive. I hope to stay glad for a long time.”

Some people in Marilyn’s life completely disavow this book—like her half-sister Berniece, who calls it “half-baked.” It’s not known where the money goes from proceeds of this book, but likely not to any family members. What must irk Marilyn’s intimates even more is that a document does exist that memorializes an agreement Marilyn made with Ben Hecht—dated March 16, 1954—which clearly states that the material “shall not be put into book form by you and you shall have no right to the use of the material for anything except one magazine article to be published in the Ladies’ Home Journal magazine.” Like it or not, My Story is the book of record—ostensibly, Marilyn’s own words about her life. Reading it today, it does seem accurate, it just doesn’t seem complete.

On January 14, 1954, Marilyn and Joe were wed in a quick civil ceremony before a judge in San Francisco. Much of her public, and the media, felt the marriage to be somewhat anticlimactic, that a star like Marilyn (in a dark brown suit with an ermine collar on this day) should have had a grander affair. However, there were hundreds of fans and reporters at City Hall waiting for them to arrive, because Fox had put out the word, unbeknownst to Marilyn, who had been considerate enough to inform the studio but asked for confidentiality. An affair any bigger would have been more than Marilyn could have handled at this intense time in her life. She made a strange request of Joe, though. If she died before him, would he promise to place flowers at her grave every week? He promised, giving her the same vow that William Powell had once given Jean Harlow.

The DiMaggios honeymooned in the small seaside town of Paso Robles—not much of a honeymoon. The couple then left for a vacation/business trip (for Joe) to Japan in early February. At the airport, the press noticed that Marilyn’s finger was bandaged and in a splint. It appeared to have been broken. She said that she “bumped it” and that Joe was a witness. “He heard it crack.” It seemed suspicious.

When they got to Tokyo, they were surprised by the absolute mob that awaited them there—thousands of fans in what was the most chaotic scene Marilyn had ever seen built around her. Her international appeal was obvious, if not also a little frightening. As for Joe, he wasn’t happy about it at all. It was clear that her popularity eclipsed his, even in a foreign country. The realization just made him more surly and disagreeable. At a press conference that had been arranged in his honor to promote the exhibition games for which he had traveled there, matters got worse. Practically every question was directed to Marilyn. He sat at her side looking more than a little peeved.

While the couple were in the Far East, an invitation came from General John E. Hull’s Far East Command headquarters for Marilyn to entertain the troops in Korea. She wanted to do it, but Joe was against it. The two had a heated discussion which ended with him saying, “It’s your honeymoon. Go if you want to go.” She did.

The brief tour began on February 16. Of course, the servicemen went wild for Marilyn everywhere she appeared as she sang songs such as “Kiss Me Again” and “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” Appearing before more than one hundred thousand military men in just four days, she was a smashing success. What was interesting about this brief series of concerts is that she was on her own—there was no Natasha Lytess in the wings telling her what to do, no Darryl Zanuck over her shoulder telling her how to be, and no Joe DiMaggio at her side telling her she couldn’t do it. She proved to herself that she could stand before an audience and entertain using her own instincts and judgment—and while singing, too, which she was never really comfortable doing, let alone in front of people. It was a big win for her, and she had never felt better about herself. She wasn’t the least bit nervous, either. It was as if when left to her own devices she knew she could soar, and she did. “I felt I belonged,” she would later say. “For the first time in my life, I had the feeling that the people seeing me were accepting me and liking me. This is what I’ve always wanted.”

“And now I’m flying back to the most important thing in my life—Joe,” she told the troops at the end of her last show. “And I want to start a family. A family comes before a career.”

When the DiMaggios returned to America on February 24, 1954, it was business as usual—meaning one problem after another. It hadn’t been going that well between them. There was still a sense that DiMaggio could not reconcile himself to Monroe’s stardom. For instance, when talking about her tour of Korea, she exclaimed, “You’ve never heard applause like that!” He responded, “Yes, I have.” He seemed to always want to remind her that she wasn’t the only star in the family. He definitely didn’t want her to become any bigger a celebrity than she already was, he said, because he didn’t believe she could handle it. So they fought about their future—about her career and how it fit into their plans as a married couple. Still, Marilyn tried to stay optimistic. “I love you till my heart could burst,” she wrote in a love note to Joe in March 1954. “I want someday for you to be proud of me as a person and as your wife and as the mother of the rest of your children. (Two at least! I’ve decided.)”

At around this time, during a trip to Los Angeles, Joe telephoned his friend the agent Norman Brokaw who had first introduced him to Marilyn in 1950. Joe said he needed to see him. They met at the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. As the two took a back booth, DiMaggio seemed very unhappy. “I don’t know what to do, Norm,” he said, according to the agent’s memory of the conversation. “I love her. But I can’t accept her career. I want her to quit, but she won’t do it.”

Norman mulled over his friend’s problem for a moment and said, “Joe, let me explain something to you, as an agent in this town. There’s no actress in this business who is going to give up Clark Gable or Tyrone Power or Spencer Tracy for any man. In fact, I don’t know any actress who would be willing to give up her career when she’s on her way to the top any more than you would have given up your baseball career before its time.” He continued, “What if when you were shooting to break the record of fifty-seven hits, a girl came into your life and said, ‘No, you need to stop at fifty-six. You can’t go for fifty-seven because I won’t allow it.’ How would you have handled it?”

DiMaggio thought about it for a second. “I never looked at it that way,” he said. “That makes sense to me.”

“Well, that’s the way it is, Joe,” Norman concluded. “That’s the field you’re playing on, my friend. She’s not going to give up her career any more than you would have before you were ready to do it. So you have to get used to it, Joe. Or, honest to God, you’re going to lose her.”

Joe thanked Norman for his advice. He would try to follow it… but it wouldn’t be easy. Not long after this meeting with Norman, Joe wrote in his personal journal about Marilyn, “No jealousy.… Don’t forget how lonesome and unhappy you are—especially without her.”