Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love (10 page)

Tommy Henrich noted that in 1942 DiMaggio batted only .305, his lowest average since reaching the majors and well below his first six seasons. The Yankees center fielder’s home run and RBI totals dipped as well, to 21 and 114, respectively. “He blamed it all on his failing marriage,” said Henrich, “and on a baby that wouldn’t stop crying. Now, there’s an explanation for you. Bear in mind that half the guys on the team had little kids, and nobody I knew ever used them as an excuse. And then there was the time Dorothy brought the baby to the ballpark and everyone clustered around them in the clubhouse after the game—everyone, that is, except for the baby’s father. DiMaggio flew out of there like a bat out of hell.”

The family vacated their West End Avenue residence and moved to an equally spacious apartment at 241 Central Park West. They had just moved in, wrote Joyce Hadley, when
Dorothy hired a private investigator to follow her husband. The investigator returned with photographs
of Joe checking into a Manhattan hotel with a redhead on his arm. The photos substantiated Dorothy’s suspicions. She took Joe Jr. and, after visiting her parents in Duluth and hiring an attorney, checked into the Riverside Hotel in Reno, Nevada, in order to initiate divorce proceedings. Joe followed and begged his wife to try again, promising to amend his ways. Their reconciliation was short lived. With DiMaggio serving in the armed forces, Dorothy took the baby and the nanny and moved into a two-bedroom suite at the Hotel Adams, announcing to the press that she and the Yankee Clipper were terminating their marriage.

On October 11, 1943, Dorothy filed
divorce papers in Los Angeles Superior Court on grounds of “cruel indifference.” “Joe never acted like a married man,” she testified. “I had a child with him, thinking that would make him realize his responsibilities . . . but even the baby’s arrival didn’t change him. He became ill tempered; refused to talk to me for days at a time. And several times asked me to get out of our home.” Dorothy asked for and received a lump sum payment of $14,000 in cash, $500 a month in alimony payments, and $150 a month for “the care and maintenance” of Little Joe, in addition to “any and all future medical and educational fees incurred by the minor.” Joe was likewise ordered by the court to create an irrevocable trust in his son’s name “for no less than ten thousand dollars,” payable “immediately following Mr. DiMaggio’s death.” The decree of divorce, uncontested on DiMaggio’s part, was handed down on May 15, 1944. Dorothy retained full custody of the child. Joe was granted alternating weekend visitation rights, an improbable arrangement considering he was currently in the military and at war’s end would resume his baseball career. He was also ordered to pay all legal costs in connection with the divorce, including those accrued by his former wife.

Encouraged by Hollywood talent agent Mort Millman, Dorothy Arnold (having resumed use of her professional “screen” name) decided to reenter the world of show business, not as an actress but primarily as a vocalist. Millman reasoned, not incorrectly, that as “the former Mrs. Joe DiMaggio,” Dorothy could draw a crowd—more out of curiosity
perhaps than anything else. By mid-1945, she had contracted to appear nightly with Nat Brandwynne and His Orchestra in the Starlight Room at the Waldorf-Astoria.

“My mother had stayed on as Little Joe’s nanny,” said Emerald Duffy, “and when Dorothy began singing with the band, we all moved into a large residential suite at the Waldorf Towers. Incredibly, Joe DiMaggio was still courting Dorothy, hoping to remarry. He’d come by to retrieve his son and take him back to his own suite at the Hotel Edison or the Elysée, where they’d sit around and watch TV all evening. Then he’d have somebody drop the boy off in the morning. At some point he suggested they try living together again. She had no intention of going back to him. She told my mother that he would never change, that he was immersed in cement, that he had no regard or respect for women. Besides, she’d started dating somebody else, and she was evidently crazy about him.”

Her new love interest was George Schubert, a former Wall Street investment broker who soon took over as Dorothy’s manager. They were married on August 1, 1946. As Joyce Hadley saw it, he was more talkative than Joe DiMaggio but otherwise shared many of Joe’s characteristics. “Schubert,” she wrote, “was stiff . . . and controlled in everything he said and did.” Like DiMaggio, he was domineering, demanding, narcissistic, and full of himself. As she’d done with Joe, Dorothy rationalized his behavior, oblivious to the reality of the situation. Life with her new husband consisted largely of dining, drinking, dancing, and attending wild parties—a radical change from her previous lifestyle. But unlike DiMaggio, Schubert had little of his own money. “I’m afraid,” she told her sister Joyce, “I’m attracted to all the wrong men.”

“The real victim in all this was Little Joey,” said Emerald Duffy. “His mother had nicknamed him Butch, though I never knew exactly why. To be honest, his parents simply weren’t there for him. After she married George Schubert, Dorothy absented herself almost completely from her son’s life. Between her marriage and her show business career,
she was never around. And the boy was virtually invisible to his father. Joe DiMaggio appeared to like little kids, constantly gave them his autograph and a few kind words, but he seemed oblivious to his own son. Occasionally he’d take him along to the ballpark. I went with them only once. Joey was about six, and he wore his little Yankee baseball uniform, pinstripes and all. And he had his own baseball mitt, the Joe DiMaggio children’s signature model. He looked really cute. He kept asking me if I thought his dad would play catch with him on the sidelines before the game. ‘I don’t see why not,’ I told him. But when we reached Yankee Stadium and after DiMaggio suited up, he asked one of his teammates to toss a ball around with his son. He couldn’t be bothered.”

Emerald recalled the day a sports magazine needed a photo of DiMaggio and Joe Jr. for their front cover. DiMaggio sent a limo to collect Joey and drive him to the photographer’s studio, where they posed together for a few shots, after which the boy was driven home. His father didn’t say two words to him. He had a dinner date that night with Peggy Deegan, his “girlfriend of the moment.” He didn’t have time for his son.

Emerald Duffy went on to describe Little Joey’s early childhood years as an “abysmal period,” during which he had little emotional contact with either parent. In addition, he had few friends his own age. At school, when he told classmates his name was Joe DiMaggio, nobody believed him. “You’re full of shit,” they’d say. “His best pal,” Emerald noted, “was an elderly elevator operator at the Waldorf, whose name was Max. Max had no family of his own, so he kind of adopted Joey. They adopted each other. Joey spent hours riding up and down with Max, chatting away with him, unburdening himself. It seemed sad in a way. My mother tried to be there for Joey, but she was being paid to look after him—it wasn’t the same thing.”

Then in late 1950, following her divorce from George Schubert, Dorothy Arnold became convinced that her career opportunities
would be brighter in California. With Joey in tow, she left New York and moved to Los Angeles. There, once again bereft of companionship and left to his own devices, Joey eventually found a new “best pal.” Her name was Marilyn Monroe, and in January 1954 Marilyn would evolve into something far more vital than a “best pal”—she would become Joey’s stepmother.

•  •  •

It wasn’t that Joe DiMaggio hadn’t wanted to tell Marilyn about his four-year marriage to Dorothy Arnold—it wasn’t that at all. Rather, it had been a question of finding “the right time and the right place.” That, in any case, is how he phrased it when he finally got around to conveying the sordid details, many of which Monroe had already heard from George Solotaire the night they dined together at the Plaza. As a result, Joe’s long-awaited “confession” came as no great surprise.

By late July 1952, Marilyn had finished shooting
Niagara
and had flown to Los Angeles, leaving Joe behind in New York to plod on with his television sports show. But at the beginning of September, she returned to the East Coast to attend the New York premiere of
Monkey Business,
and to serve as grand marshal for the Miss America beauty pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Twentieth Century–Fox’s publicity department had arranged Monroe’s participation in the pageant and had booked her into a luxury suite at the Ritz-Carlton, directly on the Boardwalk. In conjunction with her appearance as grand marshal, a US Army photographer was deployed to take pictures of the actress for an upcoming recruitment drive.

The day before the pageant DiMaggio joined Marilyn at her hotel. That evening they ate a late dinner at the Merry-Go-Round Bar, off the Ritz lobby, and it was during their meal that he brought up the subject of his previous marriage. The following day Marilyn dressed for the event in a low-cut black chiffon gown, which displayed a good deal more of her than Joe thought it should have.

In his biography of Joe DiMaggio,
Richard Ben Cramer refers to Marilyn’s comment on the outfit. It was “an entirely decent dress,” she insisted. “You could ride in a streetcar in it without disturbing the passengers. But there was one bright-minded photographer who figured he would get a more striking picture if he photographed me shooting down. I didn’t notice him pointing his camera from the balcony.”

The “bright-minded” photographer in this case happened to be the one sent by the army, and while his pictures revealed too much of Monroe’s very ample cleavage to be utilized for recruitment purposes, they appeared (somewhat retouched) in the next day’s press. If there were anybody who hadn’t as yet seen Marilyn’s nude calendar shots, they could familiarize themselves with her body by taking in the Atlantic City pictorials. Letters poured into newspaper offices from church groups and ladies’ clubs condemning Monroe for her lack of decorum and good taste.

Predictably, Joe DiMaggio became infuriated when he saw the published photos. For him it was Dorothy Arnold and her “scandalous” Jones Beach two-piece bathing suit all over again. “He was screaming at Marilyn,” wrote Richard Ben Cramer. “Like she’d done the whole thing to embarrass him. She tried to explain. It was publicity. It was part of her job. She had to show herself.”

They’d been through all this before, and DiMaggio remained as adamant as ever. “You don’t need to show them anything. Not a damn thing. You look like a fuckin’ whore in that outfit.”

But that was the gown the studio had given her to wear.

“Wear your own goddamn clothes, not theirs.”

She didn’t have any clothes worth wearing.

“Well then, buy them,” he snapped. “Or maybe you do have them, and they’re in the backseat of your car along with everything else you own. Can’t you see that those Hollywood swine are using you? You’re nothing to them but a piece of meat.”

Marilyn agreed and Joe calmed down. He apologized for yelling,
and she accepted his apology. That was the pattern they’d established. She’d do something that would set him off. He’d scream. She’d retreat. He’d feel contrite and offer an apology. They’d embrace and make up. And then, without fail, something else would come along, and they’d begin all over again.

W
HEN THE 1952 BASEBALL POSTSEASON
ended in early October—the Yanks took the World Series from the Dodgers in seven games—Joe DiMaggio flew to San Francisco, picked up his dark blue ’52 Cadillac bearing the license plate “JOE D,” and drove to Los Angeles to spend time with Marilyn Monroe.
The first thing he did was to take her on a shopping spree for a new wardrobe. He sat there patiently while she tried on a variety of outfits. Every dress had a high neckline. That was the deal: he’d pay for the clothes provided they met his sartorial specifications. She agreed to wear them if he promised to be more patient with her. He said he would try.

A few weeks later, Marilyn, wearing one of her new fashion selections, accompanied DiMaggio to Black-Foxe Military Institute on Wilcox Avenue in Hollywood to visit his son. Joe Jr. had just celebrated his eleventh birthday. DiMaggio hadn’t seen the school before, though Joey had been a student there since 1951. Because of its location, Black-Foxe (named after its cofounders) catered primarily to the sons of families involved in the movie industry. Ranging in age from seven through nineteen, the “junior cadets,” as they were officially designated, were required to wear military uniforms when attending class. One of Joe Jr.’s classmates, the son of a well-known film director, later described the academy as “an overpriced dumping ground for the
disaffected male offspring of prominent Hollywood parents eager to rid themselves of their kids for a couple of years, if not longer.”

On Friday afternoons the entire student body, in full dress regalia, with a band playing in the background, would march up and down the drill field for the pleasure of the academy’s instructors and those parents who were there to pick up their sons for the weekend. The school would break out the rifles for the parade, small stock rifles for the younger students, real rifles for the high school–aged cadets. “That’s when you knew you were at a military academy,” said Joey Jr. “There was no mistaking it for a regular boarding school.”