Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love (41 page)

By middle age, about to turn forty-seven, DiMaggio had changed in other respects as well. Because of his ulcers, which came and went, he cut back on his cigarette habit and indulgence in alcohol, limiting himself to a half pack a day and a couple of glasses of beer at dinner. He’d taken to drinking tea instead of coffee and had given up rich desserts. He was more generous when it came to money. When Marilyn told him she’d overdrawn her checking account at Irving Trust by $7,000, he generously covered it for her. Although never a simple man, he still had simple tastes. As one of his pals put it, “Give Joe a cup of tea and turn on the TV set, and he’s a happy man.” For this reason, if for no other, the relationship with Marilyn didn’t—and probably couldn’t—work full-time. It was his growing awareness that this was the case, and his gradual acceptance of that fact, that imbued their current bond with an intimacy it had previously lacked.

The day that Marilyn walked out of Columbia-Presbyterian, Joe invited her to join him at the Yankee spring training camp in Florida. Even among the veteran Yankee players, it became known that Joe had undergone a certain metamorphosis. “I always regarded DiMaggio as a haughty, imperious type of guy,” said Mickey Mantle. “He struck me as somebody who just didn’t like people, who wanted to be left alone, and who was above it all. That’s not to say he wasn’t one of the greatest ballplayers of all time, but he certainly wasn’t one of the warmest. But in 1961, for whatever reason, he seemed different. He’d stick around and eat dinner with the young guys on the team. He’d give them tips. He’d give the old guys tips as well. He’d tell stories. He’d invite players for breakfast. He began to socialize. Then he disappeared for a while. We heard Marilyn Monroe came to visit him, and he wanted to spend time with her.”

Joe and Marilyn occupied separate but adjoining rooftop suites at the oceanfront Tides Hotel and Bath Club, in the quiet and peaceful, predominantly residential town of North Redington Beach, Florida. They rested, swam, fished, walked along the beach at sunset, collected seashells, biked, dined alone, and attended several Yankees spring
training games together. It was like a second honeymoon but without the wedding ceremony.

Mercifully, the press didn’t know where to find them and the Yankee front office wasn’t talking.
Sports Illustrated
ran a photo of Marilyn ogling Joe (wearing his old number 5) as he hit fly balls to prospective outfielders, but that was the extent of the press coverage. One morning as they sat on the beach at North Redington—Marilyn in a loose-fitting white dress, sunglasses and a large floppy hat—they were spotted by a group of tourists, one of whom approached and asked Monroe for her autograph.
“Leave the lady alone,” snapped Joe, a seeming reversion to his former possessive self, for which he later apologized to Marilyn, explaining that he was merely “trying to preserve her privacy.”

They spent several days in Gainesville, where Marilyn visited with her half sister Berniece Miracle and Berniece’s daughter, Mona Rae. Marilyn borrowed Joe’s car one afternoon and drove to Miami Beach to see Isidore Miller. On April 11, back in New York, she sat next to Joe DiMaggio in the press box on opening day at Yankee Stadium. The pregame ceremony included Jane Morgan singing “The Second Time Around,” which Bob Hope introduced by dedicating it to “Joe and Marilyn.” At the end of the game, Yankees coowner Dan Topping hugged Marilyn and handed her a baseball signed by the entire team. A few months later, she sent the ball to Joe DiMaggio Jr., who subsequently sold it to a sports memorabilia shop for $400.

“After busting out of Yale,” said Joey, “I did the dumbest thing I’ve probably ever done. I moved to San Francisco and married a girl I barely knew. We eloped. It lasted a month. I then moved to my mother’s house in LA, and within a couple of weeks, I racked up a six-hundred-dollar phone bill. So I gave her the money from the sale of the baseball and split. I moved in with a guy named Tom Law, who earned a living of sorts as an extra in the movies. He got me a job working at his uncle’s rug factory in Santa Monica, which ended when a crane veered off course and gouged a large hole in my leg. After it healed, I
joined the marines. I figured the armed forces were probably more interesting and less dangerous than working in a rug factory.”

In 1994 Berniece Miracle (with daughter Mona Rae Miracle) coauthored
My Sister Marilyn
, recalling (among other episodes) a stay with her half sister in New York in late April. The visit had been arranged when Marilyn spent time with Berniece in Gainesville, Florida. When Berniece came to New York, Marilyn paid to have her hair styled by Kenneth and bought her a new wardrobe. Joe DiMaggio squired Gladys Baker’s two daughters around town, taking them to lunch at Serendipity (he drove them there but didn’t go in) and provided them with theater tickets. Berniece, who was modest and down-to-earth, had fond memories of DiMaggio. In her Marilyn memoir, she described him as “unpretentious” and “full of common sense and concern for Marilyn.” Joe was equally impressed with Berniece. Before her departure, he gave her an eight-by-ten glossy photograph of himself in a Yankees uniform, which he inscribed: “To Marilyn’s lovely sister Berniece—whose pleasant company was appreciated, Joe DiMaggio.”

Lena Pepitone recalled that Joe and Marilyn spent a good deal of time together during April and the beginning of May. They would stay either at her apartment or in his suite at the Hotel Lexington, a few blocks away. “Arthur Miller had removed some furniture from the apartment,” said Pepitone, “and you could see stains all over the white carpeting where his dog had peed or pooped. Joe hired a carpet cleaner and went furniture shopping with Marilyn to replace what
Miller had taken out. I thought they might be preparing to live together again. Then one night they had an argument. Joe found a discarded grocery bill in the trash. He added it up and discovered that the store had charged Marilyn nearly twice what she should have paid. ‘Why don’t you look the bills over before you pay them?’ he scolded her. Marilyn grabbed the bill out of his hand. ‘It’s none of your business,’ she growled. ‘It’s my money, not yours.’ That’s how it started. It ended with Joe giving Marilyn a bit of a shove as he rushed past her out the door in a burst of anger.”

They soon had words again, this time over the surprise arrival at Marilyn’s apartment of a white French poodle puppy, a gift from Frank
Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio’s onetime pal. Marilyn referred to Sinatra alternately as “Frankie” or “Francis.” So why, DiMaggio demanded to know, had Frankie or Francis delivered a puppy to Marilyn’s door? He realized that Sinatra and Monroe knew each other, but he didn’t know the extent of their friendship. Most of Hollywood’s leading actresses, particularly the more attractive ones, had at some point crossed paths with Sinatra. But how many of them were the recipients of small, cuddly puppies? Why the dog? Why now? It made no sense. Joe pressed her for an answer, until she finally offered him one. It sounded all too familiar.

“It’s none of your business, Joe,” she said. “You and I are no longer married. I don’t have to answer to you.”

And he said: “You never did answer to me, even when we were married. You did what you wanted to do, and that was probably part of the problem.”

Marilyn Monroe once named Frank Sinatra one of the two most fascinating men she’d ever known, the other being Marlon Brando. The legendary entertainer first met the legendary actress before she married Joe DiMaggio. He’d been cast opposite her in the ill-fated
Girl in Pink Tights
. Reportedly, Marilyn had sought refuge in Sinatra’s Coldwater Canyon home for a day or two immediately following her divorce from DiMaggio. Although still involved with Hal Schaefer, Monroe had evidently indulged in a brief romp with Sinatra. And then there had been the scandalous Wrong Door Raid in which DiMaggio, aided by Sinatra, attempted to catch Marilyn “in the act” with Schaefer. Neither DiMaggio nor Schaefer had the slightest inkling that the target of the raid was also involved with one of its chief perpetrators. “I had no idea that Marilyn and Frank Sinatra were lovers,” said Hal Schaefer.

In the mid-1950s, at the height of Marilyn’s New York period, she and Sinatra had continued to see each other occasionally. Once, when Sinatra performed at the Copa in New York, Marilyn arrived
unexpectedly with Milton and Amy Greene, only to be told that without reservations they couldn’t get in. Sinatra spotted Marilyn and instructed a waiter to set up an extra table at the foot of the stage. To the amazement of the Greenes, he proceeded to sing the entire set directly to Marilyn. Their affair resumed after Monroe’s divorce from Arthur Miller. Lena Pepitone admitted that on at least one occasion Sinatra had spent the night with Marilyn in her New York apartment. “I served them dinner at night and breakfast in the morning,” she said, “and this was one day after Joe DiMaggio had slept over.”

Sinatra’s gift to Marilyn of a cute little puppy told Joe DiMaggio everything he needed to know, or almost everthing: he wasn’t the only Italian American in Marilyn’s life, though he may well have been the only one that truly loved her. But there wasn’t much he could do or say. After all, as Marilyn had conveniently pointed out, they were no longer husband and wife. The elation Joe experienced after publicly resuming their relationship quickly turned into confusion. In reality, Sinatra was only part of the story. The other part—Marilyn’s involvement with John F. Kennedy, the newly elected president of the United States—represented a chapter that seemed almost fictional.

In what must surely be considered an intricate juggling act, Marilyn somehow managed to compartmentalize and yet combine her trio of lovers. DiMaggio, Sinatra, and Kennedy had Marilyn in common. She stayed with JFK at the Carlyle during one of his periodic trips to New York, finding him “strong yet fragile.” As for Sinatra’s gift, Marilyn named the poodle “Maf” (or “Maaf-Honey”) because of the crooner’s purported Mafia connections. To spite Arthur Miller, Marilyn let Maf sleep on an expensive white beaver coat that the playwright had given her as a birthday present.

If Joe DiMaggio resented Marilyn’s reluctance to be with him on an exclusive basis, he tried not to show it. He saw her whenever she seemed willing to see him and otherwise busied himself socially with one or another of a long list of standbys, his favorite being Phyllis McGuire, if only because she was already spoken for and therefore couldn’t
object to his ongoing pursuit of Monroe. In fact, McGuire’s beau, Chicago mobster Sam Giancana, coincidentally a friend of Sinatra’s, called Joe and invited him for a round of golf. “Giancana soon became a regular golf partner,” said Paul Baer. “They made for an odd twosome, particularly because Joe would occasionally spend time with Phyllis, Giancana’s girlfriend, and the arrangement didn’t seem to bother Sam.”

Evidently not the possessive type, Giancana had a second girlfriend, Judith Campbell, a former Las Vegas showgirl whom Frank Sinatra had introduced to Jack Kennedy in 1960. Like Marilyn Monroe, Campbell attended the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles that summer and continued her relationship with JFK after he entered the White House. Not only did Giancana know about Campbell’s affair with the president, but he encouraged it. Campbell became a glorified courier, carrying messages back and forth between Giancana and Kennedy, Kennedy and Giancana. To add to the intrigue and make matters even more complicated, Judith Campbell was likewise sexually involved with Frank Sinatra and now, thanks to Giancana, with Joe DiMaggio. It all made for an unholy alliance, with Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe at the center of what would become an interlocking circle of tragedy and misfortune. “It’s difficult to believe,” said Peter Lawford, “that JFK and Marilyn Monroe would soon both be dead.”

•  •  •

Having dismissed Marianne Kris as her psychoanalyst and having learned that Lee Strasberg had been instrumental in placing her on a locked ward at Payne Whitney, Marilyn Monroe decided to leave New York, return to Los Angeles, and resume her therapy sessions with Dr. Ralph Greenson. Tired of living out of a suitcase at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Marilyn sought a more permanent address and found it in a ground-floor flat at 882 North Doheny Drive, the same Beverly Hills apartment complex in which she’d resided before marrying Joe DiMaggio. Gloria Lovell, Frank Sinatra’s personal secretary, lived on the same floor in the same building. While waiting for workmen to renovate
the apartment, Marilyn moved in with Frank Sinatra. Comedian Joey Bishop, a sometime member of Sinatra’s Rat Pack, saw her at Sinatra’s house in early June 1961.

“I’d gone over there for our weekly poker game,” said Bishop. “Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and two or three other guys were there, and in the middle of the game, this tiny white puffball of a puppy waddled into the room. ‘New dog?’ Dino asked, and Sinatra said, ‘It’s Marilyn Monroe’s dog. She named it Maf, as in Mafia. Isn’t that a dumb name?’ And then Marilyn came into the room, evidently looking for the dog. And the thing is, she was completely nude except for a pair of emerald earrings that Sinatra had given her. We froze, and she stopped dead in her tracks. I could tell that Sinatra wasn’t too pleased about her not wearing any clothes. I’d heard she’d just recently undergone some minor gynecological surgery at Cedars of Lebanon, but she’d seemingly recuperated because she looked pretty damn good. After saying hello to everyone, she gathered up the mutt and went back into Sinatra’s bedroom. Marilyn was thirty-five at the time and perhaps a bit afraid of losing her great sex appeal, and I couldn’t help but think that being with Sinatra confirmed for her that she still had it—in spades. I’d seen her with Sinatra at his home in Palm Springs and at the Palm Springs Racquet Club. I once went out with them on a yacht; before we left, Marilyn went wandering around the pier trying to find someone who could provide her with sleeping pills because she’d forgotten to bring hers along. Another place Sinatra brought Marilyn was the Cal-Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe, which was coowned by both Sinatra and Sam Giancana. Then there were all sorts of crazy rumors involving Marilyn, Sinatra, and John F. Kennedy, the wildest being that on November 6, 1960, they had a threesome in Palm Springs. JFK, on the campaign trail at the time, stayed at Sinatra’s home that day. Sinatra even mounted a plaque in the house to the effect that Kennedy ‘had slept’ there. But that was the extent of it. There was never a threesome. There were two twosomes, both involving Marilyn. But I can also tell you that the most important man in Marilyn’s life was Joe DiMaggio.
His love for her knew no limits. And though their marriage ended in divorce, she loved him as well. When she needed him, he’d race to her side, like one of those Saint Bernard dogs in the Swiss Alps.”