Marilyn Monroe (19 page)

On Thursday, January 14, at 12:30 p.m., Marilyn called Harry Brand at the Fox publicity office. “I promised you that if I ever got married, I’d let you know, so I’m keeping my word.” Meanwhile, Reno Barsocchini, the manager of Joe DiMaggio’s Grotto on Fisherman’s Wharf, called his friend Municipal Court Judge Charles Peery out of a Bar Association lunch. He asked the judge to come to City Hall right away to marry Joe and Marilyn.

When Marilyn emerged from Joe’s Cadillac onto the pigeon-filled plaza outside City Hall, she was wearing a chocolate-brown broadcloth suit with a white ermine Peter Pan collar. She sported Bambi eyelashes and clutched a spray of three white orchids. Joe, in a dark blue suit, wore the same blue polka-dot tie as on their first date. He had a white carnation in his lapel. The wedding party included Mr. and Mrs. Barsocchini, Mr. and Mrs. Tom DiMaggio, and Mr. and Mrs. Lefty O’Doul. Lefty had been Joe’s manager when he played in the Pacific Coast league.

A court clerk escorted them to the third floor, where, despite their efforts to keep the wedding quiet, a crowd of reporters and photographers waited in an outer office. Marilyn, pent-up after many days of avoiding the press, couldn’t resist answering a few questions.

“I met him two years ago on a blind date in Los Angeles,” she explained, “and a couple of days ago we started talking about this.”

Joe, puffing on a fat cigar and sipping brandy from a paper cup, finally cut in. “All right, fellas, I don’t want to rush you, but we’ve got to get on with the ceremony.”

The single-ring ceremony in the judge’s chambers took all of three minutes. One journalist, standing on a desk in the outer office, watched through a transom as the judge pronounced Joe and Marilyn man and wife. When the newlyweds came out, flashbulbs popped and reporters shouted more questions.

“We’re very happy,” said Marilyn.

Did they want children?

“We expect to have one,” said Joe. “I can guarantee that.”

“I’d like to have six,” said Marilyn, holding Joe’s arm and looking at him adoringly.

“We’ll have at least one,” said Joe.

Where did they plan to live?

“We’ll probably be doing a lot of commuting,” said Joe, “but San Francisco will be our headquarters.”

Did Marilyn really plan to give up Hollywood to become a housewife?

“What difference does it make?” Marilyn grinned. “I’m suspended.”

When Darryl Zanuck learned of the wedding, he had little choice but to lift Marilyn’s suspension. If he hadn’t, the press and public reaction would have been unforgiving. To allow the newlyweds time for a honeymoon, Zanuck notified Famous Artists that he expected Marilyn to report for work no later than January 25. Charlie Feldman, waiting until February to renegotiate Marilyn’s contract and sell the rights to
Horns of the Devil
, could not have been happier.

FIVE

T
he Cadillac with “JOE D” plates had been parked in front of the Clifton Motel in Pasa Robles since eight the previous night. At 1 p.m. on Friday, the door to room 15 opened and Marilyn appeared in the bright sunlight, bundled in a loose-fitting yellow polo coat. A red scarf concealed her cotton-candy hair. There was no sign of yesterday’s false eyelashes. Her face scrubbed clean of makeup, she put on a pair of oversized dark glasses and climbed into the passenger seat. Joe settled the bill—$6.50 for the night—with Mr. Sharpe in the office. He had requested a room with a double bed and a television set—the latter, presumably, so that he could watch the news about the voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. As it happened, Joe wouldn’t be elected until the following year.

“We’ve got to put a lot of miles behind us,” Joe was heard to say as he and Marilyn headed south. The destination was Loyd Wright’s remote mountain cabin in Idyllwild, about fifty miles from Palm Springs. They planned to stay there for ten days, after which Joe was due in New York for a television commitment.

In all directions there was snow as far as the eye could see. The cabin had a billiard table but, to Marilyn’s delight, no television set. The only other people on the property were a discreet caretaker and his wife. There were no ringing telephones. There were no legal papers being served. There were no agents or studio employees or reporters pounding on the door. The newlyweds took long walks in the snow. Joe taught his bride to play billiards. And they talked—so much so that Marilyn later told Sidney Skolsky that she and her husband were finally beginning to get to know each other.

They returned to Los Angeles on the 24th. It was the day before Marilyn was due back at Twentieth, though of course she had no intention of showing up. As she opened the high iron gate at Doheny, she saw a copy of the script for
The Girl in Pink Tights
wedged behind her screen door. Zanuck had sent it over as a courtesy, with another copy to Famous Artists.

Zanuck was by no means conceding that Marilyn had the right to approve scripts, and he certainly wasn’t interested in her opinion. If, as seems likely, Zanuck thought that no harm could be done in giving Marilyn the script, he was wrong. Up to this point, Marilyn had insisted that she was refusing to report to work because she hadn’t seen a script. Now, she was going to do something different. She was going to pass judgment. Worse, she was going to question Zanuck’s judgment. She was going to imply that she knew better than the production chief whether a script was good.

The next day, when Marilyn failed to appear, her lawyer told reporters: “She read the script and does not care to do the picture.” Twentieth wasted no time in suspending her again. Hours later, the press office released a hard-hitting statement: “Producer Sol C. Siegel, who made Miss Monroe’s highly successful musical
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
, has had a complete script and full musical score ready for the CinemaScope camera. In addition, Henry Koster, who directed the most successful picture in the industry’s history,
The Robe
, was assigned to
Pink Tights
and other cast principals have been ready for filming to start. This has involved the studio in a tremendous investment. If Miss Monroe’s failure to appear is based on her desire to approve scripts, the studio wishes to point out that the outstanding success of Miss Monroe’s previous vehicles is evidence enough of the studio’s ability to select stories for her.”

Privately, Zanuck expressed rage that Marilyn would dare to criticize one of his productions in the press. He thought the idea of her having any input at all was ludicrous. As far as Zanuck was concerned, Marilyn was an idiot and didn’t know the first thing about filmmaking.

Feldman was delighted to learn that as soon as DiMaggio returned from New York, he planned to take Marilyn to Japan for the start of the baseball season there. Lefty O’Doul, known as Mr. Baseball to Japanese fans, had invited Joe to participate in an exhibition tour, during which they would also give some workshops for Japanese players. Since Marilyn was suspended, Joe asked her to come along.

For Feldman, the timing could not have been better. He would begin the negotiations with Zanuck without having to worry that Marilyn, always a loose cannon, would somehow foul things up. Besides, there was talk of Marilyn’s making a side trip to Korea to entertain the U.S. troops there, the Korean War having ended six months previously. From Feldman’s point of view, the publicity would be a great advantage. Twentieth would have a hard time attacking Marilyn in the press at a moment when she was singing and dancing for American boys overseas.

Marilyn arrived in San Francisco on the night of January 28. Joe flew in from New York earlier in the day. Before they went to Honolulu, there was a mishap at home on Beach Street. Marilyn came up behind Joe and put her arms around him. Joe, sensitive about being touched, instinctively threw her right hand back with such force that the thumb had to be put in a splint.

“I just bumped it,” Marilyn insisted, as she and Joe arrived at the airport on January 29. Reporters had noticed that she was trying to conceal her thumb in the folds of her mink coat. When they saw the splint, they wanted to know what had happened.

“I have a witness,” Marilyn went on. “Joe was there. He heard it crack.” Clutching Marilyn tightly, he stared immovably at her right hand.

Did she plan to make another film soon? someone inquired. “We’re not concerned about that now,” Joe interjected. “We’re on our honeymoon.”

When Pan American flight 831 touched down in Honolulu, thousands of fans rushed onto the airfield screaming “Marilyn! Marilyn!” An inadequate security force was powerless to hold them back. There was pandemonium. The crowd surrounded Marilyn, pawing at her hair and clothing. Some fans later claimed to have broken off strands of her hair. Finally, police formed a ring around the couple and forced a way through to an airport lounge.

Marilyn’s reception in Tokyo was equally vociferous. At the airport, she had to be smuggled out through the luggage hatch. A large police contingent was waiting at the Imperial Hotel as Joe and Marilyn drove up in a black convertible. When the police closed the lobby doors, fans plunged through the plate-glass panels in an effort to reach Japan’s number one foreign box-office star. Only after “the
honorable buttocks-swinging madam,” as Marilyn was called in the Japanese press, put in a brief appearance on a balcony did the crowd finally disperse.

That night, Marilyn, in a clinging red wool dress, held a press conference for seventy-five Japanese journalists at the hotel. She was assisted by Lefty O’Doul. “We are told you do not wear anything under your dress,” shouted one reporter. “Is it true?” DiMaggio cut a poignant figure, lurking nearly unnoticed in the corner of the large room. That kind of question pained him. Neither was he thrilled when Marilyn announced that she did indeed plan to spend about four days entertaining the troops in Korea.

The side trip was exceedingly important to her. Marilyn had often talked to Feldman about her desire to go to Korea, since she believed that she owed a good deal of her success to the U.S. soldiers who collected her posters. It was said that there were more pictures of her pasted up in bunkers, military offices, and footlockers than of any other actress. More lonely soldiers wrote to Marilyn than to anyone else in Hollywood. The military newspaper
Stars and Stripes
featured so many photographs of Marilyn on its cover that it often had to run repeat shots.

On February 16, Marilyn flew to Seoul, accompanied by Lefty’s wife. She wore a combat jacket over a man’s army shirt and trousers, and combat boots. At the Seoul City Air Base, they transferred to a helicopter that took them to the cold, mountainous location, formerly a war zone, where the First Marine Division was stationed. In addition to the pilot, there were several other soldiers on board.

The sight of thousands of men waiting on the mountain where she was to perform thrilled Marilyn. She instructed the pilot to fly in a low circle so that she could wave to the troops. Then she threw open the sliding door. Shouting at the two soldiers to sit on her feet, Marilyn slid belly-down out of the helicopter. Laughing and blowing kisses, she dangled in mid-air over the shrieking, whistling, applauding Marines. The danger seemed only to enhance her euphoria. Four times she ordered the pilot to circle the mountain as the excitement below kept building.

By the time the helicopter landed, Marilyn had the crowd worked up to a frenzy. There was a makeshift platform with an upright piano and a microphone. Marilyn disappeared into a dressing area behind some burlap curtains that flapped in the icy wind, and changed into a
skin-tight, embroidered sheath dress with plum-colored sequins. Despite the piercing cold, her shoulders were bare, the low-cut dress held up by fragile spaghetti straps. She wore rhinestone-covered hoop earrings, a pearl bracelet, and stiletto heels.

When Marilyn peeked through the burlap curtains, what she saw exhilarated her. Some thirteen thousand men, wearing heavy, hooded parkas and fur-lined hats, were all there for her. Marilyn loved the power she had over men. When she felt that power most strongly, all her insecurities dropped away. Marilyn had been known to hide in her dressing room in fear of facing a film camera. She had been known to vomit and to break out in spots. But at moments like this, she was transformed into a different person. She fed on the noise, the adoration, the sexual frenzy of the crowd.