Marilyn Monroe To Wed Again?

THE STORY BEHIND THE ANNOUNCEMENT

If Joe DiMaggio’s family and friends had known what was going to happen, they might have bitten their tongues and kept silent. But no one could have known, and so they spoke out. They knew that Marilyn Monroe and Joe might marry again—and they didn’t like it. “She’s no good for him,” one member of Joe’s family said. “Joe needs a wife and mother, not a hunk of beauty.” And a waiter at DiMaggio’s, the San Francisco restaurant Joe owns with two of his brothers, grumbled, “Only means trouble again. Joe seemed to ignore all this, but for Marilyn, knowing how closely knit Joe and his family are, that would have been harder to do. She is haunted by a fear of rejection, and this disapproval of her re-marriage to Joe must have hurt her deeply. It came so soon after her marriage to Arthur Miller broke up. So soon after Yves

Montand, too, turned his back on her. At first, when she and Joe began to see each other again, all this didn’t seem to matter. But now, with his family and friends against her, too, it may have awakened the old fears. Did she see her chance for happiness with Joe slipping away? One rejection after another. Did she wake in the middle of the night, as she used to, remembering the twelve different sets of foster parents, remembering the tragic history of mental illness in her own family? The strain was beginning to tell. On February fifth, she walked into the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic. She registered as “Miss Faye Miller” and was given a private room. She was put under the care of her personal physician and arrangements were made so that, from time to time, she could obtain a pass and leave the hospital. It was reported that she used this pass to attend “The Misfits” premiere with Montgomery Clift, to visit her friends, Paula and Lee Strasberg, and mostly to see Joe DiMaggio. It was even reported that Joe had taken a room in the hospital to be near her. She had entered the hospital secretly but, after several days, the news was out. At first, the hospital would only admit she was there “for study and treatment of an illness of undisclosed origin.” They said she was doing well and some of her friends also insisted there was nothing to be concerned about. They tried to explain that when Marilyn wanted to get away from it all, a hospital was the only place she could get a real rest. “Marilyn is prone to going into hospitals as a way of getting out of environment and escaping any conflict,” a close friend said. After all, her friends explained, after a divorce and a hard year of work on two films, anyone might be near exhaustion.

Other friends, though, were frankly worried. They said that for some time she’d seemed unstrung, that she’d been troubled by insomnia and a deep depression. The hospital refused to confirm—or deny—a report that Marilyn had been transferred from a ward for moderately disturbed patients to one for more disturbed ones. Joe, too, had no comment, but he cancelled a Miami trip with his pals George Solotaire and Skinny D’Amato to remain close by Marilyn’s side.

On February 11th, Marilyn checked out of the psychiatric clinic and disappeared. She managed to leave the hospital secretly, probably accompanied by Joe. and did not appear at her own apartment. The hospital issued a statement denying there was any schizophrenia involved in Marilyn’s case.

The next day, Marilyn turned up at the Neurological Institute at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital and was checked in there. “For just a rest and a checkup,” officials insisted. Joe had handled everything. Quietly, he had stepped in to make the decisions for Marilyn.

The mystery begins

Mystery had surrounded Marilyn’s every move for several weeks now. It started one day when she arrived at Idlewild Airport. She was wearing a black suit and a flowerpot hat, and she was early. When an airlines clerk told her that the plane to El Paso was temporarily grounded, she seemed surprised, almost as if she hadn’t noticed the blizzard outside.

Wearing very little makeup, her face averted, she stood apart from the other passengers. She seemed more shaken by the delay than any of the others and. noticing this, some of the passengers stared at her. But no one seemed to recognize at her. For forty-five minutes, she waited. Then finally the airliner was cleared for take-off. At seven that evening, it landed in the Texas border city.

All the arrangements had been made. A car was waiting to hustle Marilyn away from the airport and across the border to Juarez, Mexico. There, her suit creased from the flight, she went to a night court session that had been set up especially for her. She filed for divorce from Arthur Miller, charging incompatibility. Four days later, the decree was granted. It was the end of one marriage and. judging from Marilyn’s sudden haste, it could also mean the beginning of another.

At first, when she announced her separation from Miller, Marilyn had said she was in no hurry to get a divorce. Now, something had happened to change her mind.

“Marilyn and Joe will marry again,” a friend announced in New York. But the story behind that announcement lay three-thousand miles away in San Francisco. Photoplay sent a reporter there to investigate. Here is his story:

At Fisherman’s Wharf

The day was cold and crisp and Fisherman’s Wharf was nearly deserted. Only a handful of people, muffled in overcoats, roamed among the seafood markets and past the dozens of tiny fishing boats moored along the dock. The men on these boats remember Joe DiMaggio as a gangling boy, taller than any other boy his age. He hung around the dock and did odd jobs for them, mostly repairing crab nets. His family had been fishermen in Italy and then in San Francisco, until finally they had enough money to pool together and open a small restaurant on the wharf. The men on the wharf talk of Joe as a brother. Even if the rest of the country ever forgot the days when he belted home run after home run for the New York Yankees, he would always be a hero in San Francisco. This is his home town. This is where he married Marilyn Monroe and this is where he built a honeymoon cottage for her.

An oldtimer on Fisherman’s Wharf swears that Joe is determined to remarry Marilyn.

“Joe never sold his home.” he says, “the one he wanted for Marilyn. He has never stopped talking about her over the years. I think he believes she’ll eventually find herself and return to him. He’s in no hurry. He’ll wait.”

The man pointed to a two-story, modernly rustic building with a giant picture window looking out over the harbor. This was DiMaggio’s Restaurant today. “That’s where they had the wedding reception,” he said, and then added with a wry grin, “It was quite a party.”

Seven years before. Joe’s friends had cheered his bride. His family had taken Marilyn warmly to their hearts, ready and eager to make her a part of the kind of big, loving family she herself had never had and had always wanted.

Today, it was all different. They’ve changed their minds about Marilyn. DiMaggio’s is a family affair and. through the years, cousins, nieces and nephews have grown up in it. starting out as busboys or acting as hosts. Today, one of Joe’s nieces greets the customers at the door, and his brother Tom is there every day to supervise and look after things.

Things were quiet inside DiMaggio’s. There was time for the handful of regulars at the bar and for the waiters and busboys to remember that wedding reception and remember, too, how the marriage had ended only nine months later. They knew it was the hardest thing Joe had ever had to face. They remembered how bitterly be had fought against the divorce at first and how finally, reluctantly, he had had to consent.

They talked about Joe’s remarrying Marilyn now.

“He’s a great guy,” his niece said, “and anything he wants to do is all right with me. We love him.”

“I prefer to think he won’t marry her again.” another member of the family said. “But who could ever stop Joe? He has a mind of his own and we’re not going to interfere. It’s his life. Frankly, I feel he’s being taken on another publicity bandwagon. He’s being used again by her.”

One of Joe’s former golfing partners, who owns a San Francisco restaurant too, put it more bluntly. “Joe is an easygoing guy. Maybe a bit too naive,” he said. “The type a good-looking gal could wrap around her finger. And Marilyn has a big hold on him. I hope for his sake he can shake it.”

They talked about the big change in Joe since his divorce.

The change in Joe

Once, San Francisco had been his full-time home. Now it became only a stopping-off place for him between trips. Perhaps he thought it would be easier to forget Marilyn if he kept moving. He took a $100,000a-year job as vice president of the B. H. Monette Company, which supplies military PX stores. Often, he was in Alaska one week and Europe the next. He turned over his lush North Beach home in San Francisco to relatives to maintain. For himself, he took a three-room hotel suite on the eighteenth floor of the Lexington Hotel in New York.

“Joe drops in and out of town,” said his brother Tom. “He keeps very busy.”

Joe, who’ll be forty-seven in November, is now almost completely gray. Since divorcing Marilyn, he has had little time for social activity.

“But you have to hand it to Joe.” said one of his fellow restaurateurs on Fisherman’s Wharf. “When he falls, he always falls for a beauty.”

It was true, joe’s first wife was singer-actress Dorothy Arnold. They were married in November of 1939, when she was nineteen and he twenty-five. Joe was then already a legend as the big slugger with the Yankees. But his wife came to hate baseball as much as he loved it, for it drew them apart. They divorced in 1944. and Dorothy returned to Hollywood. She took with her their small son, Joseph Paul DiMaggio Jr., who was born October 23. 1941.

“It tore Joe up inside,” said one of his friends, “to see Dorothy take away his son. He really loves that kid. It was Joe’s plan,” the friend explained, “to ask for permanent custody of the boy after he married Marilyn. He had great plans for the three of them living together in San Francisco. Marilyn got along fine with Joe Jr., too. They really liked each other. But, of course, when the marriage broke up, so did Joe’s hopes of having the hoy with them always.”

Always a loner, Joe grew even more distant after he lost Marilyn. His trips to San Francisco grew less and less frequent. His brother Tom took over the full-time managing of the restaurant. As much as Joe loved his home town, it seemed to bring back too many bitter memories.

“He has never stopped loving Marilyn,” his friends say even now. But his relatives and long-time associates share the opinion that “he was taken.” Taken on a publicity merry-go-round. Joe and Marilyn even had to sneak into a basement elevator to avoid being mobbed at their wedding ceremony in San Francisco’s City Hall.

Some blame Marilyn for this. One report was that, minutes after Joe proposed, she was on the phone to her studio, telling them the news. Joe was used to the press asking him questions, but before it bad always been just about baseball and not his personal life. He tried to accept it.

“I have never been happier,” he told reporters on his wedding day. Marilyn, blushing, had hold of his hand. She was wearing false eyelashes, a smart brown broadcloth suit with an ermine collar, and natural polish on her nails.

The reporters asked about children.

“We expect to have one,” Joe said in a serious tone. “I guarantee that.” Marilyn interrupted, “I’d like to have six.” And then she giggled.

The honeymoon was never over because it never really began. Shortly after the ceremony, Marilyn was back at work in Hollywood. Joe tried to accept her way of life. He couldn’t. Her long hours at the studio, her fatigue when she finally did arrive home, her associates—all of this disturbed him. Joe’s idea of home life was having a wife prepare a good meal for him and later just sitting around watching TV until bedtime. Marilyn couldn’t stand this. She felt trapped again.

Yet after the divorce, Marilyn still had a hold on Joe. He was the only one permitted to see her while she was recuperating in a Los Angeles Hospital from emergency surgery. He kept tabs on her. There was the famous “wrong door” raid, when Joe and Frank Sinatra reportedly broke down the door of an apartment in which they thought Marilyn was living, it was the wrong apartment.

And in January of 1955 the two were dating each other again. A reporter recognized them in a Boston restaurant.

“Is this a reconciliation?” he asked.

“Is it, honey?” Joe asked.

She paused, as if in deep thought, and then replied, “No, just call it a visit.”

The next year she married Arthur Miller. And the next year Joe started courting Marian McKnight. She reminded many people of Marilyn. She was beautiful, independent and sensitive. But a year later, when she won the title of Miss America of 1957, the romance seemed doomed. It was strangely like the fame that had come suddenly to Marilyn just after their marriage. The publicity that came with it had been a big part of their bust-up. Now it was happening again. Joe continued to date Marian after she won the title and. for a while, they seemed even closer than ever. He introduced her to all his friends, and then they spent a weekend at his boss’s home. Almost immediately after that visit, they parted.

Joe was in New York the day Marilyn left for Juarez to divorce Arthur Miller. He appeared to be breaking out of his shell and seemed happier than in years. At first, he and Marilyn met in out-of-the-way places. Then, after she flew back, they began to revisit all the old places where, long ago, they had fallen in love. And then, unexpectedly, Joe rejoined the Yankees, this time as a coach. Was he trying to tell Marilyn that one thing had never changed, that, even to win her back again, he still would not give up his own life to share hers? If Marilyn wanted him, one thing was the same—he was still his own man.

When Joe’s family and friends first learned that he and Marilyn might marry again, they didn’t like it. But when, a few weeks later, they heard the sad reports of Marilyn’s troubled state of mind, they couldn’t help but remember the girl who had once been so eager to belong to this family, and their hearts must have gone out to her.

When, for whatever the reason was, Marilyn fled to one hospital and then another, it was Joe she turned to for advice, for help, for strength. If she turned to Joe for love, he had that to give her, too.

Joe has changed in the years between. He is not the fiery combination of temper and brawn he used to be. Once mad at the world, he’s learned to weather its blows. He’s more understanding now, and he’s eager for a home again. And the only home Joe DiMaggio has is the one he built for Marilyn long ago.

THE END

—BY BOB DEAN

Marilyn’s in “The Misfits” for U-A.

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE MAY 1961