What went on inside 508 North Palm Drive will forever remain a mystery, but several clues are provided by a letter written to DiMaggio by Marilyn herself, after an argument between the couple. In the note she admitted she was wrong to say the things she did; that she said them because she was hurt; and urged him never to be angry with ‘his baby’. Marilyn then went on to apologize to her husband, and signed it ‘your wife, (for life), Mrs J.P. DiMaggio’.
Later she explained her philosophy on how to treat her husband: ‘When I sense there’s something wrong, I ask “What’s the matter? Sorry if I did something.” If Joe doesn’t answer I don’t push it. There are some men who when they have trouble, become silent. You have to respect that.’
In public, both DiMaggio and Marilyn tried to squelch the rumours of discord, with various comments in the media. DiMaggio declared that while he didn’t interfere in her work, he was definitely interested in it: ‘I think it’s entirely possible for two people to have careers and live a happily married life. It’s going on around us every day,’ he said.
Meanwhile Marilyn told reporters that, ‘Marriage has given me roots. Joe is so strong and vital, so stable and understanding. With him beside me I have nothing to fear.’
Friends also got in on the act, with hairdresser Gladys Whitten declaring that Marilyn had never been more bubbly and effervescent, and Sidney Skolsky writing a long article about Marilyn’s life as a housewife, and saying that DiMaggio had invited him to drop in any time to watch the TV and have dinner. ‘Make this your home away from Schwabs [Drug Store],’ he was quoted as saying.
Skolsky became quite a confidant during the disturbances within the marriage, and Marilyn would often visit him at Schwabs or Googies, the restaurant next door. The manager of Googies, Steve Hayes, wrote in his book, Googies: Coffeeshop to the Stars, that she became an occasional ‘night owl’ at his restaurant, often wearing a disguise and sitting with Skolsky in a booth in the hope of no one recognizing her. Hayes knew Marilyn when they were both struggling actors and remembers one evening in 1954 when she telephoned him out of the blue: ‘She had called me from a public phone outside Googies, saying she couldn’t reach Sidney [Skolsky] and could I drive her home? I started to say no, that I couldn’t just leave the coffee shop, but when I went out and saw how desperate and bedraggled and dazed she looked, I changed my mind. Telling one of the waitresses to take over for me at the cash register, I put Marilyn in my car and drove off.’
During the journey Marilyn began talking about how miserable she felt and that she didn’t know how much longer she could go on living ‘like this’. She became so emotional that Hayes genuinely became concerned that she might be planning to do something to herself; he asked her but she remained silent. ‘When she didn’t answer, I pressed her on the subject and finally she began sobbing and said that she could never kill herself; it was against her religious beliefs. I gently reminded her that reportedly she had already tried to commit suicide on more than one occasion. I must have hit a sore spot because she suddenly lost her temper and said shrilly that she had matured since those mistakes and was trying to be a better person . . . It was the first time I felt that Marilyn was a human being and my heart went out to her.’
In spite of everything that was going on in private, Marilyn still wanted things to work out between Joe DiMaggio and herself. She cooled her friendship with Schaefer, and shockingly he responded by trying to commit suicide. ‘I did it because I didn’t see any way out,’ he remembered, ‘I thought my career was finished and my relationship with Marilyn was over. I thought there was no solution.’
On hearing of Schaefer’s suicide attempt, Marilyn raced to the hospital to lend her support. This did not help matters at home, especially when Schaefer’s hospitalization hit the headlines and it was reported that Marilyn had never been far from his hospital bed.
On 30 August, Marilyn and her co-star Ethel Merman filled in on Drew Pearsons’ syndicated column while he was away. In it she gave a glimpse into her private life, by admitting, ‘I work hard and study hard and have little time even for my husband. But I do divorce my private life from my career as an actress and that is why you never see Joe and me posing together around Hollywood.’
Finally, There’s No Business Like Show Business was over, and she immediately went into production on The Seven Year Itch, flying to New York on 9 September with an entourage that included Natasha Lytess. On her arrival at Idlewild Airport, a reporter asked, ‘No Joe?’ to which she replied, ‘Isn’t that a shame?’ and nervously giggled. When asked about a rumour that Joe was spending a large amount of time away from home, playing poker with his friends, she denied it completely, adding that it was hard enough to get him out of the house – he much preferred pottering around, taking a swim in the pool and lounging in the armchair.
The cracks in the marriage were very definitely beginning to reveal themselves to the media. Columnist Hedda Hopper recalled that on her way to the airport en route to New York, Marilyn had called into her house for a quick interview. Joe had sat outside in the limousine until finally he knocked on the door to hurry Marilyn along. Hedda commented to the baseball star that his wife looked wonderful, while Joe barely gave his wife a glance before retorting, ‘She looks nice.’ Hopper asked Joe why he was not accompanying his wife to New York, only to be told by DiMaggio that he had hives that were bound to flare up on the plane. On 11 September she wrote in her column, ‘I could be wrong but I got the feeling they’re fooling,’ and years later recalled, ‘I knew then that the marriage was over.’
Marilyn’s role as ‘The Girl’ in The Seven Year Itch was to be a landmark in her career. Her co-star was Tom Ewell, who had originated the role of Richard on Broadway and had beaten Walter Matthau to the film role. The story itself centred on Richard, a happily married man whose wife and son have gone to the country for the summer. He is alone with his fantasies until the girl upstairs (Monroe) drops a tomato plant from her balcony, and a sordid affair develops within the confines of Richard’s fertile imagination. The play revolved around Richard actually having a real-life affair with the girl upstairs, but because of worries over censorship, this part of the script was taken out of the film, which makes his advances all the more humorous.
After a bout of stomach illness, an exterior scene involving Marilyn waving out of an apartment window was shot outside a real-life apartment. One person lucky enough to witness the shoot was Joe Coudert, who was assigned to take photos of the star: ‘I was taking photos of Marilyn in her brownstone with the rest of the photographers and had to take a break to reload my camera. When I returned, I was all alone with Ms Monroe! I asked her if I could continue photographing her, she said “Yes” and I shot several rolls of film. She was very friendly and talkative. The “girl next door”, though a little overused, is an appropriate description and she was a real professional with the camera. She was highly relaxed posing and she knew exactly how to make my camera fall in love with her, over and over.
‘She asked me a lot of questions about my wife and my photography – she seemed genuinely interested in learning more about my family. She also talked a lot about the events surrounding the filming and her concerns about the New York crowds that followed her every move . . . she was nervous about the fans and the press stationed outside her windows. She was very anxious; her fans would go to great lengths to touch her as she passed. It was impossible for her to accommodate them all, and she was concerned about being mobbed.’
One scene in the film featured The Girl and Richard walking down the street after an innocent trip to the cinema. As she walks over a subway grating, her skirt flies into the air; ‘Isn’t it delicious?!’ she exclaims, as the wind bellows around her thighs. The scene was shot in the early hours of 15 September, in front of a crowd of thousands. Unfortunately, Joe DiMaggio had arrived just in time to witness the spectacle and was not pleased, especially when he saw the fans ogling his wife in her white panties.
As it turned out, the scene
was unusable due to sound problems, and had to be re-shot on a soundstage in Hollywood, but the damage was done. When the couple returned to their hotel, they had a huge argument and other guests later claimed to hear a fearsome row coming from the DiMaggio room. Friend Amy Greene also later claimed that when she and her husband Milton met the couple for dinner shortly after, she saw bruises on Marilyn’s back. Whatever happened that night will forever be shrouded in mystery, but it certainly caused irretrievable damage and by the time they left New York on 16 September 1954, the marriage was over.
The day after her arrival in Los Angeles, Marilyn called in sick at the studio, and her doctor confined her to bed with flu. DiMaggio returned to San Francisco, where he met up with friend Reno Barsocchini. He confided that he would be travelling back to Los Angeles to see Marilyn, before heading back East for the World Series, but showed no sign of any marriage troubles. ‘I’m sure everything was OK,’ Barsocchini later commented, when asked by reporters.
But things were obviously not OK, and Marilyn spent some time crying on the shoulder of Fred Karger’s mother, Anne, and her close friend Hal Schaefer. She decided that while she still loved DiMaggio, divorce was the only option, and when she phoned lawyer Jerry Giesler, she struck him as a confused woman who was still in love with the person she wanted to leave. Giesler spent time speaking with the actress, trying to determine what was best, but Marilyn was adamant – she wanted a divorce, with no request for alimony or property.
Hal Schaefer was privy to Marilyn’s very personal thoughts at this time, and to him she confided much: ‘DiMaggio had got physical with her and although she didn’t have a great deal of self-esteem, she did finally have enough and picked up and left. She was very serious about divorcing him, which is why she hired Jerry Giesler – she wanted to get away from Joe. Marilyn was a super-sensitive woman and had a real artistic thirst to grow; she loved the arts, but Joe was into none of these things. Marilyn didn’t want any part of him – she was hurt and emotionally fragile and turned to me.’
By this time, DiMaggio was back in Los Angeles and living on the ground floor of North Palm Drive, while Marilyn spent her time upstairs. When Jerry Giesler arrived at the property on 4 October, he found DiMaggio sitting in the living room where, after talking to him for some time, he served the divorce papers.
At 2.45 p.m., Giesler and Fox publicity chief Harry Brand left the DiMaggio home, and gave a statement to the press (who were rumoured to have been tipped off by the Fox publicity department), informing them that the charges would be mental cruelty and that neither Joe or Marilyn would make any comment. He also said that both parties were still friendly and that the separation had nothing to do with the skirt-blowing scene. To quash any rumours before they began, he added, ‘She is not pregnant.’
The next day DiMaggio left the home, announcing that he would never be back, while Marilyn departed shortly after, leaning on the arm of her lawyer, with friend Sidney Skolsky close by. Although she tried to speak to the press, she was too upset to do so, and was quickly shuttled to a waiting car, which took her away from the North Palm Drive home forever.
Moving into an apartment at 8338 Delongpre Avenue, she continued her friendship with Schaefer, visiting him at Apartment 203, at 1327 North Vista. It quickly developed into a physical relationship: ‘We became lovers and were going to get married,’ said Schaefer. ‘She wanted to convert to Judaism because I was a Jew. She was still legally married to DiMaggio but had already moved out and had started divorce proceedings.’
Whether or not Marilyn was fully truthful about her feelings to Schaefer is not known, but DiMaggio was concerned enough by the relationship to hire private detectives from the City Detectives and Guard Service to follow the couple. The company began surveillance on 20 October, and trailed both Marilyn and Schaefer between various Los Angeles neighbourhoods, witnessing her picking up friends, visiting her attorney and calling on Natasha Lytess. On 24 October they followed the actress to the apartment of ex-boyfriend Fred Karger, who was now married to the actress Jane Wyman. However, if they were hoping to uncover some scandal there, they were disappointed as a quick check on the car parked outside revealed that Jane was at the apartment too.
They hoped for more success when they followed Schaefer to a nightclub, where they reported that he looked ‘very dopey’, though he was not drinking. Bizarrely, the detectives claimed to witness him ‘doing something to his arm’, and wondered if he was ‘shooting up’, but if they believed they were being inconspicuous, they were mistaken. Marilyn and Hal were very much aware they were being followed. ‘It was a sick and hostile situation because of DiMaggio,’ remembered Schaefer. ‘He hired private detectives and bugged Marilyn’s car, my car, and my apartment. We were followed everywhere and it was very scary. Marilyn was terrified.’
When she appeared at Santa Monica Court House on 27 October, Marilyn did not mention the surveillance, even though it was still going on. Instead, she leant on the arm of her business manager, Inez Melson, and told how her dream of marital bliss had turned into a nightmare of ‘coldness’ and ‘indifference’. She added, ‘My husband would get into moods where he wouldn’t speak to me for days at a time – a week, sometimes longer, maybe ten days. If I tried to coax him to talk to me, he wouldn’t answer at all, or he would say, “Leave me alone, stop nagging me!”’
As she dabbed her eyes, Marilyn explained that she had even offered to give up her film career to make the marriage work, ‘But his treatment of me made me ill and I was under the care of a physician quite a bit of the time.’ Despite Skolksy’s earlier claims of being invited to dinner by DiMaggio, Marilyn explained that Joe refused to permit visitors to North Palm Drive, and when a friend came to visit her during an illness, ‘it was a terrible strain’.
Inez Melson also took to the stand and explained that she had witnessed DiMaggio pushing his wife away, and that he had admitted to Melson that he was indeed cold and that he now regretted his actions. Finally, after much tears and testimony, Marilyn was awarded a divorce and she left the court, noting that while she was glad it was all over, she and Joe would continue to be friends, adding, ‘I still don’t know anything about baseball.’
But Joe’s ‘friendship’ with Marilyn was verging on the obsessive, and on 5 November it came to a head when the private detective tailed her to 754 Kilkea Drive, the apartment block of Sheila Stewart, a friend of Marilyn and an ex-student of Schaefer. Bizarrely Joe DiMaggio was tailing the detectives (a fact that was recorded in their report). He was determined to catch Marilyn ‘in the act’ with Schaefer and stormed the apartment, along with the detectives and his friend, Frank Sinatra.
Aside from the fact that this was a ludicrous and highly illegal act, it was made even more absurd when it was discovered that the foursome had broken into the wrong apartment – that of Florence Kotz, who later described it as a ‘night of terror,’ adding, ‘I was terrified. The place was full of men. They were making a lot of noises and lights flashed on. They broke a lot of glasses in the kitchen getting out of there.’
Frank Sinatra later claimed that he had stayed in the car and smoked a cigarette, and when the case went to court in March 1957, Joe DiMaggio backed him up (though he wasn’t in court himself), while Private Detective Phil Irwin insisted that Sinatra was an active participant in the raid.
Active or not, the ‘Wrong Door Raid’ shook the entire apartment block, including Marilyn and Hal Schaefer, who were together in the apartment upstairs. At the time, both parties denied they were in the building, but some fifty years later, Schaefer came clean: ‘The apartment belonged to an ex-student of mine who had become a friend. She knew about Marilyn and I, and when she went out of town, she gave me the key to the apartment so that we could use it. It was just Marilyn and me in the apartment when the raid took place and Marilyn was terrified. I don’t believe I’d be around today if they’d found me in the apartment. They almost wrecked the building – rammed the door down of the wrong apartment and the woman
ended up suing. Marilyn and I managed to get out the back door.’
The very next day, on 6 November, Marilyn was honoured at a party held at the famed Romanoff’s restaurant. The stars invited that night included Marilyn’s childhood idol, Clark Gable, and she fulfilled a fantasy by dancing in his arms. ‘I turned the colour of my red chiffon dress,’ she later exclaimed. A couple of weeks later, on 21 November, it was reported that Monroe and Gable were ‘Hollywood’s Newest Romance’; it was not true, of course, but it was an interesting story nevertheless.
The rest of the year was busy and Marilyn was full of plans for the future. However, having been presented with the script for How to be Very, Very Popular, she knew that there was no way she wanted the part, and decided to move to New York to set up her own production company with photographer Milton Greene. Unfortunately, before she could put any of her plans into action, she first had to contend with another gynaecological operation, which took place on 8 November.
In spite of everything, Joe and Marilyn somehow remained friends and he sat beside her hospital bed for many hours, prompting the press to wonder if there was any chance of reconciliation. Some friends stated that DiMaggio was being successful at winning his wife back, while others said there was no chance at all and he should move on. Finally, after they had been seen dining at the Villa Capri on 13 November, Marilyn released a statement which read, ‘Joe and I are just friendly, that’s all. There’s nothing to it.’
After that, Marilyn sought privacy at the home of old friend Anne Karger, Fred’s mother, while making plans for the move to New York to begin her new life. Before she left, however, she had a few loose ends to tie up, including breaking the news of her departure to Hal Schaefer. He remembered: ‘Shortly after the Wrong Door Raid she went to New York to begin her new life, and that was the last time I ever saw her. She phoned me and said she didn’t know how long she’d be there, but I never saw her again.’
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