So, it was a pleasant night. Joe’s interview went fine—all baseball reminiscence—and at the 500, they ran into Walter Winchell, the famous columnist, and another guest on the radio show. Winchell insisted they go with him to the Cotton Club, where there was a dance act that he thought was a knockout. But first Winchell had to do his bit on the radio—where he spent a few minutes talking about what a wonderful fellow Joe DiMaggio was. “And did you see who he was with?” Winchell asked into the microphone. “The former Miss America, Lee Meriwether. I hear they’re quite an item. Are there wedding bells in the future?”
In the cab on the way to the Cotton Club, Winchell’s mug (and its cigar) turned around from the shotgun seat, toward Joe and Lee, who were sitting in the back—and the newshound said, “Thanks for the scoop.”
“Ah, Walter, come on,” DiMaggio said. “You know how long I know this girl? I mean, I knew her family . . .” (Lee was unable to help out. She was twenty years old, nervous and silent.)
Winchell said: “You mean, you deny it?”
“Aw, come on, Walter—get off it.”
Winchell knew enough not to ask again. Two days later, in the New York Mirror, Winchell ran a copy of Joe and Lee’s picture (taken at the 500 Club)—ran it full-page, under the headline: “TO WED?”
Lee, at that point, was the “Women’s Editor” for the Today show on NBC, and Dave Garroway, the host, asked if she wanted to deny it on the air. Lee didn’t know what was the right thing to do. But Garroway liked news—and this was news. So, that morning, she denied it, to about ten million people. She didn’t see DiMaggio much after that—or hear from him—except one time, by phone, about two in the morning . . . when she picked up the receiver and heard through her sleep: “S’Joe DiMaggio, I need to talk to you.”
As her head cleared, she could hear, he’d had too much to drink. “Where are you?” she said.
“Please can I come over?”
“What time is it?”
“I wanna come over.”
Lee didn’t like the way this was going. “But how do you know where I live?”
Then, Joe DiMaggio hung up.
EVEN WITH THE Miss Americas, a lot of Joe’s dates were business. There were a number of nights, for instance, when he was “out on a date” at the Stork Club with perhaps the most notable former, Yolande Betbeze, Miss America 1951. Yolande and Joe had both been paid to show up, and lend the place a little glamour. They’d appear on TV (the Stork Club had its own show)—and they were both good names for ink in the papers the following day.
But Joe was hardly Yolande’s cup of tea. She was a woman of sophistication, and could talk like Joe could play center field. The only time she saw Joe, when they weren’t just being seen, was when she was doing a good deed in Paris. Yolande had come from Mobile, Alabama, and there was a girl from her home state—another great beauty, some years her junior—who’d had a broken engagement and was teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. So Yolande took her to Europe, to get her mind off things. In Paris, they ran into Joe, who also favored the Continent to get his mind off things. (He could binge there without making news.) And Joe being Joe, when he ran into Yolande and her friend, he hit on the blond one, the wounded duck. So Yolande was treated (strictly as a spectator) to the sight of DiMaggio sitting on an upper-story staircase of the Hotel George V (those wonderful stairs that curve around the elevators), very late at night, trying to talk the wounded duck into his bed. The problem was, DiMaggio was so loaded, he could barely talk at all—so stinko, in fact, that his pants were open, with his member lying exposed upon his leg. (“And that,” as Yolande would recall, “was the biggest thing you ever saw.”)*
There was one Miss America whom Joe actually approached on his own. And he took her out on real dates, too. That was Marian McKnight, the five-foot-five-inch blond Miss South Carolina. Joe happened to be in attendance at the Atlantic City Convention Hall when she was crowned Miss America 1957 . . . after she wowed the talent competition with her impersonation of Marilyn Monroe. Joe went right backstage to meet her.
That was another pattern. There were a lot of Marilyn Monroe acts in those years, and if he could do so without making news, Joe took them all in. Here, for example, is the recollection of the burlesque artist, Liz Renay, from her memoir, My First 2,000 Men (Joe made the chapter called “Celebrities”):
“There were wild bed scenes with Joe DiMaggio. I’d won the Marilyn Monroe Look-Alike contest for Twentieth Century Fox. He and Marilyn were no longer together and, so his friends said, he kept trying to get glimpses of his Marilyn by looking at me.
“Joe DiMaggio was not only a good lover but a nice, likeable guy—a real gentleman. I had at least a dozen liaisons with ‘Joltin’ Joe’ in various hotel rooms and especially in his Mayflower Hotel suite. He was a once-a-night lover, but as he so nicely put it, ‘I only come once, but I last a long time.’
“Joe liked variety in his women. A delivery boy from the drugstore downstairs once whispered to me that just about every time he made a delivery Joe had a different girl in the apartment.”
Things didn’t work out quite so nicely for Dixie Evans—despite her well-earned reputation as the Marilyn Monroe of Burlesque. She’d got the name from Mr. Minsky himself (she was a Minsky Girl) in Newark, New Jersey. At that time, her act was a casting couch skit. Dixie was the actress. She took her clothes off, and got the part. Mr. Minsky said she looked like Marilyn, and she should use the name. Suddenly, she was a headliner.
By the late 1950s, when she was working Miami Beach, at the Place Pigalle (a beautiful club, with French motif—they even had murals in the bathroom), Dixie wasn’t just the big name on the marquee. An airplane flew past the beach hotels—every day, four passes a day—towing a banner that read: “See the Marilyn Monroe of Burlesque, Place Pigalle.” The plane always went by the Fontainebleau, where the celebs stayed, and they all came to see her. Sinatra, Bogart . . . Walter Cronkite came in every year with Chris Schenkel. Schenkel told her she should come to the Kentucky Derby. He’d announce her, coming in: “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Marilyn Monroe! Oh, my mistake. It’s Dixie Evans! She’ll be playing at the Post and Paddock this evening.” (Wouldn’t that be good advertising?) . . . Anyway, they all loved her act—which, at that point, involved Joe and his bat.
One night, the owner of Pigalle came to Dixie’s table, to tell her Joe DiMaggio was in attendance, and he wanted to talk to her. So, Dixie excused herself from her companions, and was introduced to Joe—and to the famous sportswriter Grantland Rice, and Mr. Skinny D’Amato, of the 500 Club in Atlantic City. Skinny and the writer were pretty profane guys and they were slinging it around pretty good, but Joe was gentlemanly. He leaned over, and whispered in her ear, “Just excuse that conversation.” She’d heard it all before, of course, but that was nice. And he was so handsome—with a little gray.
Pretty soon it was time to go on, but Dixie was thinking—Wait a minute! I don’t want to do this act in front of Joe! . . . And she told him that. He said: “Why do you think I came here?” And he told her how he went backstage to meet some eighteen-year-old girl who’d done a Marilyn imitation at the Miss America Pageant. So, Dixie got up, and did her thing.
Her thing was this: She entered in a tight satin gown, a long scarf, and a Yankee cap, with a Number 5 on it—and crying, boo-hooing, which mood she explained in song:
Joe, you walked off and left me flat—
But I’m sure glad you left your bat . . .
There were a few lines about baseball, and spaghetti, and how he’d stop in the middle of making love to say, “What’s the score?” . . .
But I know . . .
You’ll still return my calls.
Why? It’s simple—I’ve still got you
By your New York Yankee base— (badaboomcha, strike up the band) . . .
Afterward, when she came out from her dressing room, Joe stood up and motioned her over. She sat with him all night. He didn’t say much. He never mentioned
the act, or talked about Marilyn. But he kept sneaking glances at Dixie, checking her out. And he stayed until she’d done her last set, at a quarter to five. Then he invited her to breakfast. So the four of them went to Wolfie’s. The guys had ham and eggs. Dixie had a fruit cup. “Izzat all you want?” Joe kept asking. She said, sure. She was starving, but trying to be ladylike.
After breakfast, Skinny and the writer left the two of them alone on the sidewalk. Joe took her makeup kit and started to get a cab. Dixie said, “I just live right across the park. We can walk.” So Joe carried her bag home.
Dixie’s mother met them at the door. She was wearing curlers, looked like a scared cat jumping up in the air. Dixie excused herself and went to her bedroom to freshen up. Dixie’s mom hied to her room. And Joe paced the living room, picking up trinkets. When Dixie came out he gave her a long kiss. And, as she said, it was magic. With a lot of important men she had to invent the magic. But with Joe, it was real. Her knees went weak. And she noticed he was kind of aroused, too. The kissing got pretty heavy—but her mother was in the next room. So Joe said, “Do you want to go to the Flamingo Stakes?” (That was the big horse race at Hialeah.) And he told her to meet him at the Fontainebleau at twelve-thirty.
Well, then came the funny part, or the tragic part—she was never sure which. She rushed off to the beauty parlor, and was baking under a hairdryer hood, when the owner of the Place Pigalle rushed in and found her. “What are you doing?” he was yelling. “We’re supposed to be in court this morning!”
“But I have a date with Joe DiMaggio.”
“You have a date in court.”
So she went to court, got stuck there, and stood up Joe DiMaggio. “He probably thinks I’m a rotten person,” she says. “That’s the last I ever saw him.” (Years later, when her coffeepot broke, she called Mr. Coffee, and said she was a friend of Joe’s. But she didn’t get a new coffeepot—and he didn’t call.)
EVEN THAT NEAR-DATE with Dixie at the racetrack was business for Joe. In those lost years, business was about the only thing that held his attention. Or you could put it another way: once Marilyn threw him out, the only way he’d be Joe DiMaggio was for the business of being DiMaggio . . . and that’s where Skinny D’Amato came in. Skinny curried favor with the biggest players by offering them a chance to meet—to chat with, or sit with, to say they hung around with—that legend in the flesh, the Yankee Clipper. It was more or less like a big casino hiring a “greeter”—a former heavyweight champ, or an ex–major leaguer—someone the suckers could talk about: they’d met him, they shook hands, they had a laugh together. But like all of Skinny and Joe’s business, this was of the private variety.
That was one reason Joe liked D’Amato, for the privacy that was Skinny’s rule. Joe could go into the 500, and sit in the back room all day, maybe play a little cards . . . . It was bigger, fancier of course, but for Joe it was more or less like LaRocca’s Corner, back in North Beach, when he was growing up. No one would bother him in there. And if he did talk to one of D’Amato’s friends, Skinny would make that worth Joe’s while . . . . If he went down to Florida with Skinny for a big race, Joe might lose twenty bucks at the track. (He was a two-dollar bettor.) But Skinny would give him a couple of grand, just for sitting with some pals. If Joe would go out for a round of golf at the Breakers with one of Skinny’s big guys, that was a better payday—five grand at least.
(And Skinny took care of Joe, more or less like Toots always did. Any subject involving the Clipper’s welfare, Skinny had opinions and an interest. Joe’s teeth for example: Joe never got his buck teeth fixed until Skinny took care of it—put him with the Dentist to the Stars in New York. Everybody got their TV teeth from that guy—from the vice president, Nixon, on down—or up . . . . In Joe’s case, that was the first sign that he might actually be getting over Marilyn. She’d always said she could never love a man with perfect teeth. But Joe went ahead and got a nice new grille, like a Roadmaster Buick.)
Of course, Joe knew who Skinny’s pals were—or why they were pals. For instance, there was the man who went by the name of Walter Thomas. Joe had to have a talk about him with a pair of New York police detectives, and a couple of district attorneys. And for that sort of talk, the investigating officers later typed up a transcript:
“Q. You know a Walter Thomas, and did you make reservations for him at the Madison Hotel in 1957 at the request of Paul D-Amato?
“A. Yes, Paul De-Amato is the owner of a Five Hundred Club, Atlantic City, and when I am in Atlantic City I spend a lot of time there just sitting around. He called me about a Mr. Thomas during the World Series of 1957 and asked me to make reservations for him at the Madison where I was living at that time . . . .
“Q. Where did you meet [Mr. Thomas]?
“A. When in Atlantic City I would sit around the Five Hundred Club. I saw him there. I only called him Tommy.
“Q. What business is Tommy in?
“A. I don’t know.
“Q. If you had to guess what would you say?
“A. I would guess he was a gambler.”
The reason Joe had that uncomfortable chat (it went on for more than an hour) was because his pal Tommy had taken him over to the Warwick Hotel to meet three Cuban mobsters who wanted Joe to front a gambling operation in Havana. And on the way up, in the elevator of the Warwick, Joe’s pal Tommy said he had to stop by another room . . . so Joe went with him to the room of Albert Anastasia, who was, at that moment, the boss of bosses in New York organized crime. Unfortunately, those visits had come to official attention—because that was the day that Albert Anastasia was lamentably shot dead in a barber chair at the Park Sheraton Hotel. Joe was upset with his pals for taking him to talk with the mob boss on the day of his death. (What if the hit had taken place in the Warwick?)
Of course, the way Joe tried to tell it to the cops, the Cubans were only baseball fans—Joe only walked across town and went up to their room to chat about the World Series. And Anastasia—gosh, he didn’t know who that was! . . . Joe also dummied up (nope, he never saw the guy) when the cops showed him a picture of Joe Adonis (with whom Joe and Georgie used to drink by the hour, in Adonis’s own joint). And he could only shrug—never saw her, either—when the cops showed a picture of Liz Renay. (Funny, she seemed to know him so well.)
Thing was, Joe could say whatever he wanted to those cops—or any cops. Joe took the same tack when the FBI sat him down to inquire why he was playing golf with the boss of Chicago crime, Sam Giancana. Joe said, that was just a guy he happened to meet. He wasn’t going to volunteer the fact that Giancana was a pal since Joe was playing ball. He wasn’t going to say that Sam G. was always good for a broad, or a payday, in Chicago. Or that he got messages frequently, through Georgie Solotaire (who referred to that pal as “Sam from Chi”). Joe did not make an effort to explain that he was also friends with Giancana’s girlfriend, Phyllis McGuire . . . and Giancana’s younger girlfriend, Judy Campbell . . . and when Judy came to New York, Giancana told her to call Joe D.—and he’d get her into the Plaza Hotel . . . . Why should Joe tell them any of that? No investigation was going to lay a glove on the Yankee Clipper.
And that was one thing the mob guys loved about Joe. He didn’t talk. And no one was ever going to make him talk. Why would the cops be bothering a hero? . . . That’s what convinced Longy Zwillman that Joe was such a good, safe bet—just the man to help him with his problem. Longy had a problem with cash.
Actually, Longy had two problems with cash. For one thing, once the Kefauver snoops couldn’t make anything stick on Zwillman, they got nasty and turned him over to the tax guys. And of course the tax guys, the way they were, started poking around trying to figure out what money Longy had, and how did he get it. But Longy couldn’t explain all his money, in a nice federal way. The other problem Longy had was with his partners in the syndicate, on whose turf and in whose rackets Longy was continually poaching. So, even with his peers and associates, Longy couldn’t explain all his cash. So what Longy
used to do was to put some money in a suitcase—say, a couple of hundred G’s—and he’d show up at your home with his suitcase, and explain, in his quiet way: “This is my money. When I need it I’ll be back for it.” Of course, no one touched Longy’s “boxes” because bad things could happen. And about that time, Longy also figured out that the last guy in the country the feds would ever bother was his old friend Joe DiMaggio. So, after a while, Longy had thirteen “boxes” out with friends. And three of the boxes had been placed with the Yankee Clipper. Longy figured Joe had plenty of room in San Francisco.
It was that sort of figuring that convinced Joe he ought to have a real job. Not only would it help him, if he had to explain his own finances, but it might make him less available for the sort of deals that made him nervous. Also, he could use the money. (Joe Jr. was now going to Lawrenceville Prep, which cost Big Joe plenty.) . . . Sid Luckman, the old Bears quarterback, had a pal he wanted to put Joe D. with. And that was how Joe found employment with the V. H. Monette Co., of Smithfield, Virginia.
Come to think of it, it was the same job—just a different target audience. The Monette Company was the number one supplier of merchandise for U.S. military post exchange stores, all over the world. That was a business with a lot of work for a greeter. Joe and the boss, Val Monette, would turn up in Frankfurt, Germany (or Okinawa, Otranto, San Diego, Lakeland, Florida—wherever the contracts were coming up), to play a round of golf with the general in command of the U.S. base there—and maybe the colonel who ran the PX. Joe might coach some Little Leaguers on the base, or reminisce of an evening in the officers club. And that was all that was required. The generals and colonels were thrilled. They’d be talking about it for months. And Val Monette was thrilled. Business had never been better.
Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life (Touchstone Book) Page 48