Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life (Touchstone Book)

by Cramer, Richard Ben

  By autumn 1961, Greenson had taken over her life. Friends, staff, colleagues were all “bad influences”—he was at war against all her other relationships. He counseled her to get rid of her agents, and sign up for representation instead with his brother-in-law (who was Sinatra’s lawyer), Mickey Rudin. Ultimately, Greenson would even order Marilyn to send her best friend, Ralph Roberts, away. (Said Ralph Greenson: “Two Ralphs in your life are one too many.”) . . . Greenson didn’t even like the fact that Marilyn had her own home. (She’d rented another dingy one-bedroom in her old apartment complex on Doheny Drive.) Within months he would force her to buy a house near his (and like his, a Spanish colonial), where she would live with a companion of Greenson’s choosing—in fact, with the woman who’d sold Greenson his house—a spooky gray-haired duenna-and-spy named Eunice Murray.

  Of course, Greenson had sciency jargon to cover all of these moves. (He was weaning Marilyn from destructive sado-masochistic relationships.) But in private, his language smelt of his own overspiced psychological soup. “This is the kind of planning you do with an adolescent girl who needs guidance, friendliness and firmness,” Greenson wrote in one letter to a colleague, “and she seems to take it very well . . . . Of course, this does not prevent her from cancelling several hours to go to Palm Springs with Mr. F.S. She is unfaithful to me as one is to a parent.”

  By autumn 1961, even “Mr. F.S.” had concluded that Marilyn was too much to handle. Sinatra backed away from their love affair. (Soon, he would announce his engagement to the actress and dancer Juliet Prowse.) But Marilyn was still a favorite with the members of Sinatra’s “Clan”—and with a couple of adjunct members, the Kennedy boys from Washington, D.C. At the start of October, she was invited to dine with Robert Kennedy, at Peter Lawford’s house (Lawford was married to Bobby’s sister, Patricia). Marilyn had too much champagne that night, so the attorney general thoughtfully saw her home in his car. Later that month, Marilyn went again to the Lawfords’ house, for dinner with her Commander-in-Chief, John F. Kennedy.

  For four decades after, there would be speculation and debate about Marilyn’s relationships with the Kennedy brothers. (One of them? Both of them? Both at the same time?) But in that season of Marilyn’s dissolution, there wasn’t much debate. Her affair with President Kennedy had to be the country’s worst-kept secret.

  Marilyn was so atwitter about “The President” (as she always called him, never “Jack”) that she had to alert a couple of columnists—her pal Sidney Skolsky, and Earl “It Happened Last Night” Wilson—though, of course, they wouldn’t use the item at that time. “I still find it grim to speculate,” Skolsky would muse in his memoir, years later, “on what might have happened to me if I had tried to write about this romance in my column when it first came to my attention.” Not that the pressure for silence came from Marilyn: as Skolsky remembered, she was so thrilled that she (“the little orphan waif,” as Skolsky wrote) was involved with the Leader of the Free World—she could hardly stop talking about it. One night, early in ’62, Marilyn was visiting at Bing Crosby’s house in Palm Springs, and she phoned Ralph Roberts in the middle of the night to ask about a certain muscle in the back (the solus muscle, Ralph recalled). It turned out that the president, who was sharing her bed, had problems with his back, and Marilyn was sure the solus was at fault. She wanted Ralph’s advice on how to ease that muscle—which advice Ralph offered . . . whereupon JFK took the phone to thank him (“Marilyn’s told me good things about you . . .”) and to wish him good night.

  In Robert Kennedy’s case, it’s tempting to think there was more smoke than fire. His contacts with Marilyn in the fall of 1961 were mostly of a public sort—receptions, dinner parties, and the like. And Marilyn was so obviously working her agendas (for civil rights, and against commie witch-hunts), it was easy to explain why she monopolized Bobby’s time whenever they were in the same room. His friends and staff all claimed that Bobby wasn’t the philandering kind. And at one point, that autumn, Marilyn denied the affair to Ralph Roberts (to whom she told almost everything). She asked Ralph, one day, whether he’d heard rumors about Bobby and her. Ralph said, “You can’t not hear. It’s the talk of Hollywood.” Marilyn said indignantly: “Well, it’s not true. Anyway, he’s too puny for me.”

  But by the spring or summer of 1962, Marilyn confirmed her relationship with RFK—this time to Greenson (to whom she did tell everything)—and in a manner so private and matter-of-fact that it is incontrovertible. By that time, Greenson was tape-recording Marilyn’s free associations—these weren’t regular therapy sessions, but simply Marilyn’s thoughts—whatever came into her head. (Marilyn approved the taping, and ran the machine herself: she told Greenson he ought to patent the idea.) Greenson later played two tapes for John W. Miner, head of the medical legal section of the L.A. District Attorney’s office. Miner made detailed notes at the time, and vowed to Greenson he would never reveal what was on those tapes. That vow Miner kept for thirty-five years, until the Greenson family released him from his promise, and he shared the contents of Marilyn’s tapes with the dean of American diggers, Seymour Hersh, who was researching The Dark Side of Camelot.

  In the two tapes Greenson played for Miner, Marilyn was speaking (as she said on tape) from her own bed, dressed only in a brassiere—taking breaks whenever she wanted, to go to the bathroom, or the fridge—directly addressing her psychiatrist, often in graphic language. As Miner reported: “There’s no phoniness. There’s no faking in the tapes.”

  She was reverent toward Greenson. (“Doctor, you’re the greatest psychiatrist in the world . . .”)

  She was so grateful that he’d helped her to achieve—at last!—a true orgasm. (She said, if they really gave Oscars for the best acting in Hollywood, she would have won for faking it all those years.) Now, as she said, she wished Joe were with her, so she could “give him a real one.”

  Toward the president, she was devoted—not just as a lover, but as a political adherent and patriot. Near the end of the tapes, she spoke of herself in the third person:

  “Marilyn Monroe is a soldier. Her Commander-in-Chief is the greatest and most powerful man in the world. The first duty of a soldier is to obey her Commander-in-Chief. He says do this, you do it. This man is going to change our country. No child will go hungry, no person will sleep in the street and get his meals from garbage cans. People who can’t afford it will get good medical care. Industrial products will be the best in the world. No, I’m not talking utopia, that’s an illusion. But he will transform America today like Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in the thirties. I tell you, Doctor, when he has finished his achievements he will take his place with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt as one of our greatest presidents . . . .”

  But about Bobby Kennedy, Marilyn was worried. It wasn’t the worry that conspiracy buffs always write about—that she’d threatened to tell the world about Bobby, or he’d threatened her with harm—because (drum-roll) she knew too much . . . . No, she was worried because she didn’t know how to tell poor Bobby that they were, well—splitsville.

  “I’m glad he has Bobby,” she continued, about JFK. “It’s like the Navy. The President is the captain and Bobby is his executive officer. Bobby will do absolutely anything for his brother and so would I. I’ll never embarrass him. As long as I have memory I have John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But Bobby, Doctor, what shall I do about Bobby? As you see, there’s no room in my life for him. I guess I don’t have the moral courage to face up to it and hurt him. I want someone else to tell him it’s over. I tried to get the President to do it, but I couldn’t reach him. Now I’m glad I couldn’t—he’s too important to ask.”

  She said that with Greenson’s help she would find the moral courage to tell Bobby the bad news herself. In Greenson, she’d found her savior. At one point on the tape, she told the doctor that after he had cured her, maybe he could adopt her—to be the father she had always wanted. And his wife, Hildi, would be her mother, and the Greenson children wo
uld be her brother and sister. As Miner reported, when Greenson listened to that part of the tape, tears were streaming down the psychiatrist’s face.

  DIMAGGIO VISITED IN Hollywood from time to time—whenever he wasn’t working for Monette—and he didn’t like what he saw. He didn’t like the public part of Marilyn’s life—she’d been ordered in for another picture with Fox, and that already had her half-nuts with worry. Something’s Got to Give would be another stupid remake—Marilyn was panicky that it would be another dud. (In fact, Joe was told by Greenson that he thought she was suicidal: he’d ordered round-the-clock nursing care at Marilyn’s apartment.) . . . And from what Joe knew about his girl’s private life—well, that was worse. The way Joe told his L.A. pal, Harry Hall, Marilyn was drifting back to a life among people who didn’t respect her.

  Joe knew all about Sinatra and Marilyn—he could read the papers, like anybody else. But he’d also heard about the Kennedy boys—and he hated them worse than Sinatra. “Joe’s attitude was, they didn’t care about her,” as Hall remembered. “She was a toy for them.”

  Harry Hall was a Chicago wiseguy who’d come out to California before World War II. He’d known DiMag since the early war years, when Harry gave Joe a couple of paydays for exhibition ballgames in L.A. Hall still had his mob connections in the early 1960s—but according to FBI records, he was working both sides of the street. (He kept himself out of trouble by informing for the feds.) For DiMaggio, he was simply a pal, part of the western branch of the network. And as Harry remembered, at that time DiMag was a pal in over his head—he didn’t have a clue what to do about Marilyn. One time, Harry gave Joe a ride to Marilyn’s place. She slammed the door in his face. Joe just took it, and tried to shrug off his embarrassment: “Well,” he said to Harry, “one of those days.”

  DiMaggio never knew where he stood with her from day to day, or hour to hour. Joe showed up for Christmas 1961—he may have been summoned by Greenson—and that went great: Marilyn loved it, and seemed to love him. (She always loved him at Christmastime.) Joe put up a little tree, and they shopped for ornaments in L.A.’s Mexican marketplace. (Marilyn was enamored of everything Mexican—Greenson’s house was in the Mexican style.) Christmas Day they spent at the Greensons’, where the psychiatrist and his family treated Joe as the big attraction—they talked baseball all day. New Year’s Eve, Joe and Marilyn stayed in, alone at the apartment on Doheny, save for a visit after midnight by Greenson’s daughter, Joan (and her date), who remembered Joe and Marilyn curled up on the floor, roasting chestnuts on the open fire.

  Still, the next time Joe arrived, February 1962, she stiffed him altogether. He came to L.A.—and Marilyn had gone to New York. . . . Two weeks later, Joe took her to the airport in Miami, whence she left for a shopping trip in Mexico—she wanted furniture for the new house Greenson had helped her pick out. Joe knew all about the house. In fact, he’d loaned her ten grand for the down payment. But he was mightily miffed when she came home from Mexico, not with furniture (that would be shipped later), but with a handsome young Mexican screenwriter named José Bolaños. DiMaggio got that news from the paper, too—when Marilyn showed up “tipsy” (as the papers phrased it), slurred of speech, and barely able to walk, wearing Bolaños (and not much else), to receive an award as the World’s Favorite Female Star from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. DiMaggio flew into L.A. the next day.

  Bolaños was soon on a plane back to Mexico. He didn’t have any other choice. Marilyn stuck him in the Beverly Hills Hotel—and then she never came back. The day after that awards dinner, she went to Greenson’s house, and the shrink put her in a bedroom upstairs, under sedation and under his control. That’s where Joe tracked her, after he flew in late that afternoon. Marilyn’s biographer, Dr. Donald Spoto, got the scene from a student psychiatrist who was training with Greenson at the time.

  “Joe DiMaggio came to the house, and Marilyn Monroe was upstairs. Learning that Joe had come, she wanted to see him. But Greenson forbade them to meet. He asked Joe to remain downstairs to talk with him, and after a while Marilyn began to make a minor fuss upstairs—like a person confined in a hospital against her will who wanted to see her family or her visitors. Nevertheless, Greenson insisted on detaining Joe, and Marilyn was eventually close to a tantrum . . . .”

  Joe and Greenson had always gotten along fine. With DiMaggio’s new-found respect for psychiatry, he’d never tried to argue with the doctor. And Greenson had treated him as a hero—and sort of a junior colleague. The way Greenson talked to Joe about Marilyn was a thorough breach of ethics. But DiMaggio was the exception to all rules, even those of psychiatry. Anyway, they agreed on Ralph Roberts, Sinatra, the Kennedy boys—on so many of Marilyn’s friends—shrink and slugger were on the same side in those wars. But no matter what Greenson said (or how many diplomas he had on the wall) no one could keep Joe from seeing his girl.

  “Joe excused himself,” as the student psychiatrist remembered, “and insisted that he was going to go up to see Marilyn, and Greenson turned to me and said, ‘You see, this is a good example of the narcissistic character. See how demanding she is? She has to have things her way. She’s nothing but a child, poor thing.’ ”

  Joe prised Marilyn out of Greenson’s home, and got her back to the apartment on Doheny. Two days later, he was helping her move into her new house in Brentwood—on Fifth Helena Drive, near the Greenson residence. In the new place, Marilyn would be under the watchful eye of the “companion” Greenson had picked out—Mrs. Eunice Murray.

  Mrs. Murray projected an unblinking calm and a constant grandmotherly disapproval. She could never be a real companion to Marilyn. Mrs. Murray never laughed at anything. But she seemed competent at setting up a house. And Joe was relieved there’d be someone on duty. It would be different, if he wasn’t working. (He didn’t need the money anymore—and he was getting tired of flying around the world on someone else’s schedule.) If he could stick around, he’d keep an eye on things—he could be in the house, or close . . . at least he’d know what was going on. As it stood, Joe wasn’t even sure about the lowdown he got from the shrink.

  He had to know. That’s why he hired L.A.’s celebrity detective of the moment, Fred Otash, to do reports on Marilyn. Otash had a big reputation—which he relentlessly promoted. But Joe’s wiseguy pals said Otash could back up his talk. If Marilyn was running around with the wrong crowd, Otash would be the guy to find out.

  IT WAS A roller-coaster ride, and Joe was hanging on. He never knew what the next curve would bring.

  He’d fly into L.A. and visit at the new house, and Marilyn would settle into his arms like a kitten. She’d show him the new kitchen tiles, the brick path abuilding to the guest house in back . . . it was the first home she’d ever owned—she was in love with that idea, home—and Joe had helped her do that. They’d curl up on the living room floor (there was still no furniture—just white wall-to-wall, now stained with poodle pee) and Marilyn would muse about adopting a Mexican child—the orphans were so beautiful, she’d written a thousand-dollar check for them, and then she tore that up and wrote out ten thousand. A real home with children, wouldn’t that be wonderful? Then, without pause, she’d be furious about her new picture—the studio idiots didn’t know what they had. They’d had a perfectly good script from Nunnally Johnson (Joe and Marilyn’s friend, who’d written How to Marry a Millionaire) and then they hired a new writer who wrecked it—she hated it. She hated them. They didn’t want Marilyn Monroe! If she was going to do the picture, she wanted to be Marilyn Monroe—and they didn’t understand. She should get out of pictures, never do another one. If she had another flop (she’d had two years of flops) she’d be out of pictures anyway—after this mess. But Dr. Greenson said she had to make the picture, and she was trapped, it was horrible. And she was broke—the house! (Why had she bought it? She cried at the closing.) But she felt better now that Joe was here. What she wanted was champagne . . . .

  She always felt better when Joe was there—told him sh
e did. He always told her she wasn’t trapped. She could sell the house. She could quit the picture. She didn’t have to do any of that. She could marry him . . . but he always said that with a shrug in his voice—to show he wasn’t pushing, he didn’t want to make her do anything, that’s what he meant. And Marilyn didn’t take it amiss. She never had a bad word to say about her exes—or to them—and marriage was a beautiful idea. But it was hard. She told Joe Jr. he shouldn’t get married. He’d left Yale now—he’d joined the Marines—and he called from Camp Pendleton, whenever he was allowed to phone. He talked about proposing to his girlfriend, Pamela. But Marilyn was always against that. She told him, sometimes getting married just makes things harder—which, in a way, was the same thing she told Big Joe. But she loved him for asking—her Slugger.

  Then, before he left town, Joe would meet with Otash, who’d give him his reports: Marilyn in meetings with the Kennedys at the Lawfords’ beach house . . . Bing Crosby’s house with JFK . . . a weekend with Sinatra’s friends at Frankie’s new casino resort, the Cal-Neva Lodge, on the border at Lake Tahoe . . . . One time, Joe made the mistake of getting the report before he saw Marilyn. He had to pick up Joe Jr. and the girlfriend, Pamela. And they all went to visit at Marilyn’s house . . . until Joe brought up the name Bobby Kennedy—and the visit was cut short by an ugly fight.