But not all of Joe’s articles made it to Perullo. There was one particular uniform shirt that Morris kept. He’d started talking about that shirt while Joe still lay dying. “Oh, yeah—Joe gave me that shirt,” Morris told one memorabilia dealer in Florida. “I said to him, ‘No, Joe, that’s too much.’ But he said if I didn’t take that shirt, our friendship was over. So what could I do? . . .” That shirt would be offered for auction at Christie’s—with a reserve price of more than a hundred grand. In fact, Christie’s would run a DiMaggio event, with a number of “one-of-a-kind” sale items. There was the Florida license plate DIMAG 5, along with the Clipper’s MasterCard, his health insurance cards (from the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Actors), and his driver’s license. Christie’s, of course, advertised those items as DiMaggio’s. But when pressed, the auction house revealed that the “owners” who would get the money from those sales were “employees of the law firm, Engelberg, Cantor, Leone & Milgrim, P.L., of Hollywood, Florida.” Further inquiries were referred to Christie’s newest consultant, Mr. Scott DiStefano.
Scott was out on his own, now—president of Atlantic Coast Sports, Inc.—but still in tow to YCE and the estate of Joe DiMaggio. Scott’s reputation in the business depended on his access to DiMaggio memorabilia—and he’d sold most of his own stash (and put the money in a mutual fund, which nosedived). DiStefano remained doggedly loyal to Morris Engelberg, Esq. In an interview, Scott said he was sure that Joe had known everything Morris was doing. Sure, Scott had sold a lot of items for Engelberg—but “Joe probably gave Morris all that stuff.” As to the special Joe DiMaggio baseball, Scott eagerly confirmed he had “set up the whole deal.” But when he was asked about the two thousand balls that he ordered for Engelberg, DiStefano said he wasn’t sure how many balls Morris or Joe had ever gotten . . . it was complicated and, gosh, Scott just couldn’t remember.*
There was another big auction of DiMaggio memorabilia. Barry Halper had lost his taste for collecting, and sold most of his holdings at a Sotheby’s event. But Halper reserved part of his treasure to be placed intact in the Baseball Hall of Fame, at Cooperstown, New York. (The Hall would even build a replica of the den in Barry’s New Jersey house, to display the “Halper Collection.”) And to Cooperstown, Barry sent his favorite likeness of DiMaggio—a statue of the Clipper in his famous follow-through, by the Italian sculptor Clemente Spampinato. It was Joe who had first told Barry about that statue, made in 1950—Joe said that was more like him than any drawing, painting, or photograph he’d seen. And after months of investigation, Halper located the sculptor’s family and bought the bronze, so DiMaggio could see it again. Now, the Hall of Fame would display that likeness, as Barry’s homage to Joe.
In the year after Joe’s death, there were gestures of honor to his name from coast to coast. Chicago, of course, had jumped the gun—Piazza DiMaggio was already completed . . . . The Yankees wasted no time—a month after Joe’s death, the club dedicated the fifth monument in Stadium history to the memory of the Yankee Clipper. Beyond the current field and fence, in the deepest reach of the old left center field (whose vastness he had cursed so often, when it stole his home runs), Joe’s likeness would now stand shoulder to shoulder with those of Gehrig, Ruth, Mantle, and Miller Huggins . . . . The governor and mayor of New York got into a public scrap over which of them would have his way, honoring the Great DiMag. The governor wanted to rename for Joe the Bronx parkway that carried fans to Yankee Stadium. The mayor wanted to rename the West Side Highway in Manhattan. With the (unasked for) aid of Morris Engelberg, Esq., “attorney for the estate and the Yankee Clipper’s oldest and dearest friend,” Mayor Giuliani won out—and the ratty ruin of the road along the Hudson went onto the maps as Joe DiMaggio Highway . . . .
Joe’s “dearest friend” and biographer-to-be got into the act himself in Florida. The city of Hollywood was considering a plan to rename for DiMaggio an actual landmark, the Presidential Circle, on the west side of town. Engelberg scotched that plan, with fury and bluster. He was going to name his own park for DiMaggio—in the gated housing development where he lived. There was an open space where the developers had been forced to put in a drainage pond. That would be Joe’s park. Morris said he and Joe used to ride out there, in Joe’s golf cart—and those were special memories. (That was the golf cart that was offered for auction at Christie’s. Joe must have insisted that Morris accept that golf cart as a gift, too.)
In San Francisco, Mayor Willie Brown and the town supervisors settled on a plan to honor Joe D. by repairing, renovating, and renaming the North Beach Playground in his honor. After all, that was where Joe grew up, and learned to play ball. “An insult!” came the rejoinder from Engelberg, Cantor, Leone & Milgrim, in Hollywood, Florida. Morris insisted that San Francisco should rename the airport, or the Bay Bridge—not some rotten patch of cement. When San Francisco persisted, Morris threatened to sue. When Dominic DiMaggio approved the idea (“I feel certain in my heart, Joe would be pleased”), Morris told the San Francisco Chronicle that Dominic didn’t know Joe. “Joe died in my arms, not his.”
At the anniversary of Joe’s death, matters seemed a bit calmer. The city said it would search out a “legal means” to honor Joe in a manner all parties could approve. For his part, Morris told the Chronicle that he’d never really threatened to sue. As the paper quoted Engelberg: “ ‘I’m not going to take money from [DiMaggio’s] grandchildren’ to go to court.” . . . So San Francisco went ahead and renamed the playground. And Morris filed suit.
Engelberg’s complaint in federal court said that San Francisco “should not be given carte blanche to name the city junk yard, the city waste dump, in this case the North Beach Playground, or any other such facility after Joe DiMaggio without consent.” And in remarks to the press, Morris left no doubt whose consent he meant:
“I control absolutely the use of the name Joe DiMaggio, as long as I am alive.”
Apart from the legal issues, there was a certain logic on Engelberg’s side. If you looked at Joe’s life the way Joe did, as a never-ending parade of guys who tried to eat a chunk of his life, who all wanted a piece of him . . . well, then, the natural last step, at the end of that parade, was a guy who wanted to eat it all. Morris Engelberg now owned Joe’s life.
But Joe likely wouldn’t have pushed the dispute to a face-off in federal court. Bad publicity, for one thing. (And San Francisco could just give up—and name nothing for him.) . . . In the end, brother Dominic was probably right—Joe would have liked his name on a sign over the tar of the North Beach Playground. The Asian kids who played there now would see it every day—and they’d remember him. . . . To paraphrase the words Joe used himself:
Hey, wait a minute. They gotta know I was here!
* Mr. Engelberg declined to be interviewed. He was informed that this book would contain serious allegations about his conduct in connection with Joe’s memorabilia business, but he maintained his perfect five-year record and refused “contact and communication.” For the text of the reply from Engelberg, Cantor & Milgrim, see the illustration that follows this epilogue.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I BEGAN THIS BIOGRAPHY OF JOE DIMAGGIO IN 1995, with the sobering awareness that I stepped in with two strikes against me. The first came from the fact that DiMaggio was so often written about. It wasn’t just a dozen books about him—nor dozens more about his team, his towns, his wives, the World Series, the sporting press, the broadcasters who covered his doings, and baseball in the Golden Age (DiMag took center stage in all of them). There were also hundreds of magazine stories, and newspaper stories by the thousands, going back to 1932. The problem wasn’t simply volume(s) but a well-trodden sameness that had matted down the grass along a few practiced paths—the stories that were always mentioned—which were (not by coincidence) the stories of which Joe approved. The net effect of the vast and mostly shallow coverage was the creation of a character who was at once giga
ntic and at the same time curiously flat—there was so little about him that felt human and alive.
A second problem helped to explain the first—but amounted to another strike against this book. That was: I could expect no help from Joe. The coverage of DiMaggio for sixty-five years was mostly flat because Joe would show nothing but a shiny surface of his own devising. Any attempt to penetrate that surface he met with silence (at best). Persistence only spurred him to more icy and obdurate exclusion. And if that didn’t work, there was anger and threat. Moreover, he enforced a similar silence within his wide acquaintance. All the men and women who truly knew Joe were well aware they would face his exclusion or rage if he found out they had talked about him. Accordingly, to members of his family; to his employers, partners, colleagues, idolaters, lovers; to pals of his youth, his prime, and his old age; and to scores of people who served him, I owe gratitude not only for their information, but for their courage and their trust in me.
Despite these problems, there was in the story of DiMaggio an allure so sharp and fresh that there was never any question of stopping. There was, from day one, the joy of rediscovering the worlds through which he walked: North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf in the 1920s; the hard-knuckled business of baseball in the 1930s; the abundance and glamour of New York in postwar triumph; the rotten magnificence of Marilyn’s Hollywood . . . here was a canvas as generous, colorful, and crass as the country that made Joe its hero. Withal, as the story pushed past the practiced paths, there was at every turn the excitement of history never told, of connections hidden for decades, of old mysteries answered. The story of DiMaggio the icon was well known. The story of DiMaggio the man had been buried.
Alas, excavation is slow work—slower still in this case because a shovel once misplaced would hit only rock forever. Digging into the world of DiMaggio was, from start to finish, a very Sicilian business. I soon learned I could not simply call up a fellow, explain there was a book in progress, and start asking questions. Instead, I was passed from source to source by hand and with evident caution. Then, if I hung around for a while, didn’t ask much and didn’t blab what I heard, I might over time learn something real. After two or three years, I had become the crypt of DiMaggionic data. As my patient publishers noted (but seldom aloud—for which I thank them), vast matter went in, but nothing came out.
When Joe died in 1999, this book was once again delayed—for several reasons. There was, of course, a final chapter to be reported and written. But every chapter that came before was enriched by information that came sluicing in—new recollections spurred by the event, new sources who felt free to talk, and old sources who wanted to talk—to remember the man who had touched their lives. Moreover, the book itself was changed. Now, it had to be written more amply, with more context, and perhaps with new calm. The chase was over. Journalism had turned into history. And the story was better for it.
Once again, I was grateful to my publishers for their extension of time and resources. For that generosity, and for the chance to try my hand at this project, I have to thank first and foremost David Rosenthal, publisher of Simon & Schuster, godfather to this book. It was David who told me in 1993 that if I didn’t do DiMaggio he would break both my legs; and it was David who (six years later, when I still hadn’t quite done DiMaggio) didn’t break both my legs. In my house, he is capo di tutti.
I WAS BLESSED to have on this book the help of three reporters and authors who are as exemplary in my trade as DiMaggio was on a ballfield: David Halberstam, Seymour Hersh, and Gay Talese. Every reporter reading these words will understand my feeling that I hit the trifecta. (As every horse player will understand, that sort of win is always dumb luck.) Halberstam in particular was so generous with recollections, advice, sources, and the notes from his splendid Summer of ’49, that I shall always be in his debt. Hersh made available to me the voluminous files on Marilyn Monroe that he barely touched for The Dark Side of Camelot (wherein Sy had bigger fish to fry). Talese tried to give me the integral and intuitive understanding of DiMaggio that informed his “Silent Season of a Hero,” which was written for Esquire in 1966, and which remains the seminal work on DiMaggio.
On the topic of Joe D. I was aided by generous help from Maury Allen, who got to the people who mattered for his 1974 book, Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?, and set down their words with economy and grace. I am also in the debt of Roger Kahn, who wrote extensively about DiMaggio in The Era: 1947–1957, and Joe and Marilyn: A Memory of Love, and who was kind enough to share his recollections. I benefited greatly from the work of Dick Johnson and Glenn Stout, whose DiMaggio: An Illustrated Life presented a matchless game-by-game narrative of DiMaggio’s baseball career; from the work of Michael Seidel, whose Streak: Joe DiMaggio and the Summer of ’41 re-created the fever of Joe D.’s heroics on the eve of war; from the work of Professor Jack B. Moore, whose Joe DiMaggio: A Bio-bibliography surveyed DiMaggio’s life and gauged its impact on the culture of his times. I also derived valuable information by mining The DiMaggio Albums, from reading Al Silverman’s Joe DiMaggio: The Golden Year, 1941, and from books by three New York Timesmen: George DeGregorio’s Joe DiMaggio: An Informal Biography, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt’s Me and DiMaggio: A Baseball Fan Goes in Search of His Gods, and Joseph Durso’s DiMaggio: The Last American Knight.
On the gnarly topic of Marilyn Monroe, I was guided by the work and helped by the kindness of authors who’d gone before. Anthony Summers, author of Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe, was unfailingly generous and patient with my urgencies. Donald Wolfe graciously compared notes with me before publication of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe. Dr. Donald Spoto, author of Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, directed me to his taped interviews at the library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Lena Pepitone (and her friend Renee Glicker) kindly met me to review the recollections in her memoir, Marilyn Monroe Confidential. James Haspiel, author of Marilyn: The Ultimate Look at the Legend, was helpful both with his own recollections and additional sources on Marilyn and her mythos. I also found valuable information on Marilyn’s career in Barbara Leaming’s biography, Marilyn Monroe. In addition, I was aided by the writings of Truman Capote, Billy Grady, Sidney Guilaroff, Fred Guiles, Ben Hecht, Hedda Hopper, Hans Jørgen Lembourn, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Berniece Miracle, Louella Parsons, Norman Rosten, Sidney Skolsky, Steffi Skolsky, Susan Strasberg, W. J. Weatherby, Billy Wilder, and Earl Wilson. I am also grateful for recollection, information, and documents made available to me from Udell Hays, Mary Jane McCord, Louis Alhanati at Parisian Florists, Bob and Debby Slatzer, Jeanne Carmen, Mill Conroy; also from Dixie Evans, Liz Renay, Antoinette Giancana, and a special thanks to Mark Allen. On the topic of Miss Americas, I was charmed and informed by Lee Meriwether and Yolande Fox. I also found valuable the book There She Is: The Life and Times of Miss America, by Frank Deford. I thank Gus Zernial for sharing the memory of his meeting with Marilyn. I am also grateful to Brad Dexter for sharing the memory of his friendship with Marilyn. And I ended this book forever in the debt of Ralph Roberts, a great friend to Marilyn and a man of grace who died too soon.
On Joe’s life in San Francisco, I am indebted first to his family: to Dominic and Emily DiMaggio, who were kind enough to put up with me, though they didn’t want to help; to Mr. and Mrs. Dominic DiMaggio of Antioch, California, to Debby McKillop Shields, Jerri and Richard McKillop, Sam and Agnes Billaci, Donna Mather, Todd Mather, Gloria Rovegno, Joe Clima, Jr., Bob Marazani, Mike Fernandes, Joanne DiMaggio Webber, Marie DiMaggio, and especially to Betty Corbin. On the history of Italians in San Francisco, I was helped by Deanna Paoli Gumina and Russ Gumina, Charlie Ferrugia, and Kevin Starr. I am grateful for the graciousness of two men who shared vast North Beach knowledge: Don Casper and Al Baccari, two fine historians who practice other trades. Also to Mrs. Dede Baccari, Mrs. Giuseppa Corona, and Mrs. Frances Tarantino. Also, I am grateful for the help of Mayor Joe Alioto, Linda Arbunich, Wally Baldwin, Sam Basin, Louis Batemale, Sam Beler, Dante Benedetti, N
ello Bianco, John Brucato and Frank Brucato, Ron Casteel, Yolan Chan, Mrs. Lily Cuneo, Caroline Drewes, Bernie Esser, Jerry Flamm, Mr. and Mrs. Gus Gelardi, Dave Hansell, Gordy Jacobson, Quentin Kopp, Toinie Koski LaRocca, Walter Lister, Larry Lorenzoni, Hank Luisetti, Ralph Maher, Larry Mana, John Manaidas, Dr. Joseph Maniscalco, Justice John Molinari, Judge Charlie Peery, Faye Perlas, Lou Poletti, Father David Purdy, Joe Riccio, Rollie Rollovich, Guido Rossini, John Russo, Dr. Joseph and Iris Sabella, Dante and Tony Santora, Maria Geraldi Seefeldt, Rick Smith, Lou Spadia, Frank Strazzulo, Billy Walter, and Phyllis Wuerth. In Martinez, I thank Catherine Collins and Charlene Perry at the Historical Society, and Earl Dunivan. I will ever be grateful to Joe’s oldest pals in San Francisco: Carlo “Hungry” Geraldi, Frank “Ciccio” LaRocca, Dario “Dempsey” Lodigiani, Vince “Niggy” Marino, Salvatore “Shabby” Minafo, and Frank Venezia. They were great friends to Joe, and to me. On that subject, another special thanks to Ben Langella, who generously shared his memories and became my friend as well. And I cannot leave San Francisco without saying thanks to two of my oldest friends—to Neil Fitelson, to Jon Rubin (and his wife, Diane Kefauver)—who helped me and hosted me and listened so patiently through five years of talk about Joe.
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