Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love (52 page)

At ten in the morning, Harry Hall drove Joe back to the Miramar, so he could shower, shave, and dress for the funeral, scheduled to begin at one o’clock at Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery. DiMaggio had engaged the Reverend A. J. Soldan to conduct a nondenominational service, together with a reading of the Twenty-third Psalm. Joe had asked Carl Sandburg to deliver the eulogy, but the writer had fallen ill, and although he later penned a
Look
magazine tribute to the actress, it was Lee Strasberg who composed and presented the eulogy.

Joe and Joe Jr. rode to Westwood Memorial Cemetery in a mortuary limousine. Joey wore his marine dress uniform, while Joe had on a charcoal gray suit. Joe Jr. suddenly noticed that his father was crying again. Without a word, Joe reached out and clutched his son’s hand. He held it until they reached the cemetery. Thinking back on the event, Joey reflected that he and his dad had never been closer.

Besides Joe and Joe Jr., the guest list included Lee and Paula Strasberg, Inez Melson, Berniece Miracle, Eunice Murray, Mr. and Mrs. Whitey Snyder, Agnes Flanagan, Mickey Rudin, Aaron Frosch, Ralph Roberts, Anne and Mary Karger, Sydney Guilaroff, the Greensons (Ralph, Hildi, Joan, and Dan), George Solotaire, and Lotte Goslar.

In total, thirty-one mourners attended Marilyn Monroe’s funeral. Dr. Hyman Engelberg had been invited but opted not to go. “I meant no disrespect, and it had nothing to do with our affair,” he said. “I simply wanted to mourn Marilyn’s death in private and in my own way.”

George Solotaire had originally planned on flying from New York to Los Angeles on August 7 in order to serve as best man at Joe and Marilyn’s on-again, off-again wedding ceremony. “That was certainly one of the sadder aspects of Marilyn’s death,” claimed Robert Solotaire, George’s son. “Joe had spoken to my Dad about getting remarried on August 8. As it turned out, that was the day of Marilyn’s funeral. Joe loved Marilyn beyond anyone’s imagination. He was totally distraught. I recall my dad telling me that somebody showed Joe an August 7 copy of a
Los Angeles Times
interview with Peter Lawford in which the actor lambasted DiMaggio for not allowing Marilyn’s Hollywood pals to attend the funeral. Joe had an absolute shit-fit. He said, ‘Sinatra and the others, including those goddamn low-life bastards the Kennedys, killed Marilyn. That faggot Peter Lawford also had a hand in it. If he or any of those fucking Kennedys turn up at Marilyn’s funeral, I’ll bash in their faces. All of those sons of bitches killed Marilyn.’ The truth of the matter is that Joe never fully recognized the degree and extent to which Marilyn was addicted to booze and pharmaceuticals. In the long run, that’s what killed her—not the Kennedys.”

For their part, the Kennedys couldn’t distance themselves far enough from Monroe’s death. The only comment offered by any member of the family came from the First Lady. Asked by a reporter what she thought of MM, Jacqueline Kennedy responded, “There will never be another Marilyn Monroe, but there doesn’t need to be because she will go on eternally.”

Reverend Soldan conducted the first part of Marilyn Monroe’s funeral service inside the Westwood Memorial Park Chapel. “Marilyn’s casket lay open,” said Lotte Goslar, “and Marilyn looked at peace. As private a man as he happened to be, Joe DiMaggio made no effort to masquerade his emotions. He broke down, crying openly during the service, and truly my heart went out to him. His son also cried. It seems almost trite to say that with Marilyn’s death, Joe DiMaggio died as well. Her unintentional suicide took two lives.”

The service, as stark and poignant as DiMaggio had envisioned it,
ended with Lee Strasberg’s eulogy, which began:
“Marilyn Monroe was a legend. In her own lifetime she created a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived background could attain. For the entire world she became a symbol of the eternal feminine. But I have no words to describe the myth and the legend. I did not know this Marilyn Monroe . . .”

As the guests filed out of the chapel and into the bright California sunlight, Joe DiMaggio approached Marilyn’s casket. He knelt beside it and kissed Marilyn’s lips for the last time, then placed three long-stemmed red roses in her folded hands. Although no direct source is cited, Richard Ben Cramer writes in his DiMaggio biography that Joe’s final words to Marilyn were
“I love you, I love you, I love you.”

The casket, now shut, was carried two hundred yards from the chapel to crypt number 24 amidst a tranquil setting of grass and trees, an oasis in the center of a jumble of steel-and-cement high-rise office buildings. Throngs of onlookers lined the stone walls that ran along the edge of the cemetery. There was some running and shouting, even some laughter and the sound of transistor radios. A contingent of young, burly policemen stood guard along the interior of the wall. A mountain of flowers from all over the world was piled high in front of the vaultlike crypt. No bouquet was larger or more impressive than Joe DiMaggio’s heart-shaped arrangement of roses. A half dozen cemetery workers attired in black lifted the casket and slid it into place. The crypt was closed and locked. From beginning to end, Marilyn Monroe’s funeral lasted less than thirty minutes.

The mourners, among them Joe and his son, left soon after, as did the cemetery workers and the police. Now the crowd that had gathered behind the surrounding walls descended and headed straight for Marilyn’s crypt. Surging forward like a swarm of locusts, they grabbed each and every flower, tearing them off the mountain until not a single blossom remained. Watching the carnage from afar, Joe DiMaggio surmised that maybe Marilyn would have enjoyed the spectacle, just as she’d adored the adulation of thousands of American servicemen when she performed for them in Korea during their honeymoon in early
1954.
The problem, DiMaggio later told his son, was that what Marilyn needed was less adulation and more of what is real.

•  •  •

To avoid the press, if for no other reason, Joe DiMaggio decided to leave the country. On Friday evening, August 10, he joined Harry Hall and Harry’s crony Sugar Brown on a ten-day road trip to Mexico. On their way out of town, the trio stopped off at Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery, where Joe went over a few of the thousands of condolence cards and telegrams that had poured into the cemetery office during the past two days, along with hundreds of fresh bouquets of flowers. Joe arranged with the office manager to have Inez Melson come in and pick up the cards and telegrams. Given what had taken place after Marilyn’s funeral, he authorized the cemetery to donate the flowers to nursing homes and hospitals in the area.

While Harry and Sugar returned to the car to wait for him, Joe walked out to the crypt for a good-bye visit with his beloved. The cemetery had closed for the night, and Joe had Marilyn all to himself. He’d already made plans with a nearby florist to deliver fresh roses to the crypt twice a week for years to come. He’d also ordered a bench to be made and installed in front of the crypt so that visitors could sit and soak it all in.

In the gathering dark, with only a sliver of moon in the sky, Joe stayed only for a minute. Overcome by sadness, he vowed never to return. It was too upsetting for him.

Before rejoining his friends in the car, Joe stopped back in the cemetery office. He told the office manager he had one final request. He wanted to pay the cemetery to have a plaque of white marble permanently affixed to crypt number 24, and it should read simply, “MARILYN MONROE, 1926–1962.” The cemetery consented, and the plaque was attached to the crypt. With the passage of time, the white marble gradually turned gray.

N
EVER FOR A MOMENT DID
Joe DiMaggio consider the possibility that Marilyn Monroe’s death had been an intentional act. Nor, as so many conspiracy buffs wanted to believe, that she was a murder victim. She had simply miscalculated, forgotten the number of pills she’d already consumed when, unable to sleep, she decided to take more medication. She had done it before—not once, not twice, but on a number of occasions. The potential for something going drastically awry had always existed. It could happen to almost anyone. Depressed and confused, perhaps somewhat inebriated, Marilyn had taken one tablet too many. Only this time, unlike others, there was nobody around to save her.

What distressed DiMaggio wasn’t so much the
way
Marilyn died—he could somehow rationalize her multiple addictions. Nor was it even the individuals he held indirectly responsible for her death: the Kennedys, Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, the bosses and leeches at Twentieth Century–Fox who’d used and abused her. Rather, he was distraught over the medical supervision she’d received in the final months and weeks of her life. According to invoices received by Inez Melson (after MM’s death), Marilyn had consulted with Dr. Greenson twenty-seven times over a span of thirty-five days (July 1 to August 4); she’d seen Dr. Engelberg on fifteen separate occasions during the same period.
DiMaggio concluded, not unjustifiably, that Marilyn’s fame had served to seduce both physicians, rendering them incapable of saying no to their star patient.

In search of answers, DiMaggio eventually contacted Dr. Marianne Kris, Marilyn’s therapist prior to Dr. Ralph Greenson. Joe wanted to know if Kris felt Marilyn had been well served by Greenson and Engelberg. In response, Kris insisted that “under difficult circumstances” the two doctors had “done their best.” DiMaggio had his doubts. If a coroner’s inquest and grand jury investigation had taken place, he told Kris, Greenson and Engelberg would both have had to account for their questionable dealings with the actress. “I doubt they’d still be in business,” he said. “Greenson all but kidnapped Marilyn, and Engelberg gave her injections of God-knows-what. And what took them so long to notify the police the night Marilyn died? What was that all about?”

Dr. Kris agreed with at least one of DiMaggio’s contentions. There ought to have been an official investigation into Marilyn’s death. It would have cut short all that speculation as to who or what contributed to Marilyn’s end: all the chatter about hit men, enemas, and executions. It would have provided ample evidence that Marilyn, whether accidentally or on purpose, had been her own assassin.

Following Marilyn’s death, after returning to New York from Mexico, Joe DiMaggio gained entrance to her Manhattan apartment in order to retrieve some of his own personal belongings, including a blue shoe box that contained a half dozen of his love letters to Monroe. The one item he missed was a crucifix that had belonged to his mother. While still in the apartment, he came across
several hypodermic syringes, three vials containing some kind of powder, and other drug paraphernalia. The discovery upset DiMaggio, though he’d never known Marilyn to use hard drugs. He suspected she might have been keeping the powder and syringes for one of her friends, possibly Montgomery Clift.

“Marilyn didn’t disclose everything to me,” DiMaggio told George Solotaire, “but I seriously doubt she resorted to illegal drugs, with the
possible exception of an occasional joint. She sometimes did pot when she got depressed. It didn’t help much. If anything, she became even more depressed. And when she became depressed, she tended to withdraw. She’d go into that darkened bedroom of hers in New York and stay in there for days. She was moodier than anyone I ever knew. She’d say, ‘I feel blue today.’ She used the word
blue
to describe how she felt, and it was the darkest shade of blue you could possibly imagine. On the other hand, I laughed more and harder with Marilyn than I ever have with anyone. She would rebound from her dark moods as easily as she fell into them. A week before she died, she said to me, ‘Things are looking up. I feel I’m just getting started.’ And then that damn funeral!”

George Solotaire had last spoken with Monroe a month or so before she died. In keeping with her habit of late-night calls, she phoned him around midnight (three o’clock in the morning, New York time) and chatted with him for more than an hour. Much of their conversation centered on Joe DiMaggio. “I’ve known Joe for more than ten years,” she said. “I guess I know him as well as it’s possible to know him. The point is, I don’t know if I really know him at all. I don’t know if anybody knows him, or if he even knows himself.”

Joe DiMaggio’s best friend felt certain that whatever else one might conclude about MM’s liaison with Joe, it was by far the most sexually stimulating and satisfying relationship she’d ever had. “Above all,” said George Solotaire, “they enjoyed each other physically. We all know that over the years Marilyn had numerous affairs. Going to bed with a man was her way of saying thank you. It didn’t mean much to her. That wasn’t the case with respect to Joe. That part of their relationship continued long after their divorce and in a sense never ended.”

As if more proof were needed of Marilyn’s sexual awakening, particularly at the hands of Joe DiMaggio, one of the stream-of-consciousness tapes she made for Dr. Greenson touched precisely on this subject.
“I could count on one hand the number of orgasms I had in previous years,” she ventured. “But of late I’ve had lots of orgasms—not only
one but two and three with a man who takes his time. I never cried so hard as I did afterwards. It was because of all the years I had so few of them. What wasted years!”