Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love (53 page)

•  •  •

If Marilyn Monroe’s death sealed Joe DiMaggio’s fate and solitary state forever, it had an equally devastating effect on the life and career of Dr. Ralph Greenson. Haunted by the sight of Marilyn nude in bed, alone, at night, her bedroom lights ablaze, bedroom door locked, forty to fifty Nembutal tablets in her system, Greenson never succeeded in putting Marilyn’s death behind him. Lambasted by press and public alike, as well as by the majority of his colleagues, Greenson at first attempted to justify his unorthodox psychiatric approach to Marilyn by writing an article for the
Medical Tribune
, which he began the day after Marilyn’s death and completed several weeks later: “My particular method of treatment for this particular woman was, I thought, essential at that time. But it failed. She died.”

Anna Freud, one of Greenson’s few supporters, wrote to him from London on August 6, 1962, two days after Marilyn’s death, to say how sorry she was. “I know exactly how you feel,” she wrote, “because I had exactly the same thing happen with a patient of mine.” She went on to say that she believed that sometimes psychiatry was inadequate to the task of fixing “wounded psyches.”

On August 20, in response to Anna Freud’s letter, Greenson wrote: “I cared about her, and she was my patient. . . . I had hopes for her and I thought she was making progress. And now she’s dead and I realize that all my knowledge and desire and strength were not enough.”

Dom DiMaggio recalled hearing from his brother several weeks after Marilyn’s death. “Joe had invited Dr. Greenson and the doctor’s family to Marilyn’s funeral,” said Dom, “but in truth they were no longer on decent terms. Joe had come to the realization that Greenson’s therapy sessions and technique had done Marilyn more harm than good, and he regretted not having done more to encourage Marilyn to find another
shrink. He spread the word on Greenson, telling everyone what an unprofessional creep he turned out to be. When Greenson heard what Joe was saying about him, he retaliated. He told a reporter that Joe and Marilyn were ill suited and that she would have been better off staying with Arthur Miller, who at least satisfied her intellectual curiosity.”

Formerly regarded as one of the country’s leading psychoanalysts and therapists, Ralph Greenson’s reputation plummeted following Marilyn Monroe’s death. In late August 1962, hidden behind a newly grown full beard, Greenson departed for New York, where he visited with Dr. Kris and underwent his own series of therapy sessions with Dr. Max Schur, a colleague and old friend. Depressed and disillusioned, Greenson returned to Los Angeles two months later. His troubles continued to mount until, in 1970, another patient, thirty-five-year-old actress Inger Stevens, who looked like Monroe, also committed suicide. Increasingly Greenson began to miss appointments with his remaining patients. He suffered bouts of aphasia, where he lost his ability to speak or comprehend, and he sought refuge from the outside world behind the locked doors of his study. In essence, he became another person.

“It seemed as though he wanted to escape from himself,” said Hyman Engelberg. His friendships waned, and he became something of a recluse. I saw less and less of him as time went on, partially, I suppose, because I left the medical offices we shared and moved to a new address. A frail and broken man, haunted by his failed efforts to save Marilyn Monroe, Ralph Greenson died in 1979. Frankly, I don’t think there’s anything that anyone, including Ralph Greenson, could have done to rescue Marilyn. One way or the other, she had made up her mind by this juncture to end her life.”

•  •  •

On September 15, 1962, less than a month after Marilyn’s death, Rebecca Miller was born to Arthur and Inge Morath Miller, whom the playwright had married following his divorce from Marilyn Monroe. Still conflicted and embittered over their divorce, Arthur Miller later
told Christopher Bigsby, his biographer, that he hadn’t been able to mourn Marilyn when she died; it was twenty years after her death before he could cry at the thought of her death.

On first hearing of his former wife’s demise, Arthur Miller wrote to Joe Rauh, his longtime attorney: “I guess you’re as stunned as I’ve been about Marilyn. It’s still hard to accept although I’d always worried that she’d step over the line. I don’t think she meant to. And that’s even more terrible.” Miller later gave an interview to the
New York Post
in which he seemed to contradict what he’d written earlier to Joe Rauh. According to the
Post
interview, Miller wasn’t at all “shocked” by Monroe’s death.
“It had to happen,” said Miller. “I don’t know when or how, but it was inevitable.”

In 1966 Arthur and Inge Miller had a second child, a son named Daniel. Because the child suffered from Down syndrome, and because the Millers weren’t able to care for the child, they placed him in an institution. “As I heard it,” reported Norman Mailer, “Inge Morath often visited the child, whereas Arthur never visited, never so much as mentioned his son. That’s who Arthur Miller was. He couldn’t deal with problematic situations. Nor could he deal with people who had problems, which is why he couldn’t handle Marilyn Monroe. She was too much for him. She frightened the hell out of him.”

•  •  •

Marilyn Monroe’s will was admitted to probate on October 30, 1962. The actress left $100,000 in a trust fund for her mother, the annual interest from which (approximately $5,000) would be used for Gladys Baker’s maintenance and upkeep in a mental institution. Clearly, mental illness had been on Marilyn’s mind during the last year of her life. To their immense surprise, she left $20,000 to Dr. Hohenberg and $10,000 to Dr. Kris; she also left Anna Freud $10,000 to continue her work with troubled children. Xenia Chekhov, the widow of Michael Chekhov, Marilyn’s drama coach, received $2,500 per year for the remainder of her life. Marilyn bequeathed $10,000 to her half sister Berniece Miracle. She left the Rostens $5,000 to be used for the college
education of Patricia Rosten, their daughter. There were other bequests of varying amounts, but the bulk of the Monroe estate (including all of Marilyn’s personal possessions) went to Lee and Paula Strasberg, presumably to be used for their ongoing work with the Actors Studio.

In the last months of her life, Marilyn had expressed an unmistakable desire to excise the Strasbergs from her will, primarily because she had grown apart from them and had never fully forgiven them for their involvement in having her placed in the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in New York. Having heard Marilyn’s lament, Inez Melson, her former business manager, contested the will on the grounds that when it was written, Marilyn had been under the direct influence of Lee Strasberg. Melson’s claim was eventually dismissed. The situation concerning the Strasbergs and Marilyn Monroe’s last will and testament became increasingly controversial. Paula Strasberg died in 1966 at age fifty-seven. A year later, Lee Strasberg married Anna Mizrahi, a television actress from Venezuela who happened to be thirty-eight years younger than her newlywed husband. When Lee Strasberg died in 1982, Anna inherited everything, including the Monroe trademark and everything connected to it. Anna Strasberg never met Marilyn Monroe, yet she became extraordinarily wealthy as a result of MM’s legacy.

•  •  •

More than two years after Marilyn Monroe’s death, wealthy businessman Louis Wolfson sponsored a social function in San Francisco to which he invited his old pal Joe DiMaggio as well as Sam Yorty, mayor of Los Angeles from 1961 to 1973. “Yorty, a baseball fanatic, had always wanted to meet DiMaggio,” recalled Wolfson. “So I introduced them at the party, and the two of them went off into a corner to talk. Apparently Yorty told Joe he’d read all the police reports, and there was no question but that on the last day of her life Marilyn received a visit from Bobby Kennedy. I’m not certain if Joe knew about the visit, because he didn’t like to talk about Marilyn. I do know he loathed the Kennedy family. I can vouch for the fact that he shed no tears when JFK got assassinated. I saw Joe the day after the assassination of
President Kennedy. ‘The bastard got what he deserved,’ he snarled. I guess if I’d been in Joe’s shoes, I might have felt the same way.”

Louis Wolfson remembered a DiMaggio-RFK incident that took place in the mid-1960s: “Robert Kennedy was guest of honor at the annual New York Yankees Old Timers’ Day game. Had DiMaggio known that RFK would be there, I’m certain he wouldn’t have participated. Joe assured me he didn’t know until he found himself on a reception line with the other old-timers, and here comes Bobby Kennedy walking along, shaking every old-timer’s hand one by one. When he reaches DiMaggio, there’s no one there. Joe had stepped off the line and turned his back on Kennedy. I don’t know how many people picked up on it. ‘What’s the big fucking deal?’ I said to him afterward. ‘Shake his hand and be done with it.’ And he says, ‘I wouldn’t shake that little prick’s hand for all the money in the world.’ ”

•  •  •

According to an FBI report dated February 15, 1965, Joe DiMaggio offered to pay $25,000 to a pair of unnamed mobsters for a two-minute pornographic film showing a “young” Marilyn Monroe (at nineteen or twenty) performing a sexual act with an unidentified male figure.

“The report turned out to be accurate,” said Dom DiMaggio. “My brother acquired the film with money that had been given him by one or another of his wealthy buddies. He showed me the film, but I can honestly say I don’t know if it was Marilyn or not. It looked like her, but who knows? I didn’t know her at that age. Given the possibility that it was Marilyn in the film, Joe was taking no chances. He wasn’t about to let her name get dragged through the mud, particularly when she wasn’t able to defend herself. After showing me the film, he got out a pair of scissors and cut it into shreds.”

•  •  •

If Joe DiMaggio hadn’t been as well known as he was—one of the most recognizable men in the country—he could have readily passed for a
banker, chief executive officer of a major corporation, or an investment broker. His tall frame impeccably tailored, fingernails manicured, every one of his gray hairs in place, he looked like anything but the son of a struggling, craggy-faced fisherman from “the old country.” Yet the demise of Marilyn Monroe—
his
Marilyn—had left him joyless.

“We would be relaxing in the office or in an airport lounge, sometimes in the midst of a conversation,” reported DiMaggio’s attorney and constant companion Morris Engelberg, “when suddenly his head would droop. When I asked him what was the matter, he picked up his head, looked right at me, and said, ‘Don’t you know, Morris, don’t you know?” Even at times when he should have been feeling exhilarated, such as when he was receiving an award or enjoying his family, the sadness would rob him of all pleasure.

Joe DiMaggio was not a man of complex sensibilities and in fact had a rather dour, literal way of taking in the world. Years later, after DiMaggio died, singer-songwriter Paul Simon reported, in an article he wrote, that when he met Joe DiMaggio for the first time, the two had only one thing to talk about. “What I don’t understand,” Simon quotes DiMaggio as saying, “is why you ask where I’ve gone. I just did a Mr. Coffee commercial, I’m a spokesman for Bowery Savings Bank, and I haven’t gone anywhere.” In fact, Simon was making no attempt to address the metaphorical value of using Joe DiMaggio, whose larger-than-life presence had been in some ways an illusion. Apprearing on
The Dick Cavett Show
, Simon himself averred that he was actually a bigger fan of Mickey Mantle and had chosen Joe DiMaggio’s name by default only because Mantle’s didn’t have enough syllables.

The only thing that truly interested Joe after Marilyn’s death was making money. He was very naïve about the process, but he was meticulous about his image, and, luckily for him, Madison Avenue liked it. In 1972 Joe signed on to be the spokesman for the Bowery Savings Bank of New York City, and even when the bank was in danger of being seized by the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), Joe’s commanding presence gave them the air of stability and solvency. Nobody was
more surprised than Joe was to find that he was good at this spokesperson job. He had always shied away from cameras and had hated anyone invading his privacy, but he learned the scripts that were written for him, and he delivered his lines like he truly believed in the Bowery Bank. Joe seemed to be the perfect gentleman to ask, “Is there anyone who couldn’t use a bundle of cash?” He stayed with the bank until 1992.

Joe never learned to completely trust his ability to work in front of the camera very much, and when
Vincent Marotta, the president of Mr. Coffee, called him, having gotten his number from a mutual friend in Cleveland, to ask Joe to represent the new coffee maker company in 1972, DiMaggio’s impulse was to run away. “I rang Joe up on a Saturday morning,” Marotta told Linda Wertheimer on NPR in 2005. “It was about eleven; I shall never forget this. He answered the phone, and I told him who I was, and, of course, he said, ‘What’s the name of that product?’ And I said, ‘Mr. Coffee. You haven’t heard of it, Mr. DiMaggio, ’cause it’s brand new.’ And he said, ‘Well, I have heard of it. Yes, I was playing in a golf tournament last week. I won one as a prize.’ ” Joe then turned him down flat. The next day, however, Marotta flew to California and called DiMaggio once again. “This time when he answered the phone, he said, ‘Well, hi! How you doing? How’s the weather there?’ He had a whole different attitude.” The two had lunch in San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel, and DiMaggio listened, impressing Marotta with his choice of broiled salmon, and when the lunch was over, Marotta said, “He put out his hand and shook hands. He said, ‘I’m going to go with you.’ That was it. And he ended up being with me almost fifteen years.”

Though Joe was never much of a coffee drinker—because of his ulcer, he preferred tea and Sanka, which was decaffeinated—people believed that he was the owner of the company, and they would come to him with their complaints, in which case he would tell them to write to Marotta’s office. The relationship with Mr. Coffee ended abruptly in 1987, when the company added elements to his contract that he had not approved.