Marilyn Monroe: The Biography (49 page)

E
WELL
: Let’s face it. No pretty girl in her right mind wants
me
. She wants Gregory Peck . . .

M
ARILYN
: How do you know what a pretty girl wants? You think every pretty girl is a dope. You think that a girl goes to a party and there’s some guy—a great big hunk in a fancy striped vest, strutting around like a tiger—giving you that “I’m so handsome, you can’t resist me” look—and from this she is supposed to fall flat on her face. Well, she doesn’t fall flat on her face. But there’s another guy in the room—way over in the corner—maybe he’s kind of nervous and shy and perspiring a little. First you look past him, but then you sort of sense that he’s gentle and kind and worried, that he’ll be tender with you and nice and sweet—and that’s what’s really exciting! Oh, if I
were your wife, I’d be jealous of you—I’d be very, very jealous.

[
She kisses him
.]

I think you’re—just—elegant!

On September 27, not two weeks after the DiMaggios returned to Palm Drive, Joe departed for New York and Cleveland to broadcast the World Series. For the next several days, Marilyn was in constant contact with her old friend Mary Karger Short (Fred’s sister), the first to learn of the DiMaggios’ separation.

When he returned to Beverly Hills on Saturday, October 2, Marilyn told Joe she had asked an attorney to draft divorce papers. In addition, she had informed Darryl Zanuck, who left instructions that Joe was to be barred from entering the Fox lot. Joe, believing that Marilyn could be calmed and a crisis averted, said nothing and simply moved from the upstairs bedroom to the downstairs den, maintaining a dignified, aloof silence.

But that night, neighbors heard a terrific fight at 508 North Palm. Mrs. John C. Medley, concerned, was on the alert for violence: she was one of several neighbors who then saw Marilyn, disheveled and wrapped in a fur coat, exit the house and walk for hours along the street and through the service alley back of Palm Drive.

Early Monday morning, Marilyn’s actions revealed that while her pain may have been acute, her stamina and survival instincts were stronger. Publicity-conscious as ever, and eager again to turn something potentially embarrassing into something positively beneficial to the image of Marilyn Monroe, she telephoned Billy Wilder to say she was ill and unable to report for work. Immediately thereafter—just as she had from San Francisco on January 14—she then called Harry Brand. Speaking quietly, as if in confidence, she said that she had retained Jerry Giesler, the most public criminal lawyer in Hollywood, known especially for defending celebrities in delicate cases. Giesler would represent her in what she hoped would be a swift, uncomplicated and uncontested divorce. Remain calm, Brand told her; he would manage everything. Such was the position, power and presumption of studio press agents that they were told and then managed news
of births, marriages, divorces, illnesses and deaths involving the more incandescent denizens of Hollywood.

Crack ex-reporter that he was, Brand mustered the troops. He dashed off a quick announcement to the newswire services that the world-famous marriage was ending “because of incompatibility resulting from the conflicting demands of their careers,” which must have amused everyone who knew that Joe was all but fully retired from just about everything except during World Series time. Brand then mobilized his platoon—Roy Craft, Frank Neill, Chuck Panama, Mollie Merrick and Ray Metzler—and gave each a list of major newspapers, reporters and columnists. Within seven minutes, each of twenty Los Angeles news outlets was “the first” to know the story.

The news was trumpeted worldwide next day, October 5, and that morning over a hundred reporters and photographers pitched camp on the lawn of 508 North Palm Drive. Inside, Giesler sat with Marilyn, who was in bed, sedated by Leon Krohn. She signed a page-and-a-half document pleading for divorce and alleging that in the eight months of her marriage she had suffered “grievous mental suffering and anguish, all of which acts and conduct on the part of the defendant were without fault of the plaintiff.”
¹
The complaint stated that the couple separated on September 27, when Joe went East, that there would be no request for alimony, that there was no community property to be divided. Giesler then descended to Joe and handed him the papers, informing him that he had ten days in which to contest the divorce before a default decree could be obtained. Joe said nothing, pocketed the papers and resumed watching television.

And now a brilliant little suspense drama was enacted for the benefit of the press. Giesler left the house, saying only to reporters that there was no possibility of a reconciliation but that the divorce was amicable—in testimony of this, he added that Miss Monroe was ill with a virus and that Mr. DiMaggio was thoughtfully preparing soup for her. Perhaps next day there would be further news and even an appearance of the principals.

By the morning of October 6, movie cameras had been set up on the lawn of 508 North Palm Drive. Huston or Hitchcock himself could not have improved on the melodramatic scene as a gray mist lifted and the hazy California sunshine broke through. At ten o’clock, there was much scurrying as Joe swiftly exited the house with his luggage, attended by his friend Reno Barsocchini. The two men climbed into his Cadillac (a duplicate of Marilyn’s), and Joe said that he was heading for San Francisco: “It is my home and always has been. I’ll never come back here.” In fact he did not proceed at once to San Francisco but instead remained in seclusion for six weeks at the home of Leon Krohn, who had befriended both him and Marilyn. According to Krohn, Marilyn telephoned Joe every night at Krohn’s home.

At ten fifty-five that morning, she appeared. Wearing a form-fitting black jersey sweater in striking contrast to her blond tresses, a black leather belt, a black gabardine skirt and black pumps, she seemed bound for a funeral. Leaning for support on Giesler’s arm, Marilyn made her way to the newsmen’s microphones. At her side in a moment was Sidney Skolsky, who turned to newsmen and announced, “There is no other man,” which was taken to mean that there certainly was. Giesler shot him an angry glance and seized control.

“Miss Monroe will have nothing to say to you this morning,” he began. “As her attorney, I am speaking for her and can only say that the conflict of careers has brought about this regrettable necessity.”

The press would naturally not permit Marilyn to depart silently. But in response to a volley of questions she said in a choked, hoarse voice, “I can’t say anything today. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” And then she broke down and sobbed, resting her head on Giesler’s shoulder and patting her eyes with a white handkerchief. From there she went not into the house but to a car, which took her first to Dr. Krohn’s office on North Roxbury Drive and then to the studio. Two hours later, she was back home and in bed.

Reactions were solicited immediately. Natasha Lytess, gloating, told the press:

The marriage was a big mistake for Marilyn and I feel she has known it for a long time. Things like this just don’t happen overnight. It is best this way. . . . Now at last it will be possible for Marilyn to develop her talent to the fullest. In this girl we have a potentially great dramatic star. Her recent experience was a handicap to fulfillment of this goal. Now that is all behind her.

As for Joe’s resentment of Marilyn’s screen image and dress, Natasha added disingenuously, forgetting that she shared his objections:

Some people are small enough to resent things that bring success to others, you know. They quarreled a lot. Marilyn kept hoping for the best, but Mr. DiMaggio never could consider her feelings.

Discussing the divorce only briefly with a few friends, Marilyn was succinct with Michael Chekhov: “Joe is a sweet guy, but we don’t have much in common,” and not long after, she confided bluntly to Susan Strasberg, “Bored—he bored me.”
²
Later, she elaborated a little:

He didn’t like the women I played—he thought they were sluts. I don’t know what movies he was thinking about! He didn’t like the actors kissing me, and he didn’t like my costumes. He didn’t like anything about my movies, and he hated all my clothes. When I told him I had to dress the way I did, that it was part of my job, he said I should quit that job. But who did he think he was marrying when he was marrying me? To tell the truth, our marriage was a sort of crazy, difficult friendship with sexual privileges. Later I learned that’s what marriages often are.

Promptly at nine o’clock on the morning of October 7, Marilyn was back at work on
The Seven Year Itch
, looking very cheerful, as Billy Wilder recalled. “I feel alive for the first time in days,” she told him. “Had a wonderful night’s sleep, too.”

As for Joe, he retreated moodily from view. “I can’t understand what happened,” he said, clearly hoping she would drop the divorce
complaint. “I hope she’ll see the light.” He then added, probably with unintentional condescension, “I think [Marilyn] is a good kid—young and naive—but I think she is being misled by the wrong friends.”

On October 26, Joe made a bold attempt to win back his wife by seeking the mediation of Sidney Skolsky. They went to Palm Drive, where Joe begged her to reconsider. “But Marilyn’s determination was always like iron,” Sidney recalled. “Her mind was set on divorce.”

Next day, Sidney accompanied Marilyn and Jerry Giesler to Santa Monica Court. Her attorney, as Sidney recalled with some astonishment, “told Marilyn how he wanted her to act for the reporters and cameramen. He worked like a good film director, explaining every mood and expression he wanted. Giesler got a flawless performance from Marilyn”—perhaps because there could be no retakes.

Meticulously and formally dressed in a black dress with a scooped neckline, a black hat, contrasting white leather gloves and white pearls Joe had given her on her birthday, Marilyn made another grand movie-star appearance. At only twenty-eight, she was living the most public year of her life, turning everything into a press and publicity event, creating and offering new facets of herself even as she discovered them.

“Your Honor,” she said calmly to Judge Rhodes, in a statement transcribed worldwide,

my husband would get in moods where he wouldn’t speak to me for five to seven days at a time—sometimes longer, ten days. I would ask him what was wrong. He wouldn’t answer, or he would say, “Stop nagging me!” I was permitted to have visitors no more than three times in the nine months we were married. On one occasion, it was when I was sick. Then he did allow someone to come and see me.

And then she added words which may not represent the truth; in any case, they contradict much that she told friends and the press:

I offered to give up my work in hopes that would solve our problems. But even this didn’t help.

But then her voice broke:

I hoped to have out of my marriage, love, warmth, affection and understanding. But the relationship was mostly one of coldness and indifference.

Natasha wished to stand as witness, but Marilyn wisely enjoined her. To the stand, therefore, came Marilyn’s calm business manager Inez Melson:

Mr. DiMaggio was very indifferent and not concerned with Mrs. DiMaggio’s happiness. I have seen him push her away and tell her not to bother him.

In less than eight minutes, her interlocutory divorce was granted by Judge Orlando H. Rhodes; the final decree would be effective in exactly a year.

But Joe remained fiercely jealous, as was evident from a bizarre event that he and his friend Frank Sinatra engineered nine days later.

Since mid-October, Joe had contracted a private detective to follow Marilyn (evidently in the hope he could find evidence against her), and the end of his marriage did not terminate the contract. On the evening of November 5, the detective told Joe that he had followed Marilyn, variously disguised, to the same address several times: 8122 Waring Avenue, which happened to be the residence of Sheila Stuart, the actress and student of Hal Schaefer who with Harry Giventer had found him ill in his office. Summoned by the detective, Joe arrived on the scene and, enraged, wanted to break into Stuart’s apartment to find what Marilyn was doing and with whom.

The detective advised a few minutes’ caution, and he in turn summoned Sinatra, who arrived at the corner of Waring and Kilkea with a crew of men. Some of them then approached the apartment complex and together broke through a tenant’s door.
³
There was an ear-splitting scream, and the private eye’s flashlight found someone: a thirty-seven-year-old woman named Florence Kotz sat upright in bed, terrified, clutching her nightgown and bedclothes round her and shrieking for
help, which soon arrived. The gang might have been able to shoot straight, but they could not locate the door of Sheila Stuart, a few yards distant. The commotion routed Sheila, Marilyn and another guest, who scurried away while the melee continued. Soon after, Marilyn’s car was found parked at 8336 De Longpre Avenue, where she had rented an apartment after leaving North Palm Drive.

This became known for years as the night of the “Wrong Door Raid.” Florence Kotz sued Sinatra and DiMaggio for $200,000, and the case went to court. Sinatra denied being a participant, and after four years the case was dismissed in California Superior Court when Sinatra’s attorney Milton Rudin arranged an out-of-court payment to Florence Kotz of $7,500. As for Sheila’s guests, DiMaggio always insisted they were Marilyn and Hal Schaefer; to no one’s surprise, both of them denied those suspicions.
⁴