Editor's note: ESPN.com is running excerpts from Richard Ben Cramer's Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life recently published by Simon & Schuster. This is the first of three parts from Chapter 14, when a retired DiMaggio stays in the limelight, thanks to the luminous glow of Marilyn Monroe.
You could say they met for the sake of her fame -- it was one of her press agents who set up Marilyn's "blind date" with Joe. And fame was so tied up in this love story -- her fame, and his, and theirs, such a mess of fame -- it was both a joy and the sorrow, from the start.
Even those words, "blind date," didn't really make sense, in that spring of 1952. By that time, only the truly blind -- a man with a white cane, officially sightless -- would not have seen a picture of Marilyn Monroe. She had appeared in five films (and would make five more that year). At twenty-five, she was Hollywood's hottest young honeypot -- subject of a full-page feature in Collier's (with cover shoots for Look and Life in the works), and she was already lighting up the nation's magazine racks as cover girl for Photoplay ("Temptations of a Bachelor Girl").
In fact, a few million American men had seen her picture (seen her whole) before they ever knew her name -- almost before she had that name. In 1949, when she was still unfamous, out of work, and poor (two studios had signed her and dumped her already), she'd posed nude for fifty bucks. And although those calendar photos weren't pinned on her for three years, she was the number one pinup girl in gas stations from coast to coast, and for American troops around the world.
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We rode around for three hours. After the first hour I began to find out things about Joe DiMaggio. He was a baseball player and had belonged to the Yankee Ball Club of the American League in New York. And he always worried when he went out with a girl. He didn't mind going out once with her. It was the second time he didn't like. As for the third time, that very seldom happened. ” |
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— Marilyn Monroe on meeting Joe DiMaggio. |
It was precisely her photographs (these were the "clean" sort, studio sanctioned) that drew Joe in that spring. The publicity mill at Twentieth Century Fox had "borrowed" the Philadelphia A's handsome young slugger, Gus Zernial, to make some photos with their rising star. Marilyn showed up at the A's spring camp, and took "her stance" in a halter top, very short shorts, and very high heels. Zernial was told to wrap his arms around her, and show her how to hold the bat. It was a winsome photo -- made all the L.A. papers . . . and pissed Joe off, right away. "How come that fuckin' busher gets to meet a beautiful girl like that?"
DiMaggio was in town for a charity game -- a team of retired California stars against the A's -- and that's when Joe asked Zernial about her. Gus gave him the name of the "business manager," David March. Joe had a pal call March, right away, and the "date" was set up for two days thence.
For propriety's sake, it was a double date: March and another actress were going to tag along. It was set up for dinner -- seven p.m., at the Villa Nova, a dark Dago joint on the Sunset Strip. March and his date were there on time. Joe came by cab, fifteen minutes later. Then, another hour expired in uncomfortable near silence, and still, Miss Monroe didn't show.
March had to excuse himself -- he called her at home. She was vague about whether she was coming, at all. She hadn't been keen about meeting a sports star. "I don't like men in loud clothes, with checked suits, and big muscles, and pink ties. I get nervous." But March told her, Joe wasn't like that. And this dinner was all set up -- for her own good.
She was two hours late, when she floated in. DiMaggio stood as she got to the table. He was so different than the man she'd imagined, it shook her up. As she recalled for the writer Ben Hecht, when he was attempting to compile her memoirs:
"I found myself staring at a reserved gentleman in a gray suit, with a gray tie and a sprinkle of gray in his hair. There were a few blue polka dots on his tie. If I hadn't been told he was some sort of ball player, I would have guessed he was either a steel magnate or a congressman.
"He said 'I'm glad to meet you,' and then fell silent for the whole rest of the evening. . . . I addressed only one remark to him. 'There's a blue polka dot exactly in the middle of your tie knot,' I said. 'Did it take you long to fix it like that?'
"Mr. DiMaggio shook his head. I could see right away he was not a man to waste words. Acting mysterious and far away while in company was my own sort of specialty. I didn't see how it was going to work on somebody who was busy being mysterious and far away himself."
She was seated next to DiMaggio, but had no idea what else to say to him. (As she later recalled, she'd never seen a baseball game.) So she chatted to March about the picture she was shooting by day, Monkey Business. In fact, all the talk was about the movie business -- and all excluded Joe -- until Mickey Rooney spotted the Great DiMaggio across the dining room, and pulled up a chair at the table.
Rooney was an ardent fan, and started asking Joe about his famous feats. What about that huge home run off Sal Maglie? . . . What about the comeback in Boston, in '49? . . . What about that day you broke the record --
remember, in The Streak? -- when your bat got stolen? . . .
Marilyn was still a bit vague on who DiMaggio was. (Baseball? Or football? . . .) But Rooney, she knew, was somebody big. In fact, he had been Hollywood's number one box office draw, before the war, when she was
the miserable little foster-child, Norma Jeane Baker. In those days, her
guardian, Grace Goddard (the woman who came closest to a parent in her life), had stowed her every afternoon in some darkened cinema palace, and fed her relentlessly on the fantasy that someday she -- Norma Jeane -- would be a great screen star, too. The decade since had mostly been a narrow, all-excluding quest to make that fantasy into fact. Marilyn was painfully aware that all her life had been around Hollywood, about Hollywood -- and nothing else. That's why she'd signed up for a literature course at UCLA -- and why she was always broke: if she had cash, she'd spend it on "great books." Now that the dream of her girlhood was coming true -- or starting to come true -- the wider world she'd never known was her new hunger. And as the great star, Mickey Rooney -- and for that matter, her friend, David March -- turned their eager attention upon this dignified stranger from that wider world, it came clear to Marilyn that this was somebody big, too.
As Marilyn remembered for Ben Hecht: "The other men talked and threw their personalities around. Mr. DiMaggio just sat there. Yet somehow he was the most exciting man at the table. The excitement was in his eyes. They are sharp and alert.
"Then I became aware of something odd. The men at the table weren't showing off for me or telling their stories for my attention. It was Mr. DiMaggio they were wooing. This was a novelty. No woman has ever put me so much in the shade before.
"But as far as I was concerned, Mr. DiMaggio was all novelty. In Hollywood, the more important a man is the more he talks. The better he is at his job, the more he brags. By these Hollywood standards of male greatness my dinner companion was a nobody. Yet I have never seen any man in Hollywood who got so much respect and attention at a dinner table. Sitting next to Mr. DiMaggio was like sitting next to a peacock with its tail spread -- that's how noticeable you were."
Near eleven p.m., she rose and said she had an early call. DiMaggio stood, as well. By her account, she startled herself by offering him a ride home. But they didn't go to his hotel . . .
" 'I don't feel like turning in,' he said. 'Would you mind driving around a little while?'
"My heart jumped, and I felt full of happiness. But all I did was nod and mysteriously answer, 'It's a lovely night for a drive.'
"We rode around for three hours. After the first hour I began to find out things about Joe DiMaggio. He was a baseball player and had belonged to the Yankee Ball Club of the American League in New York. And he always worried when he went out with a girl. He didn't mind going out once with her. It was the second time he didn't like. As for the third time, that very seldom happened. He had a loyal friend named Georgie Solotaire who ran interference for him and pried the girl loose.
" 'Is Mr. Solotaire with you?' I asked.
"He said he was.
" 'I'll try not to make him too much trouble when he starts prying me loose,' I said.
" 'I don't think I'll have use for Mr. Solotaire's services on this trip,' he replied.
"After that we didn't talk for another half hour, but I didn't mind. I had an instinct that compliments from Mr. DiMaggio were going to be few and far between, so I was content to just sit in silence and enjoy the one he had just paid me."
Joe told her that he'd seen her photos in the paper. That's why he'd wanted to meet her. She said she couldn't understand why. He must have met so many more famous people. Joe thought for a moment, and said -- well, he'd met Ethyl Barrymore, and Douglas MacArthur. Then, he added shyly: "But you're prettier than them."
That's what fetched her into the boat. Joe never did get home that night.
And it never occurred to him to ask why she'd wanted to meet him -- why did she agree to that dinner date? . . . He had, at that moment, no way to know how she was making up her life on the fly, and why, suddenly, he fit into her fictions. Joe didn't know how she'd talked it over with her friend and advisor, the gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky -- who would reveal to the world Joe and Marilyn's liaison in the column he'd write the following day. It was Skolsky who'd told her how DiMaggio was so hugely admired, how his name -- a really Big Name! -- bespoke for the public dignity and class. It was Skolsky who told her Joe was a hero . . . just what she needed for her problem, now.
The problem was, the news was out that Marilyn Monroe was the naked girl on those scandalous calendars. In 1952, nice girls didn't pose nude. When a UPI reporter, Aline Mosby, alerted the brass at Twentieth Century Fox, the boss, Darryl Zanuck, hit the roof. Zanuck was a buck-toothed and bumptious tyrant who demanded obedience, and enforced it with rage. He wanted Marilyn to deny that was her -- deny everything! It was Skolsky who advised her to tell the truth, and tell it exclusively to Mosby (who had written, some months before, a syrupy account of Marilyn's childhood -- the "little orphan girl" who'd made it big).
So despite Zanuck's threats (Her career would be ruined! He would exercise the morals clause in her contract -- and cut her loose!) . . . Marilyn went to lunch with Mosby, and took her to the ladies' room of the restaurant, to offer her tearful tale: she'd been broke, scared, and hungry -- otherwise she never would have done it. But that fifty dollars was the only way to pay the rent! . . .)
Mosby's scoop would hit the papers that March 13 -- the day that Marilyn signed on for dinner with Joe. The way Skolsky (and Miss Monroe) had it figured, if the most admired hero in the country thought her a nice, decent girl, worthy of his company (in public -- and in hyper-public print) . . . well, what more did anybody need to know?
As it turned out, Marilyn's dangerous "scandal" would become an enormous public relations triumph -- one of the building blocks of her legend. And, at the cost of his own lifelong heartache, so would Joe.
Still, that couldn't explain why she went out with him the next night, and the next, and the next . . . in fact they were together every night he was in town -- which was just about every night, till he had to go east, that April, to take up his job in the Yankee Stadium broadcast booth.
He was so different from all the chattery men who buzzed around her in Hollywood. He was a fascination. It wasn't that he didn't have anything to say -- just that he didn't have to say it. Like he already knew everything that they were always talking about. Even about her.
He wasn't mad about that calendar -- or about the next crisis, when the papers found out she wasn't "a little orphan girl." (Her mother was very much alive, and just released from a state mental hospital.) Joe knew all about making up your own life story. He didn't judge her for that. And he knew why she did it. He seemed to understand (without a word said) how she wanted to be a star -- had to be the biggest star, a perfect star. That's what was wonderful: this man, who was so solid, rich, strong, assured, admired . . . still, he knew everything there was to know about hunger.
He wooed her sweetly, and gave her respite from the fever of appearing that was the rest of her life. (Joe was just as happy to spend an evening on a couch in a darkened room with on old movie on TV, while she resumed the habits of her girlhood and curled up next to him, to dream while some celluloid fantasy played out onscreen.) Withal, he bound her to him with the only cords that could ever keep her -- those of her own ambition. She wanted to learn to be like him.
What she saw, what she wanted to learn, was the same thing two generations of Yankees saw, and tried to learn, from Joe. That was the certainty of his own stardom. She saw, she thought she had to have, the same thing the kids on the old North Beach Playground wanted, when they looked at Joe: the sufficiency in himself that made him quiet at his core. It was enviable, it was maddening. Marilyn and Ben Hecht tried to put it into words:
"I was always able to tell what it was about a man that attracted me. Except this time with Mr. DiMaggio. My feelings for this silent smiling man began to disturb me. What was the use of buzzing all over for a man who was like somebody sitting alone in the Observation Car?
". . . I thought, 'You learn to be silent and smiling like that from having millions of people look at you with love and excitement while you stand alone getting ready to do something.'
"I only wished I knew what Mr. DiMaggio did."
What Joe knew was, here was the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen. He knew a lot of broads -- beauties, sure -- but no one, nothing, like this girl. It wasn't even the same category. He'd been around the block a few times in Hollywood. And not just with Dorothy -- but big stars: Marlene Dietrich, for instance. (Joe didn't like her. She had bad breath.) But Marilyn put them all in the shade. This girl had beauty shining out from inside.
It wasn't her stardom that made her shine -- though it pleased Joe that everything Dorothy hungered for, strove for, dumped him for . . . Marilyn already had all that (effortlessly, as he imagined), and by age twenty-five. She was just a kid! . . . And it wasn't only her looks -- though, what a looker! When she'd get dressed up (finally!) and made-up (second or third time, when she was satisfied), they'd go to some joint and she'd stop the place cold -- like everybody else in the room disappeared. He loved that.
But he loved it more when it was just for him -- or even better, when they'd get to her place, and she'd drop that dress on the floor (there was never anything on underneath), and scrub all that shit off her face, and drop the towel coming out of the bathroom, lit perhaps by one bulb behind her, or the blue of the TV he'd flicked on . . . and there she was, his girl, so pale, past vanilla, it was white in her young skin -- dairy milk -- and perfect, tiny-boned, delicate, like a twelve-year-old virgin, childlike as her giggle when he grabbed her, then, covered her with him, filled her, crushed her, sometimes (Christ forgive him) he was trying to kill her . . . God, he never wanted to jolt anybody like this girl.
Maybe she did know a bit about baseball -- or she was learning fast. She called Joe her "slugger." Years later, when her friend (and the great profile writer of the age) Truman Capote asked her who was the best, she brought up Joe's name, and added: "He can hit home runs." Capote understood -- and, as usual, he understood why: he entitled his profile on Marilyn Monroe, "A Beautiful Child."
By the time April came, Joe didn't want his job on TV, and didn't want to leave for New York. He felt like his real life -- his aliveness -- was with Marilyn. He'd known her three weeks.
Still, what he wanted was to leave with her -- take her away to San Francisco, which was always the stage set in his mind when he cast himself as head of household. He didn't push. He didn't want to scare her . . . but he had to ask: did she ever want -- you know, a real family? Kids? . . .
Oh, yes -- more than anything! (Marilyn always said that.)
It made perfect sense to Joe. What didn't make sense was to leave her now -- here, in this town full of worms. What would happen when he left? Nothing good. (He could feel the acid-ache in his stomach, already.) But he had to leave. She told him she was going to come east that summer, to film on location at Niagara Falls. She could come to New York then. He could show her his town. She loved New York! . . . He made her promise, then promise again.
What happened when he left was a bellyache of the worst sort -- Marilyn was hospitalized with acute appendicitis. On April 28, she was wheeled into an operating room at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. From New York, DiMaggio sent wires and mail, called at all hours, day and night. Every day, he sent flowers -- roses, always. (Marilyn had told him she loved roses. If she died, she wanted him to put roses on her grave every week -- just as William Powell did for the great Jean Harlow.) . . . DiMaggio filled her room with roses.
In her own way Marilyn, too, tried to be true to what she'd told him -- or what she always told herself. When the OR staff lifted her hospital gown to reveal her belly where the incision would be made, they found a note, taped to her skin:
Most important to Read Before operation.
Dear Doctor,
Cut as little as possible. I know it seems vain but that doesn't really enter into it -- the fact that I'm a woman is important and means much to me. Save please (can't ask you enough) what you can -- I'm in your hands. You have children and you must know what it means -- please Doctor -- I know somehow you will! thank you -- thank you -- for Gods sakes Dear Doctor No ovaries removed -- please again do whatever you can to prevent large scars. Thanking you with all my heart.
Marilyn Monroe
As her British biographer (Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe), the relentless digger, Anthony Summers, confirmed with her surgeon more than thirty years later, there was no collateral damage, no ovaries disturbed (and just a normal small scar) when Marilyn's appendix came out. A week later, she was back on the set, to finish Monkey Business. Her makeup man, Allan "Whitey" Snyder, promised he would make her the picture of good health. (Anyway, he said, if she keeled over and died, he'd make her look great in her coffin. Marilyn laughed, and made him promise that, too.)
In New York, Joe was delighted with her good news. The way he figured, as soon as she finished that picture (When? A week? Two weeks?) . . . she'd be coming east to start on Niagara. He called every night (though it was late in New York) to see how she was, what she'd done that day -- and to fret about his own job (it was stupid, and nerve-wracking). She was always sympathetic. He was just shy, like her -- she was always scared to death in front of a camera. . . .
It did him so much good to talk to her, Joe never realized that all her good news (She'd be working once again with Howard Hawks. . . . She'd met an agent, a big-time agent -- Charley Feldman -- he came to see her, himself! . . . They were talking about her for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!) . . . every good thing that happened was carrying her farther from the life he saw for them. The life he thought she saw, too.
"She's a plain kid," Joe told his pal Jimmy Cannon. "She'd give up the business if I asked her. She'd quit the movies in a minute. It means nothing to her."
Last week in May, she arrived in New York, and that's where she fetched Joe into the boat forever. It was like life came back to him -- and appetite, excitement, fun. Even within his network of pals, no one had ever seen him like this. Jesus! Daig was grinnin' all the time!
He'd had such a rotten month -- with that little pissy job. He knew it should have been easy. There was a pregame warm-up show -- five minutes at most. And then after the games, fifteen minutes more: just an interview with one of the guys, five or six questions (the writers would have them all written out), then give the final score again, and goodbye. . . . It should have been a walk in the park. But it ate him up. He knew he looked bad.
Even the brevity of it was a problem. It was like a whole day leading up to one at-bat. And then you got up, there were only two pitches (that you never saw before, and neither one worth a shit) . . . how could you hit 'em out of the park like that? He'd show up every day -- every hair in place, beautiful suit, perfect shirt, gorgeous tie, pants creased, shoes shined -- and wait (That was another problem: wait, wait, wait! What's he supposed to do? Chat?) . . . while something got screwed up. He'd stand in front of the camera, waiting ten minutes, stiffer every minute (he could feel it in his back) . . . twenty times, he'd unbutton his coat, cram his shirtfront back into his pants, hold the microphone in front of him again, then look down -- his fuckin' shirt was wrinkled! . . . Then, he'd look up again. Where's the goddamn CUE CARDS? One time, he threw a total fit, roaring curses -- he refused to go on -- because the producer lost the first cue card. They calmed him down in the nick of time -- wrote out a new card in block capitals:
HI, I'M JOE DIMAGGIO.
WELCOME TO THE JOE DIMAGGIO SHOW.
For contract purposes, it was called The Buitoni Show. That was the sponsor, the big pasta company. That was another problem. Joe liked the guys from Buitoni fine. They treated him with total respect. And their checks were good. But still, he wasn't thrilled about being the front man for an all-Dago band. He'd sit down in a restaurant, and smart-ass fans would start making jokes: how come he wasn't eating Buitoni macaroni? . . . And then there was the hokey end they wrote for the interviews. They'd bring out a bowl of spaghetti -- like Joe and the guy he was talking to were going to chow down, after the game. One time, he had Jerry Coleman on the show -- they bring out the big, steaming dish of spaghetti . . . and Joe's supposed to wind it up by asking Coleman, "How's the spaghetti?"
Coleman's supposed to say it's good -- "Great!" And that's that. But he says, "How do I know, Joe? I haven't tasted it yet."
Then what the hell was Joe supposed to say? . . . After the show, he was furious at Coleman. Sonofabitch showed him up!
It was like being in a slump all year. Couldn't get his timing . . . couldn't just hit it . . . and spending every night with the worry that always made it worse. He'd go out at night, have some belts to unwind, and the pal he was with would tell him he was fine -- all he had to do was relax. That was like a slump, too: same meaningless advice. "Just go up there and be yourself! . . ." What the hell did they know about it?
But when Marilyn came, she told him he looked wonderful. And he was so cow-eyed -- from her he half-believed it. (She was the one who looked perfect -- to him.) And, after all, this was the kind of thing she did know about. The way the camera stared at you, like a million eyes in one, when you knew everything about you was wrong. Yes, she did understand. . . . She told him about the tricks she'd learned -- the breathing lessons she received from her coach (Natasha. Oh, she was brilliant!) . . . Joe even said he'd try those, too.
He would've stood on his head if she'd told him to -- or tried, or said he would someday . . . if she'd just stay with him. All his troubles disappeared. He took her around to his New York haunts. Dinner at the Colony, and next night, Le Pavillion . . . and she loved them. She must have said five times, there wasn't anything like this -- nothing close -- in Los Angeles. She hated L.A. . . . and New York loved her.
Everywhere they went, she stopped the show. Or she and Joe did. There was no one who didn't look, and whisper to friends, or poke a companion so he could look, too. And no one who didn't start to smile, the minute they saw them -- those two looked so . . . perfect! There were plenty who came over for autographs (natch). But Joe even smiled through that. Of course, he'd sign -- glad to -- "But don't you really want her . . . ?"
The papers fell into the love-fest, too -- couldn't get enough of this dream couple. Mr. and Miss America! . . . Or maybe it was Mrs. (There were immediate rumors that wedding bells were in the offing -- or maybe they'd already tolled! Winchell, for one, insisted that he had information . . . about Mr. and Mrs. DiMaggio.) Marilyn, who was always thrilled by publicity, reveled in the excitement of this. Sure, she was (or she was getting to be) a big deal in Hollywood. But this was amazing! There was her photo -- their photo -- in a dozen papers, all in the same day. She couldn't understand why Joe was so suspicious about that. He warned her repeatedly to watch out for the writers -- and watch what she said around them. It was like he didn't want her to enjoy herself . . . and just forget. But she knew he was only trying to protect her. He was so sweet. He rented them two rooms at the Drake -- made a big show about that -- in case anybody asked. (They did.)
There was in New York's glee an element of civic ratification. Competition with "The Coast" -- Tinseltown in particular -- hadn't heated up to a fever yet. But still it was satisfying that their hero (forget where he was born -- wasn't he always the Yankee Clipper?) . . . had sallied forth from his Manhattan cave and clubbed to (radiantly happy) submission this golden girl of Hollywood. It was as good as the Yankees dashing the hopes of the Red Sox again. (Better! Who gave a shit about dowdy old Boston?) . . . And, of course, being New Yorkers, both writers and readers assumed that anything that happened in New York had happened for America, once and for all. "They are folk idols," Jimmy Cannon announced, "Marilyn and Joe, a whole country's pets."
That wasn't quite how Joe would have said it -- he wasn't interested in being the national poodle. But, still, he couldn't argue the point. With the Hero Machine artillery firing barrels of ink from both coasts (Photoplay shot first, among the monthly cannoneers -- with "He's Her JOE! The Romantic Score on the Pin-up Girl and the Yankee Clipper.") . . . the nation as a whole was soon splattered. Seemed like a dozen times a day, now, Joe had to "no comment" some writer or columnist, or send Georgie out to tell the shutterbugs to back off. And not just through that first visit -- but weekends, all through June and July -- she'd fly down from Buffalo, Friday night, when her shooting was done. DiMaggio steadfastly refused to discuss Miss M. in print. Except to deny they were married (when he'd settle for the blandly suggestive demurral: "No. We're just good friends.").
But what was also suggestive was, he wasn't hiding her -- or hiding himself anymore. He took her happily to Yankee Stadium where, to the delight of the sporting press, she coached him in the interview studio in the basement tunnel behind the Yankee dugout. Before the games, she'd wander down to the box seats, and all the young Yankees would flock to the railing to meet her, and get her autograph. (That part, Joe wasn't happy about: did they have to crowd her like that? Jesus! Why didn't they just climb in her lap?)
And the surest sign of his newfound ease: he took her to the cannoneers' HQ -- what Red Smith used to call the Mother Lodge -- after dinner, they'd show up at Toots Shor's saloon. Joe had finally forgiven Toots, and resumed his place on the banquette in the corner. What the hell, it was only a fight about broads -- and Dorothy -- that was all over now. Joe didn't have any more problems on that subject. In fact, he took a positive delight in showing Toots how he'd worked out his worries. (Who's moonin' now?)
And for his part, Toots was so abjectly grateful that the Big Guy had come back (God, Toots cried like a baby when Joe got mad, it was like losing a son) . . . he woulda thrown everybody else on the street, locked the doors -- leave the crumb bums on the curb! -- if Joe and his girl wanted the joint to themselves. But that was the beauty part. Joe didn't want anything special. That's why Tootsie had to love him! Joe walks in with a broad -- she's so gorgeous a train would stop . . . and says he don't want to disturb anybody. That is a champion with class!
Of course, in the event, what happened was, they walked in and the place was jolted -- bigger than Dempsey, Sinatra and Gleason, and Joe Louis all rolled into one -- the place went electric, like everybody found a plug and stuck their fingers in, and you could feel the lights flicker and come on brighter. Then the noise: like the air had come out of them all at once -- whhouff -- and then a rumbling male approbation (the sound at the Garden when a champ lands a big hook to the head), louder and louder, as they're shouting, "It's Dago! Hey, Joe! There he is, the Clipper!" And then they came over -- a parade to the corner: "You look great, Daig! Y'gonna introduce me?"
The funny part was, Joe had told her that's where they could go to get away from the columnists, photographers, fans -- where they wouldn't be bothered. But she loved it anyway. And it was funny. Joe was laughing. He looked so happy. All these strange, loud, adoring men, clapping him on the back like he'd just won the big game. "Joe! You look great! . . ." He'd shrug, and say through his grin: "I'm just with her."
For Joe, in this happiness, there was more than an element of ratification. Maybe he would always be a stiff on TV. Maybe center field now belonged to Mantle -- and (despite the mistakes that Joe had pointed out to Marilyn that afternoon) maybe the rockhead would do fine. Maybe the Yanks (in first place, and coasting) could even be champions without the Dago. . . . But with this girl on his arm, Joe was, once again, the Big Guy in the Hero Game. Without another word said -- from her, or him. And didn't matter what they did! Simply, in her person, she affirmed him -- made him once again what he was (what he thought he'd lost) . . . He loved what he was in her eyes -- and in the eyes of the world, with her. He was Joe DiMaggio again.
Click here for next excerpt.
From JOE DIMAGGIO by Richard Ben Cramer. Copyright ® 2000 by Richard Ben Cramer. Reprinted by persmission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Richard Ben Cramer is the author of the bestselling What It Takes: The Way to the White House, which was acclaimed as one of the finest books ever written on American politics. His journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Time and Newsweek. His dispatches from the Middle East for the Philadelphia Inquirer won the Pultizer Prize for International Reporting in 1979. with his wife and daughter, he lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore. | |
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ALSO SEE
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DiMaggio book: Prologue and Mantle arrives
DiMaggio book: Fits and starts for a legend
DiMaggio book: Joe departs after the '51 World Series
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 Richard Ben Cramer says Joe DiMaggio was a nearly impossible subject to write about.
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Richard Ben Cramer talks about DiMaggio being a cultural icon.
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Richard Ben Cramer says DiMaggio was a product of his own fame.
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DiMaggio became America's guest for over 60 years, says Richard Ben Cramer..
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