To the surprise of Darryl F. Zanuck, Marilyn’s bit parts and cameo roles brought her a flood of fan mail—over three thousand letters each week. But it was when she made her entrance into the 1951 20th Century-Fox sales convention that she crossed the threshold of stardom.
The sales and publicity forces had gathered in the Café de Paris to mingle over cocktails with Fox executives and the studio’s stable of stars—Tyrone Power, Betty Grable, Gregory Peck, June Haver, Susan Hayward. But the salespeople were looking out of the corner of their eyes for Marilyn Monroe.
She made a calculated late entrance, and all eyes were riveted on her as she paused in the doorway, breathtaking in a strapless black cocktail gown. The room became silent, and in that hushed moment the president of 20th Century-Fox, Spyros Skouras, felt the vibrations and heard the melody of cash-register bells. Skouras insisted that Marilyn sit next to him at the executive table. Zanuck issued orders the next day that Marilyn Monroe be given the star treatment. Philippe Halsman photographed her for Life, and she soon appeared in Look, Colliers, and Quick as Hollywood’s new anatomic bombshell.
Earlier in the year, Marilyn had been loaned out to RKO to play a supporting role in an adaptation of Clifford Odets’s play Clash by Night. Starring Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan, the film was directed by the formidable Fritz Lang. Natasha Lytess recalled that Lang made Marilyn so nervous that she’d throw up before each scene and red blotches blossomed on her face and neck. Lang hadn’t wanted Lytess on the set, but Marilyn insisted. “She fought Lang to have me there,” Lytess remembered. “I was glued to her, working in her tiny dressing room all day long. She was so nervous, she missed some of her lines, and then Lang took her on like a madman.” Marilyn was shivering with fright, and only her iron will and determination to succeed got her from the dressing room to the bright lights in front of the camera.
When Clash by Night was released in 1952, Marilyn received favorable notices. In the New York World-Telegram Alton Cook proclaimed, “Marilyn Monroe is a forceful actress, a gifted new star, worthy of all that fantastic press pageantry. Her role is not very big, but she makes it dominant.”
Having seen the rough cut of Clash by Night, Zanuck tested Marilyn for the lead in Don’t Bother to Knock. “I didn’t think she was ready for so demanding a role,” Lytess stated, “but she made such a beautiful test that even Zanuck had to write her a glowing note.”
Marilyn played a psychotic baby-sitter who threatens to kill her bratty ward at a downtown New York City hotel, and her career could have been easily scuttled by this mediocre melodrama. But from her first appearance through the revolving door of the hotel, there was something captivating about her that sailed high above the murky script. There were intricate prisms of nuance to her portrayal of a psychotic woman who has been emotionally broken by tragic loss.
But just as Fox was preparing to release Marilyn’s starring vehicle, the executive offices received the news that the photograph of the entrancing nude popularized on the widely circulated calendars of the Baumgarth Company was a photo of their new star. Marilyn was summoned to the front office by Harry Brand, head of publicity, who demanded to know if the story was true. When Marilyn admitted it was, Brand screamed, “How could you do such a thing! Don’t you know how offensive this is to the public? This could ruin your career if it comes out, don’t you know that?”
“Well,” Marilyn began to sob, “I needed the money, and I di-didn’t think I’d ever be identified.”
“There’s only one thing to do,” Brand exclaimed. “Deny it! You never posed for any calendars, understand! Just stick to your story and we may get out of the woods!”
As Brand slammed the door behind her, Marilyn began to panic. She didn’t want to lie, nor did she want to lose her career. Telephoning Sidney Skolsky to ask his advice, she sobbed, “I’m so mixed up and scared, Sidney. I don’t really feel ashamed. I didn’t do anything so b-bad, did I? I needed the money to get my car back. I wouldn’t have done it if it was bad. They’re trying to make me feel ashamed but I’m not. What should I do?”
“Just tell everybody what you just told me,” Sidney advised, “and you’ve solved your problem.”
Marilyn disclosed the simple truth to UPI reporter Aline Mosby, and the story broke on March 13, 1952. It was picked up by almost every newspaper in the United States. To Brand’s amazement, no civic, pious, or public guardian of morality denounced the Monroe calendar. It was generally perceived as a lovely photograph of a naked Venus, and those who may have found it immodest didn’t find it offensive. Fox’s publicity department was deluged by requests for a copy of the calendar, and crowds stood in line to see the naked Venus perform in RKO’s Clash by Night. Marilyn soon began to receive star billing above Barbara Stanwyck on the theater marquees.
“Success came to me in a rush,” Marilyn said. “It surprised my employers much more than it did me…. I knew what I had known when I was thirteen and walked along the sea edge in a bathing suit for the first time. I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else. The public was the only family, the only Prince Charming and the only home I had ever dreamed of.”
She soon found her Prince Charming.
“Miss Monroe, this is Joe DiMaggio,” said David March, a friend of hers and DiMaggio’s who had set up a blind dinner date at the Villa Nova on the Sunset Strip.
“I’m glad to meet you,” DiMaggio said with a warm smile.
Marilyn recalled that she thought she was going to meet “a loud, sporty fellow.” Instead she found herself smiling at a reserved gentleman in a gray suit, with a gray tie and a sprinkle of gray in his hair. “We smiled and sat down next to each other at the table,” Marilyn remembered, “and hardly said two words to one another. There was no denying I felt attracted, but I couldn’t figure out by what. Somehow he was exciting. The excitement was in his eyes. They were sharp and alert.”
When it was time to leave the restaurant, DiMaggio turned to Marilyn and explained that he was just a visitor in Hollywood and didn’t have a car. “Would you mind dropping me at my hotel?” he asked. As she drove DiMaggio to the Hollywood Knickerbocker, Marilyn began to get anxious when she realized that Joe DiMaggio might be stepping out of her life when they arrived, and she’d never know what had attracted her to him. She slowed her car to a crawl as the hotel came into view, and Joe spoke up just in time.
“I don’t feel like turning in,” he said. “Would you mind driving around a little while?” We rode around for three hours. I had never seen a baseball game, and I really didn’t know what it was exactly that Mr. DiMaggio did. 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 in New York, and he always worried when he went out with a girl in Hollywood. 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 George Solotaire who ran interference for him and pried the girl loose.
“Is Mr. Solotaire in Hollywood 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 will have use for Mr. Solotaire’s services on this trip,” he replied.
My heart jumped, and I felt full of happiness. Something was starting between Mr. DiMaggio and me.
During the filming of Monkey Business, which costarred Cary Grant, Marilyn began suffering abdominal pains and was running a fever. Diagnosed with appendicitis, Marilyn checked into Cedars of Lebanon Hospital on April 28, 1952, to have her appendix removed. In the operating room the surgeon was amazed to find a handwritten note taped to her abdomen:
Dear Dr. Rabwin,
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.
For God’s sake Dear Doctor—No ovaries removed!
Thanking you with all my heart.
Marilyn Monroe
Mobbed by the press when she left the hospital several days later, she relied on Whitey Snyder to make her look the picture of health. It was then that she exacted Whitey’s promise to make her up for her funeral, if she should die.
In May she recuperated at her new apartment on the corner of Doheny Drive and Cynthia Street, where DiMaggio was a frequent visitor. The press was soon on to the budding romance between two of America’s most publicized celebrities. It was a match made in movie-mogul heaven, and Zanuck didn’t hesitate to renew Marilyn’s option, which raised her salary to $750 a week—one of the lowest salaries paid to an important star. Marilyn was already scheduled to film Niagara with Joseph Cotten, and it was announced on her birthday that she would have the plum role of Lorelie Lee in the musical comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Originally planned for Betty Grable, the part went to Marilyn because of her increasing box-office draw.
On her way to the Niagara location in Buffalo, Marilyn visited Joe DiMaggio in Manhattan, sparking rumors of their romance. But at the time he wasn’t Marilyn’s only romantic interest. She was also having an affair with Nico Minardos, a young Greek actor she had met at Fox, and she frequently saw Bob Slatzer. When Marilyn flew to the Niagara location, she called Slatzer and suggested he meet her. When he arrived, he found that Marilyn had arranged accommodations for him in the choicest room at the hotel—the one next to hers.
After celebrating their reunion with several glasses of champagne, Slatzer recalls Marilyn giggling, “Wouldn’t this be a wonderful place to get married? We wouldn’t have to go to Niagara for our honeymoon because we’re already here!” Very much aware of her romance with DiMaggio, Slatzer wondered if it was just the bubbles talking. After several more glasses of champagne, they decided to go ahead with the honeymoon, and talk about marriage later.
When Niagara finished filming, Slatzer and DiMaggio both followed Marilyn back to Hollywood. “I saw Marilyn as much as DiMaggio did,” Slatzer commented. “When he was out of town I saw her practically every night. Sometime I’d be at the apartment when DiMaggio would phone, and there were times when I would call late at night and DiMaggio would be there—then she’d call back sometimes at three o’clock in the morning, and say, ‘Bob, I can talk now.’”
Dorothy Kilgallen picked up on Marilyn’s affair with Slatzer, and wrote in her column of August 16, 1952, “A dark horse in the Marilyn Monroe romance derby is Bob Slatzer, former Columbus, Ohio, literary critic. He’s been wooing her by phone and mail, and improving her mind with gifts of the world’s greatest books.”
Three weeks later, Kilgallen invited Slatzer to do a guest column about Marilyn, and on September 12 his column appeared under Kilgallen’s “Voice of Broadway” byline. Slatzer wrote of supplying Marilyn with literary classics in her quest for knowledge. Confidential followed up with a cover story on Slatzer’s romance with Marilyn. “DiMaggio was jealous,” Slatzer said, “and Marilyn told me she couldn’t see any way she could be happy with him, because he was always so jealous. Not only over me—he would become jealous of anyone she paid attention to. If someone asked for an autograph or took her picture, he’d get bent all out of shape and give her hell. Back in the fall of 1952, I’d never have thought she’d marry him.”
Slatzer claims she decided to marry him instead.
After a long night of talk and champagne, Slatzer and Marilyn headed for Rosarita Beach, just south of the Mexican border. Stopping at the Foreign Club in Tijuana for a few more drinks, they suddenly decided to get married. Finding a lawyer who performed marriages, they were told to come back in an hour. On the Avenida, they encountered Kid Chissell, who had loaned Slatzer and Marilyn his car on their first date in 1946.
“It was pure chance,” Chissell said. “I was down in Tijuana with an old navy buddy, and I saw Bob and Marilyn coming out of a shop. I gave him a shove and he swung around, looking mad. When they realized who I was, we all laughed, and they said, would I be their witness at the wedding?”
Chissell recalled that Marilyn wanted to visit a church before the ceremony, and they went to a nearby Catholic church off the main street. He remembered seeing Marilyn cover her head with her sweater and light a candle near the altar. Afterward they went to the lawyer’s office, filled out the forms, and were married.
On the way back from the border, the champagne bubbles began to burst. Marilyn was having second thoughts. When Slatzer turned the car radio on to hear some music, there was Joe DiMaggio announcing the World Series, and Marilyn began to cry. When they got back to Hollywood, Marilyn decided she had made a mistake. The next day they returned to Tijuana and bribed the lawyer to tear up the marriage certificate, which hadn’t yet been officially filed. Bob and Marilyn had been married on Saturday, October 4, 1952. By Monday the marriage had ended. Actress Terry Moore, who knew Marilyn well during her years at Fox, stated, “I remember very well her being excited about going out with Bob. She wanted so much to have culture, and she respected Bob because he was well-read. She did tell me she had married him, right after they did it.” Interviewed by Anthony Summers in 1982, Kid Chissell also confirmed his involvement as a witness on that wedding day.
By the end of 1952, Marilyn had become the most publicized star in Hollywood and was receiving over five thousand fan letters a week. She shared top billing with Jane Russell in one of the major musicals of the fifties, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Her option was renewed and her salary increased. But she wasn’t happy: “I was making more money a week than I had once been able to make in six months. I had clothes, fame, money, a future, all the publicity I could dream of. I even had a few friends. And there was always a romance in the air. But instead of being happy over all these fairy tale things that had happened to me, I grew depressed and finally desperate. My life suddenly seemed as wrong and unbearable to me as it had in the days of my early despairs.”
She attended the studio’s annual Christmas party and put on a smiling face. Afterward, she left the festivities with nothing to do but return to her empty Doheny apartment. DiMaggio had said he was going to spend the holidays in San Francisco with his family, and she hoped he might call. When she entered her apartment, she was surprised to see a Christmas tree and a large cardboard sign—MERRY CHRISTMAS TO MARILYN. Joe was sitting in a chair in the corner. “It’s the first time in my life anyone ever gave me a Christmas tree,” Marilyn later remarked to Sidney Skolsky. “I was so happy, I cried.”
How to Marry a Millionaire costarred Marilyn, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall. Nunnally Johnson, who tailored the script for Marilyn, said, “It was the first time she had a chance to act in a role that was somewhat like she really was, and the first time anybody liked Marilyn for herself in a picture. She herself diagnosed the reason for that very shrewdly. She said that this was the only picture she’d been in, in which she had a measure of modesty—not physical modesty, but modesty about her own attractiveness.”
Director Jean Negulesco observed, “She may have been late and difficult at times, but in the end I adored her because she was a pure child who had this ‘something’ that God gave her, that we still can’t define or understand. It’s the thing that made her a star. We did not know whether she’d been good or bad, and then when we put the picture together there was one person on that screen who was a great actress—Marilyn.”
Shortly after her twenty-seventh birthday, Marilyn and Jane Russell, her costar in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, placed their imprints in the cement of the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre forecourt. The gala event took place not far from the spot where eight-year-old Norma Jeane had once tried to fit her shoes into the prints of the stars. DiMaggio was conspicuously absent. He hated the Hollywood hoopla and abhorred the way Marilyn flaunted her “sexual vibrations.” He refused to attend the ceremonies at Grauman’s, the Photoplay Awards when Marilyn was named “Fastest Rising Star,” and the glittering premiere of How to Marry a Millionaire. Jealous of any rivals for Marilyn’s attention, DiMaggio was often seething with anger beneath his image of the strong, silent hero of American baseball legend. Commenting on his temper, Natasha Lytess observed, “All during these months of 1952 and 1953, Marilyn would phone me day and night, sometimes in tears, complaining about the way he misused her.”
During the filming of River of No Return, Marilyn began having conflicts with her director, Otto Preminger. Filmed in the wilds of the Canadian Rockies, the picture required scenes of a raft caught in the rapids of a raging river. Preminger insisted that Marilyn do the perilous scenes herself, and there were a series of accidents in which Marilyn hurt her leg. Perhaps exaggerating the extent of her injuries, the press painted the director as a sadist, and DiMaggio rallied to Marilyn’s defense. DiMaggio arrived at the location accompanied by a doctor, and Preminger became uncharacteristically subdued in the presence of “the slugger.” DiMaggio and Marilyn vanished for a weekend, and rumors began spreading of a secret marriage.
When Marilyn returned to Hollywood, Joe virtually moved into what was referred to in the press as their Doheny “love nest.” Marilyn learned to cook spaghetti the way Joe’s mother did, and she tried to influence him to read the classics. Joe preferred television. There were visits to the DiMaggio family home on Beach Street in San Francisco, where Joe’s sister Marie lived. There were fogbound days when Marilyn would bundle up in a leather jacket and jeans and go surf fishing with him up the coast.
During the years of Marilyn’s sudden fame, she had kept in touch with Aunt Grace. It was a difficult time in the Goddards’ life. Because both Doc and Grace Goddard had become confirmed alcoholics, the visits were painful. Much of Marilyn’s success was lost on Grace, who was often incoherent. In October 1953, Grace died from an overdose of barbiturates. She was buried in the Westwood Village Mortuary, not far from Aunt Ana.
Toward the end of 1953, Marilyn was scheduled to begin filming Pink Tights, costarring Frank Sinatra, but neither Joe nor Marilyn liked the script. Marilyn thought her role stupid and ill-motivated, and Joe thought her part risqué. Zanuck demanded that Marilyn fulfill her contractual obligation, but Marilyn and Joe disappeared. Fox suspended Marilyn on January 5, 1954, for failing to appear for work. When the press discovered that Joe and Marilyn were in San Francisco, the DiMaggio family home became the scene of media frenzy. Marilyn recalled Joe’s anger.
“I wonder if I can take all your crazy publicity?” Joe said.
“It’s part of my career,” I said. “Do you want me to hide in a basement?”
“We’ll see how it works out,” he said. “You’re having all this trouble with the studio and not working, so why don’t we get married now?”
I had never planned on or dreamed about becoming the wife of a great man. Any more than Joe had ever thought about marrying a woman who seemed eighty percent publicity. The truth is that we were very much alike. My publicity, like Joe’s greatness, was something on the outside. It had nothing to do with what we actually were.
On January 14, 1954, the private marriage ceremony took place in the chambers of San Francisco Judge Charles Peery. The marriage would last less than nine months.