IN THE SPRING OF 1953, Michael Chekhov, Marilyn Monroe’s most recent drama coach, introduced her to Lotte Goslar, a mime and movement teacher from Dresden, Germany, who conducted private and group classes at the Turnabout Theatre in Hollywood, where she also performed. Chekhov thought Marilyn could benefit from taking Goslar’s course. Goslar placed her in a class with ten other students and tutored her individually as well, working with her on River of No Return and on many of her subsequent films. In addition to being an instructor, Goslar took on the twin roles of friend and confidante.
“Marilyn seemed to enjoy my class,” said Goslar. “She wore no makeup, only a touch of lipstick. She was usually late but always managed to show up. She had considerable ability and was serious about her craft, but she was insecure with regard to her skill and even regarding her beauty. She didn’t think she was pretty and needed constant reassurance. She was eager to learn and grateful whenever anyone took the trouble to help her develop her talent. She also had a wonderful little giggle, and when she didn’t know what to say, she giggled. Michael Chekhov had recommended that she read The Thinking Body, an important book on movement by Mabel Elsworth Todd, and she carried it with her at all times. One evening after class, I went for coffee with her. She revealed to me what she’d previously told Michael, that she hoped to become a bona fide actress, not a dilettante or even a so-called Hollywood star. ‘Blond hair and breasts,’ she said, ‘that’s how I started. I couldn’t act.’ Now she wanted to learn how to express her inner feelings through gestures and body movement. I assured her I would do my utmost to teach her how to use her body as an instrument of expression as well as a thing of beauty.”
Goslar recalled being introduced to Joe DiMaggio following one of the group sessions, which met twice weekly. “He would sometimes collect Marilyn after class,” said Goslar. “On one occasion, my car had broken down so Marilyn offered to have DiMaggio drive me home when he picked her up. She told me he’d just returned from Washington, DC, having been a guest at a White House dinner party given by President Dwight Eisenhower. Joe struck me as soft spoken and polite, not what I expected of a former baseball player, though Marilyn let me know he wasn’t always that gentle. She later told me he was prone to insane bouts of jealousy, such as the time they bumped into her onetime lover at a party, and DiMaggio ‘accidentally on purpose’ spilled a drink on him and then, an hour later, ‘accidentally’ stepped on his foot. Still, there was a certain mystique about the ballplayer, a quality Marilyn shared. It set them apart as a couple. They were both extremely good-looking. He didn’t have traditional movie star good looks, but he had a certain masculine quality that stood out, a kind of craggy Gary Cooper–like appearance that can only be described as sexy. They had much in common, but there were also major differences. For one thing, DiMaggio was always punctual, and Marilyn was never on time. Except for his fits of jealousy, he appeared to be very sure of himself, Marilyn much less so. He was interested in Marilyn but not in her career, other than to insist that everyone in Hollywood was corrupt and out to use her. He completely underestimated the degree to which Marilyn valued her career. She defined herself as an actress. She and Joe had different priorities and interests. He’d had his fill of public adoration, and she pursued it with a passion. He didn’t like books, and she was a compulsive reader. He seemed set in his ways, whereas Marilyn constantly altered her persona in an effort to expand her vistas. All in all, I wouldn’t say it was a match made in heaven, though they appeared to be bonded in some curious, indefinable fashion.”
Following her return to Los Angeles in the fall of 1953, Marilyn resumed classes with Goslar. She and DiMaggio were living together at the apartment on North Doheny. In the early morning, while Marilyn luxuriated in her bathtub, Joe would buy coffee and doughnuts at a local bakery and meet up with Whitey Snyder, who would return home with Joe to share breakfast with the couple.
Whitey remembered that when Joe wasn’t around, Marilyn would listen to and sing along with Les Brown’s popular recording of a song (written by Ben Homer and Alan Courtney, published in 1941) called “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio,” the lyrics of which included the refrain “He’ll live in baseball’s Hall of Fame / He got there blow by blow / Our kids will tell their kids his name / Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio.”
Whitey asked Marilyn if she’d ever performed her little number for Joe, and she said she hadn’t. She thought it might offend him. “No it won’t,” responded Snyder. “He’ll appreciate it.” So after breakfast one morning, with Whitey Snyder present, Marilyn played the record and went into her song-and-dance routine. “Joe got a big bang out of it,” said Whitey. “He couldn’t stop laughing. It really was cute. Marilyn in one of her half dozen terry cloth robes doing this jig and singing along with the recording. I never forgot that scene of joy.”
Whitey Snyder acknowledged Marilyn’s comedic skills. “She was a wonderful mimic and very funny, a bit on the risqué side,” he said. “Discussing her romance with Joe DiMaggio, she once described herself as ‘the ballplayer’s ball player.’ And I recall Truman Capote telling me about a conversation he had with Marilyn during which he admitted to her he’d gone to bed with actor Errol Flynn. ‘Flynn zigzags,’ answered Marilyn. ‘He’s bisexual.’ She mentioned a Hollywood party she attended at which Flynn played ‘You Are My Sunshine’ on the piano with his penis. She then added that had it been Joe DiMaggio’s penis, he probably would’ve played something a lot more substantial.”
Lotte Goslar remembered a less humorous moment. Marilyn called one night and asked her to come over. She sounded concerned. Whitey Snyder and Joe DiMaggio were both there with Marilyn when Goslar arrived. So was Sidney Skolsky. They were later joined by DiMaggio’s attorney Loyd Wright, currently working for Monroe as well. Riding the success of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, Marilyn had expected to be offered a role in The Egyptian, scheduled to start shooting in early 1954. “As Marilyn explained it that evening, not only had Darryl Zanuck bypassed her for that film, the role he offered her was that of a prim, angrily virtuous schoolteacher who becomes a ‘hoochy-koochy’ saloon dancer in a motion picture called The Girl in Pink Tights, costarring Frank Sinatra.” The film was a remake of a 1947 Betty Grable picture called Mother Wore Tights.
“The script, which the studio at first refused to send her, was full of breathy suggestive lines. Marilyn wrote the word ‘trash’ across the title page and sent it back. The studio’s jocular in-house response was, ‘Well, that never stopped her before.’ Marilyn notified Twentieth Century–Fox that she had no intention of reporting for the first day of rehearsals on December 15, eliciting a predictable reply from Zanuck reminding her that she was under contract and had no choice in the matter. If she refused the role, she risked being placed on suspension and possibly having her contract terminated.
“The question was what to do? Should Marilyn simply refuse to accept the role and risk everything, or should she agree to appear in the movie and use it as a bargaining chip for a future film of her choice and a more lucrative contract? Joe DiMaggio had no intention of allowing her to appear in yet another film that exploited her sexuality. ‘You have to play hardball with those bastards if you want to win,’ he remarked. He said he received demeaning endorsement offers all the time, most recently from a men’s hair-coloring firm and another from a denture cream manufacturer, and he routinely turned them down. He advised Marilyn to do the same. Sidney Skolsky agreed. ‘It’s called show business,’ he pointed out, ‘with the emphasis on business. Tell them to go fuck themselves.’
“The Pink Tights offer was a slap in the face, a debasement,” said Goslar, “the more so because Marilyn had become one of the highest grossing and most popular actresses in the industry. She was caught in the cruel and relentless treadmill of fame and stardom. She had so much more to offer than her looks. I think it was earlier that year the Italian film industry gave her an award for one of her pictures. I don’t recall which one. I happened to be at the ceremony in Hollywood, and when they announced Marilyn’s name, Anna Magnani, seated in the audience, shouted ‘Putana!’—whore. Hollywood refused to grant her the respect she deserved. And that more than anything is what she sought.”
Lotte Goslar advised Marilyn to turn down the film and hold out for a more challenging role. Loyd Wright felt that while they would probably suspend Marilyn, they would just as quickly reinstate her. Whitey Snyder made it unanimous. “Why don’t you and Joe get married,” he said, “and see what happens? I guarantee Zanuck will come crawling.”
Zanuck came crawling well before Joe and Marilyn became husband and wife. He dispatched members of his staff to Doheny Drive to try to convince Marilyn to sign on for Pink Tights. An irate Joe DiMaggio intercepted Zanuck’s emissaries at the front door. Under no circumstances, he informed them, would Marilyn do the film. That was her final decision.
• • •
Although Twentieth Century–Fox didn’t officially suspend Marilyn until early January, both she and DiMaggio realized the letter would arrive and that her weekly payroll checks would stop coming. Joe told her she needn’t worry—they would get married, and he would take care of her. They could live in the house on Beach Street in San Francisco, have a boatload of babies, and grow old together. In fact, he was prepared to fly with her to Reno and get married immediately. In September 1953 she agreed to become Joe’s wife, but she wasn’t ready to set a date.
“As much as she loved him—and she did love him—Marilyn didn’t seem overjoyed at the prospect of becoming Mrs. DiMaggio,” said Lotte Goslar. “She foresaw problems. She realized he had contempt for Hollywood and everything related to it, and while she herself disliked aspects of her profession, she knew full well she couldn’t just walk away from it and become a full-time housewife. As she put it, ‘I’m not Dorothy Arnold,’ a reference to his first wife, who did just that. And that’s what Joe wanted. He wanted her to become his housewife, and it just wasn’t going to happen, not the way he wanted it and certainly not without a number of concessions on both sides. And neither of them was very willing to compromise. He convinced himself that it was his responsibility to save her from a lifetime of servitude to the devils that controlled the evil empire called Hollywood. He wanted as little to do with Hollywood as possible.
“In early November, for example, DiMaggio refused to escort Marilyn to the Los Angeles premiere of How to Marry a Millionaire. Marilyn reacted by demanding that he remove his clothes from her apartment, but he apologized, and once again, as she’d done so often, she forgave him. As retribution, however, she made him take her to the Hollywood opening of the play Call Me Madam. And after the play, he treated her to a late supper at Chasen’s. You might say they were kindred spirits with opposing points of view.”
On November 25, Joe’s thirty-ninth birthday, Marilyn gave him a gold medallion upon which she had ordered a jeweler to inscribe a line from The Little Prince, the fable by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “True love is visible not to the eye but to the heart for eyes may be deceived.” “I like it,” said DiMaggio, “but what the hell does it mean?”
Joe and Marilyn traveled to San Francisco together to spend Thanksgiving with his family and friends. They had their holiday meal at Joe’s house and were joined by (among others) Frank “Lefty” O’Doul, his former manager with the San Francisco Seals. O’Doul had been a star outfielder during the 1920s and 1930s; his .349 lifetime batting average remains the fourth best in baseball history—and 24 points higher than DiMaggio’s. Reno Barsocchini, a former bartender at the DiMaggio family restaurant, was there too. Lefty and Reno were like family to DiMaggio; both had opened North Beach bistros of their own. Reno’s establishment, on Post Street next door to the Ambassador Health Club, had become Joe’s West Coast version of Toots Shor’s.
After carving the turkey, which had been prepared by Marie, Joe announced that he and Marilyn were planning to tie the knot. Reno stood and raised his glass of wine. “Here’s to Joe and Marilyn,” he said. “At least there’ll be one looker in the DiMaggio household.” After dinner, “the looker” helped Marie with the dishes. When an Associated Press reporter, having heard of the possible nuptials, asked Marilyn if she intended to get married to the Yankee Clipper, she said, “It could be. I intend to remain in pictures, but I’ll eventually become a housewife, too.”
Back in Los Angeles, following Thanksgiving, Marilyn and Joe had brunch with Inez Melson, Monroe’s new business manager. DiMaggio had given Inez his stamp of approval, largely because Melson shared his negative opinion of Natasha Lytess. In any event, she was undoubtedly preferable to Doc Goddard, who’d fulfilled the same function until Melson took over. Not that Doc had been dishonest, but he was, after all, the man who’d sexually abused Marilyn as a child, although that story too seemed to change with every telling.
Soon after assuming her new position, Inez convinced Marilyn to appoint her as Gladys Baker’s guardian. As such, she made frequent trips to visit Marilyn’s mother at Rockhaven and made certain her needs were met. One day, the three of them—Monroe, DiMaggio, and Melson—set out on a drive to Rockhaven to spend the afternoon with Gladys. As Joe later reported to George Solotaire, “Mrs. Baker seemed quite pleased to see her daughter and even more pleased when Marilyn told her we were going to be married. On the other hand, she didn’t seem to remember that Marilyn had been married once before.”
Lotte Goslar remembered visiting Joe and Marilyn at home during this period. “Marilyn seemed unusually triste,” she said. “I thought it might be related to their recent trip to Rockhaven.” As they sat and chatted, the reason for Monroe’s sudden mood shift became evident. Seeing her mother again had reminded the actress of her birth father. “I hadn’t heard the name Stanley Gifford before,” said Goslar, “and apparently Joe hadn’t either.”
In bits and pieces Marilyn revealed how, in 1945, while still married to Jim Dougherty, she’d telephoned Gifford and said, “This is Norma Jeane, Gladys’s daughter.” He hung up on her. Then, in 1951, she learned that he’d gotten married and moved to a farm in the town of Hemet on the outskirts of Palm Springs. She decided to confront him. With Natasha Lytess along for moral support, Marilyn drove from Hollywood in the direction of Palm Springs. When they reached Riverside, she pulled into a gas station and called Gifford from a pay phone to announce that she was on her way. Gifford’s wife answered the phone and said, “He refuses to see you. He suggests you contact his lawyer in Los Angeles if you have any questions. Do you want his number?”
Marilyn’s revelation startled Lotte Goslar as well as Joe, and in some strange sense explained the actress’s attachment to Natasha Lytess. Even if she wasn’t the consummate drama coach, she had been there for her when Marilyn most needed her. It didn’t diminish DiMaggio’s dispassion for the woman, but he now understood the reason behind Marilyn’s excessive loyalty to her.
In late November 1953 Lytess asked Monroe for $5,000 to help pay for surgery she’d undergone to correct a back problem, and this time Marilyn flatly refused to help, suggesting instead that she turn to Twentieth Century–Fox for the money. Although she was no longer on Fox’s payroll, the studio had continued to absorb a portion of Natasha’s living expenses. DiMaggio used Lytess’s request to distance Marilyn even further from the drama coach. When Marilyn stopped just short of firing her, Joe lashed out at her. “Either she goes, or I go!” he yelled. “Don’t threaten me, Joe,” Marilyn countered.
Natasha would tell Lotte Goslar that if Marilyn married DiMaggio, she would live to regret it. “It can’t possibly succeed,” she said. “He becomes infuriated if you’re a minute late for an appointment, and Marilyn’s usually hours behind schedule. And then he’s jealous of every man who even looks at Marilyn. She gets five thousand fan letters a week, including mail from Arab sultans and Texas oil barons, and he reads them all to see if anyone’s coming on to her. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.”
As early as 1950, Hugh Hefner, a native of Chicago and a copywriter at Esquire, envisioned the framework—tastefully photographed nudes amid well-written articles and short fiction—for the men’s magazine he eventually called Playboy. With borrowed funds and whatever savings he could scrape together, Hefner launched his trend-setting magazine in December 1953. For the front cover of Playboy’s first issue and as its first centerfold, he chose none other than Marilyn Monroe.
Displayed prominently in the (originally titled) “Sweetheart of the Month” section of the publication was Marilyn’s nude calendar shot. Within days of its initial appearance, the magazine sold out. The “Sweetheart of the Month” feature soon became known as the “Playmate of the Month.”
“Like every other full-blooded American male,” said Hugh Hefner, “I was well aware of the Tom Kelley nude calendar spread of Marilyn Monroe. It had never been published in a magazine, so I contacted John Baumgarth, owner of the calendar company that controlled the rights to the photo, and made an appointment to see him. He lived in Chicago, as did I, so I drove to his office and told him what I wanted and acquired the publication rights for five hundred dollars. I acquired another Monroe shot or two from him as well for an additional thousand dollars. It was the best investment I ever made, because by the end of 1953, when Playboy first materialized, Marilyn had become a major star. That nude calendar shot emerged as the most famous pinup of the twentieth century. Marilyn became the woman most women in the world want to resemble in terms of sex appeal.”
The irony of Hugh Hefner’s connection to Marilyn Monroe is that they never met. His brother studied acting with her in New York in the mid-1950s at the Actors Studio. Joe DiMaggio visited the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles on several occasions after Monroe’s death, indicating that he harbored no resentment against Hefner for his use of her nude image in the magazine. But the Monroe-Hefner connection doesn’t end there. When he heard that the burial vault next to Marilyn’s at Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery was still available, Hefner purchased it. “It just seems fitting,” he observed, “that I should spend an eternity with Marilyn, given her tremendous contribution to the magazine’s success.
• • •
“Late in 1953,” noted Lotte Goslar, “Marilyn reaffirmed her commitment to Joe DiMaggio. She called me at three in the morning—not an unusual time for her—and told me how sweet, kind, and gentlemanly he could be. On the other side, she added, there were moments when he bored her to death, particularly when he talked about baseball and nothing else. Yet when he wasn’t around, she missed him. She even missed their arguments. She’d grown accustomed to his paternalistic guidance and the protective side of his personality. She imagined that if she had a father, he’d be protective of her in the same way as Joe. And here was a father figure with whom she could have sex. And the sex was pretty damn good, if she had to say so herself. In essence, Joe DiMaggio filled a dual role in Marilyn’s life, that of father and lover, a dangerous combination, especially considering that he seemed to be obsessed with her at times.”
When the couple arrived in San Francisco to celebrate Christmas and bring in the New Year with Joe’s family, Marilyn seemed nervous and run down. She hadn’t shown up on the Pink Tights set on December 15, and the shoot had been put on hold. Her suspension would take effect on January 4, 1954, cutting her off from a studio system that seemed almost parental in its all-encompassing sweep. Although material possessions—furs, jewels, and clothes—generally meant little to Marilyn, her mood brightened a bit when, on Christmas Eve, Joe gave her a pair of diamond earrings, similar to a set he’d once bought for Dorothy Arnold.
On New Year’s Eve the couple dined at the DiMaggio restaurant with Tom, Dom, and Reno Barsocchini. Later that night, Joe reportedly told Marilyn he wanted to marry her within the next two weeks. They’d talked about it for months now, and nothing had happened. She kept putting it off. If they didn’t marry now, they’d never marry. He wanted to establish a definitive date. It should be a discreet, quiet ceremony—just a few friends and family members. No press, no publicity. Coming from DiMaggio, it sounded more like an ultimatum than a marriage proposal, which was just as well. The one thing Marilyn couldn’t afford at this delicate juncture was to lose the only person she could depend on to be there for her no matter what. She agreed. They located a 1954 calendar and chose Thursday, January 14, as their wedding date.
Joe returned to Los Angeles with Marilyn to attend a film industry function at the Ambassador Hotel and a day later went back to San Francisco to make wedding arrangements. Marilyn remained in her apartment at North Doheny Drive. Approached by the press, she denied that she and Joe had a wedding date in mind. Marie, Joe’s sister, told a San Francisco reporter named Alice Hoffman, “Marilyn Monroe’s plain and honest and warm and shy, just like Joe. They were made for each other.”
In his autobiography, movie director Elia Kazan remembered calling Marilyn in 1954. He had not spoken with her in several months; the two had carried on an informal but lengthy affair that began soon after their first meeting on the Fox lot in December 1950, within days of Johnny Hyde’s death. Glad to hear Kazan’s voice, Marilyn said she had some “wonderful news” and wanted to tell him in person. He invited her over. She showed up in his room at the Bel Air Hotel late at night.
“I’m going to get married,” she announced. “I wanted to tell you first, because I’m not going to see you again.”
“Who is it? Who are you talking about?” asked Kazan.
“Joe DiMaggio,” she said. “He wants to marry me, and I really like him. He’s not like these movie people. He’s dignified.” She went on about Joe for well over an hour, and Kazan could see she really did care for DiMaggio. “It was nice to see someone so happy and so hopeful,” he wrote. And then, without another word, she took off her dress and climbed into bed with Kazan. “We made love,” he remarked. “Congratulations and farewell.”
What was probably most significant about Marilyn’s liaison with Elia Kazan was that when she met him in late 1950, he was with a friend, a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman named Arthur Miller who, at age thirty-five, had already established himself as one of America’s leading playwrights, having won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for All My Sons (1947) and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Death of a Salesman (1949).
Kazan and Miller were both staying at agent Charles Feldman’s house. Later that week, Feldman gave a party honoring Arthur Miller. Among others, he invited Marilyn Monroe. She wore a dress that, according to Kazan, barely contained her. Describing Marilyn as “the most womanly woman I ever met,” Miller spent most of the evening seated next to her on a couch, chatting away while massaging her feet, intermittently holding on to one of her toes. After the party, Marilyn called Natasha Lytess and said, “I met a man tonight . . . It was bam! It was like running into a tree. You know, like a cool drink when you’ve got a fever.”
There were obstacles that stood in the way of a complete relationship in 1950, not the least of which was Miller’s ten-year marriage to Mary Slattery, whom he’d met while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. They had two children, Jane and Robert, who at that time were nine and six years old, respectively. Though Miller’s marriage was in trouble—he and his wife were in therapy together—he wasn’t ready to walk away from it.
Miller returned to New York, and Marilyn contented herself by sleeping with Kazan and corresponding with Arthur, whose first letter to her began: “Bewitch them with this image they ask for, but I hope and almost pray you won’t be hurt in this game.” He recommended that she purchase a copy of Carl Sandburg’s biography of Abraham Lincoln. She bought both the book and a portrait of the former president and amused Miller by writing him that in junior high school she’d penned a paper on Lincoln that had won her a prize. She bought and read Death of a Salesman, and everything else Miller had ever written. She kept Miller’s photo on a shelf behind her bed. But though he maintained an intense interest in her career and continued to correspond with her (often sending her wild love letters), it was Joe DiMaggio who came along and swooped her up.
On January 7, 1954, the day after she made love to Elia Kazan for the last time, Marilyn sent Arthur Miller a short note: “As you probably read in the press, I am going to marry Joe DiMaggio next week. Wish us luck. God knows we’ll need it.”