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“AT FIRST, IT ALL WAS INNOCENT AND FUN”
Who would ever dream that my marriage to my second husband, the world-famous former New York Yankees star baseball player Joe DiMaggio, would end in divorce after only nine months? That would have been enough time for us to have a baby, but that never happened. I would never have imagined instead, [that] while I was in New York City on location filming The Seven Year Itch, a scene in the film would be the cause of our breakup.
The year was 1954 and I was busier than ever before. [After] There’s No Business Like Show Business was finished that summer, I’d gone into shooting The Seven Year Itch. Sam Shaw, a world-famous photographer-producer and friend of the director, had an idea for a scene. He approached the producer, Charles Feldman, who agreed the idea would be sensational—giving great publicity and zest to the movie. Feldman discussed it with director Billy Wilder, George Axelrod, the screenwriter, and me. We all said, “Let’s do it!”
The scene was for Tom Ewell and me to come out of the Trans-Lux movie house on Lexington Avenue. This was a night scene. It was a warm September evening, and we stopped on a subway grating; when a train would pass by, the air could cool me off.
I was wearing a sheer-white, billowy sleeveless dress. When the subway train roared by, it would send up a blast of cool air. There was a subway grating there all right, but everything else was make-believe. No train passing by, but air blowing up was done by the special-effects people stationed underground with a wind-blower machine. This sent my dress flying waist high, revealing my legs and white panties. A crowd had gathered even though it was two or three in the morning. They consisted mostly of men who somehow had heard about our late night-filming. Among the crowd was my husband,
GEORGE BARRIS: When Marilyn Monroe became the world’s most famous movie star, she was very suspicious of the invitations she received from presidents, royalty, and important men from all walks of life. Did these men want her company because she interested them or because her presence would bolster their position or their ego? She often sat at home alone at night once she was so much in demand, finding it more to her taste to listen to the music that she enjoyed—besides Garland and Sinatra, she liked Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme. She played Garland’s “Who Cares” constantly, and Sinatra’s version of “That’s Why the Lady Is a Tramp” was another favorite.
Despite her fame, when Marilyn was in New York, she could, with the aid of a wig and a kerchief, stroll along the sidewalks of the city unrecognized. That delighted her-Cabbies would whistle at her; other guys would try to pick her up, just as they tried to pick up any other pretty girl out for a stroll. Broadway and the bright lights, the plays—all were there. She could go out as often as she wished and never tired of doing so. She would dream of performing on Broadway in a hit musical or drama. Any opening that she attended was sure to be especially well attended by the press, and the
Joe, and his famous friend, Broadway columnist Walter Winchell. At first, it all was innocent and fun, but when Billy Wilder kept shooting the scene over and over, the crowd of men kept on applauding and shouting, “More, more, Marilyn—let’s see more.” Joe became upset, especially when the director’s camera kept coming in, focusing only on my vagina. Luckily I had been wearing two pairs of panties, hoping no pubic hair would show through. The whistles and the yelling from the male audience became too much for my husband. It was like a burlesque show. What was to be a fun scene turned into a sex scene, and Joe, angry as could be, turned to Winchell, shouting, “I’ve had it!” And the two men took off.
I turned to Wilder and said, “I hope all these extra takes are not for your Hollywood friends to enjoy at a private party.” I couldn’t imagine them showing such a scene, especially such a close-up of my private area, in a comedy film made for the family audience.
I was right. When we returned to Hollywood the scene was reshot at the studio in a
photographers could not seem to get enough pictures of her. It often seemed that Marilyn was the star of the play—not just another visitor from Hollywood.
Marilyn had great love for the arts—acting, dancing, music, poetry, and literature. She had once enrolled in the University of Southern California at Los Angeles to improve her limited academic education, but she did not graduate—and she once said that not graduating was her one big regret in life. But she was street smart and she read widely.
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While Marilyn was still married to Arthur Miller, the couple went to see An Evening With Yves Montand on Broadway. After the show, she pronounced its star sexy and said, “When he sings, he moves his body in the most erotic way. He’s wonderful!” Although she’d never met Montand or his wife, Simone Signoret, the Millers went backstage and invited Yves and Simone to have supper.
Marilyn soon found out all about Yves. He had been born in Italy, grown up in Marseilles, and had always wanted to be a singer. He’d at first sung in small clubs, and his career didn’t take off until he was dis-
more refined way. But Sam Shaw’s idea was a great publicity stunt for the film. The photo of my dress flying sky-high up to my panties made every newspaper, every magazine in the world. For the film’s premiere showing at New York’s Loew’s State Theater, its four-story building façade was covered by a huge artist’s rendition of that famous dress-blowing scene.
Only two good things came out of that [scene]: one was making friends with [George Barris] when he came to interview and photograph me for the weekly papers; the other was the success of the film. But [as I said before] that dress-flying (or sex) scene was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Joe admitted he still loved me but my being a movie star was too much for him to take any longer. He became impossible to live with. I guess at the time there was nothing to do but get divorced.
[On October 6, 1954] I stepped out of our Beverly Hills rented home to give a press interview on the lawn, with tears streaming down my cheeks and a lump in my throat. I held on to my attorney for support and said, “Joe and I are getting a divorce.”
Meanwhile in the house [Joe] was packing his belongings. He left the house and put his suitcases in his car while the reporters asked him, “Where you headed, Joe?” He got in his car and shouted, “Going home.” Without another word he roared off to San Francisco.
covered by the great chanteuse Edith Piaf. When Marilyn discovered him, she was slated to make the musical Let’s Make Love with Gregory Peck. When Peck pulled out, Marilyn knew she had the perfect replacement: Yves Montand.
During the filming the couples lived in adjacent bungalows at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Marilyn and Yves became lovers both off and on the screen. Yves considered her just another of his conquests, but Marilyn was serious about him; she wanted him to leave his wife, and she was willing to leave Arthur. Simone and Arthur seemed to accept their spouses’ romance as just one of those things—and probably a temporary one. Sure enough, when the filming was over, so was the romance, as far as Yves was concerned. He rushed back to France and Simone. But Marilyn never got over him.
I wanted a husband, and [I wanted] my career. I guess no husband wants to live in the shadow of his wife’s fame. [Later] my marriage to Arthur Miller fell apart. No one wants to be known as “Mr. Marilyn Monroe.”
At the completion of The Seven Year Itch, I went to New York and formed Marilyn Monroe Productions, in partnership with magazine photographer Milton H. Greene. For our company I produced a picture in England with Sir Laurence Olivier called The Prince and the Showgirl.
About Sir Laurence: I think Larry at his best is a great actor. It’s what you get up there on the screen—he was my choice [as the lead] because I felt there was something incongruous and it would make it interesting. But frankly, he wasn’t my choice as a director—but he wanted to direct. Some have told me the film was not a financial success, but I am sure they’re wrong. It sure made money; why, I’m making money. It’s still making money. I’ve refused to sell it to television.
She had another serious romance after she and Miller split up—this time she was involved with the president of the United States. In romancing a famous star, John F. Kennedy was following in the footsteps of his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, who had once brazenly taken Gloria Swanson as his mistress. Marilyn was invited to sing “Happy Birthday” at JFK’s birthday party in Madison Square Garden in New York City. The president’s wife had not been invited, and Marilyn had a Cinderella fantasy that Kennedy would divorce Jackie and marry her, that she would then become first lady. Instead, it is rumored, the president passed her on to his kid brother, Bobby, and after a while this romance soured, too. She never forgave the Kennedy brothers, feeling she had been just another of their rich boy’s playthings.
