It was a great love story – but a lousy marriage.
Joe DiMaggio was the shy, recently retired superstar Yankee slugger more at home behind home plate than the plate of a fancy Hollywood dinner party.
Marilyn Monroe was the temptress toast of Tinseltown, a bottled-blond concoction of curves and vulnerability that brought audiences to their knees.
Somehow, his boyish looks and quiet demeanor caught her eye.
Her beauty and laughter caught his.
DiMaggio and the woman whom pals called the love of his life dated about a year before marrying in San Francisco on Jan. 14, 1954.
He was 40 – 12 years her senior. It was the second marriage for both.
It also was a tumultuous union many observers say was doomed from the start: partly because of Monroe’s demanding fame and insistence on continuing to work, and partly because of Joe’s own macho insecurity about being forced into the background by his wife.
Joe’s jealousy over his sultry wife was well-known among close friends even before they were married.
‘Joe loved her,” said former Yankee Phil Rizzuto. ‘I know that. [The problem was, Joe was a] jealous guy, and he didn’t like all the men looking at her.”
The pair were wed in a civil ceremony in San Francisco’s City Hall. They spent their wedding night in a $6.50 motel room, which DiMaggio reportedly liked because it was out of the spotlight – and had a TV set.
The seemingly charmed couple’s marital woes seemed to begin from the start.
On their honeymoon in South Korea, an excited Monroe returned to their hotel after entertaining U.S. troops there and gushed to her hubby: ‘Joe, you never heard such cheering!”
‘Yes, I have,” DiMaggio said quietly, but not without a hint of mocking at his clueless wife.
One of their most famous public showdowns reportedly came in New York, while Marilyn filmed ‘The Seven Year Itch.”
As the cameras rolled, Marilyn stood provocatively over a heating grate outside the old Trans-lux Theater at Lexington Avenue and 52nd Street, her sexy white halter dress suddenly flying up between her legs.
Hubby Joe was said to be furious, screaming at a friend on the sidelines, ‘What the hell is going on around here?”
It was reportedly the final straw for Joe.
Rumors of physical violence at home hounded the couple, and Marilyn showed up more and more often alone at Hollywood premieres. So news of their divorce after 274 days was hardly a shock.
Two years later, Marilyn married playwright Arthur Miller, again an older man. That marriage was over by 1960.
DiMaggio never remarried. Through the years, he repeatedly refused to talk about her – although he kept up one public display of lasting endearment for his Marilyn.
He made sure that a half-dozen fresh, long-stemmed red roses were always adorning Marilyn’s grave in a Hollywood cemetery.