was a much sweeter and kinder character than 20th Century-Fox. I decided I didn’t want the studio’s million, either. I wanted to be myself and not just a freak vibration that made fortunes for the studio sex peddlers.
34
I have to be careful in writing about my husband Joe DiMaggio because he winces easily. Many of the things that seem normal or even desirable to me are very annoying to him.
He dislikes being photographed or interviewed. If he is even so much as asked to participate in some publicity stunt he registers a big explosion.
Joe doesn’t mind being written about, but he is against doing anything to encourage or attract publicity. In fact, publicity is something that makes him wince more than anything else.
Publicity was one of the problems in our courtship after the three-hour tour of Beverly Hills that first night.
“I wonder if I can take all your crazy publicity,” Joe said.
“You don’t have to be part of it,” I argued.
“I am,” he said. “And it bothers me.”
“It’s part of my career,” I said. “When you were a baseball idol you didn’t duck photographers.”
“Yes, I did,” he answered.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Don’t I know it,” Joe nodded.
“Do you want me to hide in a basement?” I asked.
“We’ll see how it works out,” he said.
There were a number of things to “work out.” One was the low neckline of my dresses and suits.
I gave in on this one. I wear no more low-cut dresses. Instead they have a sort of collar. The neckline is an inch under my chin.
I put up an argument about the neckline for some time. But after my adventure with the Army in the Atlantic City Beauty Contest, I began to think that Joe might be right in his “show them nothing” stand.
The situation at the Studio seemed to grow worse everyday. I mean every time I thought about it, it looked worse to me.
Among the black marks the front office had against me was the fact that I had kept Mr. Zanuck waiting for an hour at an Award Presentations ceremony. He accused me of doing it on purpose. This wasn’t true. I was working on the set, and it took me an hour to get the makeup off and my hair restored to normal.
But keeping Mr. Zanuck waiting was only a side issue in the trouble that kept growing. Even the matter of getting more money was a side issue—to me as well as to the Studio. When a studio stumbles on to a box-office name in its midst, it means millions of dollars income. And every studio has learned to be very considerate, financially, toward the goose who lays their golden eggs—as long as she keeps laying them, at least.
The trouble was about something deeper. I wanted to be treated as a human being who had earned a few rights since her orphanage days.
When I had asked to see the script of a movie in which it was announced I was going to star, I was informed that Mr. Zanuck didn’t consider it necessary for me to see the script in advance. I would be given my part to memorize at the proper time.
The name of the movie was
The title made me nervous. I was working with all my might trying to become an actress. I felt that the studio might cash in on exhibiting me in pink tights in a crude movie, but that I wouldn’t.
I notified the studio that I couldn’t agree to play in
The Studio’s first reply was to put me on suspension and take me off the payroll. I didn’t mind. Their next move was to take me off suspension and put me back on salary. I didn’t mind that either.
Then a copy of
It was much worse even than I had been afraid it would be. Movie musicals usually had dull stories. This one was way below dullness. It was silly—even for a movie about the 1890s.
I had to play the character of a prim, angrily virtuous school teacher who decided to become a sort of hoochy-koochy dancer in a Bowery dive so as to earn enough money to put her fiance through medical college. The fiance is high up in society with a dowager ma, but they are shy on money. This dreary cliche-spouting bore in pink tights was the cheapest character I had ever read in a script.
What’s the use of being a star if you have to play something you’re ashamed of? When I thought of Joe or any of my friends seeing me on the screen as this rear-wiggling school teacher doing bumps and grinds in the great cause of medicine I blushed to my toes.
Pink Tights didn’t even get to marry the Society Man for whose sake she unveiled herself to wiggle in a Bowery Dive. She married instead the owner of the Dive—a man of rough appearance but with a heart of gold (or mush) underneath!
I sent back word to the Studio that I didn’t like the script and wouldn’t play in the movie.
I heard from different people that nobody in the Studio liked the script. Even Mr. Zanuck’s conviction that it was a masterpiece about humble but colorful people had been shaken somewhat by one of his star directors refusing to shoot it.
But that didn’t help my case any. Everybody in the world could despise the picture, including, finally, its audience, and I would still remain in the wrong. This was because of my standing in the eyes of the Front Office. In these eyes I was still a sort of freak performer who had made good against its better judgment.
I wasn’t angry but it made me sad. When the rest of the world was looking at someone called Marilyn Monroe, Mr. Zanuck, in whose hands my future rested, was able to see only Norma Jean—and treat me as Norma Jean had always been treated.
Joe and I had been talking about getting married for some months. We knew it wouldn’t be an easy marriage. On the other hand we couldn’t keep on going forever as a pair of Cross-country Lovers. It might begin to hurt both our careers.
The public doesn’t mind people living together without being married, providing they don’t overdo it. It would be very odd of the public if it did mind since, according to Dr. Kinsey in his report on such things, eighty per cent of all married women have had premarital real love experiences with their husbands.
After much talk Joe and I had decided that since we couldn’t give each other up, marriage was the only solution to our problem. But we had left time and place in the air.
One day Joe said to me:
“You’re having all this trouble with the Studio and not working so why don’t we get married now? I’ve got to go to Japan anyway on some baseball business, and we could make a honeymoon out of the trip.”
That’s the way Joe is, always cool and practical. When I get excited over some magazine giving me a big picture spread, he grins and sneers a little.
“Yes, but where’s the money?” he asks.
“It’s the publicity,” I yell back.
“Money is better,” he says in the quiet way men use when they think they have won an argument.
And so we were married and took off for Japan on our honeymoon.
That was something I had never planned on or dreamed about—becoming the wife of a great man. Anymore than Joe had ever thought of marrying a woman who seemed eighty per cent publicity.
The truth is that we were very much alike. My publicity, like Joe’s greatness, is something on the outside. It has nothing to do with what we actually are. What I seem to Joe I haven’t heard yet. He’s a slow talker. What Joe is to me is a man whose looks, and character, I love with all my heart.
