Part 9 (1/2)

Prompted by Walter Winch.e.l.l, who, it would seem, was trying to get a good reaction from Joe for his column, Joe found himself on the set that night. Watching his wife perform in such a provocative-even if very obviously staged-moment infuriated him. Billy Wilder described the look on DiMaggio's face as ”the look of death.” Even though Marilyn wore two two pairs of panties for modesty, under the klieg lights there was still more visible than what Joe would have been comfortable with. James Haspiel was present for the filming, and he recalled, ”I must confess I had no trouble seeing through Marilyn's sheer panties. Most of the published photographs from that night do not ill.u.s.trate this intimacy. I think they shot the scene fifteen times so it was a very exciting, intimate situation being played out over and over again before my eyes. Nonetheless, I could fully appreciate DiMaggio's anger. Indeed, Joe stood there sour-faced. In defense of Monroe, I am reasonably convinced that in her dressing room she did not see what the powerful klieg lights then put on display.” pairs of panties for modesty, under the klieg lights there was still more visible than what Joe would have been comfortable with. James Haspiel was present for the filming, and he recalled, ”I must confess I had no trouble seeing through Marilyn's sheer panties. Most of the published photographs from that night do not ill.u.s.trate this intimacy. I think they shot the scene fifteen times so it was a very exciting, intimate situation being played out over and over again before my eyes. Nonetheless, I could fully appreciate DiMaggio's anger. Indeed, Joe stood there sour-faced. In defense of Monroe, I am reasonably convinced that in her dressing room she did not see what the powerful klieg lights then put on display.”

DiMaggio rushed back to the St. Regis Hotel and waited for his wife to join him there at the end of her workday. Then he took out his rage on her, slapping her around the room. The altercation was so noisy, in fact, that other hotel guests reported it to the hotel's management, afraid that someone was getting badly hurt. Natasha, in the room next door, was alarmed enough to pound on the door to the DiMaggios' suite. ”Is everything okay in there?” she shouted out, knowing, of course, the answer. The door swung open and there was Joe, eyes blazing, face reddened. ”Get outta here,” he told her brusquely. ”Mind your own business, for once.” Later that night, Milton and Amy Greene had dinner with Joe and Marilyn. They noticed bruises on Marilyn's back. The next day, Gladys Witten, a studio hairdresser, noticed bruises on Marilyn's shoulders, ”but we covered them with makeup,” she said.

”That was the last straw,” recalled Stacy Edwards, who met Joe in New York earlier in that day. ”The way I heard it, Joe let her have it. It was pretty bad. After he hit her, she told him she'd had enough and wanted out of the marriage. I spoke to Joe maybe three weeks later and asked him about that night. He said, 'Things got out of hand, I admit it. But she p.i.s.sed me off so much. She didn't care what I thought about anything, she just wanted to do what she wanted to do.' That was DiMaggio. He could be a sweetheart if everything was going his way. If not, he was pretty mean. To tell you the truth, I lost a lot of respect for Joe when I found out he hit Marilyn Monroe. I thought to myself, 'How could any man hit such a beautiful creature?' ”

Years later, Marilyn admitted to her hairdresser, Sydney Guilaroff, very famous in his time for his work with Hollywood stars, ”Joe beat me up twice. The first time, I warned him. 'Don't ever do that again.' I'm not going to stand for it. Then, after he witnessed me filming a s.e.xy scene for The Seven Year Itch The Seven Year Itch, he slapped me around the hotel room. I finally screamed at him, 'That's it.' I don't know what makes a man beat a woman-vulnerable and weak-I just don't understand it.”

The DiMaggios left New York on September 16. The next day, Marilyn did not show up for work at the studio. Her doctor said she was home in bed with the flu. It would be four days before she could return to work. Even Darryl Zanuck-arguably a cruel man himself, with his comments about his star Monroe-felt badly about what was going on in her private life. He sent a note over to Billy Wilder a.s.suring the director, ”Others could give a good performance, but nothing could make up for Marilyn's personality in this film.”

Billy Wilder summed up Marilyn's appeal best when he told her biographer Donald Spoto, ”She had a natural instinct for how to read a comic line and how to give it something extra, something special. She was never vulgar in a role that could have become vulgar, and somehow you felt good when you saw her on the screen. To put it briefly, she had a quality no one else ever had on the screen except Garbo. No one.”

What's most stunning about Marilyn's performance in The Seven Year Itch The Seven Year Itch is that she was able to rise to the occasion despite the misery of her private life. That's what real movie stars do-they give all they have when on camera, even when they seemingly have nothing left to give. She inhabited the role of The Girl as if born to it. With her arresting beauty, she is totally aware of the effect she has on men, even joking about it. But the jokes are on her, not the men. Melissa Anderson of the is that she was able to rise to the occasion despite the misery of her private life. That's what real movie stars do-they give all they have when on camera, even when they seemingly have nothing left to give. She inhabited the role of The Girl as if born to it. With her arresting beauty, she is totally aware of the effect she has on men, even joking about it. But the jokes are on her, not the men. Melissa Anderson of the Village Voice Village Voice wrote, ”So arresting is Monroe's presence that when she's not on-screen, we wait impatiently, wondering, 'Where have you gone, Mrs. DiMaggio?' ” She wears white throughout most of the film, appearing in a pastel pink shorts outfit briefly and in a slinky evening gown in one of Sherman's fantasy sequences. It is apparently meant to point out the character's virginal purity and her total lack of guile. Her short, curly hairdo by Helen Turpin is timeless and the one most closely a.s.sociated with Marilyn for the rest of her life. wrote, ”So arresting is Monroe's presence that when she's not on-screen, we wait impatiently, wondering, 'Where have you gone, Mrs. DiMaggio?' ” She wears white throughout most of the film, appearing in a pastel pink shorts outfit briefly and in a slinky evening gown in one of Sherman's fantasy sequences. It is apparently meant to point out the character's virginal purity and her total lack of guile. Her short, curly hairdo by Helen Turpin is timeless and the one most closely a.s.sociated with Marilyn for the rest of her life.

That said, Marilyn's emotional problems took their toll during filming. This, along with her tardiness and ill-preparedness-by one report as many as forty takes for a single scene-was said to have added over a million dollars to the film's $3.2 million budget. It still managed to earn a nice profit, taking in $12 million at the box office for Fox. The still shot of the famous billowing-dress scene that so infuriated Joe became the film's graphic signature, and Fox's marketing team decreed that it be blown up to a height of fifty-two feet. The enormous Monroe image was then cut out and placed in front of Loew's State Theatre in Times Square when the movie opened. It caused a sensation.

Marilyn Divorces Joe.

She knew what she had to do-but that didn't make it any easier for her. The much-reported story is that she called her attorney, Jerry Geisler, and told him that she wanted a divorce. However, Marybeth Cooke worked for Geisler at the time and she tells a different story. She recalled, ”We all knew that Marilyn Monroe was still crazy in love with Joe, but that he was beating her up. Still, she did not want to let him go. I have to say-and Jerry would not have wanted anyone to know this at the time-that Marilyn called him from New York and told him that she might want a separation from Joe, but she wasn't sure. When she got back to Los Angeles, she was not calling Jerry to ask him to file divorce papers. She thought maybe he knew someone who could talk to Joe and make things better. She was desperate to find a way to save her marriage. It was Jerry who said, 'Look, I like you a lot, Marilyn. As a friend, I have to tell you-you have to get this creep out of your house.' That was not like Jerry. He represented the biggest names in Hollywood and never injected his personal opinions. But with Marilyn Monroe, it was different. When he found out what was going on, he was very upset, I remember him saying, 'G.o.d d.a.m.n it, I'm a big fan of Joe DiMaggio's, too. Or at least I was was a fan.' ” a fan.' ”

On October 4, Jerry Geisler-middle-aged, stout of frame, and balding above a ruddy face-was ready to serve ”Joltin' Joe” DiMaggio with divorce papers. Marybeth Cooke continued: ”I remember him saying, 'Christ, almighty, I just called Marilyn to ask her where Joe was so I could serve him myself out of respect and guess where he is? At home with her!' It turned out he was still living in the same house, though I believe in separate bedrooms, or maybe on separate floors. He went to the house and gave Joe the papers. He told me DiMaggio glanced at the papers, said, 'Thanks a lot,' popped a beer, and then went back to watching television. When he got back to the office, Jerry sank into a chair and looked drained. I asked him, 'Are you okay?' He said, 'I just told Joe DiMaggio that Marilyn Monroe is divorcing him. How do you think I feel?' I think at about that same time, he and Marilyn sent a memo to Darryl Zanuck telling him that DiMaggio wasn't allowed on the property. So, it was really over.

”The next morning was chaos at Marilyn's home on Palm Drive in Beverly Hills. I had to meet Jerry there and give him some papers, but I couldn't even get into the house there was so much media in front of it, just camped out and waiting for the next shoe to drop. I finally got into the house and it was just teeming with people. It was also a mess. I couldn't believe the clutter-it looked as if it hasn't been tidied up-ever! There was food left out in the kitchen and on plates in the living room. There were crushed, empty beer cans on the floor... clothes strewn about... ashtrays filled with cigarettes... I mean it was really a pigpen. Someone who worked for Marilyn-I can't recall who wouldn't let me upstairs to her room, where I knew Jerry was. I was told she was too sick to be disturbed, or, as it was put to me, 'She has taken to her sick bed.' So, I left. I spoke to Jerry that night, who told me, 'The kid is sick, she's on drugs, she's sad... she's a mess.' The next day was the press conference. I didn't go. It was a zoo.”

Marilyn Monroe emerged from her home on the morning of October 6 to meet the press wearing an all-black ensemble: a skintight black sweater with a matching gabardine skirt and heels along with a black leather belt. She leaned on Jerry Geisler for support as he told the a.s.sembled reporters that ”Miss Monroe will have nothing to say to you this morning. As her attorney, I am speaking for her and can only say that the conflict of careers has brought about this regrettable necessity.” While reporters shouted questions at her, Marilyn seemed ready to faint. ”I can't say anything today,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. ”I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.” She then broke down and began to cry, her head on the attorney's shoulder. Never in any reporter's fantasy could the scene have been any more melodramatic-and newsworthy. Even when she didn't intend it, Marilyn Monroe always gave a good show. Photographs from that brief press conference appeared all over the world that night and the next day. It wasn't an act. ”She was at the end of her rope that day,” said Marybeth Cooke. ”Jerry had to take her straight to a doctor's office where she was given more pills to get through the rest of that day. Then he took her back to her house where she went right to bed. She didn't want to speak to anyone. I remember thinking, this girl is only twenty-eight. How much longer can she endure this kind of life?”

Indeed, Marilyn was very difficult to reach during this difficult time and even her beloved half sister, Berniece, could not get through to her. Therefore, on October 8, she sent her a letter: Dear Marilyn, Dear Marilyn,The news about you and Joe came as a shock and we were very sorry to hear it. I know you are lonely-do try and come visit us and it may help you over the cloud. You are very busy and all, but if you could fly here for a few days I'm sure you would feel better. We three are just the same as when you saw us last, except a little fatter and older, ha ha. Mona Rae is very busy in school and loves it. She is trying hard to become a cheerleader for the football team this year. We love you loads and hope to see you soon.Your sister,Berniece If Berniece had known of some of the bizarre situations unfolding in her half sister's life, she might have tried even harder to get her to Detroit. However, Marilyn was keeping a lot of the sadness of her life from Berniece. First, she didn't want to worry her. Second, she just didn't want her to have the information in case any reporter ever tried to trick it out of her. Every time she talked to Berniece, she would say the same thing to her before ending the call: ”Please promise me that you won't give out stories about me.” One might have thought, given all they shared, that Berniece would be the last person Marilyn would feel she'd have to worry about in terms of discretion. However, that wasn't the case. A sister of Jim Dougherty's gave a story about Marilyn to the press, and even though it would be flattering, Marilyn would still be very unhappy about it. It was getting to the point where she felt she couldn't trust anyone.

Sinatra.

One of the people Marilyn Monroe did trust during this time was Frank Sinatra. Lena Pepitone, her maid and sometimes seamstress, once recalled that while Marilyn's divorce from Joe DiMaggio was being finalized, she went to live with Sinatra for a couple of weeks so that she could regain her emotional bearings. Much of what Pepitone recalled in a book she wrote with William Stadiem t.i.tled Marilyn Monroe-Confidential Marilyn Monroe-Confidential has been called into question. However, this memory of hers is in fact true. has been called into question. However, this memory of hers is in fact true.

It's difficult to determine when Frank and Marilyn first met. She had always been a fan of Sinatra's. His friend Joey Bishop recalled the time Marilyn went to see Frank at the Copacabana, ”sometime in the fifties. I'm doing my act, and in the middle of it in comes Marilyn Monroe walking into the room like she owns the joint,” Bishop remembered. ”Of course, I lost the crowd. Who's gonna pay attention to me when Marilyn Monroe walks in? There wasn't an empty seat in the house, so they pulled a single chair up for her to sit in and stuck it ringside, about four feet away from me. I looked down at her and I said, 'Marilyn, I thought I told you to wait in the truck.' ” Like many people's memories of their star-crossings with Marilyn, Joey's is a little off. What actually happened was that Marilyn was with a group of friends in New York when she decided she wanted to see Sinatra perform at the Copa. However, the show was sold out. ”So?” she asked her friends. ”What does that have to do with me? Of course we can get in.” Marilyn and her group then took a cab to the nightclub. As soon as the management saw her, they made quick arrangements. They brought a table into the packed club-Sinatra was already onstage, not opening act Bishop-as the Copa staff put white linens on the table and moved it right to the front of the nightclub in an empty corner. Frank stopped his song, winked at Marilyn, and continued with the show.

At this time-in 1954-Frank Sinatra was miserable about the slow erosion of his marriage to actress Ava Gardner, said to be the love of his life. Now the two consoled each other over their losses: Frank's over Gardner and Marilyn's over DiMaggio. Another friend of Frank's, Jimmy Whiting, recalled, ”Marilyn was real dependent on Frank. There were many late-night phone calls to him. She used to say, 'If I have any problem in the world about anything, there's only one person I know can help: Frankie.' Frank's feeling was hey, if I can help out the dame, I will. She's a good kid.”

Jim Whiting has a funny memory regarding Sinatra. ”He heard that Marilyn's... you know what... was visible underneath her panties in that scene in The Seven Year Itch The Seven Year Itch where her dress blows up. So he got an early 'screening copy' of the film and invited a whole bunch of guys over to see her... you-know-what. We all sat in his darkened screening room watching the film and waiting and waiting and waiting for this one scene. Finally, the dress starts blowing up and every neck and head in the room craned forward. The dress is up and up and up... nothing... no you-know-what. You couldn't see it! Frank said, 'G.o.dd.a.m.n it! If she wanted to sell tickets to this movie, all she had to do was show her... you-know-what.' Except he didn't say 'you-know-what.' ” where her dress blows up. So he got an early 'screening copy' of the film and invited a whole bunch of guys over to see her... you-know-what. We all sat in his darkened screening room watching the film and waiting and waiting and waiting for this one scene. Finally, the dress starts blowing up and every neck and head in the room craned forward. The dress is up and up and up... nothing... no you-know-what. You couldn't see it! Frank said, 'G.o.dd.a.m.n it! If she wanted to sell tickets to this movie, all she had to do was show her... you-know-what.' Except he didn't say 'you-know-what.' ”

After they began living together, Frank and Marilyn both admitted to still being in love with their estranged spouses. Therefore, for a time there was nothing s.e.xual going on between them. They were just sharing a vast, common loneliness. Frank wasn't interested in anything more, though it was difficult for his friends to fathom that he had one of the most beautiful and sought-after movie stars living in his apartment with him and was not intimate with her.

As it happened, Marilyn had a habit of not wearing clothing around the house. Everyone who knew her well knew that this was the case. She always said she would rather be naked; her friends and staff were used to seeing her au naturel. When she stayed with Frank during this time, she did not change that behavior. One morning, according to one friend of Sinatra's, he awakened, went into the kitchen wearing just his shorts, and found Marilyn standing in front of the open refrigerator with her small finger in her mouth, trying to decide between orange juice and grapefruit. She was naked. ”Oh, Frankie,” she said, probably feigning embarra.s.sment, ”I didn't know you got up so early.”

”That was the end of anything platonic between the two of them,” reported Jimmy Whiting. ”He told me that he took her right there in the kitchen, up against the closed refrigerator. 'Man,' he told me, 'I never had s.e.x like that. She is one fantastic woman.'

”Actually, Frank had been going through this whole impotency trip at this time. Way too much sauce [liquor]. The booze was completely ruining his s.e.x life. He was getting too old to drink like that and then expect to also perform in the sack. He was frustrated by it because one thing Sinatra always prided himself on was his ability to satisfy a woman.”

Apparently, Marilyn cured Sinatra of his impotency, at least for a while. She said that she didn't care how long it took; she was determined that he was going to acquit himself in bed with her. They were s.e.xually innovative. For instance, according to Sinatra's friends, he and Marilyn engaged in intimacies one night on the roof of the Sands Hotel, above the Las Vegas strip. Interestingly, a memo dated May 30, 1959, from Jack Entratter to the hotel's security staff, confirms as much. It reads, ”Please be advised that Mr. Frank Sinatra is permitted twenty-four-hour access to the roof of the Sands Hotel. Mr. Sinatra will use his own discretion in choosing to entertain any guest on those premises. Thank you.”

”What I heard around the office was that Marilyn and Frank had an argument when she drunkenly confessed to him that while she was attempting to cure him of his impotency, she had been 'faking it,' not achieving s.e.xual satisfaction herself,” recalled Wesley Miller from Wright, Wright, Green & Wright. ”Frank was upset about that revelation and, apparently, said, 'Jesus Christ, if I can't satisfy her, then what the h.e.l.l am I doing with her? Why'd she even have to tell me that? Did I have to know that? h.e.l.l, no, I did not.' ” (While Frank took Marilyn's confession as an affront to his masculinity, others who knew her well said that she rarely felt satisfaction during s.e.xual relations and that this problem was the consequence of her many psychological problems.) Despite any problems with her, Frank always felt that Marilyn was intelligent, witty, s.e.xy, and exciting. ”Frank said that Marilyn was like a shooting star,” observed actress Esther Williams, ”and you couldn't help but be fascinated by her journey. While you knew she was going to crash and burn, you didn't know how. However, you knew it was going to be a merry ride. The only reason Sinatra wouldn't allow himself to become more serious about Marilyn, he had said, was because he was still so wracked with pain about Ava. It was too soon. Also, he would never end up with another actress. He had made that promise to himself.”

As much as they got along, Marilyn and Frank did argue from time to time. Once, she almost absentmindedly walked naked into a poker game he was having with friends, which infuriated him. ”Get your fat a.s.s back in your room,” he scolded her, always the charmer. However, he could never stay angry at her for long. He truly loved Marilyn-though he was not in love with her-and he understood her frailties. Obviously, she was weak and delicate, traits he was usually not fond of in a woman. He would never allow any of his women the luxury of vulnerability, but with Marilyn it was different. She was special.

After that poker-game incident, when his friends had departed, Sinatra went back into her bedroom, as Marilyn later remembered it, ”kissed me on the cheek, and made me feel like a million. From then on I always dressed up for him, whether or not anyone was coming over.”

The Wrong Door Raid.

Marilyn's time at Frank Sinatra's did not last long. They could never really connect romantically, though they did love each other. She soon moved out of his apartment and was on her own again. At around this time, another gentleman came into her life as a potential suitor, but this too would not work out for her. He was Hal Schaeffer, the musical coach of her recent films. He actually arranged the highlight of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn's stunning routine of ”Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend.” The two had a flirtation going on for some time. Schaeffer, who sounds as if he had his own emotional issues, was so distraught that Marilyn did not want to take things any further with him, he reacted by trying to kill himself. Schaeffer may have been hoping Marilyn would rush to his side if he tried to do himself in, and of course she did. However, the time she spent at his bedside in the hospital was just more time for Joe to act out in a jealous rage. Now that he clearly no longer had a hold on Marilyn and Sinatra was also out of the picture for the time being, she was adrift emotionally, and she turned to Hal. It's difficult to imagine that what the two of them shared was serious for her, though it was to him. It was brief and definitely a diversion for her. By this time she had become so dependent on sleeping pills-freely given to her by the studio's physician-it's likely her judgment was impaired. That said, Schaeffer was kind, gentle, and understanding, and he was also creative-about as opposite to DiMaggio as possible.

When Joe DiMaggio heard about Hal Schaeffer in Marilyn's life, he simply could not accept it. How dare his estranged wife replace him so quickly? What right did she have to move on without him? For a couple of weeks, he and his best friend, Frank Sinatra, did what best friends often do when faced with love lost in their lives-they began to commiserate about it. ”We dagos gotta stick together,” Frank told Joe. ”So let me take care of this thing. Let me come up with something that'll screw with the divorce. Then she'll see the light and you'll be in like Flynn.”

The next day, Frank made a few telephone calls and was eventually referred to a company called City Detective and Guard Services. Joe Dougherty (no relation to Jim Dougherty) was one of the detectives working for the company. He recalled, ”The divorce hearing was set for October 27. Sinatra hired us about a week earlier. He said, 'I want you to follow Marilyn and this bozo she's s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g-Schaeffer somethin' or others-and take pictures of them in the act. Then, Joe DiMaggio is gonna use it against her and get that broad back in his life.' I was thinking, 'If this doesn't p.i.s.s off his wife, I don't know what will. So how's he going to get her back doing this thing is beyond me.' But a job is a job and so, fine, we signed a deal and got right to work.

”We did what we were paid to do. We followed Marilyn Monroe all over the G.o.dd.a.m.n city waiting for her to hook up with this guy. She knew we were on her tail, too, which must have rattled her because once she almost crashed her car into a tree trying to evade us. Another time, she ran a red light and almost hit an old woman walking across the street with a shopping cart. When she got out of the car and started apologizing to the woman, we started snapping away thinking, well, at least we got some good pictures of Marilyn Monroe maybe we can sell or something later on. Looking back on it now, it was a dirty business. We bugged her car. We bugged her apartment. We bugged his car. We bugged his apartment. I don't know what they had going on but I can tell you that we didn't get one G.o.dd.a.m.n thing to use against her. If they were hooking up, I don't know where they were doing it.”

Hal Schaeffer confirms, ”We were followed everywhere. It was sick and twisted. She was absolutely scared to death. How a man could do that to a woman, I don't know. It just confirmed to her that she had made the right decision in letting him go.”

On October 27, Marilyn-again in all black except for white gloves and pearls-stood before a judge and detailed her reasons for her divorce pet.i.tion. ”Just the night before, Joe had shown up at her house to try to talk her out of it,” said Marybeth Cooke. ”Jerry [Geisler, her attorney] couldn't believe his nerve, and was especially surprised that Sidney Skolsky had arranged the meeting. That made no sense. Everyone who cared about Marilyn wanted it over-not extended. But, luckily, Marilyn stood her ground. She told Joe it was over. He left, angry as ever.”

In court, Marilyn said that DiMaggio was ”cold and indifferent” to her and that days would go by when he wouldn't speak to her. ”Cold and indifferent”? That wasn't DiMaggio. The problem was that he was just the opposite, a hothead who was furious because he couldn't have her in his life the way he wanted her.

The stress of being married to him had made her sick on numerous occasions, Marilyn continued. She said she even offered to give up her career at one point, but that nothing would have satisfied him. She wasn't even allowed visitors when he was around, she claimed. Inez Melson, Marilyn's business manager, then took the stand and testified that she had witnessed DiMaggio ”push her away and tell her not to bother him.” * * Natasha Lytess had earlier stated that she had a few things on her mind and hoped to have her day in court, too, but Melson told her that it wasn't the time or place for whatever she had to say about the Monroe-DiMaggio alliance. Joe DiMaggio didn't make an appearance. The divorce was granted-final decree to be effective in a year's time. End of story? Not quite. Natasha Lytess had earlier stated that she had a few things on her mind and hoped to have her day in court, too, but Melson told her that it wasn't the time or place for whatever she had to say about the Monroe-DiMaggio alliance. Joe DiMaggio didn't make an appearance. The divorce was granted-final decree to be effective in a year's time. End of story? Not quite.

”We figured our job was over when the divorce was granted,” said Joe Dougherty. ”But Sinatra and DiMaggio still had plans for Marilyn. DiMaggio said that she probably hadn't hooked up with Schaeffer because she was too smart to do it before the divorce was granted. Now that it was a done deal, he was sure that she and the guy would start having s.e.x. And he still wanted to catch them in the act. 'Why?' I asked him. He said, 'Who are you to ask me questions? I just want to screw with her, that's why. Satisfied now?' Well, that wasn't a good enough reason for me, so I pulled out of it. The company I was working for, though, wanted the money so they just replaced me with another guy, and the surveillance of Marilyn Monroe continued.”

To fully understand just how jealous Joe DiMaggio was, consider the details of what has, over the years, become known as ”The Wrong Door Raid.” It happened on the night of November 5, 1954. Frank, Joe, and Frank's friend Hank Sanicola were eating at a favorite Italian restaurant called Villa Capri when the maitre d', Billy Karen, came to the table and said that there was a phone call for Sinatra. Sinatra went to take the call and, according to Hank Sanicola, returned saying, ”Let's go, fellas. They found Marilyn and that little jerk at some dame's apartment in Hollywood.” The fellows, who'd had a few too many drinks by this time, took off without paying their bill. As they walked out of the restaurant, the maitre d' came running after them. ”We'll pay it later. Christ almighty,” Sinatra exclaimed. ”The h.e.l.l with that,” said Billy Karen, ”I'm comin' with you guys. I want in on this thing.”