Damn Yankees by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Damn Yankees

Page 327

on a medical discharge in September 1945, due to chronic stomach ulcers.

In January 1937, DiMaggio met actress Dorothy Arnold on the set of “Manhattan Merry-Go-Round,” in which he had a minor role, and she was an extra. He announced their engagement on April 25, 1939. They married at San Francisco's Saints Peter and Paul Church on November 19, 1939, as 20,000 well-wishers jammed the streets. Their son, Joseph Paul DiMaggio Jr., was born at Doctors' Hospital in Staten Island. The couple divorced in 1944, while he was on leave from the Yankees during World War II.

According to her autobiography “My Story,” Marilyn Monroe originally did not want to meet DiMaggio, fearing he was a stereotypically arrogant athlete. They eloped at San Francisco

City Hall on January 14, 1954. Although she suffered from endometriosis, Monroe and DiMaggio each expressed to reporters their desire to start a family.

The union was troubled from the start by DiMaggio's jealousy and controlling attitude. A violent fight between the couple occurred immediately after the skirt blowing scene in “The Seven Year Itch” that was filmed on September 14, 1954, in front of Manhattan's Trans-Lux 52nd Street Theater. Then 20th Century Fox's East Coast correspondent Bill Kobrin told the “Palm