The relationship between Joe DiMaggio, legendary Hall of Fame baseball player, and Hollywood starlet Marilyn Monroe has fascinated Americans for over 60 year. This is likely due to the fact that, below the glamorous facade, there were dark truths of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. The two and their relationship featured many dark secrets including abuse, racism, SA, exploitation, addiction, parental neglect, death, and even a love that went on beyond the grave.

Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio (eventually anglicized to Joseph Paul DiMaggio) was born on November 25, 1914 in California. The future "Joltin' Joe" was the eighth of nine children born to Giuseppe - whom he was named after - and Rosalia DiMaggio, two Sicilian immigrants who settled in the North Beach section of San Francisco due to Giuseppe's career as a fisherman off the city's waters. Giuseppe harbored hope that each of his five sons would follow his footsteps into he profession.

Norma Jeane Mortenson - the future Marilyn Monroe - was born on June 1, 1926 to Gladys Pearl Baker. For decades, Monroe's father was identified, though in 2022 DNA testing revealed that her father had been Charles Stanley Gifford, a co-worker with whom Gladys had an affair. Monroe also had two half-siblings, Robert and Berniece, who were born to Gladys and her first husband, John Newton Baker, who had taken the children with him after the marriage fell apart. Robert died in 1933, but Monroe and Berniece would meet in the 1940s.

Despite his father's wishes, Joe DiMaggio had no desire to enter into the family fishing business. He later recalled that he would often do anything to avoid cleaning his father's boat, as detested the smell of dead fish. Suffice to say, this didn't go over well with Giuseppe Sr., who found his son "lazy" and "good for nothing." For his part, DiMaggio bounced around schools, eventually leaving education all together before graduating high school. However, he began playing baseball at the age of 10.

Foreshadowing the rest of her life, Marilyn Monroe life a somewhat tumultuous childhood. She bounced between the care of her mother and various foster homes, including at least one where she was sexually assaulted, Later in life, Monroe would say that the instability and trauma of her childhood led to her becoming an actress. "I didn't like the world around me because it was kind of grim ... When I heard that this was acting, I said that's what I want to be ... Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I'd sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it."

Joe DiMaggio began playing professional baseball in 1933, debuting that season for the Pacific Coast League's San Francisco Seals. The minor league hometown hero became a sensation due to a 61-game hitting streak that season, and in-turn major league scouts started singing around. Eventually, DiMaggio's contract was purchased by the New York Yankees in exchange for $50,000 and 5 players. DiMaggio made his debut for the Yankees in 1936, and became an immediate star, teaming with Lou Gehrig to lead the team to 4 straight Word Series Championships from 1936 through 1939.

While Joe DiMaggio was already a baseball superstar, he didn't become an iconic figure of American life until 1941. The season, which turned out to the the final year before America entered the Second World War, DiMaggio recorded base hit in an astounding 56 consecutive games. The streak, and the publicity associated it, made DiMaggio one of the country's most famous face. He won the MVP that season - over Ted Williams, who hit .406 - and led the Yankees to another title.

By 1945, the future Marilyn was married and working in a factory while her husband was deployed in World War II. After posing for an army photographer who was sent to the factory to "shoot morale-boosting pictures of female workers" she decided to leave her job and try her hand at modeling and acting against her husband's wishes. Monroe quickly became an in-demand cover girl, which then transitioned to a film contract with 20th Century Fox. She began using the stage name Marilyn Monroe this point, with Marilyn coming from Broadway access Marilyn Miller, while Monroe came from her mother's maiden name.

Joe DiMaggio being one of the biggest names in America at the outset of World War II, it didn't save his parents from racial discrimination once the war began. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Giuseppe and Rosalia DiMaggio were among the thousands of German, Japanese, and Italian immigrants classified as "enemy aliens" by the government. They were required to carry photo ID booklets at all times, were not allowed to travel outside a five-mile radius from their home without a permit, and Giuseppe was barred from fishing in San Francisco Bay. Despite the treatment of his family, DiMaggio did serve in the military for two years from 1943 to 1945.

Prior to his wartime service, Joe DiMaggio married actress Dorothy Arnold in 1939. The couple, who met on the set of a 1937 film where both appeared, greeted 20,000 well-wishers in san Francisco after the nuptials. Despite Arnold giving birth to Joseph Paul DiMaggio Jr. in 1941, the marriage didn't last. They divorced in 1944, while DiMaggio was on leave from the Yankees and serving in the U.S. military.

Through the late 1940s and early 1950s, the newly-named Marilyn Monroe attempted to break into film, with middling levels of success. It seems like for every small role she scored - including appearances in films like All About Eve, The Asphalt Jungle, As Young as You Feel, Love Nest, and Let's Make It Legal - there were career pitfalls including being dropped from studio contracts. Monroe would return to modeling whenever her film career took a downturn, and during this period she did some nude modeling that would come back to somewhat haunt her.

In November of 1953, Hugh Hefner published the first issue of Playboy. Monroe was the cover girl for the first issue, and nude photos of her made up the centerfold. The issue sold like gangbusters and made Monroe the nation's biggest sex symbol. The only problem? She didn't consent to any of it. The cover image was a photograph taken of her at the Miss America Pageant parade in 1952, and the centerfold featured one of her aforementioned 1949 nude photographs, both of which had been purchased by Hefner without Monroe's knowledge.

Joe DiMaggio's baseball career began to wind down in the early 1950s. Following the 1951 season - a year in which DiMaggio felt that his body breaking down was affecting his play and that the Yankees were trying to phase him out in favor of highly-touted youngster Mickey Mantle - DiMaggio announced his retirement despite the Yankees having just won their third consecutive World Series, the ninth of DiMaggio's career. He said at the time, "I feel like I have reached the stage where I can no longer produce for my club, my manager, and my teammates. I had a poor year, but even if I had hit .350, this would have been my last year. I was full of aches and pains and it had become a chore for me to play. When baseball is no longer fun, it's no longer a game, and so, I've played my last game."

In 1952, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were at very different places in life. He was a just-retired sports legend, and she was an up-and-coming Hollywood starlet. According to Hollywood legend, it was DiMaggio who initiated the meeting between the two through a mutual connection, having become smitten with Monroe from afar. The actress was initially resistant, fearing he was just a “flashy New York sports type” according to her autobiography, however she eventually found him "reserved" and the two pursued a relationship.

Joe and Marilyn had what many would consider a whirlwind romance, and the couple ended up marrying in January 1954 in San Francisco. The couple wanted a private courthouse wedding, however someone tipped off the press, leading to a media frenzy. The couple ten took off to Japan for their honeymoon, which coincided with a previously booked DiMaggio business trip. While in Japan, Monroe was asked to travel to Korea to entertain U.S. troops stationed there, despite her new husband's misgivings. This was the first crack of many inter union.

When DiMaggio and Monroe married, the couple were asked if they wanted to have children. They responded as such:

"I’d like to have six," Marilyn said. "At least one," DiMaggio added. "I’m going to continue my career," Marilyn explained. "But I’m looking forward to being a housewife too."

Allegedly, issues of controlling behavior and jealousy from DiMaggio began plaguing the couple from the moment they married. Things came to a head during the filming of The Seven Year Itch in 1954. While most of the film was shot in Hollywood, director Billy Wilder and the studio set up a shoot in New York City to drum up publicity. The scene, which featured Monroe standing over a subway grate that would blow her skirt up over her head, drew a crowd of over 2,000 people. DiMaggio was inured at the content and crowd, getting into a massive verbal and by some accounts physical altercation with Monroe.

Just a month after the Seven Year Itch fiasco, Monroe filed for divorce from DiMaggio. The couple were only married for nine months, under 300 days, before they officially split. For his part, DiMaggio supposedly "underwent therapy, stopped drinking alcohol, and expanded his interests beyond baseball" in reaction to the divorce. Meanwhile Monroe headed back to New York, yearning to break free of the studio system and the stereotypical role she felt she was being offered.

Shortly after her divorce from DiMaggio, Monroe became involved with playwright Arthur Miller. The relationship was controversial amongst Hollywood studio heads - who worried that Monroe's association with the left wing Miller might damage her career - and the media. Reporter Walter Winchell said of the couple, "America's best-known blonde moving picture star is now the darling of the left-wing intelligentsia." Despite this, the couple married in 1956, and remained together until 1961, when career pressures, drug issues, and the trauma of Monroe's 1957 ectopic pregnancy tore them apart.

Despite the hectic nature of her personal life, Monroe achieved her greatest critical success in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The height of her success came with 1959's Some Like It Hot. The comedy, which focused on gender roles, had a nightmarish production that which Monroe would later describe as a "sinking ship", was a massive box office and critical hit upon release. Monroe earned a Golden Globe for Best Actress for her performance, and Variety said she was "a comedienne with that combination of sex appeal and timing that just can't be beat."

By the early 1960s, Monroe's life was in shambles. Her career took a downturn after Some Like it Hot, her marriage to Miller fell apart, she fell deeper into drug addiction, and according to some engaged in an affair with President John F. Kennedy. DiMaggio reentered Monroe's life in 1961 when he helped secure her release from a Psychiatric Clinic in Manhattan. That spurred months or rumors, famously lampooned by Oscars host Bob Hope at that year's ceremony, that the coupe, were reuniting. Allegedly, DiMaggio even told some close associates that he planned to remarry Monroe. However, it wasn't meant to be.

Just days after DiMaggio allegedly told friends that he was going to remarry Monroe, the actress was found dead in her Hollywood home. An autopsy toxicology report showed that Monroe's cause of death was acute barbiturate poisoning, and her death was ruled a suicide. This proved controversial, as many - including DiMaggio himself - believed that Monroe hadn't shows suicidal tendencies. Conspiracy theories emerged quickly, and have continued to spread through the 21st century.

However Monroe died, there's no question about what happened next. DiMaggio took total control of her funeral arrangements. He took possession of her body, and arranged the entire service with Monroe's stepsister. DiMaggio barred anyone from the Kennedy family or most of Hollywood from attending the service, instead focusing on Monroe's personal friends. Furthermore, police were present to keep the press and crowds at bay as Monroe was laid to rest.

Following Monroe's death, DiMaggio's public personal remained somewhat cool a detached. Despite appearing in numerous ad campaigns, including memorably for Mr. Coffee, he became a symbol of a bygone era in American life. Singer Paul Simon tapped into this feeling when he included the line "Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely yes to you..." in the hit single Mrs. Robinson. According to Simon, he once discussed the song with DiMaggio. The singer explained, that the baseball legend said to him, "What I don't understand, is why you ask where I've gone. I just did a Mr. Coffee commercial, I'm a spokesman for the Bowery Savings Bank and I haven't gone anywhere!" Simon claimed to reply "that I didn't mean the lines literally, that I thought of him as an American hero and that genuine heroes were in short supply. He accepted the explanation and thanked me. We shook hands and said good night".

For years after Marilyn Monroe's death, public perception was that DiMaggio was still in love with her and mourning her loss. This seemed to be backed up by his actions, including never marrying again and having rides sent to Monroe's grave every week for decades after her death. DiMaggio himself never confirmed nor dispelled these rumors, instead never speaking about Monroe or their relationship publicly out of respect for Marilyn.

DiMaggio, a smoker for most of his adult life, was diagnosed with lung cancer late in 1998, and spent nearly 100 days in the hospital. He died on March 8, 1999. According to DiMaggio's attorney Morris Engelberg, DiMaggio's last words were "I'll finally get to see Marilyn", however that account has been disputed by member of the DiMaggio family, who have all questioned Engelberg's motives and dealings with DiMaggio.