Now the blond bombshell Marilyn Monroe, the actress initially didn't want to meet Joe DiMaggio — she assumed the New York Yankees star would be a "stereotypical arrogant athlete" — but in March 1952, the two went on a date in LA. They struck up a romance that Summer, though from the start, Joe seemed to harbor a distrust of Marilyn's burgeoning career and Hollywood friends and a jealousy of her ability to attract other men. An old-fashioned man from a traditional Sicilian family, Joe believed that women should be at home, and his ideal Marilyn would have been that of a happy housewife and mother.
The couple were married in January 1954 in a quick civil ceremony at San Francisco City Hall. They were each other's second marriages; Joe was previously married to actress Dorothy Arnold, whom he shared a son with. Rumors of emotional and physical abuse plagued their union; in one infamous incident, discussed in The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe by J. J. Randy Taraborrelli, Joe got so upset watching Marilyn film her iconic white dress subway grate scene for The Seven Year Itch that he "slapped her around" that night in her hotel room, and the bruises left from the beating had to be covered up with heavy makeup on set the following day.
On Oct. 6, 1954, Marilyn stepped outside her Beverly Hills home with lawyer Jerry Giesler to announce that she was seeking a divorce from Joe, citing "mental cruelty." And on Oct. 27, just nine months after they were married, Marilyn stood before a judge to get a divorce petition. She called Joe "cold and indifferent" and revealed that days would go by when he wouldn't speak to her. The divorce was granted, and the couple went their separate ways.
In his 2017 book Dinner with DiMaggio: Memories of an American Hero, Joe's close friend Dr. Rock Positano gives further insight into the reasons for Joe and Marilyn's split. "[From] Joe's point of view, they didn't stay married because Marilyn was not able to have children. It was as simple as that. It was not about the published reports of jealousy and not wanting to take a back seat to her fame," Positano wrote, adding that "Joe wanted kids with Marilyn, and Marilyn wanted to reward him with a family. In Italian terms, sex meant kids. Great sex meant great kids. Marilyn gave goddess sex, but no kids." Marilyn's biggest goal in life was to have children, but she suffered from endometriosis, which made getting pregnant that much more challenging.
Though their love story was short-lived, Joe still held a torch for the actress. After Marilyn's death in 1962, Joe stepped in to handle funeral arrangements — and for over 20 years, he had red roses delivered to her grave twice a week.
