Before Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio Married a Different Hollywood Actress

When Joe D was coming into his own as a superstar, he met and married a movie star long before his romance with Hollywood’s ultimate blonde bombshell.

by Rich Watson 

When Joe DiMaggio married Marilyn Monroe in 1954, it was headline news around the world. They were superstars in their respective fields, adored by the whole country and living their lives in the media spotlight. His relationship with her was abusive and marked by jealousy, yet the truth of it wasn’t well known at the time.

In 1939, DiMaggio was a star, but he was not yet the baseball legend he would become in later years. The fifty-six-game hitting streak, the hundred thousand dollar contract, the ascension to the Hall of Fame, the Mr. Coffee commercials, they all came much later—and before he even knew who Monroe was, a different film actress had caught his eye.

Joe DiMaggio in the 1930s

The Yankees bought DiMaggio, the son of an Italian fisherman from the San Francisco Bay Area, from the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. There, he had hit in sixty-one straight games—remarkably, not a Minor League record. 

He debuted for New York in 1936, only two years after Babe Ruth departed. He came with high expectations, and he met them: he hit .323 with 29 homers and 125 RBI. Playing alongside Lou Gehrig in his twilight years, DiMaggio, an outfielder, won four consecutive World Series from 1936-39 and first gained his nickname, the “Yankee Clipper.” 

Salary negotiations between DiMaggio and Yankee management were a factor during these years. When told that Gehrig made $40,000, which was held up as a benchmark at the time, DiMaggio responded, “Then Mr. Gehrig is a badly underpaid player.”

Regardless, DiMaggio was a star on the rise, playing in the nation’s spotlight. He quickly attracted attention from outside baseball, which led to him meeting a woman named Dorothy Arnold.

Dorothy Arnold in the 1930s

Arnold’s peak as a Hollywood actress was the mid-to-late thirties. The Minnesota native had a number of uncredited roles and parts in shorts during this time. She was also a staff singer at NBC, as well as a model. 

Perhaps her best-known film role was in a serial from 1939 called The Phantom Creeps, with Bela Lugosi. Here’s a quote from her from 1939:

As a kid in Duluth I was an awful tomboy—always playing baseball and football with the sandlot boys. But that was only until I got to be 13 and decided to be a singer and dancer. By the time I was 15 I looked 22 and was doing torch songs in night clubs…. I went into vaudeville with a song and dance specialty… and the next season went east, where I tried a little theater work, and stock, and tried to crash Broadway. I almost starved, and sometimes I sang with cheap dance orchestras. Ever since then I’ve been a sucker for hard-luck stories; whenever anybody mentions ‘landlord,’ I reach for my purse.

DiMaggio and Arnold’s marriage

In 1937 DiMaggio and Arnold appeared in a film called Manhattan Merry-Go-Round, featuring an all-star lineup of musicians. Arnold was an extra; DiMaggio’s role was a cameo. He got his name on the poster below the title. 

The two met on the set and hit it off. They married two years later, after the World Series, in San Francisco. Their son Joe Jr. was born in 1941.

Not only did Arnold convert to Catholicism for her husband, she quit her acting career for him. In accordance with his wishes, she stayed at home. It wasn’t enough to straighten out their problems, though, according to this profile of Arnold at the SABR website:

If Arnold thought that having a baby would smooth out the rocky marriage—DiMaggio, emotionally unavailable, spent most evenings away from their upper Manhattan home—it had the opposite effect. (Perhaps Arnold had the best insight as to what Paul Simon meant by “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?”)

DiMaggio and Arnold separated in 1942, but because of his service in World War 2, didn’t divorce until 1944. Their relationship fluctuated until she remarried in 1946, to stockbroker George Schuster.

As a post-script, Arnold sought an amendment to their divorce in 1952. DiMaggio had taken Joe Jr. out with Monroe. Arnold claimed Monroe insisted on going to places where the child was exposed to adult conversation and drinking. Arnold also wanted more child support money and a stipulation that required all future father-son visits be at her home. The case was dismissed a year later.

Arnold returned to acting in 1957 with the movie Lizzie. She also did a little television. She divorced again  and married again, in 1970. She co-owned a supper club in Palm Springs until her death from pancreatic cancer in 1984.

DiMaggio meets Marilyn

DiMaggio retired from baseball in 1951 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame four years later.

He met Monroe in 1952 in an Italian restaurant in New York after seeing her in publicity photos taken with the White Sox. According to the book The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe by J. Randy Taraborrelli:

What most impressed Marilyn about Joe on this night was that despite his quiet, almost sullen demeanor, he somehow managed to command the table. In fact, the whole room…. Or, as she so perfectly put it, “Sitting next to Mr. DiMaggio was like sitting next to a peacock with its tail spread, that’s how noticeable you were.” There was no doubt in her mind that she was fascinated.

But that is another story.

————————

Do you have a favorite Joe DiMaggio story?