In the
summer
of 1954, Peter arranged
for
Jack
and
Jackie to
be invited
to the agent
Charles
Feldman’s
home for a party.
Peter
knew that
among
the
guests would be
Marilyn Monroe,
the
most
talked- about
woman
in the
world that
year,
and
her husband of
six months,
former
New
York Yankee
baseball great Joe DiMaggio. Their marriage was already on
the
rocks, and it
would end
a few
months later, destroyed by
DiMaggio’s jealousy
and
Monroe’s
unwillingness
to give up
her burgeoning career,
as DiMaggio insisted, and be
a housewife.
DiMaggio’s mistrust of
Marilyn’s fidelity was
usually unfounded,
but in the case of
Marilyn and John F.
Kennedy, his
suspicions
were
justified. Marilyn said
she felt uncomfortable
at the party because
Jack
Kennedy
stared at
her the entire evening. “I
may
be flattering myself,” she
giggled, “but he
couldn’t
take
his eyes off me.”
Charlie
Feldman
noticed
that Jackie
saw
what Jack was
doing, and she
was getting
angry.
Joe
DiMaggio was
aware of
what was
going on,
too. Every
few
minutes he
would grab Marilyn’s
arm
and
say, “Let’s go!
I’ve had
enough of
this!” Marilyn
didn’t want to
leave,
and
Feldman
recalled that
“they
had words about
it.”
The DiMaggios did leave early,
but sometime before
that Marilyn
gave
Senator Kennedy her
phone
number.
The
next day Jack
called, and DiMaggio
answered
the
phone.
When
he asked
who
was calling, Kennedy said,
“A friend.” DiMaggio
hung up in Jack’s face and started to
grill Marilyn about
who
it was, because
he hadn’t
recognized
Kennedy’s voice.
The
next time Marilyn saw Kennedy,
he said,
“I guess I shouldn’t
call at certain
times,
huh?”
A
few
months after the
party
at Charlie Feldman’s, Jack was
hospitalized for surgery
to alleviate
a chronic back problem.
Visitors
to his room
were
amused by a color poster
of Marilyn
Monroe
he had
taped
to the wall, in which she
wore
blue
shorts and stood with
her legs spread widely
apart.
Kennedy
had hung the
poster
upside down.
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