J. Taraborrelli - The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

When Joe DiMaggio heard about Hal Schaeffer in Marilyn’s life, he simply could not accept it. How dare his estranged wife replace him so quickly? What right did she have to move on without him? For a couple of weeks, he and his best friend, Frank Sinatra, did what best friends often do when faced with love lost in their lives—they began to commiserate about it. “We dagos gotta stick together,” Frank told Joe. “So let me take care of this thing. Let me come up with something that’ll screw with the divorce. Then she’ll see the light and you’ll be in like Flynn.”

The next day, Frank made a few telephone calls and was eventually referred to a company called City Detective and Guard Services. Joe Dougherty (no relation to Jim Dougherty) was one of the detectives working for the company. He recalled, “The divorce hearing was set for October 27. Sinatra hired us about a week earlier. He said, ‘I want you to follow Marilyn and this bozo she’s screwing—Schaeffer somethin’ or others—and take pictures of them in the act. Then, Joe DiMaggio is gonna use it against her and get that broad back in his life.’ I was thinking, ‘If this doesn’t piss off his wife, I don’t know what will. So how’s he going to get her back doing this thing is beyond me.’ But a job is a job and so, fine, we signed a deal and got right to work.

“We did what we were paid to do. We followed Marilyn Monroe all over the goddamn city waiting for her to hook up with this guy. She knew we were on her tail, too, which must have rattled her because once she almost crashed her car into a tree trying to evade us. Another time, she ran a red light and almost hit an old woman walking across the street with a shopping cart. When she got out of the car and started apologizing to the woman, we started snapping away thinking, well, at least we got some good pictures of Marilyn Monroe maybe we can sell or something later on. Looking back on it now, it was a dirty business. We bugged her car. We bugged her apartment. We bugged his car. We bugged his apartment. I don’t know what they had going on but I can tell you that we didn’t get one goddamn thing to use against her. If they were hooking up, I don’t know where they were doing it.”

Hal Schaeffer confirms, “We were followed everywhere. It was sick and twisted. She was absolutely scared to death. How a man could do that to a woman, I don’t know. It just confirmed to her that she had made the right decision in letting him go.”

On October 27, Marilyn—again in all black except for white gloves and pearls—stood before a judge and detailed her reasons for her divorce petition. “Just the night before, Joe had shown up at her house to try to talk her out of it,” said Marybeth Cooke. “Jerry [Geisler, her attorney] couldn’t believe his nerve, and was especially surprised that Sidney Skolsky had arranged the meeting. That made no sense. Everyone who cared about Marilyn wanted it over—not extended. But, luckily, Marilyn stood her ground. She told Joe it was over. He left, angry as ever.”

In court, Marilyn said that DiMaggio was “cold and indifferent” to her and that days would go by when he wouldn’t speak to her. “Cold and indifferent”? That wasn’t DiMaggio. The problem was that he was just the opposite, a hothead who was furious because he couldn’t have her in his life the way he wanted her.

The stress of being married to him had made her sick on numerous occasions, Marilyn continued. She said she even offered to give up her career at one point, but that nothing would have satisfied him. She wasn’t even allowed visitors when he was around, she claimed. Inez Melson, Marilyn’s business manager, then took the stand and testified that she had witnessed DiMaggio “push her away and tell her not to bother him.” *Natasha Lytess had earlier stated that she had a few things on her mind and hoped to have her day in court, too, but Melson told her that it wasn’t the time or place for whatever she had to say about the Monroe-DiMaggio alliance. Joe DiMaggio didn’t make an appearance. The divorce was granted—final decree to be effective in a year’s time. End of story? Not quite.

“We figured our job was over when the divorce was granted,” said Joe Dougherty. “But Sinatra and DiMaggio still had plans for Marilyn. DiMaggio said that she probably hadn’t hooked up with Schaeffer because she was too smart to do it before the divorce was granted. Now that it was a done deal, he was sure that she and the guy would start having sex. And he still wanted to catch them in the act. ‘Why?’ I asked him. He said, ‘Who are you to ask me questions? I just want to screw with her, that’s why. Satisfied now?’ Well, that wasn’t a good enough reason for me, so I pulled out of it. The company I was working for, though, wanted the money so they just replaced me with another guy, and the surveillance of Marilyn Monroe continued.”

To fully understand just how jealous Joe DiMaggio was, consider the details of what has, over the years, become known as “The Wrong Door Raid.” It happened on the night of November 5, 1954. Frank, Joe, and Frank’s friend Hank Sanicola were eating at a favorite Italian restaurant called Villa Capri when the maître d’, Billy Karen, came to the table and said that there was a phone call for Sinatra. Sinatra went to take the call and, according to Hank Sanicola, returned saying, “Let’s go, fellas. They found Marilyn and that little jerk at some dame’s apartment in Hollywood.” The fellows, who’d had a few too many drinks by this time, took off without paying their bill. As they walked out of the restaurant, the maître d’ came running after them. “We’ll pay it later. Christ almighty,” Sinatra exclaimed. “The hell with that,” said Billy Karen, “I’m comin’ with you guys. I want in on this thing.”

Five minutes later, Sinatra, DiMaggio, Sanicola, and Karen met two detectives in front of the building in question. The bunch of them then walked up to the apartment and, with a good kick from slugger DiMaggio and a hearty shove from crooner Sinatra, broke the door right off its hinges. All of them then rushed into the apartment, one person shouting out, “Get your paws off Marilyn Monroe!” and another hollering, “We caught you red-handed. The jig is up!” But guess what? Wrong apartment. Thus “The Wrong Door Raid.” The poor woman who actually lived in the unit had been snugly tucked away and probably counting sheep by this time. Suddenly awakened by the sound of a crashing door and a bunch of goons screaming at her while shining flashlights in her face, she sat up in bed, gathered her bedclothes at her chest, and then screamed so loud that people three blocks away would complain about the ruckus the next morning. *

Today, more than fifty years later, Hal Schaeffer says that he and Marilyn actually were in the apartment building together—just obviously not in the apartment that was raided. “I think I’d be dead today if they had found me in there with Marilyn,” he says. “They came in there and started destroying things, I mean, these guys were thugs. We heard the whole thing from the apartment we were in—which belonged to a student of mine. Marilyn was scared to death. She said, ‘Jesus Christ, Hal. We gotta get out of here. If Joe finds us here, he’ll kill us both.’ We managed to get out through a back door when all attention was focused elsewhere. I can’t say I have good memories of that night.”

Frank Sinatra was terribly embarrassed by this chain of events. After all, he was the one who had hired the detective company that botched the job. “He came down to our office the next day and was so pissed, honest to God, I was afraid for my life,” said Joe Dougherty. “He had three henchmen with him and said, ‘You guys are lucky we don’t tear this goddamn building apart brick by brick.’ ”