Joe & Marilyn

A Memory of Love

By: Roger Kahn

Narrated by: Dick Hill

Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's Summary

He was the most famous and best ballplayer of his generation. She was America's blonde. They were intense, impassioned lovers, and, long after that, gentle and loving friends. The only thing that didn't work between Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe was their marriage.

Joe & Marilyn is a portrait of DiMaggio, as godlike as his legend on the field, but vulnerable and intensely human off and of a stormy Marilyn of whom it was said, "She doesn't need a husband. She needs salvation."

After DiMaggio retired from baseball, he saw a publicity photo of Marilyn and his courtship began. She was reluctant to meet him fearing an old, vulgar ballplayer and instead finding a poised and graying man - "a little shy, like me" - impeccably tailored and financially secure. When they married in 1954, reporters called them "Mr. and Mrs. America." But their married life was strained from the start. She was messy. He was compulsively neat. He wanted a certain primness and she liked to show her storied body. The marriage lasted nine months.

In later years as Marilyn drifted through mental illness, DiMaggio reappeared as a stalwart friend. But even he could not rescue her. In the end all that was left for him was to plan her funeral. He barred some of Hollywood's most famous names. Why? "Because they killed her," he told a friend.

©1988 Roger Kahn (P)2009 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

TRULY AWFUL!

This book was downright PAINFUL! The DiMaggio obsessed Author goes on long tangents that make it obvious he is simply trying to pad out a story he has done little (if any) research on! it's clear from the start that he is DiMaggio obsessed so if you are hoping to learn ANYTHING about Monroe "fugetabouit". This was quite possibly the dullest thing I ever had to endure and the narrator obviously had similar feelings because its the most miserable performance ever! Most of the time he sounds like hes ready to fall asleep and I can understand why! This book was also just chock full of hearsay probably to add some sensationalism to a painfully dull story. spare yourself the agony!