With an overabundance of arrogance, Clem Heymann dedicated Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love to the junior Joe DiMaggio. Upon reading that dedication, a reader could rightfully assume that Clem Heymann had experienced an abiding and meaningful relationship, a friendship with the junior DiMaggio. Certainly, Clem recognized that such an assumption by his readers would encourage them to believe his assertions, his anecdotes and his sources. An author usually dedicates a book to a person in order to acknowledge that person’s importance in or impact on the author’s life or to express gratitude for that person’s assistance and support or gratitude for an inspiration. Did Joe, Jr. assist and support the author while he wrote the above mentioned publication? Did Joe, Jr. inspire the author? Did Clem’s dedication derive from Joe, Jr.’s difficult struggles with fame, notoriety and disappointment?

Born on October the 23rd in 1941, at the Doctor’s Hospital on Staten Island, New York City, Joseph Paul DiMaggio, Jr. was the only son of baseball great and New York Yankee icon, Joe DiMaggio, otherwise known as The Yankee Clipper. By all accounts, the immense fame and athletic accomplishments of the Senior Joe eclipsed and overshadowed the junior Joe. Evidently, from the day of his birth until the day of his death on August the 7th in 1999, the Junior Joe never enjoyed a relationship with his famous father, never lived-up to his famous father’s all-American image and never satisfied his famous father’s expectations. Joe Jr. never found fame, and he never found himself. The son was vastly different than his father; but certain aspects of his life were not that different from his former, inordinately famous stepmom, his father’s second wife, Marilyn Monroe.

Within the leaves of Joe and Marilyn, Clem Heymann quoted Joe DiMaggio, Jr. a considerable amount, dialogue that I compiled into five 8½x11 inch pages of single-spaced, type-written testimony, all separated and memorialized by quotation marks. In total word count: 3,272 words. The resultant conclusion must be, therefore, that Clem invested a considerable amount of time with Joe, Jr., interviewing him, questioning him, making tapes and taking notes.

But once again, that conclusion would be incorrect.

During her frequent trips to Stony Brook University and her investigation of Heymann’s voluminous archive, Donna Morel attempted to locate verification that the dubious biographer had actually interviewed the Junior Joe. Donna informed me that

Heymann’s archives at Stony Brook contain no file, transcript, tape recording, or research documentation of Joe Jr. providing an interview to Heymann. Information from Heymann’s archive include documents dated from the fall of 1999, after the death of Joe Jr. Again, no documentation in Heymann’s archives exists or even men­tions an interview with Joe DiMaggio, Jr. […] Several news accounts published prior to and immediately after Joe Jr.’s death confirm that Joe Jr. never granted a lengthy, detailed interview to any journalist or reporter—let alone Heymann.

If Heymann did not interview Joe, Jr. and Joe Jr. never granted a lengthy interview to anyone, due to his disdain for and distrust of the Media, an attitude shared by both his father and his former stepmom, from where did Heymann derive all the many words that he attributed to the junior DiMaggio. Cleary from Heymann’s own imagination. He invented Joe, Jr.’s testimony.

What follows is a lengthy quotation that Heymann attributed to Joe, Jr.:

After busting out of Yale, I did the dumbest thing I’ve probably ever done. I moved to San Francisco and married a girl I barely knew. We eloped. It lasted a month. I then moved to my mother’s house inland, and within a couple of weeks, I racked up a six hundred dollar phone bill.  So I gave her the money from the sale of the baseball and split. I moved in with a guy named Tom Law, who earned a living of sorts as an extra in the movies. He got me a job working at his uncle’s rug factory in Santa Monica, which ended when a crane veered off course and gouged a large hole in my leg. After it healed, I joined the Marines. I figured the armed forces were probably more interesting and less dangerous than working in a rug factory. (Heymann: Legends, 282-283).

There are many problems with the preceding quotation, and Donna Morel noted the following:

1. After leaving Yale, Joe Jr. did not elope with a “girl from San Francisco.” After leaving Yale, DiMaggio married a young woman from San Diego County on May 18, 1963;
2. Joe Jr.’s marriage did not “last a month.” The marriage lasted approximately one year, as accurately stated in Joe Jr.’s August 8, 1999, Los Angeles Times obituary, and in Ragdoll Redeemed, authored by Joe Jr.’s former wife, Dawn Novotny;
3. Joe Jr. did not join the Marines following the dissolution of his 1963 marriage. He joined the Marines after leaving Yale in 1961, prior to his 1963 marriage. News photos (readily available on the Internet) capture Joe Jr. dressed in his Marine uniform for the August 1962 funeral of Marilyn Monroe, approximately nine months prior to his divorce.

A question Donna Morel posed to me in an email is certainly germane: why would Joe, Jr. provide Clem Heymann with a completely inaccurate chronology and erroneous information about his life? Donna concluded, as I have concluded, the above lengthy quotation evidences that the quotes were likely created by someone other than Joe Jr., who, again, never provided a detailed interview to any book author in the course of his lifetime. In fact, the Junior DiMaggio never provided a lengthy interview to any member of the press or media; and after his 1999 death, noted Donna, the media recounted his steadfast refusal to conduct interviews with journalists and authors.

Therefore, we are left with this overwhelming fact: during his literary career, Clem Heymann never changed. Heymann’s propensity to fabricate, to outright lie within the pages of publications advertised and sold as biographies only increased; or as David Cay Johnston observed and stated in his Heymann Newsweek article: he was certain that Heymann’s methods hadn’t changed over the years. Still, Heymann’s work was uniformly praised and supported by various publishers and reviewers. For example, on the inside flap of Joe and Marilyn’s dust cover, a potential reader will encounter this:

Based on extensive archival research and personal interviews with Monroe and DiMaggio’s family and friends, Joe and Marilyn offers great insight into a famously tragic romance. In an intimate, sensitive, shocking, and richly detailed look at two of Americas biggest stars, Heymann delivers the expertise and passion for his subjects that his many fans are hungry for and pens an unforgettable love story for the ages.

On the back of the richly detailed book’s dust cover, a potential reader will encounter these blurbs. From Publishers Weekly: Clear-eyed, often startling … A wealth of intimate detail found in no other biography. From People: Shocking, yearningly romantic, and tons of fun. From the New York Post and Liz Smith: One juicy story after another. Mr. Heymann doesn’t hold back. From the Toronto Sun: Informative and entertaining. And finally, from Booklist: A far cry from the glitzy, superficial star bios that litter bookstore shelves … Heymann knows how to make a biography read like an epic novel. The hyperbole from Booklist inadvertently hit the cranium of the truth: Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love reads like a novel because it actually is a novel.