In 1953, wrote Heymann, Joe and Marilyn spent four days in New York in early September before heading back to Los Angeles. While they were in New York, according to Heymann, the couple attended a ballgame at Yankee Stadium where they joined Paul and Rudy Baer. Born in Milan, Italy, according to Clem Heymann, Paul Baer owned a porcelain factory in Lower Manhattan and played golf with DiMaggio whenever the ballplayer happened to visit New York. He’d known DiMaggio since the days of his marriage to Dorothy Arnold. (Heymann: Legends, 104), Both Paul and his brother, Rudy, knew Joe DiMaggio; but Paul, so sayeth Heymann, was one of Joe’s extremely few confidants.

Heymann used that convenient confidant attribution and Paul Baer as a source for some salacious anecdotes involving both Joe and Marilyn. Heymann repeated alleged testimony from George Solotaire to Paul Baer, making what Heymann asserted hearsay testimony, that Mr. 56 owned a notorious Marilyn Monroe look-alike mannequin […]. Evidently Joe paid some toy manufacturer ten thousand dollars to custom-produce this life-size, one-of-a-kind doll, Baer told Heymann. It could fold up to fit into a leather carrying case that came with it. However, Heymann admitted that Baer never actually saw the mannequin (Heymann: Legends, 191). Baer was Heymann’s source for an alleged affair involving the baseball player and the blonde during the blonde’s marriage to Arthur Miller. Baer provided the location for Joe and Marilyn to enact and conceal the alleged affair: As Baer put it, “I had a petite one-bedroom flat on Central Park West in the mid-nineties, which I held on to after I moved because the rent was moderate” (Heymann: Legends, 239).

According to Clem, Paul Baer convinced Joe to “get away from it all” by accompanying him on a Florida golfing junket“ (Heymann: Legends, 190). Baer extended his invitation and the junket purportedly occurred in early 1956 at a time when contemporaneous reporters devoted a large amount of ink and column inches to Marilyn and Arthur Miller’s romance along with their impending marriage, which DiMaggio found depressing. Mostly, according to Heymann, Joe DiMaggio needed a respite from the media and his depression.

Donna Morel engaged in extensive research to confirm the existence of the person Heymann named Paul Baer; but her research did not produce any results. She could not find any evidence that a porcelain fabricating company owned by a Paul Baer ever existed in Lower Manhattan; and she did not find any news articles relating to DiMaggio and Paul Baer.

Likewise, my investigation into the life of Joe DiMaggio’s intimate friend and confidant produced nothing, not even an obituary. I searched several newspaper archives; and although I found a few Marilyn articles in several newspapers—articles about Marilyn’s nude calendar photographs, her appearance on The Jack Benny Program, her rivalry with Mamie Van Doren and the ankle injury she incurred while filming River of No Return in Canada—I did not find any evidence or contemporaneous newspaper reports which confirmed that the famous celebrity couple attended a Yankees’ baseball game in early September of 1953.1The 1953 Yankees began September play at the Chicago White Sox, then they played the St. Louis Browns followed by Boston. They played the next ten games at home against Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis. They played two games at Boston and then returned home for the regular season’s final five games against Philadelphia and Boston. The 1953 World Series began on the 9th of September. The Yankees won their fifth consecutive championship: they beat Brooklyn 4-2. The series ended on October the 4th.Most certainly, if such an event had actually transpired, at least a New York City daily would have mentioned it; and I suggest that Twentieth Century-Fox would have arranged for a few publicity photographs. I did not locate one photograph of the Yankee Clipper and the world’s most famous blonde as they watched a late season Yankees baseball contest.

I located one UPI article which ran in several newspapers on September the 30th in 1953. Evidently, Joe and Lefty Gomez, former Yankee roommates, exchanged quips while watching the Dodgers and the Yankees work out. “I made a star out of you,” said Gomez to DiMag. “They never knew you could go back for a ball until you played behind me.” The article did not print a firm date for the DiMaggio-Gomez exchange, and the article did not mention Marilyn Monroe.

April VeVea and Carl Rollyson, along with Donald Spoto and Gary Vitacco-Robles, did not mention an early September visit to New York City. In fact, Marilyn returned to Los Angeles from Canada on the 1st of September with her injured foot still in a cast. During the following week, Fox kept her busy with post-production work on River of No Return, after the completion of which, she immediately began rehearsal for her September the 13th live appearance on The Jack Benny Program. I did not find one article pertaining to The Yankee Clipper, his golfing chum and partner, Paul Bear, and their shared golf junket to Florida, not even in any of Florida’s newspapers.

On March the 8th in 1999, The New York Times on the Web published a brief biography combined with an obituary for Joe DiMaggio who had died shortly after midnight (12:00 AM) on that date. The author, Joseph Durso, noted:

At his bedside this morning were his brother Dominic, the former center fielder for the Boston Red Sox; his two granddaughters, Paula and Cathy; Morris Engelberg, his lawyer, and Joe Nachio, a longtime friend. His body was flown to Northern California for a funeral Thursday and for burial in San Francisco, his hometown.2Link to website:
<https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/sports/baseball/bbo-dimaggio-obit.html>

Speaking only for myself, of course, I find it odd that Joe’s confidant and dear friend, Paul Baer, was not present when Joe died; and Durso did not mention Paul Baer at all.

At this point, you might be wondering: what happened to the notorious Marilyn doll? Certainly, following Joe’s death, somebody would have discovered that notorious doll and its leather carrying case, along with a Marilyn inspired wardrobe. Clem was at least informed enough to know that such a doll had not been found, which presented a problem for the author; but he was clever enough to provide a solution. According to Paul Baer, according to George Solotaire: […] at some point in 1957, Joe destroyed it […]. Problem solved.

In an email, Donna Morel noted:

The following noted biographies and memoirs of Monroe and DiMaggio never once mention Joe DiMaggio’s alleged confidant, Paul Baer. Marilyn Confidential by Lena Pepitone (1979); Goddess by Anthony Summers (1985); Marilyn: The Biography by Donald Spoto (1993); Joe DiMaggio: A Hero’s Life by Richard Ben Cramer (2000); DiMaggio: Setting the Record Straight by Morris Engelberg (2003); Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio: Love in Japan, Korea and Beyond by Jennifer Jean Miller (2014).

Following Donna’s lead, I reviewed thirteen publications about DiMaggio’s life and baseball career, including Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil by Jerome Charyn, published in 2011, and Dinner With DiMaggio: Memories of an American Hero, by Rock G. and John Positano, published in 2017. Paul Baer did not make an appearance. Additionally, I reviewed twenty-two publications about Marilyn’s life and film career. As you may already have concluded, Paul Baer did not make an appearance. More revealing and significant perhaps, Paul Baer did not receive a mention in any publication written by C. David Heymann other than Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love. Why? Donna Morel came to the following conclusion, a conclusion that I also share: Paul Baer was a figment, a contrivance of Clem Heymann’s imagination.