To
Schedule an interview about MARILYN
MONROE with Mary
Jane Poppoff, call: 626
791-1896
or use our
Do-it-yourself
Guest Booking Form
To
see This Weeks other Guests & Topic suggestions: CLICK
HERE!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
THE REAL MARILYN
MONROE AND JOE DiMAGGIO
A family
member speaks for the first
time about the celebrity couple and
reveals the
untold stories, the unseen photos, the secret of Marilyn’s
death in
Marilyn,
Joe & Me
June DiMaggio Tells It Like It
Was
|
ROSEVILLE—June
DiMaggio,
niece of baseball great Joe DiMaggio and dear friend of Marilyn Monroe
for
eleven years, talks about the two legendary and very private stars for
the
first time in Marilyn, Joe & Me: June
DiMaggio Tells It Like It Was with
Mary Jane Popp (Penmarin Books, November 2006,
ISBN:1-883955-63-7,$29.95, HC).
Now 80 plus and holding,
June DiMaggio is
telling her story—her memories of Marilyn, the person who often came to
her
apartment in pajamas and a fur coat for late-night lasagna; the person
who
sometimes arrived depressed after casting-couch liaisons; the person
who basked
in the warmth of June’s big, Italian family; the person who loved to
quote
Emerson; the person who fell in love with her Uncle Joe, arguably the
greatest
baseball player ever.
|
In Marilyn,
Joe & Me, June DiMaggio, a singer and
actress in
her own right, who appeared in dozens of stage and film productions,
remembers
when Joe and Marilyn met in the early 1950s, married, and divorced. She
speaks
from an insider’s point of view and offers numerous never-before-seen
family
photographs of the Hollywood legend with her sports-star husband at the
DiMaggio home, as well as personal photographs printed here for the
first time,
including one taken by Marilyn of June after a day’s outing turned into
a
giggle for girls then almost the same age. There are also unseen
professional
photos of Marilyn, among them scenes from the production of her
next-to-last
movie, The Misfits.
June DiMaggio has told her story to
popular syndicated radio talk show host and trusted interviewer Mary
Jane Popp
over seven years, relating private moments about the golden couple as
well as
personal stories about other stars, including Ann Sothern, Jeanette
MacDonald,
Hoagy Carmichael, and Barbara Stanwyck.
June DiMaggio offers her lively,
personal recollections of Marilyn as a witty, intelligent, warm, and
generous
human being as she relaxed with the DiMaggio family. She knew Marilyn
outside
the glare of studio lights and in the candlelight of home. June and
Mary Jane
take us, in Marilyn, Joe & Me, on
a private journey, with no throwing flowers,
to the real woman inside the Hollywood sex kitten and the real man off
the
baseball diamond.
June also tells us now, more than
forty years after Marilyn’s death, why she believes that Marilyn was
murdered .
. . and that her mother knew who murdered the girl she called “Marilee.”
June had been with Marilyn on her
last day, and her mother was speaking to Marilyn on the phone when the
screen
icon dropped that telephone. She was found with her arm outstretched
toward it.
June tells us that Lee DiMaggio heard the name of the person who came
to
Marilyn’s room before the line went dead, but Lee, virtually frightened
to
death that her family would be harmed if she disclosed it, went to her
grave
with that information.
Dozens of theories abound about the
life and death of Marilyn Monroe, but in Marilyn,
Joe & Me, June DiMaggio
speaks her mind, and Mary Jane Popp has relentlessly researched and
vetted
June’s story.
Already the duo has been featured in
Playboy magazine, “Inside Edition,”
CNN’s “Showbiz Tonight,” Fox’s “The Big Story,” and MSNBC’s “The Dan
Abrams
Report” and countless radio programs nationwide.
Find out what went on inside the
studio for Marilyn, find out what went on inside the marriage of
Marilyn and
Joe, and find out why June DiMaggio knows that her friend was murdered
in Marilyn,
Joe & Me.
Praise
for Marilyn, Joe & Me
Marilyn, Joe
& Me
is an uncompromising and detailed examination of the 20th
century’s
highest profile celebrity marriage: Marilyn
Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. The Yankee
Clipper’s niece, June
DiMaggio, who remained a close friend of Marilyn’s until the day she
died, is
the ultimate insider here, and she sheds great light on a subject that
has
haunted the public for decades.
—Mitchell
Fink, NY Times best-selling author of The
Last Days of Dead Celebrities
Much
of what June has
to say is startling. . . . She has waited half a century to tell what
she
knows. But she wanted to tell it all before she died: the story of the
Monroe
she knew, the Monroe she visited on the day of her
death and what she knows about Monroe’s last
moments on earth,
including the phone call she believes was interrupted by her killer or
killers.
—Lisa
DePaulo, “A Special Playboy Report:
The Strange, Still Mysterious Death of Marilyn Monroe
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
WorldNetDailyExclusive
BLONDE
BOMBSHELL
Stunning
new
revelations:
Marilyn Monroe murdered
June
DiMaggio
breaks long silence on details
surrounding mysterious death of her friend
Posted: October
18, 2006
1:00 a.m.
Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Marilyn
Monroe and Joe DiMaggio at Tom DiMaggio's birthday party, 1954
|
Marilyn
Monroe was talking on the
telephone to Louise DiMaggio when she was murdered and was able to
utter the
name of her attacker before her death, according to a new book by
DiMaggio's niece and Monroe confidante June DiMaggio.
In "Marilyn,
Joe &
Me," 44 years after the Hollywood
superstar's mysterious death, which was ruled a suicide, June DiMaggio,
friend
of Marilyn and niece of New York Yankee Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio, she
discloses that her mother was speaking long distance with Marilyn
Monroe when
the actress was killed. DiMaggio says her mother overheard Monroe blurt out
the name or names of her
killer as they stormed into her bedroom.
Now in her
late 70s, DiMaggio knew
Marilyn before she was married to her uncle and for years afterward –
until the
star's death in 1962.
"It's about
the truth, and
it's about time," DiMaggio says, explaining why she is finally
publishing
her memoirs.
"Mother told
me that she knew
who killed Marilyn, but that knowledge absolutely terrified her," she
writes.
(Story
continues below)
To protect her family,
she said that she would
never reveal the
details of what she knew.
"I begged
mother to tell me
who it was, over and over and over again," says June.
Joe DiMaggio
also pleaded with her
to confide in him many times. Only her mother knew, and she never
confided in
Marilyn's former husband or anyone else.
"I even asked
her on her
deathbed," she recalls. "'Won't you tell me now?' And she just said,
'No, I want my family to live.'"
By DiMaggio's
account, Marilyn was
indeed the victim of a wretched childhood and the Hollywood
studio system that made her star power last to this day.
Still, she
paints a picture of a
different Marilyn, one who faced life sunny-side-up, who seemed to
accept her
fate on many levels. She divulges a Marilyn who read books and loved to
talk
about politics, who was unwavering in her generosity, who had an almost
naive
sense of wonder. She portrays a Marilyn sometimes lonely, who wasn't
even aware
of her hundreds of Christmas cards that flooded the studio; a Marilyn
that
cooed over a stuffed Teddy bear and took childlike pleasure in watching
cartoons. And yes, a Marilyn who also admitted to spending time on the
casting
couch.
DiMaggio
writes, "On the very
day of her death, Marilyn phoned me mid-morning and asked if I could
bring her
one of my homemade pizzas.
"When I
arrived with the pizza
around noon she
was in high
spirits, chatting about how she and my mother were going to Mexico
to shop for wrought-iron
patio furniture for the new home where she and Joe would live after
they
remarried.
"Yes,
remarried.
Authors
June DiMaggio and Mary Jane Popp
|
"They were
planning to retie
the knot on August 8, the day that would instead be her funeral.
Marilyn was
very happy and excited to be marrying Joe again. She was even thinking
of
domestic comforts and bought a set of dishes for their new love nest.
"When I saw
her that fateful
day, she went on and on about her new life and her plans for the
future. She
had a contract to fulfill, but she was hoping to cut back to perhaps a
movie a
year so that she could finally begin to enjoy life with her own family,
in her
own cozy home.
"On the night
that she was
murdered," DiMaggio relates, "the police were trying to locate Joe to
tell him that she'd been found dead. When they arrived at my door that
night
between 11 p.m.
and midnight, I was
in shock. I didn't
know where Joe was for sure, so I called to ask Mother. I remember
thinking
that he might be in San
Francisco.
When she picked up the phone she was sobbing uncontrollably.
"She already
knew.
So, who was
Marilyn's killer?
DiMaggio,
whose bright eyes belie
her strength and feistiness, is stalwart in her belief. She says her
mother
never told her the name, because she was desperately afraid for her
family.
"Only Mother knew, and she never confided in Joe or anyone else. He
kept
asking her, 'Won't you tell me now, Lee?' And she just said, 'No, I
want my
family to live.'
"Even after
the FBI traced
that last call that Marilyn made to Mother, not even the country's
G-men could
make inroads with her. As she told me directly and in no uncertain
terms, she
wouldn't tell anything to the FBI or to another living soul."
But then
there's an interview
co-author Mary Jane Popp happened upon, which breathes life into
DiMaggio's
account. Popp interviewed Alan Kimble "Kim" Fahey, author of
"Hollywood Unlisted," in which he tells hair-raising stories of the
35 years that he worked as a telephone repairman in the land of stars
and
stories, when he "kept his ears open and his mouth shut."
"The story
took place around
the early '80s, when Kim was sent to do about three days of phone work
on a
system at Atascadero State Mental
Hospital,
a maximum-security facility on California's
central coast. Kim was minding his work, converting an old switchboard
to a new
phone system, when he was confronted by a thin, wiry man.
"The Guy, as
I will refer to
him, was in his late 50s or early 60s, of medium build, maybe 145
pounds, with
slicked-back, graying hair. Kim said that he spoke in a streetwise tone
and
seemed desperate to talk to someone.
"He told Kim
he was a
small-timer in the Sam Giancana crime family in the East. The goal of
anyone
working for the mob was to move up in the family, so when he was told
to go to California
to do the
deed he had no hesitation. He was told to shut Marilyn up and get a
journal she
had been keeping.
"It seems
that what she was
writing in that journal was making some very powerful people nervous.
The Guy
had never been to Los Angeles
and didn't know his way around, so a driver was provided for him and
his
partner.
"They stalked
Marilyn for
several days to find out her routines. They discovered that part of her
nightly
routine was to sedate herself a little, take a drink or two, and crash
on the
bed in her bedroom with the TV on.
Marilyn
Monroe takes a break on the set of "The Misfits."
|
"During the
time they stalked
her, they also lifted her keys and had duplicates made of all of them,
since
they weren't sure which ones they would need. Finally they chose the
night to
make their move.
"They let
themselves in the
front door. The Guy said they didn't see anyone else in the house. They
entered
her room and, as expected, found Marilyn in bed.
"Before she
could react, they
were on top of her. Both men held her down while the Guy inserted a
nembutol
suppository (supplied for the purpose when they arrived in California)
into her rectum. They had been
told that it would work quickly and that it would not show up in an
autopsy.
"The Guy said
that Marilyn
struggled for only a minute or so, and then she stopped breathing. All
was
quiet. The search for the journal didn't take long; they found it under
the
mattress. They left in a matter of minutes, making sure that the front
door was
locked behind them and leaving no evidence of a break-in.
"The Guy
thought he was going
to move up in the Giancana crime family because of his slick work,
until he
heard that his partner had been murdered and that there was a contract
out for
him, too.
"He told Kim
that he stole an
ID that had a physical description close to his. He didn't want to be
arrested
and put in the general population in prison, because he knew the mob
could get
to him from inside.
"So he got a
crazy idea to
pretend that he was crazy. He got into an altercation in a restaurant,
acted
nutty, got arrested, and was subsequently admitted to Atascadero State Mental
Hospital.
"Crazy as the
plan was, it
might have worked. He may have thought that he could hide in the
hospital and
be released when things cooled off. What he didn't know was that the
stolen ID
was from a guy with a rap sheet longer than his arm who was a bona fide
nut
case."
In addition
to revealing new and
startling information surrounding Monroe's
death, DiMaggio and Popp also tackle rumors and conspiracy theories
about Frank
Sinatra's involvement, the FBI, and potential ties to the Kennedy
family.
Popp also
recently did an exclusive
interview with Gene Anthony, world-renowned photographer, who was only
one of
two photographers allowed to freely photograph Marilyn Monroe's
funeral.
As Popp
related, "I couldn't
believe my ears when Gene told me how he had gotten a call at about 2
a.m.
Pacific time from his New York agent who had already been called by a
German
magazine from Germany, telling Gene to get down to Hollywood to cover
Marilyn
Monroe's death. There have been stories claiming her body was not even
discovered until 3:30 a.m.
How then did Gene get this early morning call to cover the story? It
all comes
down to what June has told me all along. Marilyn was murdered before midnight when the police
arrived at
her door with the news."
Adding yet
another timely twist,
former Los Angeles
County
prosecutor John
Miner, now 88, has recently spoken again about reopening the
investigation into
her death and exhuming her body to reexamine it and reconsider the
finding that
she committed suicide.
"What I do
know after my
investigative interviews and my long relationship with June is that
Marilyn was
murdered. I have no doubt," Popp concludes.
|