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Overview
Joe DiMaggio was, at every turn, one man we could look at who made us feel good.
In the hard-knuckled thirties, he was the immigrant boy who made it big — and spurred the New York Yankees to a new era of dynasty. He was Broadway Joe, the icon of elegance, the man who wooed and won Marilyn Monroe — the most beautiful girl America could dream up.
Joe DiMaggio was a mirror of our best self. And he was also the loneliest hero we ever had.
In this groundbreaking biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer presents a shocking portrait of a complicated, enigmatic life. The story that DiMaggio never wanted told, tells of his grace — and greed; his dignity, pride — and hidden shame. It is a story that sweeps through the twentieth century, bringing to light not just America's national game, but the birth (and the price) of modern national celebrity.
Synopsis
Joe DiMaggio's complicated, very public, very enigmatic life is also the story of America's media machine. Back in the 1930s, when he first played with the Yankees, DiMaggio was in effect chosen to become our new national hero. How this happened, the invention of national celebrity, and the way fame both builds and destroys is the incredible story told here.
New York Times - Richard Bernstein
Mr. Cramer gets us through his...narrative in brisk and lively fashion, capturing the beat of mid-century America as he proceeds..DiMaggio, in Mr. Cramer's penetrating and unforgiving illumination of him, is a scowling, calculating and sometimes cruel phantom...[Cramer] has written something more than a definitive revisionist biography of a cultural archetype. [He] has furnished us with a grand American tale....
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Joe DiMaggio had an extended honeymoon with the American public. He was a hero to baseball fans everywhere when he roamed center field in the House That Ruth Built with a grace and elegance few players have ever matched; the envy of every red-blooded American male when he married Marilyn Monroe; and considered by most the greatest living ballplayer, revered as a man of quiet dignity and class. With the publication of Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life, the honeymoon may finally be over. Richard Ben Cramer's portrait reveals that the Yankee Clipper may not have been the man we thought him to be.From the Publisher
Ken Garcia San Francisco Chronicle An often brilliant and deeply disturbing look into the rise of one of the country's modern-day giants.
Richard Bernstein
Mr. Cramer gets us through his...narrative in brisk and lively fashion, capturing the beat of mid-century America as he proceeds..DiMaggio, in Mr. Cramer's penetrating and unforgiving illumination of him, is a scowling, calculating and sometimes cruel phantom...[Cramer] has written something more than a definitive revisionist biography of a cultural archetype. [He] has furnished us with a grand American tale....— New York Times
From The Critics
News flash: DiMaggio wasn't a very nice man. The Yankee Clipper of the baseball diamond was Revoltin' Joe away from it—rude and selfish, cheap and greedy, a guy who accepted money from mobsters and pursued sex with showgirls. He abused Marilyn Monroe and treated his only son like a photo prop. He used people and was convinced that people were always out to use him. (Often, he was right.) He lived his life with a sense of what biographer Cramer calls "regal entitlement," as if the world orbited around him, because the people in his world told him that it did. One gets the sense that DiMaggio might have fared better in these pages if he had cooperated with Cramer (a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter whose What It Takes is the definitive study of presidential campaigning as a war of attrition). Since the thought of turning his life into an open book was DiMaggio's worst nightmare, Cramer met the challenge of his subject's resistance with investigative resources, a fertile imagination and myriad sources who might have had axes to grind. At its most invasively salacious, the book seems to delight in playing "gotcha!"-for it's hard to imagine any man less likely than the pathologically private DiMaggio to share the size of his penis (a "Louisville Slugger," as Cramer delicately footnotes) with the world at large. At its most incisive, this biography provides an antidote to hero worship, and an indictment of the American celebrity machine. Such a book could have been written (and some have been) about Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Michael Jordan, almost anyone the culture inflates to godlike status and then deflates for betraying our larger-than-life illusions.—Don McLeese
Publishers Weekly
Much of the lowdown here about the ultimate American icon is controversial, but the extent to which it startles or shocks will depend on the reader's knowledge of DiMaggio (1914-1999), since rumors about him have been prevalent for years. Cramer's allegations are many. He documents how DiMaggio beat up Marilyn Monroe on at least three occasions, the most prominent time being the evening that Monroe filmed the famous scene with her dress flying up over her waist as she stands on a New York City subway grate in The Seven Year Itch. After Monroe's divorce from Arthur Miller, she and Joe had a rapprochement, and DiMaggio planned to remarry her on August 8, 1962--which turned out to be the day of Monroe's funeral. Concerning the Mob, Pulitzer Prize-winner Cramer alleges that DiMaggio knew Albert Anastasia, Sam Giancana and Frank Costello. However, although DiMaggio accepted many gifts from them, it was the mobsters who courted DiMaggio, because of his stardom--as they also pursued Sinatra--and not the other way around. (At one point, DiMaggio received a trust account at the Bowery Bank set up by Frank Costello that eventually netted DiMaggio over $1 million.) Morris Engelberg is now in the news almost daily and has made a second career for himself as the self-anointed longtime "friend" and trusted "confidant" of DiMaggio. Cramer alleges that Engelberg hijacked many of the products that DiMaggio autographed--worth well over seven figures. Cramer also focuses on what he says were Engelberg's efforts to ease DiMaggio out of this life with the help of morphine suppositories. The author of What It Takes, the epic history of the 1988 presidential race, has written a biography that will have people talking. (Oct. 17) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.Library Journal
Cramer does a very creditable job of exploring DiMaggio's life in and out of major league baseball; he's also an excellent reader. We follow "Joltin" Joe from his teens in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood to his death from lung cancer in 1999. This is a story of how Joe the businessman parlayed his athletic talent, baseball success, and name into a personal fortune over nearly 40 years in the public eye. That he still managed to become a baseball hero seems almost coincidental to his single-minded pursuit of cashing in on his skills. Cramer gives especially fine descriptions of DiMaggio's relationships with his first wife, Dorothy, with Marilyn Monroe, and with his son, Joe Jr., each a disaster of major and lasting importance. Adult language and situations occur; highly recommended, but not for fans younger than the later teens. Cliff Glaviano, Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.Herbert I. London
…extraordinary biography…— National Review
Terry W. Hartle
There is much about DiMaggio that we will never know. But Cramer's book provides a wonderfully rich and full portrait of a man who wanted desperately to avoid revealing anything about himself.—Christian Science Monitor
Widmer
An ambitious new biography that is worthy of its subject. DiMaggio: The Hero's Life may disturb DiMaggio's card-carrying disciples, but it will also bring new acolytes and provoke a fresh examination of a fascinating life, The book is gripping from start to finish, exploring the man, the aura and the interstices between.—New York Observer