DiMaggio: Setting the Record Straight [Hardcover]

Mr. Schneider has taken the info and made it into a very readable book. The chapters on his grandchildren and son are very moving and helps explain the elusiveness of joe dimaggio.
The answers are all there in this marvelous book.

For brevity, I'll address the more glaring errors. In his version of DiMaggio meeting Marilyn Monroe, he dismisses her version as the product of "handlers." Yet, his version of her version is wrong. And her version is from her autobiography! He's further undermined by what Joe himself told writer John M. Ross in the 10/1954 magazine, True.

He claims Monroe became pregnant with DiMaggio's child in the summer of 1954, but miscarried, yet no one knew because it was never announced. When you consider the world learned of her miscarriages with Arthur Miller without them having to alert the media, Engelberg's story defies belief.

Frank Sinatra "pimping" Monroe in order to curry favor with the Kennedys is laughable! He was the most powerful celebrity in the world; he hardly needed Marilyn to make friends. If anything, the Kennedys would've sought him out.

While it's concieveable DiMaggio decided the Kennedys were somehow to blame for Monroe's death, Joe did tell gossip monger Earl Wilson in his book "Show Business Laid Bare" he believed her death was an accident.

Worse, the book features Robert Slatzer and Jeanne Carmen, two names familiar to Monroe fans. Slatzer claims that, for 3 days in October 1952, he was her husband (!) Carmen claims to have been a "confidant," and has related salacious stories of Monroe's involvement with the Kennedys. Forget that neither has ever offered a shred of evidence to back their claims, and that Monroe biographer Donald Spoto resoundly discredited them, the fact he gives them the legitimacy they don't deserve is proof of Engelberg's contempt for Monroe.

He also relates two stories via DiMaggio "friend" Rock Positano. Positano claims he drove DiMaggio to the cemetary where he buried Monroe. He had Positano go to her crypt and report what he saw. He didn't visit because there was a photographer who stood to bag $10 million for a pic of Joe at her crypt. This is plain hooey: biographer Maury Allen documented that DiMaggio visited Monroe's crypt many times. At any rate, Positano claims he reported to DiMaggio that, among other things, was a bench with a plaque reading: "Marilyn Remembered;" this is the name of a fan club. However, Positano says DiMaggio told him he placed the bench there so that fans could have a place to sit! The other tale Positano spins is about a near-encounter between DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra. Positano was driving DiMaggio to Beverly Hills eatery Mateo's, where he and Monroe used to dine. When Positano learns Sinatra is waiting there to make peace with his former pal, he changes plans. There is only ONE slight problem with this: Mateo's opened in 1963; Monroe died in 1962.

For all his "setting the record straight," Engelberg mostly whines about what a chore it was to be the great man's flunky. Ironically, the more he drones, the more Cramer's portrait of DiMaggio as a Humbug is confirmed. At one point, he claims he threw DiMaggio's false teeth off a bridge so nobody could sell them. THIS from the guy who tried to peddle Joe's personal effects to the highest bidder!

That whirring sound you hear is Joe spinning in his grave!