Today in 1954 – Joe DiMaggio Marries Marilyn Monroe

Joe DiMaggio Chesterfields Ad

Talk about a vintage meld, this is one that easily lures the sports and movie collectors across niches!

If you collect baseball, then Joe DiMaggio likely holds a high spot in your collection (unless you're a Red Sox fan, but hey, I like Ted Williams too!), and many movie collections center around Marilyn. Actually, that statement is a vast understatement of the power of Marilyn, many collections are Marilyn Monroe collections, period. There's even been a book about collecting Marilyn and digging deeper another on collecting Marilyn Monroe magazines, plus some fantastic websites dedicated to collecting Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, interviews with collectors, etc.  In fact, even with my background in sports cards and memorabilia, it's pretty easy to say Marilyn makes Joltin' Joe look like small potatoes in the collectibles world.

The January 15th edition of the San Francisco Chronicle covered the DiMaggio-Monroe wedding in detail noting that the ceremony took place at Municipal Judge Charles S. Perry's courthouse with the judge pronouncing the super couple man and wife at 1:48 pm.  Art Hoppe, the journalist covering the event for the Chronicle, mentions that Judge Perry was a close friend of DiMaggio's.  Despite trying to keep the wedding itself secret, Marilyn actually got the PR ball rolling herself by putting in a call to her studio that morning to tell them about the 1 pm wedding.  Hoppe writes, "A studio official casually mentioned it as fast as he could to all the major news services," which lead to about 500 people milling about Judge Perry's courthouse by the time of the wedding.

They newlyweds had a tough time escaping the courthouse once the ceremony was complete until the notioriously private, some say cranky, DiMaggio decided they could escape through a basement exit.  According to Hoppe:

“This is a fine thing—dodging your loyal fans like this, Joe,” said a member of the crowd who had wormed his way into the elevator. Di Maggio took umbrage and after much this and that shouted: “Don’t tell me what to do!”

They would divorce later that same year, October 27, 1954.

I don't really need to do a blog post to sell Joe DiMaggio, and especially Marilyn Monroe, collectibles.  As you might imagine they move pretty easily.  But I think the pop culture crossover perfectly illustrates the idea behind Immortal Ephemera--in fact, I moved to movie collectibles by accident myself, just tacking on a cheap lot of vintage fan photos to a larger sports collectibles order and finding myself hooked in from there.  So while I don't know how many DiMaggio/Marilyn items you're going to find me offering for sale at any one time (did I mention, they move quick!), I thought the anniversary of this event would be a perfect place to post a couple of images I sold awhile back.

Below you'll see two press photos from the Joe DiMaggio-Marilyn Monroe wedding that I was lucky enough to handle awhile back.  The pair sold on November 11, 2004, the first one going for $124 and change and the one below it for just under $68.  I must say, looking back just over four years later...those prices are low!

Joe DiMaggio & Marilyn Monroe

Exiting the Courthouse