No one man seems to stand out in the life of Marilyn Monroe. A marriage to playwright Arthur Miller, rumors about relationships with JFK and his brother, and her crushes on her popular co-stars have created such a glitzy, sexy image of her love life that it would be hard to say who was the most prominent of Marilyn Monroe’s men. When we view her relationships from the man’s perspective, however, then she certainly outshines the other women in his life (excepting Jackie O. in JFK’s case). With Joe DiMaggio, she not only overshadowed the other women in his life; in their short years together, she overwhelmed the famous Yankees player himself.

Jerome Charyn recounts the complex romance between the “prince of baseball” and his “princess” in Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil. The dark, riveting affair Charyn presents to us is better than stories in the films that made Monroe famous. While DiMaggio was more besotted with her than baseball, she married him soon after her nudie pics surfaced and nearly ended her career. Obsessed with her but entirely unaware of her personality, believing she would give up the movies if he asked her to, DiMaggio sat at home eating dinner in front of the T.V. while she made the most of her career boost  from the marriage. As vampy off-screen as on, she enraged him with her flirtations. He hired thugs to follow and threaten a suspected lover, raged at her when he did not find her at home, and finally beat her after the subway grating, skirt-blowing photo shoot. When she divorced him directly after, he stalked her, pounding on her door, and slept with Marilyn Monroe Look-Alike Contest winners.

Yet “Mr. Marilyn Monroe” was not a cruel or cold man, Charyn leads us to believe despite the faults of both. DiMaggio was tragic, too isolated by his largely undesired fame to seek help. Joe was there instantly to help Marilyn when her marriage to Arthur Miller fell apart, and she broke him again when she left for Frank Sinatra and the Kennedys. And then again they were together, had another wedding date picked out, before she overdosed and he had to bury the eternally young starlet. Although Charyn points out that DiMaggio lived decades after his ex-wife, he questions whether, after the intense pain of loving and losing Marilyn, Joe “really survive[d]” her.