Blind Date

JOE DiMAGGIO & MARILYN MONROE: "Joltin' Joe" DiMaggio was a newly retired baseball legend when he went on a blind date in 1952 with a young blonde actress whose career was just taking off. Marilyn Monroe would later claim she didn't want to meet a stereotypical jock, but the ... moreseeming opposites clearly were attracted and their courtship and subsequent elopement in 1954 grabbed headlines. For all their glamour, DiMaggio and Monroe were a tempestuous pair whose passion was laced with friction and arguably sabotaged by his jealousy and her career ambitions. They divorced after 274 days, but the Yankee legend was said to remain deeply in love with his ex-wife throughout her life: It was DiMaggio that helped Monroe gain release from the Paine Whitney Clinic's psychiatric ward in 1961, as her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller ended. DiMaggio reportedly was planning to propose again when Monroe died as an apparent suicide in August, 1962. He would have roses delivered to her crypt for the next 20 years.

(Sam Shaw/Camera Press/Retna Ltd.)