Customer Reviews

Dimaggio: Setting the Record Straight

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I was so surprised to finally read a book that gave tremendous insight into the life of one of the greatest ball players ever. But I was more pleased that it is a great read about a great American. The details of Joe's life presented in this wonderful and compelling read are extraordinary. The detail, humorous asides, deep personal revalations and of course Marilyn make this book one of the best I have ever read. All baseball fans should read it. Yankee fans especially should read it. But people who just love a great true story should also read it even if they know nothing about baseball! Well done.

Setting the Record Straight accomplishes what it sets out to do.
The relationships between his lawyer, family, son,grandchildren and the fans are carefully explained in this fine book just published.

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.

Mr. Engelberg took some shots in the Cremer book. Through the fine writing of Mr. Schneider, he "sets the record straight". In doing so, he doesn't candy-coat the lives of Mr. DiMaggio or the other charectors in the book (Monroe, Sinatra, JFK and RFK) and they all come out flawed.
Nobody is perfect in this book except perhaps the ghost-writer who does a heck of a job writing this book in the first-person for Mr. Engelberg.

I grew up listening to Yankee radio and going to the stadium several times a year with the PAL (Police Athlete League). It was wonderful, decades later to learn so much about a major figure from my youth. It was poignant to understand there were shadows and disapointments in his life. The cheers, triumphs, and repect he experienced were not his total experience. I found "Setting rhe Record Straigt" a full, nuanced and honest story. Surprisingly, my sons, without any direct knowledge of the Yankee Clipper were thrilled to get inside his life. Now they understand the inclusion of "the great DiMaggio" in Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea"

I am not a baseball fan, but I was drawn to this very personal and intimate biography of the elusive Joe DiMaggio. In reading this very personal portrait of Joe, peppered with fascinating anecdotes, I was given insight into what made this private and reserved man tick. It was compassionate yet brutally honest. The chapters about Joe's remarkable success in the field of baseball was a lesson in business! Fascinating reading on many levels!

DiMaggio:Setting the Record Straight is a page turner from the beginning. I turned right to the Marilyn Monroe chapter, then went back to the beginning and read right through to the end. I am not particularly a baseball person, but love to read about celebrity lives. This book gives lots of detail, is well-written and give access to DiMaggio's life in a way that matches my memories of him as a hero of America. The man who married Marilyn. You will be touched by the relationship between Engelberg and DiMaggio--it is the story of true friendship.

Attorney-client privilege does not end when the client dies. But, hey, we're dealing with Morris "Mo" Engelberg here, a man whom, according to the 4/25/99 NY Daily News, bragged of refusing to do deals while DiMaggio was alive in order to drive up the fees he could collect from Joe's estate, illegally had DiMaggio sign items in lieu of payment, which were sold to a dealer in 6/99, and revealed to others that Joe was cheap. While I don't believe 90% of what's in Richard Ben Cramer's biography, when he claims an impatient Engelberg had the plug pulled after morphine suppositories failed to send Joe to that Great Ballpark in the Sky, it has the sad ring of truth.

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!

Had I read the readers' reviews of this book prior to reading the book itself, I might have passed it up and missed out on an exceptionally well-done, thoughtful and moving account of Joe DiMaggio's life (particurly the later years). Engelberg's biography of Joe is, of course (since he is telling the story of a man he knew intimately and worked with for over 25 years) also a look at the relationship between the two men; Sports Icon and shrewd businessman/lawyer/confidant. Too many of the little details about Joe ring true for me to doubt that the overall tenor of this book is not on the mark. I read this with a dual interest (being a long time Marilyn Monroe fan, as well as a fan of the Yankee Clipper), and the relationship between the two, which Engelberg recounts based on his own conversations and knowledge, rings true. Engelberg makes no attempt to hide his disdain of Joe's brother, Dom, nor of a few other folks that apparently there were conflicts with, particulary concerning memorabilia and what happened to Joe's World Series rings. This is no way detracted from the story itself. Setting the Record Straight takes on the task of doing that, at least from the viewpoint of someone who appears to have been a dear friend of DiMaggio's. While I am sure there are other agendas out there, particularly in the readers review section, those issues are beyond the scope of the book itself.

I found this moving, sad at times, and altogether a sensitive and sympathetic view of Engelberg's hero, who became his friend as well. Other books may be better for biographic details, particularly of Joe D's playing years, but this book makes an effort to maintain the dignity that DiMaggio displayed his entire life, and rebuts and/or clarifies some incidents that were reported in other biographies.

Morris Engelberg has some SERIOUS chutzpah writing this book. As reported in numerous newspaper and magazines and extensively covered in Richard Ben Cramer's exceptional book on DiMaggio, Engelberg is a con-man in an Armani suit. He did everything he could to keep Joe under his thumb, his conduct was not only unethical and illegal. I wont't repeat what has been covered in other review, but STAY AWAY from this book, don't enrich Morris Engelberg any more than he already has on the memory of Joe DiMaggio. Richard Ben Cramer's book is the REAL story.

If Morris Engelberg and Marv Schneider think they are doing DiMaggio's legacy a favor with this book, they are sorely mistaken. I have been a huge DiMaggio fan for several years, and knew both the good and bad about him. I had hoped to get a special insight into his baseball life but instead got Engelberg's self-congratulatory evaluation of their "friendship." Speaking of, I think they had the most dysfunctional relationship I've ever witnessed between two grown men. If Engelberg respected DiMaggio as a friend and American icon, he should have donated the proceeds of this book to the DiMaggio Children's Hospital and left himself out of the story.