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Journalist’s TradeWho Were You, Joe DiMaggio?He was an ‘icon of icons’ about whom little was known.By David HalberstamIn October 1965, Gay Talese, a youngwriter recently departed from themore confining pages of The NewYork Times, suggested to his editors atEsquire that the next piece he wantedto write was about Joe DiMaggio.DiMaggio was by then the mythic baseballhero to two generations of Americans,a figure of epic proportions, albeitan almost completely unexaminedone, and Talese wanted to do a portraitof DiMaggio some fourteen years afterhis last game. What happens, Talesewondered, to a great figure after thecheering stops, and what kind of manwas DiMaggio anyway? He knew thelegend but not the man, and DiMaggiohad always been treated by writers as alegend rather than a man. Off he set forSan Francisco, Fisherman’s Wharf, andthe DiMaggio family restaurant. Itwould turn out to be the perfect unionof reporter, magazine, and subjectmatter at a critical time in the history ofnonfiction journalism….What came through in Talese’s workwas a kind of journalism verité, reportingprofoundly influenced by cinemaverite—the reporter as camera. Americannonfiction journalism was changingat an accelerating rate in thosedays, and Esquire in the early sixtieswas very much the leader in the changestaking place, the magazine where youngrestless writers wanting to challengethese archaic professional formulaswere coming together under the talentedleadership of two exceptionaleditors, Harold Hayes and ClayFelker….In addition the subject, DiMaggio,was perfect—because of the almostunique degree of difficulty he presentedto the writer, for in truth he was a manwho could not be reported on with anydegree of accuracy under the old rules.The premise of what both Talese andHayes were pushing at, and what wouldeventually be called the New Journalism,demanded a new journalistic realism,and at its best it stripped away thefacade with which most celebrities protectedthemselves as they presentedthemselves to the public. In this newkind of journalism just coming of agethe journalist was able to see thesecelebrities as they really were, not asthey had so carefully presented themselvesover the years.And perhaps no celebrity was a bettersubject for that kind of reportingthan Joe DiMaggio. At that moment heremained not merely in the world ofsports, but to all Americans, a kind oficon of icons, the most celebrated athleteof his age, the best big game playerof his era and a man who because of hisdeeds, looks and marriage to the actressMarilyn Monroe, had transcendedthe barriers of sports in terms of thebreadth of his fame. But in journalisticterms, he remained a man about whoma great deal had been written but also,about whom very little real reportinghad ever been done, and about whomvery little was known.Because the Yankees almost alwayswon and because DiMaggio was thebest player on those dominating teamsand played with a certain athletic elegance(in the media capital of theworld no less), and because it was adecidedly less iconoclastic era, he hadalways been treated with great delicacyby an adoring New York and thus nationalpress corps. The essential portraitof DiMaggio which had emergedover the years was of someone as attractiveand graceful off the field as hewas on it. DiMaggio had rather skillfullycontributed to this image—he wasextremely forceful and icy in his controlof his own image, as attentive andpurposeful in controlling it as he wasin excelling on the field, and he quicklyand ruthlessly cut off any reporter whothreatened to go beyond the acceptedjournalistic limits. Those limits were,of course, set by Joe DiMaggio. At thesame time he was deft at offering justenough access—access under whichhe set all the ground rules—to a fewfavored reporters and he was particularlygood with a number of columnistswho were unusually influential in thosedays, most notably Jimmy Cannon, thenof the New York Post, who often hungout with him. If you were influentialenough, you were on occasion allowedto pal around with him, but if youpalled around with him, you could notwrite about what he did or said whenyou palled around together. Over theyears Cannon and a handful of othershad created an image of a graceful,admirable, thoroughly likeableDiMaggio. No one had ever been allowedenough access to dispute thatimage.Yet the truth among those who knewhim relatively well was somewhat different:he was said (privately by peoplewho did not want to go on the record)to be an unusually self-absorbed man,suspicious, often hostile, and largelydevoid of charm….Talese in time showed up to meetwith him. DiMaggio, it turned out, wasnot happy to see him despite his earlierpromise, and for several days did notreturn his phone calls. After almost aweek of waiting, his calls still unanswered,Talese set off for the DiMaggiofamily restaurant. What happenedthen—DiMaggio’s almost lethal rejectionof him—is what makes the pieceso powerful—DiMaggio, dodging himin the restaurant and then calling himon the phone—both of them still insidethe restaurant: “You are invadingmy rights. I did not ask you to come. I44 Nieman Reports / Fall 1999