Joe DimaggioPencils and Pop Culture: Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio Never Goes Away

“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you…”

There is an aura that surrounds the life of Joe DiMaggio that doesn’t occur with any other baseball player in history. Perhaps it doesn’t even occur with any other athlete. For a generation of writers, singers and artists, DiMaggio became something untouchable in his perfection.

Would Hemmingway have written about Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle? No, it’s DiMaggio who is the paragon of virtue and stoicism in Hemmingway’s “The Old Man and The Sea.” As Santiago, the old Cuban fisherman, reminds himself, “I must have the confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel.”

It is later, after he has speared the great marlin, that Santiago returns to his home, and modestly praises himself by saying, “I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today.”

What would DiMaggio think of any of us? It seems to be a tacit question in Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s iconic song “Mrs. Robinson.” Those last lines, detached and yet mournful:

“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio,
Our nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you.
What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson.
Jolting Joe has left and gone away…”

In a 1998 interview with the New York Daily News, Simon admitted that he was more of a Mickey Mantle fan, and that, initially, choosing DiMaggio for the song was as much a matter of rhythym as anything else. However, as years passed, Simon realized that “Mantle was similar to Elvis,” says Simon. “There was that incredible burst of vitality and youth, and the eventual corruption of it. DiMaggio was never corrupted.”

It was in 1999, on the occasion of DiMaggio’s death, that Simon wrote about the great ballplayer’s enduring cultural allure:
“…We are enthralled by myths, stories and allegories. The son of Italian immigrants, the father a fisherman, grows up poor in San Francisco and becomes the greatest baseball player of his day, marries an American goddess and never in word or deed befouls his legend and greatness. He is “the Yankee Clipper,” as proud and masculine as a battleship.”

DiMaggio remains an icon of solidity, duty, and honor in a world where impecadiloes and misdemeanors are the order of the day among celebrities of any stripe. Where sordid tales of one-night stands and sexual exploits are splashed about like tales of going to the grocery store, DiMaggio never breathed a word about his marriage to Marilyn Monroe, arguably one of most beautiful and desired women of all time.

It is said that he asked her to re-marry him four days before she died, and that he fiercely guarded and arranged her funeral, keeping at bay many of the Hollywood sycophants who he believed to have led to her destruction. He never remarried, and sent flowers to her grave every week for the next twenty years.

All of this, of course, was never confirmed by the man himself. So it was with Joe DiMaggio.

He inspired artists in his time, and he will continue to inspire them long after his death. He is an emblem of a forgotten time, a different construction of masculinity – the strong, silent type. He inhabits the same part of the American cultural landscape as Aaron Copland music, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and Audrey Hepburn’s eyes. It is the part that remains steadfast and honorable in the face of adversity, and embodies what it is to live a life of dignity.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I have much in my life for which I am grateful – my family, my friends, my good health and the roof over my head. And maybe, just maybe, there’s a little part of me that’s thankful for Joe DiMaggio.

Photo credit: Chadillac/Stock.Xchng

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