The Tamesis
A century after her birth, Marilyn Monroe remains a fascinating mystery. The actress, model and singer is ingrained in the American image, but no matter how many photos you study closely, there’s a sense that it’s only scratching the surface. To commemorate her birth, ACC Art Books publishes Marilyn Monroe at 100: The Official Centennial Booka publication of the Marilyn Monroe estate. throughout its cover page (including new yorker(Rachel Syme), 275 photos clearly express the many facets of Monroe, from her Norma Jean days to her final photo taken on a Santa Monica beach.
early pages of Marilyn Monroe 100 An exploration of the star’s publicity photography and her relationship with the press sets the stage for the book’s core: a detailed look at the work of Monroe and the major photographers with whom she collaborated. There are Cecil Beaton’s photographs of Monroe performing her “powerful gay show” at the Ambassador Hotel; Richard Avedon’s evocative “Sad Marilyn” studio portrait; and, of course, Alan Grant’s photographs of Monroe at her Spanish Colonial home in Brentwood. These images will be published in Life She gave her last interview on August 3, 1962, the day before her untimely death.
The book highlights the close relationships she developed, both professional and personal, with photographers such as Milton H. Greene, Eve Arnold, and Sam Shaw. Some may be familiar with Xiao as the photographer who conceived the skirt-blowing photo for “My Skirt.” seven year itchbut the creative partnership between him and Monroe lasted about a decade. “She was a friend first,” said Melissa Stevens, Shaw’s granddaughter and director of family archives. The two met in Los Angeles in the early 1950s, when Monroe offered to drive Shaw to and from the set because he was a New Yorker and didn’t have a driver’s license. “Sam recalled that even though Marilyn was young and unemployed at the time, she didn’t ask him to pay for gas,” Stevens said. “He later wrote, ‘Sex, lovers, beauty, fame – she never thought about wealth. She never struggled for money, except for the power that money can buy: a good story, a great director.'”
In 1954, Monroe moved to New York, and Shaw introduced her to his friends and showed her around the city. “He remembered that she loved New York and New York loved her,” Stevens said. Their creative partnership continued during the East Coast’s reinvention, including a series shot in Amagansett. “On the beach, Sam offered certain word cues to Marilyn, like ‘Medusa’ and ‘Aphrodite,’ and she responded with various gestures,” Stevens shared, calling the show one of her favorite series because of the range and complexity that Monroe embodied. “She is silly, glum, jubilant, in love, lonely, relaxed, thoughtful, posing and not posing…”
After Monroe’s death, Shaw stopped participating in the tabloid frenzy and did not show the photos he took of her out of respect. “He was unwilling to profit from his friend’s photos,” Stevens explained. He finally started sharing the photos about a decade later, and after Shaw’s death in 1999, the family discovered archives of previously unseen photos of Monroe, as well as letters between the two. “The letters between Sam and Marilyn remain a bit of a mystery,” Stevens said. She believed Monroe must have kept the letters among her personal papers and that they disappeared after her death. One day, the handwritten notes resurfaced at an auction, and the Shaw family was able to buy them back. “When they arrived and read them, we laughed and cried because they were so Sam, so completely his voice, his humor, his insight, and the cartoons and the jokes.”
What George Bernard Shaw admired about Monroe, and what continues to resonate a century later, was her uncompromising free spirit. “She had personal freedom, but she lived in a time and place that didn’t allow her that freedom,” Stevens said. “She gave herself permission and validation even when others didn’t. And she also found joy and humor in the midst of difficulty.”
Below is a selection of photos Marilyn Monroe 100: The Official Centennial Book, Available now.
