Just the Movies

Marilyn Monroe photographed outside Fox Studios in New York on July 8, 1960. 

“My mother even bought me a piano at an auction that once belonged to that famous movie actor Fredric March. I learned to play the classical tunes quite well. It’s one of my best-kept secrets – until now of course. Very few of my friends know I can play the piano. It came in handy when I played a duet on the piano with Tom Ewell, my costar in The Seven Year Itch.”

- Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe riding a pink elephant at Madison Square Garden Circus Charity event, March 1955

“The place went absolutely ape,” Amy Greene told Photoplay. “I have never experienced anything like the hysteria and the din that came out of those mouths all the way up the stands. I’m telling you, I had goosebumps. Everyone cheered her, and when I looked up toward the balcony, it was the strangest sight. All I could see were the open mouths, right up to the rafters.”

Everything worked beautifully. The elephant was tender and tame, pausing to bow at the cheering audience. (Milton:“Afterwards she talked about how sweet and nice the elephant was. She called it a ‘sweet baby’.”) Marilyn smiled and waved in spangled glory, all the while bleeding from a straight pin that had punctured her thigh.“

- Elizabeth Winder, Marilyn in Manhattan. Her Year of Joy

Marilyn Monroe by Mischa Pelz, 1953

Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell on the set of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953).

Marilyn Monroe during the Crystal Star Awards ceremony in New York, on February 26, 1959. Photographs by Paul Slade.

Marilyn Monroe photographed by Cecil Beaton in New York, 1955.

Marilyn Monroe in Korea, 1954

Marilyn Monroe by Sam Shaw, Roxbury Farm, Connecticut, 1957

“The playful spirit of the child lurked in her eyes, her walk, her psyche, particularly her laugh.”

- Norman Rosten, poet, novelist, Marilyn’s close friend

Marilyn Monroe at the Banff’s National Park in Canada (1953). Photo by John Vachon.

Marilyn Monroe arriving at the “Call Me Madam” premiere in Los Angeles, California, March 1953.

Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio back from their official honeymoon in Japan, 1954.

“She read voraciously – especially biographies – Josephine Bonaparte, Lady Emma Hamilton, Marie Antoinette, and Eleonora Duse – bold women who invented themselves, seized control of their image; women whose personalities defined the age they lived in and glittered out from the past. "She was fascinated,” said Amy (Greene), “by women who had made it.” Sometimes Amy found her sitting on the stairs, gazing at a portrait of Lady Hamilton, a coal miner’s daughter who launched herself into the highest echelon of 18th-century society. Then she discovered Josephine and scooped up every book she could find about her, chattering at dinner about the empress and her friends. She regaled them with stories about Juliette Recamier, a brainy beauty who comissioned a nude statue of herself. When Juliette’s breasts began to age she smashed the girlish marble ones – controlling her image just like Marilyn.“

- Elizabeth Winder, Marilyn in Manhattan. Her Year of Joy 

Marilyn Monroe shopping in a men’s clothing store on Fifth Avenue in New York, NY (1957). Photographs by Sam Shaw.