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Writers as diverse as Norman Mailer and Gloria Steinem have waxed lyrical about Marilyn Monroe's enduring appeal, but they have rarely doted on her movie performances. Instead, they consider her image in photographs: the playful, precociously sexual Norma Jeane, so carefully cloaking her harrowing childhood; the iconic platinum-blonde glamour girl who wanted only to marry a millionaire; the dreamy and heartbreakingly worldly woman of the fabled "Last Sitting," photographed six weeks before she died. One could say that her greatest role was a nonspeaking one: Marilyn, the Portrait.
"She could, arguably, be the most photographed person of the 20th century," says producer and director Gail Levin, whose PBS "American Masters" documentary, "Marilyn Monroe: Still Life," aired in 2006, the year its subject would have turned 80. In justifying how Monroe could qualify as an "American Master"—she was technically not the artist, but rather the artist's muse or model—Levin told an interviewer, "Not only did she master her own image, create it and ultimately control it, she was the subject of many of the great masters of photography of the 20th century." One of these was fashion photographer and portraitist Milton Greene (1922-1985), whose photos reveal a little-recognized turning point: the moment at which Monroe began to take control of both her image and her life.
Ironically, Greene's photographs—such as the winsome shot from his 1954 "Ballerina" series shown here—have been at the heart of a legal struggle over who owns the rights to images of celebrities. Is it the photographer who obtained a model release, made the photos and holds the copyright for them? Or is it the subject or his or her heirs? In Monroe's case, the company Marilyn Monroe LLC—controlled by Anna Strasberg, widow of acting coach Lee Strasberg, to whom Monroe left her estate—asserted a "right of publicity" to her image but lost in California and New York courts. The stakes were not trifling: Monroe has made Forbes.com's list of "Top-Earning Dead Celebrities" every year since it was inaugurated, in 2001. She was ninth last year, with earnings of $7 million.
When Monroe laid claim to her image for the first time, in the 1950s, Greene was her co-conspirator. They met on a shoot for Look magazine in 1953 and "became instant friends," says Greene's son Joshua; soon they hatched a plot to free Monroe from her restrictive contract at 20th Century Fox, and she left Hollywood, moving in with the Greene family in Connecticut for a time. In this haven, Joshua Greene says, Monroe and his father formed their own company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, which in 1956 co-produced with Fox (under a new contract that gave her more control over her career) Bus Stop, the first film to showcase her dramatic capabilities.
Meanwhile, Greene was photographing Monroe—in Connecticut, New York and Los Angeles—in ways she had not been photographed before. They raided studio costume departments for whimsical outfits; they grew playful with settings and moods. "Everything leading up to 1953 was either on-set photography or glamour shots," says Joshua Greene. "My father was determined to break that mold and capture the real person, the soul, the emotion. He wanted to show the range of her capabilities as an actress."
A radiant, natural, wistful Monroe emerged from these improvised sessions. In the "Ballerina" series, for instance, her tulle dress was too small to fasten so she clutched it in a gesture of instinctive diffidence, evoking both the demure child and the voluptuous siren. In addition to other studio sessions, Greene took a multitude of candids—at cocktail parties, in front of the Greene Christmas tree and, eventually, at Monroe's private wedding to Arthur Miller in 1956.
Monroe reportedly once described Greene as unique in her life: a male friend and protector who treated her with respect. The pictures reflect that relationship, says Carol Squiers, a curator at the International Center of Photography in New York City. "Marilyn never had a father, and she shuttled between foster families," Squiers says. "Milton incorporated her into his family. He provided a kind of sanctuary that was both professional and personal. She trusted him and relaxed with him, so there's not that sex-goddess tension you see in most Marilyn pictures."
By 1957, however, their relationship was all but over—Joshua Greene says his father and Miller differed over the direction of Monroe's career (though she also accused Greene of having mismanaged their company). One oft-repeated story from the fraught set of The Misfits (1961), her last completed film, has her shrieking at Miller in the last throes of their marriage: "You took away the only friend I ever had! You took away Milton Greene."
The photographer and his muse spoke to each other only one more time, on the phone a month before Monroe died, at age 36 on August 5, 1962. "They were both happy to renew the friendship," Joshua Greene says. They planned to meet when Greene returned from shooting the Paris fashion shows that fall. But by then she was gone.
Michelle Stacey, an editor-at-large for Cosmopolitan, is the author of The Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery.
Anna Strasberg has always "presumed" to own the publicity rights for Marilyn. Her agent, CMG WorldWide, is also well know for legal threats, intimidation and litigation. What a combination. There are quite a few licensees that have paid those fees, and could now file against both companies because those rights they purported to have were fraudulently obtained.
Posted by Friedman Kohn on May 16,2008 | 10:19AM
Her "personality" was all on her chest.
Posted by Jon Zemans on May 22,2008 | 01:09PM
My brother-in-law was a producer at 20th Century Fox working with Marilyn Monroe. He finished and we were on vacation at a beach in South Carolina without any communication with the studio. He did not want to be contacted. I believe we were having breakfast when a highway patrolman knocked on the door and asked to speak with him. He gave us the news that Monroe was dead, Don was to get the next plane back to California, and contact the studio immediatley. We took him to Myrtle Beach for his flight. He talked about handling the funeral of which he was in charge. The reason there are n o photographs of her body is because he would not allow them He said she'd had too much sorrow in life, he wanted her to have peace. Photographers would peel off $100 bills to try to change his mind, no luck.
Posted by Lawrence Berry on May 22,2008 | 01:42PM
I never tire of hearing and reading articles about this icon. I was 12 years old when I was traveling to Florida with my parents and saw the headlines on the newstand about her death. I can still picture today my Mom crying in the reataurant about Marilyn.
Posted by Donna Peterson on May 23,2008 | 05:21AM
My sisters and I were returning from the library (Washington D.C.), the song Rambling Rose sung by Nat King Cole was playing on the radio and the annoncement followed on the radio Marilyn was gone. I was 11 years old. Marilyn,in my pre teen mind, was a grown up Shirley Temple. I so idolized Shirley Temple. Looking back, as an adult,Marilyn was so much that child. No wonder all ages, all walks of life love her still. In her eyes we see that child looking out in search of a "safe" friend. So sad, her mother was too self absorbed to nurture her talented child. My five sisters and I could have brought her in but we were too young. Pandora
Posted by Pandora on May 25,2008 | 10:47AM
I'm sure many Americans feel otherwise, but I am tired of the lionization of this calendar art actress. I would rather see space in a serious scientific magazine given to Marie Curie or Rosa Franklin or to unheralded female pioneers of medicine and the sciences. But Marilyn will not be quieted down until her image no longer sells merchandise, including this magazine.
Posted by carol vega on May 25,2008 | 05:29PM
There are and have been plenty of articles and books devoted to women (and men) of the caliber of Marie Curie. What also has to be accepted is that these articles will claim the attention of a smaller percentage of serious readers. Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Cher et al are cultural icons. Unfortunately or fortunately our "heroes" tell us a lot about society, ourselves and our values at a given time in the world we inhabit. Who "we" choose to worship or idolize defines us in the eyes of others. At the heart of it all, a poster of Marie Curie on our wall creates a different image to our peers as compared to a poster of Marilyn Monroe. In turn helping to define ourselves by the friends we choose - "birds of a feather...."
Posted by joan soldwisch on June 2,2008 | 04:06AM
As a missionary in 1954 I first saw Marilyn Monroe's calender pinup in the home of a Guatemalan indian family. They were unflappable about it and I learned the great lesson that real beauty knows no boundaries.
Posted by Will Pearson on June 14,2008 | 01:57AM