Marilyn Monroe has been a Hollywood icon for decades upon decades after her death for reasons I can’t explain. I’m not into movie made before the 1970’s so I obviously haven’t seen any of Monroe’s films, but I’ve gotta assume they were all Oscar-worthy considering people like Lindsay Lohan and Courtney Stodden all have raging lady boners for her. As for Monroe herself, she wasn’t always the star we’ve all heard of today, at one point struggling to make ends meet and turning to nude photos in order to do so:
In 1949, Marilyn was not yet the icon she later became. In fact, the then-22-year-old was having trouble finding work and desperately needed money. She had been released from contracts with both 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures, and turned back to modeling to make ends meet.
That’s how she was convinced by photographer Tom Kelley to pose nude. With Mr. Kelley’s wife, Natalie, present to calm her nerves, Marilyn laid against a red velvet backdrop while nearly naked, staring sensuously into the camera.
For the shoot, Marilyn made a paltry $50 – and signed the release as ‘Mona Monroe’ to protect herself – and also because she was embarrassed and ashamed.
In the book Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words, Marilyn herself explained that she only agreed to Mr. Kelley’s request out of ‘desperation’, as she believed ‘nice girls did not pose in the nude’.(via)
When the media finally found Marilyn’s nudes in 1952, rather than going into denial and publicly stating the photos were not of her she instead told the truth: that she had done the shots because at the time she had been strapped for cash and struggling. Luckily for her the public was on her side, and in 1953 Hugh Hefner licensed the photo for $500 to appear on the first-ever issue of Playboy.
As for Marilyn’s nudes…well we can’t have any nudity on the site because we’re already perverted enough as it is. Instead, you can click HERE, HERE and HERE to see the obviously NSFW photos I’m talkin’ about. They’re not half bad. Kind of artsy in that old 1950’s style, but way better than anything we’ve seen coming out of Kim Kardashian recently. Blegh.
[H/T Daily Mail]