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She remains one of the most iconic sex symbols of all time
But newly released photos of blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe show her in a softer, gentler light, before she blew up as one of the most famous movies stars of all time.
She appears in these photographs in a monogrammed polo, fresh faced at 24, and already looking at ease in front of the camera.
Lounging in the shade, Monroe studies lines of an unknown script. It was still early in her career, and she'd just begun to grab attention: Three months before this shoot, she appeared as a crooked lawyer's girlfriend in The Asphalt Jungle, and two months after, she had a small role as an aspiring starlet in All About Eve.
The photographs, taken by LIFE photographer Ed Clark, were shot in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park in August of 1950.
He revealed in a 1999 interview with Digital Journal that a friend from 20th Century Fox had called him about a ‘hot tomato’ he just signed.
That tomato, of course, would become Marilyn Monroe.
Sporting her signature bobbed flaxen locks, the model and actress was shot in a variety of poses. Mr Clark said he was able to photograph her at his leisure since she was relatively unknown at the time
"She was unknown then, so I was able to spend a lot of time shooting her," Clark recalled.
He told the magazine: ‘We’d go out to Griffith Park and she’d read poetry. I send several rolls to LIFE in New York, but they wired back, “Who the hell is Marilyn Monroe?”’
The editors weren’t entirely off base. Only four years before, the woman being photograph called herself Norma Jeane Dougherty, the wife of a Merchant Marine and a worker in a munitions factory.
The images were discovered as LIFE magazine underwent the daunting task of digitalizing each negative from every photo shoot.
It remains a mystery why the magazine didn’t publish these photos after Monroe skyrocked to fame.
The only scrap of insight is in the form of a note attached to the photos, saying that one of the takes was ‘over-developed and poorly printed.’
In 2011, a photographer stumbled upon a folder of black-and-white negatives containing even more never-before-seen photos of the actress, in another session before she was well known.
The photographer for that shoot still remains unknown.
The bombshell was discovered in 1946 by 20th Century Fox executive Ben Lyon, who noticed her modelling in magazines.
Few Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 1960s were so compelling, so utterly unique, that they actually came to define the era in which they worked and played. Marilyn Monroe was one of those stars.
From her earliest days as an actress until late in her career — when she had, against her will, been cast in the public eye as the century’s ultimate Sex Goddess — Marilyn posed for LIFE magazine’s photographers. Many of those pictures never ran in the magazine — and, in fact, were never published anywhere. This gallery changes all that.
The negatives for the revelatory images seen here were discovered during the years-long effort to digitize LIFE’s immense, storied photo archive — an archive that includes outtakes and entire photo shoots that, for reasons as varied as the subjects they covered, were never published.
Here, then, is a series of stunning shots of the one and only Marilyn, as well as some possible explanations why they never made it into print.
She remains one of the most iconic sex symbols of all time
But newly released photos of blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe show her in a softer, gentler light, before she blew up as one of the most famous movies stars of all time.
She appears in these photographs in a monogrammed polo, fresh faced at 24, and already looking at ease in front of the camera.
Lounging in the shade, Monroe studies lines of an unknown script. It was still early in her career, and she'd just begun to grab attention: Three months before this shoot, she appeared as a crooked lawyer's girlfriend in The Asphalt Jungle, and two months after, she had a small role as an aspiring starlet in All About Eve.
The photographs, taken by LIFE photographer Ed Clark, were shot in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park in August of 1950.
He revealed in a 1999 interview with Digital Journal that a friend from 20th Century Fox had called him about a ‘hot tomato’ he just signed.
That tomato, of course, would become Marilyn Monroe.
Sporting her signature bobbed flaxen locks, the model and actress was shot in a variety of poses. Mr Clark said he was able to photograph her at his leisure since she was relatively unknown at the time
"She was unknown then, so I was able to spend a lot of time shooting her," Clark recalled.
He told the magazine: ‘We’d go out to Griffith Park and she’d read poetry. I send several rolls to LIFE in New York, but they wired back, “Who the hell is Marilyn Monroe?”’
The editors weren’t entirely off base. Only four years before, the woman being photograph called herself Norma Jeane Dougherty, the wife of a Merchant Marine and a worker in a munitions factory.
The images were discovered as LIFE magazine underwent the daunting task of digitalizing each negative from every photo shoot.
It remains a mystery why the magazine didn’t publish these photos after Monroe skyrocked to fame.
The only scrap of insight is in the form of a note attached to the photos, saying that one of the takes was ‘over-developed and poorly printed.’
In 2011, a photographer stumbled upon a folder of black-and-white negatives containing even more never-before-seen photos of the actress, in another session before she was well known.
The photographer for that shoot still remains unknown.
The bombshell was discovered in 1946 by 20th Century Fox executive Ben Lyon, who noticed her modelling in magazines.
Few Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 1960s were so compelling, so utterly unique, that they actually came to define the era in which they worked and played. Marilyn Monroe was one of those stars.
From her earliest days as an actress until late in her career — when she had, against her will, been cast in the public eye as the century’s ultimate Sex Goddess — Marilyn posed for LIFE magazine’s photographers. Many of those pictures never ran in the magazine — and, in fact, were never published anywhere. This gallery changes all that.
The negatives for the revelatory images seen here were discovered during the years-long effort to digitize LIFE’s immense, storied photo archive — an archive that includes outtakes and entire photo shoots that, for reasons as varied as the subjects they covered, were never published.
Here, then, is a series of stunning shots of the one and only Marilyn, as well as some possible explanations why they never made it into print.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097537/Marilyn-Monroe-pictures-effortless-glamour-hidden-drawer-50-YEARS.html#ixzz1livBUyw8
