Marilyn Monroe The World's Most Photographed

In June 1945, an army photographer set out on a routine assignment in Southern California.

Working for an army magazine, he made his way to a parachute factory in Los Angeles.

David Conover's mission was to take pictures of women doing war work, as a morale-booster for US troops.

But when he got there something totally unexpected happened.

"I came to a girl putting on propellers and raised the camera to my eye.

"I snapped her picture and walked on.

"Then I stopped, stunned.

"Half-child, half-woman,

"her eyes held something that touched and intrigued me."

Conover had just taken the first professional photograph

of a fresh-faced young girl called Norma Jean Baker.

Her life would never be the same again.

Norma Jean would become one of the most photographed women of the 20th century -

Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe is known primarily as a movie star, but she always preferred being photographed.

Faced with the pressure and chaos of the film set, she was often anxious and full of self-doubt.

One-on-one with a photographer, she felt at ease and in control.

Whenever the pressures of Hollywood threatened to overwhelm her, she always turned to photographers

for the reassurance and intimacy she craved.

Marilyn Monroe's love affair with the camera began when David Conover

spotted Norma Jean's natural talent, and took her outside the parachute factory to pose for another shot.

Norma Jean was 19 years old.

She had endured a turbulent childhood.

Her mother had suffered from mental illness, so she'd been brought up

by foster parents and even spent some time in an orphanage.

These early years of intense insecurity created an overwhelming need for other people's approval.

A craving that would never leave her, despite the impact she was already having on men.

Her figure blossomed quite early, by 14 she was quite opulent.

She knew that high school boys, her classmates,

were whistling at her and inviting her for sodas. This was wonderful,

as it is for any young woman, but especially a young woman who has no family and no emotional support,

she's now got a little fan club!

Despite her popularity, Norma Jean still longed for a secure home life.

At the age of 16, she rushed into marriage with a local boy, Jim Dougherty.

But her first chance for stability was shattered when Jim eagerly signed up to fight in World War II.

When David Conover took his life-changing photographs,

Norma Jean was still feeling lonely and rejected.

When he offered to introduce her to the small-time Blue Book Modeling Agency, she jumped at the chance.

Young Norma Jean's only expectation

was to have a job in which people would look at her and find her pretty.

She had no experience of emotional stability,

so she was an emotionally needy young woman.

Norma Jean felt calm and reassured in front of the camera.

The factory girl surprised everyone with her critical eye.

She pored over the contact sheets, scrutinizing her own image again and again.

She was ambitious and eager to give the camera exactly what it required,

but Norma Jean needed a photographer with the talent to take her further.

Only a few months later she met the man who would do just that,

Andre de Dienes - a young Hungarian who'd made his name in New York.

Andre had just arrived in Hollywood.

He called the Blue Book Modeling Agency looking for a young face, a new model to photograph.

Norma Jean arrived, and they met,

and I think that was something really special for Andre.

He commented that from the moment that she walked into the room,

he was tremendously taken with her.

Norma Jean eagerly seized her chance. The day after her husband

returned on leave for Christmas, she hit the road with de Dienes.

She would be gone for three weeks.

They travelled up through California and into Arizona and Nevada taking photographs all the way.

The resulting pictures revealed the wholesome Californian girl who would evolve into the Hollywood star.

Norma Jean posed like somebody's sister or sweetheart on a day in the country -

the all-American girl next door.

We're so used to seeing Marilyn as the blonde bombshell,

the woman towards the tragic end of her career,

and these pictures show a completely different side of her and her personality.

Somebody said he never saw Marilyn so fresh or so happy or so, like, light energy.

She was 19, she was happy, I think, at this time.

Ever since they left Los Angeles, De Dienes had been trying get Norma Jean to sleep with him.

One night when they found themselves in a motel with only one free room, she finally agreed.

They remained lovers for the rest of the trip.

Throughout their journey, he also attempted to persuade her to pose nude.

He insisted that his motives were artistic, but she refused to strip off for the camera.

Back in Los Angeles, De Dienes quickly sold some of the photographs.

Norma Jean soon had her first front cover on a national magazine.

The trip had been an enormous success, it boosted her confidence and intensified her ambition.

I really think the...

early photographs with Andre were absolutely crucial to Marilyn's career.

And I think that had she not met Andre, perhaps she would have never become Marilyn Monroe, who knows?

Increasingly confident of her success as a model, Norma Jean's next step was the movies.

Only her husband was holding her back.

She filed for divorce and set her sights on Hollywood.

There were thousands of pretty girls, desperate to make it in the movies.

But Norma Jean was prepared to go to any lengths to ensure that she would stand out from the rest.

Step one was to change her name.

On the advice of a casting director from Fox Studios, Norma Jean Baker became Marilyn Monroe.

Step two was more drastic.

At a time when cosmetic surgery was risky and expensive,

a top agent urged her to have both her nose and her chin reshaped.

The final step was her hair.

The head of Columbia Studios insisted Marilyn's hairline should be heightened by electrolysis.

Then her natural brown colour was stripped away by hydrogen peroxide and ammonia.

The result was the pale, shimmering platinum effect which became her trademark.

Norma Jean the model, was now Marilyn, the Hollywood starlet.

The transformation soon paid off. Over the next few years,

Marilyn was cast in small but increasingly prominent roles by major Hollywood studios.

But just as her career was gaining momentum,

a single photograph threatened to end her dreams of stardom.

The picture appeared on a calendar and featured a naked model.

Hollywood gossip suggested it was Marilyn.

Back in 1949, Marilyn had been broke and struggling to get noticed in Hollywood.

Photographer Tom Kelly offered her 50 to take her clothes off for the camera.

Where Norma Jean had once said no, Marilyn Monroe said yes.

When I first asked her to do it,

she turned me down.

But after thinking it over for a few days, she came back and said,

"I would like to do it." Cos she really did need the money.

This is a negative of the calendar of Marilyn that sold eight million copies.

The studio panicked,

believing a starlet could never survive the public humiliation of a lewd photograph.

But Marilyn didn't believe a simple denial would kill the story.

Defiantly she set up an interview with a sympathetic journalist and gave her own version of events.

When the article appeared, Marilyn was presented as a victim,

forced by her poverty into bearing all for the camera.

She became a heroine overnight.

The photograph was such a hit that it was published again as the first ever Playboy centrefold.

Far from destroying her career, the nude photo shoot established her name in Hollywood.

A month after the calendar story broke,

Marilyn Monroe adorned the cover of LIFE - the biggest selling magazine in America.

Marilyn was rapidly becoming Hollywood's hottest property.

In 1953, she starred in Niagara as a cheating wife who tries to murder her husband.

# Men grow cold As girls grow old... #

Later that year in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn played Lorelei Lee, a curvaceous, gold-digging blonde.

The film featured her show-stopping performance of Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend.

# Diamonds are a girl's best friend... #

On screen, Marilyn Monroe oozed confidence and charisma,

off screen, Norma Jean was still tortured by self-doubt and insecurity.

She was already getting a reputation for panicking on set and forgetting her lines.

But Marilyn's public profile rocketed in January 1954,

when she married the retired baseball star and national hero Joe DiMaggio.

She was rapidly becoming one of the most photographed women in the world.

The increased exposure was great for her career but disastrous for her marriage.

He was the man who'd established his greatness within a field and was now sort of in a plateau of life.

Joe DiMaggio, the former baseball player or, worse, Joe DiMaggio, the baseball legend.

Whereas Marilyn is, as the Italians say, del mondo, she belongs to everybody.

He didn't see it that way.

For DiMaggio there was worse to come.

In the middle of their honeymoon in Japan,

Marilyn accepted an invitation to visit American troops in Korea.

60,000 soldiers got their cameras out for Marilyn.

It was her biggest photo shoot ever. DiMaggio was furious.

Joe was back in town with his cronies and she went back and she said,

"Oh, Joe, it was such a wonderful experience, you never heard such applause."

And he said, "Oh, yes, I have."

Joe's expectations were that she would give it up,

stay home, raise babies, and make marinara sauce for the pasta.

No way would she do this.

In September 1954, Marilyn came to New York to work on her latest movie.

On her first night in the city, she met someone who would become her most unlikely photographer.

James Haspiel was only 15 years old. He was just another enthusiastic fan, but he was bolder than most.

I said, "Miss Monroe, would you give me a kiss?"

And she looked at me and there was "no" written all over her face.

And I begged her, I said, "Just here on the cheek."

And the crowd, I think vicariously started to oooh and aaah,

and I think she responded to the crowd. She put her arms around me and kissed me. So it started with a kiss.

Haspiel was hooked, and he was determined

to get a record of the next kiss, so he quickly acquired a camera.

It was a Brownie Hawkeye, it was 5, and I began to photograph her

with this 5 camera, and those photographs are regarded today as brilliant.

It wasn't anything I did, it was what she was about

when she was made up that made the pictures as wonderful as they are.

Over the next two years, Haspiel watched and waited for opportunities to photograph Marilyn.

Whenever she was feeling lonely or vulnerable, she would encourage his infatuation.

Leafing through his growing collection of pictures, she even chose a personal favourite.

She asked if she could borrow that slide.

And I loaned it to her, and it took me two and a half weeks to get it back.

She didn't want to give it back to me, and having retrieved it,

I looked at it again and thought, "Why does she like this?

"Maybe it's because the camera's not up her nose."

She's just a human being in a city setting, with other people

and buildings and street-lamps and whatever. But she loved that picture.

On 15th September, Marilyn was shooting a scene for The Seven Year Itch.

Photographer Sam Shaw, then in charge of publicity at Twentieth Century Fox,

had an inspired idea for an image to sell the movie.

As the cameras rolled on that late summer evening,

Marilyn walked over a Manhattan subway grating and into Hollywood history.

Sam Shaw had reserved the spot right next to the movie camera for himself.

His 17-year-old son Larry was lucky enough to be his assistant that night.

It wasn't my first time on a movie set.

What was different was the excitement of the people, there were a lot of people.

And the guys who had to keep the crowd quiet had a big job, big job.

James Haspiel had pushed his way to the front of the crowd.

I was very startled,

because I could see through her panties, which meant everybody could see through her panties.

I subsequently learnt that in the dressing room,

she had examined herself and could see through her panties.

Always with costuming, there's more than one of everything,

so she asked for a second pair of panties and put them on over the first pair.

In the dressing room that was fine, but outside under the klieg light, it wasn't.

Joe DiMaggio was livid.

Marilyn relished the adulation of her fans but increasingly resented being type-cast as the dumb blonde.

The studio was delighted with the shot and turned it into a massive billboard in Times Square.

It was the most erotic image ever to have been publicly displayed in the United States.

It's wonderful. I think it's wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

I think it's very nice but I'd rather it were me.

I said, "What has Marilyn Monroe got that a million other women have and prefer not to show?"

It's pretty vulgar if you ask me.

For DiMaggio it was the final straw.

Their marriage of only nine months was brought to an end by one of the defining photographs of the century.

Her marriage over, Marilyn was determined to take control of her life.

She decided to stay in New York to take up acting lessons

and establish her independence from Hollywood.

Marilyn entered one of the happiest periods of her life.

Three months after settling in the city, she met and fell in love with the playwright Arthur Miller.

Stability and contentment seemed to be within her grasp.

But her old fears of rejection could never be completely banished.

Marilyn still craved the unthreatening intimacy she only found in front of the camera.

Sam Shaw, the man behind the Seven Year Itch shoot, soon became a trusted friend.

He went to pick her up one day at her hotel room

and he walked in the door and he said, "Marilyn, where are you?"

A voice came from the bathroom, so she said, "Sam, come on in,"

and he went into the bathroom and she was lying in the bath tub.

He was shocked.

Not because she was lying in a bath tub, but she was lying in a bath tub of ice cubes.

See, you're shocked! He sat down on the toilet and he said, "Marilyn, why are you doing this?"

And she said, "I'm fighting gravity, the body must be firm."

Marilyn came to depend on Shaw more than any other photographer she'd ever worked with.

I think Marilyn saw in my father...

maybe the father she didn't have.

He was a mentor to her, he was a best friend to her,

he was a companion to her.

He was a really good teacher and I think she trusted him to the end.

One autumn day in 1956,

Sam Shaw set out to photograph Marilyn in a way she'd never been seen before.

He had this idea, just a very simple idea, a day in the life of Marilyn Monroe.

He met her and Arthur, they were living in Brooklyn at the time, Arthur drove her in to New York City,

and somewhere around Fifth Avenue left Marilyn with my dad, and Arthur went off.

And they just travelled around New York, taking pictures, doing various things -

shopping, going to Central Park, going in a row boat, having sodas, eating a hot dog.

And then later on, down at Battery Park,

they met up with Arthur Miller,

and Sam followed them back into Brooklyn, taking pictures,

and that's all it was, A Day In The Life, and it was very successful.

Marilyn and Arthur Miller had been married that summer.

The shots of the couple fresh from their honeymoon are intimate

and revealing, natural and spontaneous pictures of two people in love.

I think Arthur Miller was attracted to Marilyn Monroe because she was beautiful

and funny and warm and supportive of him

and she respected his work and learned from it

and was, I'm sure, in their intimate life, a wonderful companion.

What she found in him was very simple - a wise, learned,

successful, serious playwright who thought she was pretty hot stuff!

Marilyn's happiness wasn't to last.

Once she returned to the demands of film-making, all her insecurities came flooding back.

She grew increasingly dependent on alcohol and barbiturates

to help her sleep, even her relationship with Miller was under strain.

But she was about to take on a new role that would confirm her reputation as a serious actress.

I don't feel that way about you, Gay.

Don't get discouraged, girl, you might.

Arthur Miller wrote the role of Roslyn in The Misfits especially for Marilyn.

She plays a sensitive and confused young woman tormented by the brutality of the men around her.

Miller based it on his observations of her own life.

The making of The Misfits was photographed more than any other film ever made.

A rota of top photographers was permanently on set throughout the shoot.

Bruce Davidson was one of them. He remembers observing Miller and Monroe up close.

They were such a beautiful couple to me.

I mean, Arthur was like...

to me, what Abraham Lincoln might have looked liked as a young man.

And he had this kind of incredible intelligence, and he was very masculine, very virile.

And when they sat together, the contrast was almost amazing.

She was very vulnerable and soft and feminine

and he was like a cowboy on a horse.

Davidson saw an opportunity to photograph the couple in all the chaos of the movie set.

He came away with one image which captures the mood of the final days of their marriage.

This photograph, there's just one image, one moment when they're clear,

without the make-up man or somebody else appearing in the frame,

which spoiled the balance of the picture, and didn't give the total information I wanted to convey.

So they're really in their own world,

and I caught them in their own separate worlds -

Arthur the writer, Marilyn the actress.

A year later, her marriage to Miller and her love affair with New York were over.

She returned to Los Angeles for good.

In 1961, she began work on Something's Got To Give, a film she would never complete.

She was now repeatedly turning up late on the set and suffering crippling panic attacks.

The papers were full of gossip about her erratic behaviour -

Marilyn's life and career were spinning out of control.

Once again Marilyn seized the opportunity to find salvation in the camera.

One of her good friends, photographer George Barris,

had an idea for a book of intimate photographs telling her own story.

She was quite excited about us doing a book together,

and she said, "I can tell everything I really want to tell about my life,

"and we can get rid of all those lies that the press has been saying about me."

They decided to take photographs by the ocean at Santa Monica.

It was a place with special memories for Marilyn, and for Norma Jean -

she'd played there when she was a child.

Barris planned to keep the shoot simple with only Marilyn, the beach and a towel in frame.

I said, "Marilyn, let's try to use this towel as a prop.

"Maybe you can dance around it, hold it in front of you,

"it could be daring, it could be sexy, it could be fun."

And we had fun doing it, and the towel became a wonderful prop.

Barris prepared to shoot the last roll of what would be Marilyn Monroe's final photo session.

The sun had gone down, it was windy, it was cold,

and Marilyn said,

"Can't we stop? I'm getting cold."

And I said, "There's only one film left in the camera."

And she said, "But, George, you're always saying that," and I said, "No, honestly, it's the last picture."

So we took the towel, or the blanket, we put it over her legs,

and she said, "I'll blow a kiss to you."

She puckered up her lips and she said "George, this is just for you."

And...

I'll never forget... that was the last picture we took.

We got up, it was rather chilly...

..on the 13th of July. We both walked off the beach,

and that was the end of our photographic session.

All her life Marilyn had relied on photographers to rescue her from her darkest fears.

But nothing could ever rid her of the anxieties that had haunted her since childhood.

On 5th August 1962, Marilyn was found dead by her housekeeper.

The autopsy concluded that she had overdosed on barbiturates.

Overwhelmed at last by the ghost of Norma Jean,

not even the camera could save Marilyn Monroe from destruction.