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Tag / Marilyn Monroe

Mona (Marilyn) Monroe, the $10-an-Hour Pin-Up Model

In 1946, a nineteen year-old aspiring actress in Hollywood was in need of a job, and fast. Born Norma Jean Dougherty, destined to become Marilyn Monroe, but in between, for those not-so-squeaky-clean modelling jobs, she preferred to go by Mona– with a going rate of $10 an hour. It’s often thought that the first nude modelling Monroe did was…

A Brief Compendium of Vintage Hollywood Test Shots

Ah, the pressures of Picture Day. Who can’t relate to the anxiety of getting that perfect shot for a yearbook, driver’s license, or, in this case, beloved Hollywood classic? For actors like Audrey Hepburn and Liz Taylor, sitting for test shots was all in a day’s work. We wish we could travel back in time…

Old Hollywood’s Playground Island

Ah, the joys of an island vacation. Feet in the sand, a piña colada in hand and…a herd of buffalo by the palms? On a small island off the coast of L.A., a curious population of non-native buffalo has been thriving since 1924, when they were brought over for a silent Hollywood film– and left there to save…

Marilyn Monroe’s Forgotten Hollywood Sorority

If you had knocked on the door of room 334 at the Hollywood Studio Club on Lexington Avenue in 1948, a 24 year-old struggling actress going by the name of Marilyn Monroe would have answered with eyes full of hope. Marilyn was one of over 10,000 girls who were housed at the Hollywood Studio Club during its sixty year history, providing film studios…

Marilyn Monroe’s Diet Plan, Lipsticks and her Most Intimate Belongings are Up for Auction

You only have to glance at the range of items in the upcoming sale of the largest collection of Marilyn Monroe ephemera ever offered at auction, to see that her fingerprint can still transform the most prosaic of objects more than 50 years after her tragic death. While it wouldn’t be a true Marilyn Monroe auction without her most iconic dresses, diamonds…

Working Out with Marilyn Monroe

It’s pretty neat when you come across rare photos of one of the most iconic and recognisable faces in history, and it doesn’t get much more rare and interesting than Marilyn Monroe herself, lifting weights in a terry cloth bikini… Marilyn and her guns of steel were photographed here in 1952 by Philippe Halsman for LIFE magazine.…

Found: The Unclaimed Louis Vuitton Trunk of Marilyn Monroe

There’s a Japanese Lady Gaga living in Tokyo called Princess Tenko, and she collects anything from hairbrushes to underwear that once belonged to Marilyn Monroe. One of the most treasured pieces in her collection is a mysterious unclaimed Louis Vuitton trunk she acquired at auction in 2005 for a modest $5,000, which allegedly belonged to…

Norma Jean, Not Marilyn

“For hours she danced and sang and flirted and did this thing that’s—she did Marilyn Monroe. The white wine helped things along. Then there was the inevitable drop … she sat in the corner like a child, with everything gone. I wouldn’t photograph her without her knowledge of it. And as I came with the camera, I saw…
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