“Although she seems uncertain, her understanding of what would make her a movies star was so great. The need also was so great. The intelligence was there too. She created Marilyn. She created that character, it wasn’t the movies that did it. She did it. She had much more control with a still camera than in the movies. We would discuss what we were going to do and then we would play. We used to laugh a lot. It was great.
Neither one of us knew what we were doing and that was a bond between us. Secondly, I was not a threat to her. I had six sessions with her. The shortest was two hours which was a press event, and the longest was two months on the set of “The Misfits”. Her enemy was that she couldn’t sleep, so she would take sleeping tablets. I saw an enormous change in her over the ten years that I photographed her. In that time she had gone from a beginner to a world figure and it had taken its toll. She created “Marilyn Monroe” but it was very hard on her. To my knowledge as long as she could fantasize about being a movie star she was fine. It was when the fantasy became the reality that it was hard”
~ Eve Arnold
(1912 - 2012)
“A nice girl knows her limits, a smart girl knows that she has none”
~ Marilyn Monroe
(1926 - 1962)
One of the most photographed people of the 20th Century. Everyone wanted to be near her, and take a piece of her. This is one of the greatest photographs ever taken of her because it is enigmatic and reflects the essence of who she was and the struggle to be who she thought she wanted to be.
Is she “acting” or is she going through genuine moments of her own unease and sadness, and conflicts. We will never know. That is why the image has held up for over 60 plus years.
