Captivating Glimpses: Eve Arnold’s Intimate and Playful Portraits of Marilyn Monroe

The narrative revolves around Marilyn Monroe and a companion strolling down Fifth Avenue one day during the 1950s while discussing Marilyn Monroe. MM donned a headscarf and a simple, belted raincoat. The friend commented on the stark contrast between the woman he was familiar with and the celebrity the world believed to know. “You want me to impersonate her?” Marilyn stated. “Observe.” She swiftly removed the scarf, unfastened the raincoat, thrust her chest forward, and adopted The Walk. Within moments, she found herself encircled by a throng of enthusiastic fans clamoring for her signature.

Monroe was one of the great clowns of the 20th century, whose antics were designed not to amuse us – although she was undeniably hilarious – but to immerse ourselves in fantasies of yearning and craving. Most film stars portray a version of themselves, more or less convincingly; Marilyn crafted a completely different incarnation of herself, designed not to persuade but to allure. She embodied both Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s creature, and it is our unconscious recognition of this duality that renders her such an intriguing and captivating being, even now, more than six decades posthumously.

In the early 1950s, Monroe came across a photo-essay by Eve Arnold in Esquire magazine and was captivated. The subject featured Marlene Dietrich and, when Monroe encountered the photographer at a gathering in New York hosted by John Huston at the 21 Club (where else?), she remarked to Arnold: “If you could achieve that level with Marlene, can you envision what you could accomplish with me?”. They connected well, and Arnold would become Monroe’s semi-official “court photographer” throughout her brief existence.

Arnold’s assertion that Monroe took still photography just as seriously, if not more so, than film is not an exaggeration. The unique sway she applied for the movie camera – described as “like Jello on springs,” as the Jack Lemmon character puts it in Some Like It Hot – had its monumental essence in the stances she assumed for the photographer’s gaze. Nevertheless, she appreciated the Esquire shoot due to its distinction from the meticulously lit, posed, and retouched category of movie-star studio imagery, as Arnold notes.

Even so, she was indeed very selective regarding the visuals she permitted to be published. In Marilyn Monroe – first released in 1987 and now reissued in a revised edition featuring newly mastered prints by Danny Pope – we learn of her rejecting shot after shot if they did not meet her criteria for glamour and beauty. “She was swift and astute,” Arnold recalls, “would listen when I clarified why a specific photo or circumstance was essential, and would agree if she was persuaded. Otherwise, we would contend until either side yielded.”

How did she manage to flaunt such unrestrained sexuality? For no extent of airbrushing or euphemistic dressing could conceal the reality, abundantly demonstrated in Arnold’s images of her, that this was a genuine woman, possessing a form – slightly stout, with lush thighs and a sizable backside – not vastly dissimilar from that of your mother, or your spouse, or that girl in the neighborhood you often admired. A significant portion of her allure for men, and likely for women as well, was that she was ordinary, yet a specter from the most fervent of nighttime fantasies.

Her appearance was not extraordinary: no individual with a nose like that could be characterized as a conventional beauty – and her facial bone structure was delicate. When she was not “being” MM, many of the individuals she encountered did not recognize her and found it hard to believe that she was Marilyn. Yet, when she stood before the camera, she was radiant. “Up close,” Arnold informs us, “around the edges of her face there was a fine dusting of soft hair. This light fuzz captured light and created a halo effect, giving her a faint luminescence on film …”

She understood from the outset how crucial still photography would be for her success; the photo magazines of the 1950s and 60s sold in vast quantities. By the time she encountered Eve Arnold, she had become a star and could afford to relax, at least to some extent, into being herself, even if she no longer fully comprehended where her true self ended and the image began.

This opulent volume contains some beautifully personal, heartfelt, and humorous photographs, as well as images that capture, as only the still camera can, the vulnerability and anguish hidden behind the perpetually smiling exterior. In Arnold, both Marilyn Monroe and Norma Jeane Baker discovered their ultimate visual interpreter. As Arnold remarked: “If a photographer cares for the individuals before the lens and possesses empathy, a great deal is achieved. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the true instrument.”