I’m not especially a fan of Marilyn Monroe — with the exception of the sublime Some Like It Hot, all of her movies that I’ve seen blur together in my memory, and I’m not even certain which ones I have seen — but she was undeniably pretty, and I like photos of pretty girls. I’m also fascinated by those occasional stories of long-lost artifacts being rediscovered in somebody’s attic, so naturally my ears pricked up when I heard on The Today Show this morning that a cache of unpublished photos of Marilyn had turned up in the archives of Life magazine. You can see a nice selection of them here. These shots were taken in August of 1950, when Marilyn was 24 years old and still a few years from attaining full-fledged stardom. To my eye, she looks happier and sexier in these than in most of the better-known images of her that were taken later on. But then I’ve long suspected she was much happier as Norma Jean than she ever was as Marilyn.
FYI, yesterday was her birthday. She would’ve been 83 years old, something that’s nearly impossible to imagine…