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MARILYN MONROE, with BEN HECHT

Foreword by JOSHUA GREENE

foreword

My father, Milton H. Greene, passed away in 1985. Though he was a successful New York–based fashion and portrait photographer, credited with over 150 covers and thousands of editorial pages, he’s remembered best for the body of work he created with Marilyn Monroe from 1953 to 1957.

Milton met Marilyn in the fall of 1953 on an assignment for Look magazine. They had an immediate, relaxed rapport and, like two children in a sandbox, began to create images together with playful abandon. A close and endearing friendship quickly grew.

The following year, Milton met up with Marilyn at the Los Angeles home of producer Joseph Schenck, with whom Marilyn was involved at the time. Also present was screenplay writer Ben Hecht. Schenck’s home offered expansive views with wonderful props for Milton and Marilyn to play off, as seen on page 148. Besides doing a series of candid pictures, still considered favorites, the four spoke of Marilyn doing a book about her life story, the result of which is the book in your hands. Marilyn and Ben Hecht spent time together over the next few months, and they began working on her biography. Before leaving California for New York to live with the Greene family, Marilyn had dictated her own words and Hecht put them to paper.

Rick Rinehart and I selected the pictures for this edition, and I want to thank Rick for his assistance in this project. Many of these are favorites that have been digitally restored from the original transparencies and negatives. When my father passed, he thought that most of his 300,000-image collection had faded and been lost to time. I started the Archives in 1993 to salvage his collection. Ever since I have embraced digital photo restoration.

The technology has allowed me to pursue my passion, photography, while protecting and preserving my father’s legacy.

On page 21, there’s a photograph of Marilyn dressed in a bustier with ostrich feathers and a huge shiny necklace—costume jewelry, of course. This was a very special evening. Nobody knew where Marilyn had been for the last year and a half. She had moved to New York and with the help of my father, and his attorney had successfully sued Twentieth Century Fox to get her released from her slave contract. Michael Todd organized a fundraising event at Madison Square Garden with the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus. It was a star-studded, high society affair with Milton Berle as Master of Ceremonies dressed in riding boots and tails. At the end, when the performers came out for their final bow, Marilyn appeared riding on top of a pink elephant wearing this flamboyant outfit. It brought down the house.

On page 35 and 129, there are images from the “Hooker” series, so nicknamed because she was posing as a call girl on a French set on the Twentieth Century Fox back lots. On Sunday afternoons when not filming Bus Stop, Milton and Marilyn would run over to the wardrobe department and rummage through the costumes, looking for something to spark their imaginations. Milton was a “photographer’s photographer”—every frame was usable and he never overshot. Today’s younger generation may recognize this outfit from Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” video.