Marilyn and Douglas Kirkland 1961

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written by Immortal Marilyn | views: 1290

"When we were alone, off came the robe, and there was a very bare Marilyn.... I was holding the camera so she had to get to me." - Douglas Kirkland, to Popular Photography magazine

"It was hard to take a bad photo of her." - Douglas Kirkland

"She knew exactly what to do, her movements, her hands, her body were just perfect. She was the sexiest. Better than anyone else. Emotionally, she did everything right. She expressed just what I wanted." - Douglas Kirkland

Marilyn & Kirkland, the 1961 photo session:

On the evening November 17th, 1961, in Los Angeles , Douglas Kirkland photographed Marilyn Monroe. He was a freshman photographer, 24 years old with a huge crush on Marilyn (like most men had), on his first major assignment for “Look” magazine, and Marilyn was Hollywood ’s sexiest star. She was 35 years old, and this was just one year before her untimely death. The photo session was being taken for Look Magazines 25th Anniversary cover. Douglas Kirkland photographed Marilyn in the intimate confines of an unmade bed. The result is a series of some of the most spontaneous and beguiling photographs ever taken of Marilyn.

Kirkland had no way of knowing that this was to be one of the last shoots Marilyn would ever sit for. Though he had acquired a reputation at Look as a go-to guy after well received shoots of Elizabeth Taylor and Marlene Dietrich, by his own admission Kirkland acknowledges that he was thrown into the deep end in every way by Marilyn.

He says:

“I was a mess.. a mess. There I was, a kid in my mid twenties, trying to make my mark, trying to imagine some way to approach the biggest star in the world in an entirely new way. It obviously had to be eye-catching, but I wanted a more overt and honest depiction of her than perhaps she was accustomed to showing. Being Canadian in principle and Midwestern in culture though, it wasn’t easy to form the words ‘Marilyn.. I want you undressed.’” - Douglas Kirkland

I read poetry to save time. Read more Marilyn Monroe quotes

She had a few requirements… if the shoot was to be in bed then the sheets had to be silk, Dom Perignon must be at the ready, and Frank Sinatra must be playing on the turntable.

Marilyn arrived 3 hours late to the no-frills studio in Hollywood . She giggled and joked with Kirkland , maybe sensing his anxiety. Then she disappeared for a moment and returned wearing nothing but a robe and slipped it off hoping into the bed. There was no strobe light, just a simple steady floodlight that helped produce the lateral shadows. Kirkland photographed Marilyn while dangling from a railing above her. What Kirkland ended up with was a series of dreamy, intimate and legendary images of Marilyn. Marilyn twisted and turned, smiled and laughed, and sometimes even acted bashful by glancing away from the camera, and sometimes the opposite.. staring directly into the camera.

Many year’s later after the shoot, in just recent years, Kirkland has now come out saying that Marilyn asked him to get into bed with her, while the crew left them two alone, and that he passed up an opportunity of a lifetime by fighting this temptation…