Marilyn Monroe Is A Big Fat Fraud
That’s what my friend Dee Sushi always says. Dee says that Marilyn didn’t have a tenth the talent of Judy Holliday or half the campy appeal of Jayne Mansfield. Yet it was Marilyn who became the global icon. But in 1949 she was just another struggling young actress trying to make it in Tinseltown. Tight on cash with a car payment looming, the starlet, who was just days away from her 23rd birthday, agreed to pose nude for $50 for photographer Tom Kelley. The photos would go on to make up the now-iconic “Golden Dreams” calendar and would appear in the first issue of Playboy in 1953. Now, 21 never-before-seen photos from the original shoot have just been released and can be viewed this summer in a traveling exhibition across the U.S. courtesy of Limited Runs.
