Marilyn Monroe’s Nudes Made Her Notorious. “Surprisingly Good” Acting Made Her a Star.

Dr. Sauer would know: He’d seen Niagara three times (for purely medical reasons, no doubt). Bernard watched with a mixture of pride and astonishment as his friend achieved a stardom stranger than either of them had dreamed, writing, “Marilyn had turned into a sex symbol of unparalleled dimensions, a myth which everyone interpreted according to his own tender or torrid thoughts. MM became the number one dream girl of the American male, the sort of sex symbol that made the lonely GI Joe swoon and gave him something very concrete worth fighting for instead of “making the world safe for democracy.” When MM was flown to the boys in Korea, she generated more heat there than an atomic bomb explosion on the Bikini Atoll islands. In the solid citiizen type of husband on the home front, she evoked often suppressed unproper thoughts that made him want to beat up his wife. And in the sweethearts and wives who became “displaced persons,” she aroused thoughts which are not communicable even in a free press.”

Monroe’s feelings regarding her sudden ubiquity were more muted, if telling; Adam Victor, in his book The Encyclopedia of Marilyn Monroe, quotes her as saying, “I’m thrilled of course. Everything’s so wonderful—people are so kind—but I feel that it’s all happening to someone right next to me. I’m close—I can feel it—I can hear it—but it isn’t really me.”

In an act of synergy, on August 3, 1952 the musician Ray Anthony’s threw an event for his fresh single, “Marilyn,” featuring Monroe in person, photographed by Bruno Bernard. If Bernard was looking for clues as to whether his friend’s life had become a circus, Anthony’s party—which included a band, navy men, a chopper, and, for some reason, famed canine star Lassie—provided solid evidence. The press event, loosely titled “Meet Marilyn,” found the actress at the center of a tornado of photographers. Bernard had made a point of seeing his friend’s films, but when he first saw Norma Jeane descending the staircase to Anthony’s backyard spread, it occurred to him that this was the first time he was seeing Marilyn Monroe—this Marilyn, resplendent with notoriety—in the flesh. “He was surrounded by other photographers jockeying for eye contact,” Miller says, “and they were shouting her name like an incantation. Obviously, he’d watched her star rise, but it was another thing to be in the middle of it.” As Bernard wrote, “Marilyn seemed to enjoy the controversy which brought reams of new publicity. On one occasion . . . Her Majesty paraded in a low-cut body clinging outfit which was held up by sheer willpower. When the photographs later revealed the “look Ma, no bra” feature, Marilyn chirped with wide-eyed innocence and hurt dignity, “How could I know that some low brows would shoot me from high-camera angles?”

Monroe’s methodology—make their heads explode, then claim astonishment at the carnage in your wake—was well in place but not yet perfected by the time she spotted Bernard in the crowd of photographers as she descended the stairs to the bandstand on the lawn. Whether the relative innocence she displays in these images is owed to her seeing Bernard or to the event itself is impossible to tell. With Mickey Rooney at her side, she sings along to Anthony’s tune “Marilyn” (which did not prove as lasting as Niagara); she smiles with servicemen; she signs autographs and mingles politely with studio types.