Milton's Marilyn

This densely packed monograph recreates Milton Greene's classic portrait of Marilyn Monroe in a compact, affordable edition. As an early confidant and business partner, Greene helped establish Monroe's fame.

Richard Avedon called Milton Greene "the greatest photographer of women," and this touching, insightful book proves Marilyn Monroe was his greatest creation. Milton's Marilyn appears as enchanting gypsy, saloon girl, barely clad ballerina, innocent high school yearbook heartthrob, and screen siren in incendiary scarlet dress. He also captures privileged glimpses of her private life: clowning with her boyfriend Brando, backstage on various films, frolicsome in a swimming pool. In some shots, she wears no makeup--and looks startlingly different. In others, she's apparently tipsy; she used to travel with Greene under the fake name Zelda Zonk, and her charm on camera is often a zonked one.

Greene was also Monroe's business partner and mentor until he outlived his usefulness, and this book adds interesting news to Barbara Leaming's intelligent bio Marilyn Monroe. Monroe was savvy but uneducated (she urged a costar to "ab lib"). Joe DiMaggio was her greatest sex partner ever, but--according to one source here--she was bruised after her Some Like It Hot panty-flashing photo shoot enraged him. Rock Hudson spurned the costar role in Bus Stop because producer Greene once rebuffed Rock's sexual proposition. Monroe's intimates cast interesting new lights on her, proving she wasn't the dim, helpless waif she played, nor simply victimized by fame. Being besieged on the street pleased her, says one pal: "She liked to have the power to part the Red Sea." --Tim Appelo