More than 100 photos of Marilyn Monroe are on the block at Julien's Auctions, the same place that made her "Happy Birthday Mr. President" dress and Truman Capote's ashes available to the highest bidder last year.
The photos span much of her life, from when she was just Norma Jean Baker on Zuma Beach up to weeks before her death in 1962, when she participated in a photo shoot on Santa Monica Beach. In addition to several beach portraits, Monroe is pictured reading, speaking to troops in Korea, building small structures out of money, getting her hair and makeup done, bear-hugging a tiger, and on various film sets solo or with co-stars. Truly a Monroe for all seasons.
Friend and photographer George Barris took these in Santa Monica in 1962, weeks before Monroe's death.
The bulk of the photographs-25 of them-are the "Nude in White Silk Sheet" series by Douglas Kirkland. Kirkland wrote in his book With Marilyn: An Evening 1961, "At a certain point, Marilyn herself said, 'I know what we should do. We should have a bed, and a white silk sheet [. . .] She insisted it must be silk, and it went from there."
