Mark Marilyn Monroe’s Centennial with These Seldom – Seen Photos

(SeaPRwire) –   When someone’s image takes on a larger-than-life quality, it becomes almost impossible to view her as a real, living, feeling person. That’s certainly the case for Marilyn Monroe, who was born on June 1, 1926 and is now marking her 100th birthday. Fans can’t help but associate all kinds of emotions with her face, figure, voice, movements, and singing style. But looking at Marilyn through the lens of photographer Bruno Bernard—later known as Bernard of Hollywood—offers a fresh perspective. The young woman Bernard met and photographed in the mid-1940s wasn’t Marilyn Monroe yet: She was still Norma Jeane Mortensen, transitioning from one phase of her life to an unknown future.

Joshua John Miller and Mark A. Fortin’s book The Marilyn Monroe Century: From Norma Jeane to Icon—A Story in Photographs traces Marilyn’s life and career from Bernard’s viewpoint. Bernard fled Nazi Germany to come to the U.S. in 1937. When they met, Marilyn was still an up-and-coming but struggling actress. Miller, Bernard’s grandson, notes that the two shared an immediate bond: Bernard, an orphan who’d left his homeland, and Marilyn, who’d endured abuse and hardship in multiple foster homes as a child, felt a “sense of belonging to each other,” Miller says.

This connection is evident in Bernard’s photos of Marilyn, three of which are featured here. One image captures Marilyn at the Hollywood Bowl in 1953, radiant and happy in a tangerine draped dress. She didn’t own the dress—she was short on cash then and borrowed it from the wardrobe of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. During the filming of The Seven Year Itch, Bernard took what might be Marilyn’s most iconic photo: the moment she laughs joyfully while trying to hold down the fluttering skirt of her white halter dress—even though the two had drifted apart by then. Another photo here shows a more thoughtful Marilyn on set, ready to perform. Bernard was hurt that his old friend had almost forgotten him by this point, but he wrote in his diaries that Marilyn spotted him among the photographers and said, “Remember, Bruno, it all started with you.”

The third photo, taken by Bernard at Palm Springs’ renowned Racquet Club in 1949, evokes those early days. In it, the future superstar is playful and at ease, greeting a close friend—who just happens to be the one taking the picture. She’d already started using Marilyn Monroe as her stage name, but Bernard continued to think of her as Norma Jeane until his death in 1987.