Meanwhile, just one year after she posed for the photos out of desperation, Monroe had begun to find great success as an actor, appearing as both Miss Casswell in All About Eve and The Asphalt Jungle's Angela Phinlay in just 1950 alone. “I was nervous, embarrassed, even ashamed of what I had done, and I did not want my name to appear on that model release.”Įither way, Kelley eventually sold the photos for $900 to the Western Lithograph Co., and the images were later published as part of a 'Golden Dreams' pinup calendar.

On the release documents for the Red Velvet series, as the images were known, the actress signed her name “Mona Monroe.” The reason? “I don’t know why, except I may have wanted to protect myself,” Monroe told Barris for his memoir.

Barris also noted that the shoot lasted two hours and Monroe had made Kelley promise she'd look unrecognizable in the photos. In 1949, a cash-strapped, jobless Monroe posed nude for pinup photographer Tom Kelley in exchange for the $50 she needed to make a car payment, as described in her friend, photographer George Barris' 1995 book, Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words. That was, of course, because neither was legally required. READ MORE: Inside Marilyn Monroe's Final Days and Fragile State of Mind Monroe took the nude photos because she needed to pay her bills

In fact, when the late Hugh Hefner used 'the famous Marilyn Monroe nude' (the exact words emblazoned upon the publication's splashy inaugural cover) to launch the men's lifestyle and entertainment glossy - and his storied Playboy brand as a whole - in 1953, Monroe hadn't consented to the then-four-year-old images' use, nor had Hefner directly paid her a dime. The naked truth about Marilyn Monroe's famed appearance on the first Playboy cover: The iconic blonde bombshell (born Norma Jeane Mortenson) never actually posed for the magazine at all.

Marilyn monroe george barris 1962