The Story Behind Marilyn Monroe's Nude Calendar Photo Shoot and What Size was She Really?

this episode is brought to you by curiositystream a subscription streaming service that offers over 2 000 documentaries and non-fiction titles unlimited access starting at just 2.99 a month and 30 days for free if you sign up through the link below and use the code brain food more on them in a bit [Music] it was 1949 then as now thousands of young actresses in hollywood were unemployed or otherwise struggling to get by most ultimately give up the struggle many also make decisions out of necessity that they will later regret as they chase the elusive songbird known as fame it was in this atmosphere that a young marilyn monroe was making her own attempted stardom unfortunately finding herself mostly unemployed with the proverbial wolf knocking on her door monroe originally norma jean mortensen had no idea of that that's a less sexy name and then shortly thereafter norma jean baker baker being the last name of her mother's husband before martin mortensen monroe's father was born all the way back in 1926 and spent most of her early years in foster care and sometime in an orphanage her father ran off before she was born and her mother had severe mental problems including ultimately being placed in a mental institution when she was 16 years old her foster parents moved and could no longer afford to keep her in order to avoid being sent back to an orphanage she married her first husband 21 year old jimmy dougherty in june of 1942. this was apparently not entirely by choice though this point has been disputed morrow herself stated about it grace mckee arranged the marriage for me i never had a choice there's not much to say about it they couldn't support me and they had to work out something and so i got married doherty very soon went off to fight in world war ii leaving monroe alone at home before he left she tried to convince him to get her pregnant as she was afraid he'd die but he refused because he thought she was too young this worked out for her in some respects as she found herself working in a radio plane plant where she was discovered by a photographer as a result of this before her husband returned from the war she already had a successful career in modeling on that note shortly after he returned they got a divorce partially due to the fact that he did not approve of her new career and how scantily clad she was in many of the photos according to monroe however they just didn't have a good relationship anyway with the two almost never talking not because they were fighting or angry at one another but just because they had nothing to say arranged marriages incidentally doughty wasn't the only husband she lost due to her career another was joltin joe dimaggio when she met him she states she was surprised to be so crazy about joe i expected a flashy new york sports type and instead i met this reserved guy who didn't make a pass at me right away he treated me like something special joe is a very decent man and he makes other people feel decent too however less than a year after getting married the two divorced according to monroe i didn't want to give up my career and that's what joe wanted me to do most of all i want it to be a big star more than anything it's something precious that being said dimaggio and she remained close and when she was in the whitney psychiatric clinic in 1961 he helped to get out she then spent time with him in florida where he was working as a batting coach for the yankees concerned with her mental state and the people she had surrounded herself with he tried to get her to marry him again so he could look after her more directly but she refused dimaggio was the one who a year later arranged a funeral on top of that for 20 years after her death he had fresh roses placed in the vase next to her crypt three times per week but we're not here to talk about her love life we're here to discuss her rather infamous nude photo shoot separated from her first husband and in search of stardom monroe as alluded to found herself a bit down on her luck by this point she had already turned down several offers by a photographer she knew and had worked with a bit before on beer advertisements named tom kelly she had nixed kelly's more recent offers because unlike the many previous modelling gigs she had gotten he wanted her to post clothes in only the skin she was born in by now it was may 27 1949 just five days shy of her 23rd birthday in maryland desperately needed 50 about five hundred dollars today to make a payment on her car lest she lose her means of transport around this time young marilyn had also been dropped from her contracts both 20th century fox and colombia and these steady studio contractual stipends were dearly missed so she finally agreed and reported to kelly's studio at the appointed time just so there was no hanky-panky implied or otherwise and perhaps simply to keep an eye on her husband kelly's wife natalie was there for the entire shoot which lasted two hours countless photos were taken but only two were to ever be used or have any lasting importance a new wrinkle showed marilyn sprawled out lying on her side this shot was to grace a baumgarth company calendar the other soon-to-be world famous shot was dubbed golden dreams this was a shot of marilyn sitting in a sexy pose with her left arm crooked and held behind her head after the shoot was over monroe was paid the agreed upon fifty dollars for her services instead of using her real name she signed the contract release using the name mona monroe in the hope that if she made it big someday nobody in the public would ever connect the photos to her now if marilyn monroe had been just another actress the story would end there and the photos would be a molecule in the universe of photography honoring the feminine form but now we cut to 1952 at which point marilyn's golden dreams photo was gracing the walls of barbershops gas stations and men's locker rooms from coast to coast further at this point she wasn't an unknown actress anymore she had been featured in several films in the intervening three years and was now poised to become a genuine superstar naturally it didn't take long for someone to notice that the naked woman in the photo looked an awful lot like the budding starlet marilyn monroe and so it was the journalist delene mosby broke the nude calendar story in march of 1952. the studio's initial reaction was to deny everything after all this was an era when unlike today when this sort of thing is a bit par for the course and even things like leaked sex videos can be leveraged to actually make a young starlet even more famous at this point in history such a scandal almost universally would have seen the women involved have her career take an unrecoverable nosedive however marilyn herself made the decision to fess up and admit that it was indeed her in the photo as mosby had alleged and could be seen pretty much plain as day and so it was that in an interview on march 25 1952 scandal-hungary reporters sharpened their pencils ready for embarrassment ridicule shame and the likely destruction of a hopeful young actress's career every hollywood journalist sweat dream apparently but instead of all of this the story took a different turn with the press and general public charmed by marilyn's candidness honesty and various points sense of humor in pertinent part she stated i was broke and needed the money why deny it you can get one a calendar any place besides i'm not ashamed of it i've done nothing wrong i was a week behind in the rent note here she either had decided to change the real story perhaps implying she would have become homeless which is more desperate than becoming carlos or she had genuinely forgotten about her coffees at this point however as you'll soon see the former is probably the case i had to have the money tom didn't think anyone would recognize me my hair was long then but when the picture came out everybody knew me i'd never have done it if i'd know things would happen so fast in hollywood for me note here in a later interview she switched to a version of the car story stating my sin has been no more than i have written posing for the nude because i desperately needed 50 to get my car out of hock in any event as noted even marilyn's natural sense of humor was to come out in the aftermath of the golden dream scandal breaking for example at one point when a reporter asked her if she had anything on during any part of the infamous shoot she quipped oh yes i had the radio on incidentally here as you might be gathering from all of this monroe herself had nothing to do with the photo gracing the cover of playboy magazine in 1953. after the scandal broke hefner simply purchased the right to use the photo in the first edition of playboy for about five hundred dollars which is five thousand dollars today as for monroe besides the initial amount she was paid when the photo was taken she never saw a dime for it after even though it made hefner millions thanks to it instantly propelling his magazine into wide circulation selling around 54 000 issues within a week of that first issue being published in any event despite what could have potentially been something that destroyed the budding star's career instead the press and more importantly the public saw marilyn's genuine sincerity and were more than willing to let this cultural faux pas go despite the fact that few before her had ever survived such a similar scandal not long after that she would appear in gentlemen prefer blondes in 1953 how to marry a millionaire also 1953. these were the films that launched the marilyn monroe phenomena and her immortal dumb but sexy blonde persona after this she'd star in the seven year rich 1955 bus stop 1956 the prince of the showgirl 1957 and of course marilyn's crowning achievement some like it hot from 1959 one of the great comedies in cinema history sadly her sparkling career was to end with the misfits in 1960 co-starring her childhood fantasy ideal clark gable today like babe ruth in baseball michael jordan in basketball muhammad ali in boxing marilyn monroe remains the undisputed champ for immortal actresses with her estate actually earning more per year today than when she was alive in fact upon her death in 1962 her entire estate was only worth about 1.6 million dollars about 13 million dollars today however well over half a century later the estate still earns about 2 million annually licensing her name and likeness now just before we get into the bonus facts today i do want to take a moment to tell you about today's fantastic sponsor curiosity stream curiosity stream is a subscription streaming service that offers over 2 000 documentaries and non-fiction titles from some of the world's best filmmakers including exclusive originals i have enjoyed a bunch of different documentaries on curiosity stream indeed many of them have been great expansions on topics we've covered here on today i found out and the content really does have range from the series pyramid builders with absolutely no mention of aliens to series on philosophy there is loads of stuff to get into whatever you are into it's available on many platforms web broker android xbox one smart tvs ios chromecast amazon for amazon kids on apple tv and available worldwide get unlimited access starting at just 2.99 a month that is such a deal and for you guys it's an even better deal because the first 30 days are completely free if you sign up at curiositystream.com forward slash brain food and use the promo code brain food during the sign up process it's a great way to support this show and it keeps us making more videos and well i just think they're a good fit so go over try it out for free for 30 days and let's get into the bonus fact a common statement you'll find pervasive throughout the interwebs is that marilyn monroe was through most of adult life the same size as the average american woman today usually stated as around size 12 to 16 from roseanne barr stating i'm more sexy than pamela lee or whoever else they've got out there these days marilyn monroe was a size 16 that says it all to elizabeth harley stating i've always thought marilyn monroe looked fabulous but i'd kill myself if i were that fat i went to see her clothes in the exhibition and i wanted to take a tape measure and measure what her hips were she was very big the thing about this however as should be obvious to anyone who's ever seen a picture of marilyn monroe or seen one of her films is that it's just not true at all how this myth got started isn't exactly known one possible contributing factor to this myth was marilyn monroe's a typical extreme hourglass shape however more directly it probably partially stems from the fact that women's sizes today are not at all equivalent to women's sizes in the 1950s in the 1980s in order to accommodate people's vanity and ever expanding girth the u.s department of commerce got rid of the uniform sizing system and instead allowed for more ego stroking sizes as a result of this a size 8 would have been roughly equivalent to a size 16 to 18 in the 1950s obviously though this varies a shocking amount from brand to brand much the chagrin of women so what size was marilyn monroe well luckily many of her dresses have been carefully preserved and we can measure them further one of her dressmakers also chimed in with exact measurements those measurements were 5 foot 5.5 inches tall 35-inch bust 22-inch waist approximately 2-3 inches less than the average american woman in the 1950s and 12 inches less than the average woman today also she had 35 inch hips with a bra size of 36d of course her weight fluctuated quite a bit over her career usually rising in times of depression and falling back to her normal size thereafter but her dressmaker listed her as 118 pounds and the hollywood studios tended to listen as between 115 and 120 pounds as to what size marilyn monroe would be in women's sizes today that's not an easy thing to answer due to the differing sizes from brand to brand country to country and the fact that her extreme hourglass shape would have made it difficult for her to find the perfect size while clothes shopping luckily for her she could afford to have custom clothing made which she totally did as a direct example of her size the white dress she wore in the seven year itch was relatively recently auctioned off and was put on a mannequin that was a size two however they were unable to zip up the dress as the mannequin was too big many of her other dresses that exist from throughout her career match up to about the same size give or take an inch or two that being said marilyn monroe at times would have dresses so tight that they'd be sewn onto her so something more comfortable in a size four-ish american and something like an eight in the uk is probably more accurate with most brands though it should be noted that a 22 inch waist in any popular american jean sizes today would be below a zero so again the exact size is difficult to nail down thanks to the non-standardized sizing systems we have today and a rather interesting figure if you're curious as to how that compares to modern contemporary fashion models according to blue fire model registry models are generally in the vicinity of a 34 bus 24 waist and 34 hips which is very close to monroe's measurements of 34-22-35 they list the average model today at five foot eight inches to monroe's 5 foot 5.5 inches elizabeth hurley who in the aforementioned quote called marilyn monroe fat is actually listed at around the same dimensions 34 24 34 though is about five inches taller than monroe was so while it's often lamented rightly so that female models and actresses today set a standard that no normal woman can realistically live up to the same was true in the marilyn monroe era minus photoshop even though she's often used today as an example of how things were different back in the day incidentally another marilyn monroe myth was that she was a blonde in fact the actress famed for her platinum blonde curls was actually a darkhead brunette she first dyed her hair blonde after being told that models with lighter colored hair were preferable so she bleached it to golden blonde and later adjusted this a total of nine times until she settled on platinum blonde as monroe later stated there's only one sort of natural blonde on earth albinos so i really hope you enjoyed that video hopefully we busted some myths for you if you did enjoy it please do smash that thumbs up button but more importantly than that go get that 30 day free trial of curiosity stream link below thanks for watching

Channel: Today I Found Out

Views: 770,656

Rating: 4.9152889 out of 5

Keywords: today i found out, tifovidz12, tifo, awesome, facts, didn't know, Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe facts, Marilyn Monroe nude photos, Marilyn Monroe nude calendar photo, Marilyn Monroe photo shoot

Id: 4YbBXg7gCnI

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2020