In other shots she was swathed in a large green towel, or clad in a thick-knit woollen jumper that emphasised the smallness of her wrists.Īs the day went on, it became increasingly cold. One session took them to Santa Monica beach, where she enjoyed champagne and paddled in the sea. “She never looked more beautiful, nor was she ever so talkative.” “She was wonderful to work with the entire time,” Barris recalled. A well-heeled friend in the North Hollywood Hills lent them his house for longer conversations and elaborate backdrops. From June 9 until July 18, therefore, he and Marilyn Monroe began a series of interviews, shoots and shopping sprees.īarris went to Beverly Hills to buy her slacks, a beach jacket and a bikini. The title of her latest film, Something’s Got To Give, struck Barris as apt readers, he told the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, would be anxious to know what the future held. Her marriage to the playwright Arthur Miller had collapsed. She had spent six months of the previous year being treated for health problems including severe depression. “Although she was then 28 years old, she looked and acted like a teenager.”īy the time that she and Barris met again to collaborate on a book about her life and work, she had become a sex symbol with 30 films to her name and had just received a “World Film Favorite” Golden Globe Award at the March 1962 ceremony.īarris was aware that not all the headlines had been positive. “She was no phoney or snob,” he recalled.

They shared the same star sign (Gemini) and many of the same interests.īarry, for his part, found her easy to talk to and unusually lacking in artifice, despite her status as a sex symbol and rising actress of Hollywood’s golden age. It also typified their personal relationship. Barris’s relaxed approach produced some of the most striking imagery of the actress at the height of her fame.

Marilyn monroe george barris 1962