The last sitting

Bert Stern was the last person to photograph Marilyn Monroe before she died, 39 years ago this month. An exclusive interview with Salon.

By David Bowman

Aug 14, 2001 | Bert Stern was a 32-year-old, red-blooded Brooklyn-born boy and he was going to ball Marilyn Monroe. Yes, sir! It was 1962. Stern was cruising the streets of L.A. in a pink Thunderbird convertible, a case of '53 Dom Perignon in the trunk. Bubbly for Marilyn. Earlier, Stern had reserved them Suite 261 at the Bel-Air Hotel. He planned to get Marilyn drunk and coax her to drop her clothes and then ... He wanted to make love with her, but there was the job he'd come to L.A. to do -- to take Monroe's photograph for Vogue magazine. "Making love and making photographs were closely connected in my mind when it came to women," he would later write.

Stern had already seen Monroe once at a Manhattan cocktail party back in 1955. "I just glanced at her," he remembers. "She was under a light with a lot of guys around. I didn't have the courage to go and talk to her. I just noticed that she was startling." He was a nobody in those days, but now he'd become one of America's foremost commercial photographers. Several years earlier he'd taken the photograph that was considered his masterpiece -- he shot the tip of a pyramid in Egypt, reflected upside down in a cocktail glass filled with Smirnoff vodka. Of course liquor and women were different subjects.

Only days earlier, Stern had been in Rome photographing Elizabeth Taylor on the set of "Cleopatra." Today he was going to take the first nudes of Marilyn Monroe since her 1949 calendar shots.

As Stern cruised down Wilshire, he couldn't help fantasizing about what he really wanted to do with his subject. "What woman in the world would I like to sleep with?" Stern asks rhetorically 40 years later. "Of course there was my wife [New York ballerina Allegra Kent]. There was Jackie Kennedy. And there was Marilyn Monroe. But Jackie was married to the president and I was married to my wife. Marilyn was the only other woman who caught my interest."

Back up, Bert. There was something else about Jackie. Her hair. Brunettes have always scared you. Liz Taylor was an absolute freeze-out. You snapped the woman dressed in full Cleopatra regalia, but your mind was on a blond. Monroe. You were unaware of the curious synchronicity of photographing these two stars back-to-back. Both "Cleopatra" and Monroe's film "Something's Got to Give" were Twentieth Century Fox pictures. Liz's flick had gone way over budget and Fox couldn't afford the same deal with Monroe. So they shut down Marilyn's movie. Perhaps if "Cleopatra" had not been such a money hole, the suits would have shown Monroe grace and patience. As it was, her loss was photography's gain. Monroe was an aging beauty queen without a movie deal. Posing for Vogue magazine was a good career move.

Stern drove to the Bel-Air and cooled his heels in Suite 261. He was joined by a guy named George -- Monroe's hairdresser. They waited all afternoon. No Monroe. Stern was not upset. The unreality of his expectations was almost too much. He was going to strip Marilyn Monroe. Then he thought about how chubby she looked in her last flick, "The Misfits." Then, at 7 p.m. the front desk rang. "Miss Monroe is here." Stern went down to meet her.

"The sun was setting behind the Hollywood hills," he wrote in the introduction to "The Last Sitting." "And the girl-next-door every man dreams of was walking slowly toward me in the golden light." Forty years later, he remembers, "She came alone. She had a bandanna around her head. Some slacks and a sweater. No makeup. She was just gorgeous. I was shocked that she was so fit. She was wonderful for photography."

The first thing Stern said was, "You're beautiful."

She smiled and said, "Really? What a nice thing to say."

What did the movie star's voice sound like in person? "Her voice was more normal," Stern remembers. "I think 'Marilyn Monroe' is a character she created. That voice was exaggerated. She was a riot. I haven't seen anyone except people imitating her have that. And no one can imitate her properly."

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