Joshua John Miller and Mark A. Fortin’s book The Marilyn Monroe Century: From Norma Jeane to Icon—A Story in Photographs charts Marilyn’s life and career through Bernard’s eyes. Bernard had come to the United States in 1937 to escape Nazi Germany. When he met Marilyn, she was still an aspiring, and struggling, star. Miller, who is Bernard’s grandson, explains that Bernard, an orphan who’d had to leave his home country behind, and Marilyn, who’d survived abuse and hardship in various foster homes while growing up, felt an instant kinship—a “feeling of belonging to one another,” he says.
You can see that in Bernard’s pictures of Marilyn, three of which are included here. There’s Marilyn in 1953, appearing at the Hollywood Bowl, resplendent and joyous in a tangerine-colored draped dress. The dress wasn’t her own: she had no money at the time and had borrowed it from the wardrobe of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. As The Seven Year Itch was being filmed, Bernard had shot what is possibly the most famous photograph of Marilyn—the one in which she laughs with joy as she tries to control the skirt of her billowing white halter dress—though he and Marilyn had grown apart by that time. Another shot included here shows a more pensive Marilyn on set, waiting to spring to life. Bernard had felt stung that by this time, his old friend had nearly forgotten him—but he noted in his diaries from the time that Marilyn had spotted him in the crowd of photographers and said, “Remember, Bruno, it all started with you.”
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