The Hollywood Reporter‘s Seth Abramovitch looks back at Marilyn’s delightfully kitsch ‘potato sack’ photo shoot today.
“There are several versions of the story behind a series of promotional photos taken of Marilyn Monroe wearing a potato sack dress.
The best one involves a party at the Beverly Hills Hotel in which Monroe, then 24, allegedly showed up in a revealing red dress that a columnist declared ‘cheap and vulgar,’ adding she would have been better served wearing ‘a potato sack.’ The Twentieth Century Fox PR department then capitalized on the moment by putting her in one.
The less colourful version of the story is that the studio was simply hoping to drum up some publicity by suggesting their starlet was so beautiful, she could even make a potato sack look good — which she indubitably does.
As for who tailored it to hug her famous curves, chances are good it was William Travilla … One of the sack-dress photos ran in Stare, a cheesecake magazine, in 1952 — a year before Playboy launched with Monroe on the cover. ‘MMMarilyn MMMonroe doesn’t care too much for potatoes because it tends to put on weight,’ the Stare caption read. ‘But she decided to do something for the potatoes!'”
The offending gown is often thought to be a red velvet number designed by Hollywood costumer Oleg Cassini. However, according to April VeVea’s Classic Blondes article on the potato sack shoot, it was another gown that drew fire from gossip columnists when Marilyn wore it to the Photoplay Awards at the Beverly Hills Hotel in February 1952.
“I have another evening gown which women criticise, but which has won me an appreciable number of comments from men,” Marilyn told Modern Screen in July. “It is a strapless red silk taffeta, snug from the bodice down to the hips, which is covered in black French lace. At I. Magnin’s, where I paid a still price for it, I was told that the dress was the only copy of an original purchased by a San Francisco social leader. I wonder if her dress has ever been criticised in her set the way mine was the night I wore it to one of the few formal Hollywood parties I have attended … it was the proof positive, they claimed, that I was utterly lacking in taste. I’m truly sorry, but I love that dress.”
The publicity department at Twentieth Century-Fox ensured that images of Marilyn in a potato sack – shot by studio photographer Gene Kornman – were circulated shortly after Sheilah Graham and Edith Gwynn slated her in print. As James Spada noted in his book, Monroe: A Life in Pictures, over 400 newspapers across the U.S. printed various poses from the sitting in early 1952 alone.
While Marilyn’s response was certainly eye-catching, the potato sack wasn’t a new idea as she had already made a similar pose for another studio photographer, Earl Thiesen, in 1951. Today, her risqué style is celebrated – and her provocative stance takes pride of place at the Idaho Potato Museum.
And finally, in a recent post for her Culled Culture blog, Genna Rivieccio considers the potato sack as a timeless riposte to fashion victims everywhere.
“Glamorclassicblondes.com/…/marilyns-potato-sack-dress https://classicblondes.com/2024/01/03/marilyns-potato-sack-dress/ous gowns were the linchpin in her wardrobe (and, of course, they were deliberately form-fitting so as to show off her curvaceous figure), yet Monroe could just as easily be photographed in a ‘casual’ ensemble—at the time, that meant something like elegant slacks paired with a blouse—and also embody the American sense of carefreeness intermixed with a sense of pride in one’s polish. Monroe, too, blazed the trail for what would once again become chic in the twenty-first century (more around the 2010s, than the 2000s): curves … Showing off her physique early on in her career, Monroe and the studio she was tied to, 20th Century Fox, decided to troll a certain journalist … the real point was to thumb her nose at those who claimed she was only deemed ‘sexy’ and ‘glamorous’ because of the attire she was dressed in. Turns out, in Marilyn’s instance, clothes do not make the woman. She wanted to prove quite the contrary while also unwittingly manifesting the core of American fashion in a single ‘garment.'”
The Marilyn Report 
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