Marilyn Brings ‘Hollywood Dolce Vita’ to Deauville

Sébastien Cauchon is a film historian and author of the novel, Marilyn Monroe 1962. He has written articles about Marilyn’s French connections and interviewed Jimmy Collins of the Monroe Six, a group of young fans who befriended Marilyn in New York. In 2022, Sébastien curated a Marilyn-themed photo exhibition in Lyon – and now, twelve prints from his archive of candid photos captured during Hollywood’s golden era is on display until September 10 at the Royal Hotel in Normandy – right on time for this year’s Deauville American Film Festival, as Vanity Fair reports. You can order 50×50 cm prints from Sebastien’s website, They Had Faces Then (named after Gloria Swanson’s immortal line from Sunset Boulevard, of course.)

“The ‘Hollywood Dolce Vita’ exhibition is drawn from the personal collection of Sébastien Cauchon, who has been unearthing rare gems for over thirty years. Crazy about cinema and its icons, he is closely interested in the photos commissioned by the major studios in the 1950s. ‘At the time, the studios devoted entire departments to their photographic archives,’ he explains. Great professionals came to take photos of sets, gala evenings or awards ceremonies, portraits of stars under contract… Not to mention the specialist press. He cites Movieland and Modern Screen, reference magazines which supported and recounted the heydays of the Hollywood industry. ‘The press negatives are of such quality that their prints are sumptuous,’ enthuses the collector … ‘The great complicity that reigned between photographers and artists made it possible to compose incredible photos.'”