A new special magazine from Paris Match on movie legend Marlon Brando includes a feature on his many romances. His brief affair with Marilyn – which led to a lasting friendship – is documented with this photo of the pair serving as celebrity ushers for the premiere of The Rose Tattoo, a fundraiser for the Actors Studio, in December 1955.
Marilyn had visited Marlon on the set of Désirée in 1954, and they were snapped together by Magnum photographer Dennis Stock. Brando was in costume for his role as Napoleon Bonaparte, while Marilyn wore her gown from the ‘A Man Chases a Girl (Until She Catches Him)’ number in There’s No Business Like Show Business, which was also in production at Twentieth Century-Fox.
Following their short-lived fling when she first came to New York, Marilyn and Marlon posed for photographer Milton Greene to promote The Rose Tattoo, although neither appeared in the movie.
On the night of the premiere, the two stars sat down for a rare NBC radio interview. But although Marlon was Marilyn’s dance partner that evening, her real date was Arthur Miller, who made a discreet appearance at the after-party.
Nonetheless, Monroe and Brando remained close until her death, and he would remember her in his autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me. “She had been beaten down,” he wrote, “but had a strong emotional intelligence – a keen intuition for the feelings of others, the most refined type of intelligence.”
The Paris Match special, currently available in the UK (see here), is one of several recent issues putting Marilyn’s contemporaries – from Audrey Hepburn to Brigitte Bardot – ‘in the spotlight.’
MM has also appeared in previous specials on celebrity lovers – with herself and Yves Montand on the cover – and the Kennedys.
And finally, Marilyn’s death in 1962 is featured in the Decades collection chronicling the first 70 years of Paris Match.
Thanks to Divine Marilyn
The Marilyn Report 
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