Marilyn’s nude calendar pose graces the latest cover of Saturday, a weekend magazine supplement to The Guardian – and inside, Tom Kelley’s photo is featured alongside other shots that made history.
“Words can tell a story, but it’s pictures that will make you believe in it. Such is the power of a photograph; the ability to strip away illusions, to illuminate something hidden, and sometimes force us to accept unpalatable truths. When it comes to scandal, seeing is believing – occasionally even to the point that a picture changes the course of history.
The story our pictures tell is, of course, partly one of changing mores: things that seemed scandalous only by the lights of a more repressed era, but also things that in hindsight should have shocked much more than they did … One constant theme for almost a century, however, is the use of female flesh to shock … From the historic to the trivial, what makes many of these images unusually poignant in 2026 is that the era they represent – one of humans offering other humans visual proof of our shared world – is now under threat … the proliferation of highly convincing AI-generated images, spread instantly and virally by social media, risks a much more serious erosion of trust in what our eyes are telling us.
What you see here may yet come to be remembered as a golden age for photography: one in which cameras were quick enough to catch a fleeting moment of truth, and we were still capable of believing it.”
– Gaby Hinsliff
“‘I was broke and needed the money. Why deny it?’ Marilyn Monroe told reporters when her nude 1949 photos taken by Hollywood photographer Tom Kelley resurfaced just as she was on the brink of fame, and were published in the first issue of Playboy. Studio executives feared they would affect her career, but she was unapologetic: ‘I’m not ashamed … I’ve done nothing wrong.’ Academics came to see the images – or rather, Monroe’s ownership of them – as a sign of the sexual revolution of the time.”
– Hannah J. Davies
Marilyn first met Tom Kelley on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, after her car was involved in a collision. He offered her $5 for a cab fare, and gave her his business card. Stuck with a hefty car repair bill, she visited his studio a few days later and they shot an advertisement for Pabst beer.
In May 1949, Kelley contacted Marilyn after John Baumgarth, a calendar producer from Chicago, asked if she would pose nude. She returned to Kelley’s studio two days later, on May 27, for what is now known as the ‘red velvet’ sitting. To protect her anonymity, she was photographed in profile, and signed her model release form as ‘Mona Monroe.’ She was paid a flat fee of $50, while Kelley earned $500 for the assignment. They later collaborated again on a 1951 advertisement for City Club shoes.
In early 1952, Marilyn’s bosses at Twentieth Century-Fox learned about her nude calendar, and publicist Harry Brand advised her to deny it. But after consulting with reporter Sidney Skolsky, she came clean in a syndicated interview with Aline Mosby, published on March 13.
Kelley’s wife Natalie, who had assisted him during the two-hour shoot, later told her side of the story in the July 1953 issue of Movie Stars Parade. Just a few months later, a young Chicago publisher, Hugh Hefner, acquired the photographs from John Baumgarth – and the Playboy empire was born.
Thanks to Fraser Penney
The Marilyn Report 