VINTAGE 1948 MARILYN MONROE BATHING BEAUTY PHOTOGRAPH W/PRESS SNIPE PIN UP RARE

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We'd like to extend our gratitude to all the fine collectors on ebay who have paid a visit under the Grapefruit Moon--we are honored to provide you all with 5-star service and look forward to continuing to offer an always eclectic and sometimes plain weird assortment of art deco ephemera, paper, and memorabilia. ITEM: You are bidding on an original 1948 vintage photograph of Marilyn Monroe an early and spiri ted pin-up view which was taken during her early days as a struggling starlet in Hollywood - working as a pin-up model frequently for Blue Book Model Agency - paying her bills and waiting f or her big break. Dated on verso July 1948, at t his time the beautiful M arilyn Monroe would model swimwear at the Brentwood country club to get her name out there as a new actress with Columbia pictures. This is a classic cheesecake shot of the bombshell icon, showing off a playful side and also her incomparable figure. This has great allure for any collector of Monroe ephemera and is a beautiful photograph with press snipe on verso (detached) that reads Wideworld Photos Actress Marilyn Monroe 7/48 and also features inkstamps from the photo service. This measures just under 7 3/4" x 9 1/2" with one chip to upper right corner, the clarity is excellent and the image area is clean. CONDITION: This vintage 1948 Marilyn Monroe pin up photograph is in very good++++ condition, with one flaw, the chip in the upper right corner, the press snipe has come detached, but this is a rare and beautiful piece. A Brief Biography of Marilyn Monroe, as her story can never be told too often: The most endlessly talked-about and mythologized figure in Hollywood history, Marilyn Monroe remains the ultimate superstar, her rise and fall the stuff that both dreams and nightmares are made of. Innocent, vulnerable, and impossibly alluring, she defined the very essence of screen sexuality. Rising from pin-up girl to international superstar, she was a gifted comedienne whom the camera adored, a luminous and incomparably magnetic screen presence. In short, she had it all, yet her career and life came crashing to a tragic halt, a Cinderella story gone horribly wrong; dead before her time -- her fragile beauty trapped in amber, impervious to the ravages of age -- Monroe endures as the movies' greatest and most beloved icon, a legend eclipsing all others. Born Norma Jean Mortensen (later Baker) on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles, she was seemingly destined for a life of tragedy: Her mother spent the majority of her life institutionalized, she was raised in an endless succession of orphanages and foster homes, and she was raped at the age of eight. By 1942, she was married to one Jim Dougherty, subsequently dropping out of school to work in an aircraft production plant; within a year she attempted suicide. When Dougherty entered the military, Baker bleached her hair and began modeling. By 1946, the year of the couple's divorce, she was accredited to a top agency, and her image regularly appeared in national publications. Her photos piqued the interest of the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who scheduled her for a screen test at RKO; however, 20th Century Fox beat him to the punch, and soon she was on their payroll at 125 dollars a week. Rechristened Marilyn Monroe, she began studying at the Actors' Lab in Hollywood; however, when virtually nothing but a bit role in the juvenile delinquent picture The Dangerous Years came of her Fox contract, she signed to Columbia in 1948, where she was tutored by drama coach Natasha Lytess. There she starred in Ladies of the Chorus before they too dropped her. After briefly appearing in the 1949 Marx Brothers comedy Love Happy, she earned her first real recognition for her turn as a crooked lawyer's mistress in the 1950 John Huston thriller The Asphalt Jungle. Good notices helped Monroe win a small role in the classic All About Eve, but she otherwise continued to languish relatively unnoticed in bit parts. While she was now back in the Fox stable, studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck failed to recognize her potential,... read more

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