Lawrence Schiller

In 1962, Lawrence Schiller photographed Marilyn Monroe on the set of Something’s Gotta Give. The film, directed by George Cukor, was the actress’s  final project before her untimely death just a few months later at the age of 36. Monroe suggested the idea of the nude shoot, during a skinny dipping scene in the film, to which Schiller responded, “You’re already famous, now you’re going to make me famous.” Indeed, although Schiller had previously photographed Monroe on the set of Let’s Make Love in 1960 and published in magazines as a freelance photographer, the provocative and alluring shots from Something’s Gotta Give have become the photographs for which he is best known. Images from the project were first presented in the 22 June 1962 issue of Life magazine which covered Monroe’s firing from the film. The present work is a print that originally accompanied Schiller’s acclaimed monograph Marilyn & Me, published in 2012 by Taschen, and is a personal and honest snapshot of a superstar.