In a new interview with the UK Telegraph, Elliott Erwitt recalls photographing Marilyn on the set of The Misfits. ‘She didn’t pay any attention to me and I took a few pictures of her not posing,’ he remarks. ‘I guess it’s unusual to see a movie star without make-up, with their mere essentials.’
Angela Allen, who served as director John Huston’s script advisor for The Misfits, says, ‘I don’t think Elliott played up to people, being as smarmy as some of the others. Especially around Marilyn. I think he was more objective about her.’ The two women did not get along, as Marilyn suspected her husband, Arthur Miller, of being attracted to Angela.
Allen mistakenly states that Erwitt photographed Marilyn on the set of Some Like it Hot, adding, ‘he’d seen what Billy Wilder had had to go through.’ In fact, Erwitt had been on the set of The Seven Year Itch, Wilder’s earlier, more harmonious collaboration with Marilyn. He did not photograph her in Some Like it Hot.
