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‘Glamour of the Gods’

The photo above was taken by Ernest Bachrach while Marilyn was filming Clash By Night in 1952. (Note the book on the pavement: her exercise bible, The Thinking Body by Mabel Elsworth Todd.)

This photo – one of my favourites – features in ‘Glamour of the Gods’, an exhibition dedicated to classic Hollywood photography, featuring pictures from the John Kobal Foundation, opening at London’s National Portrait Gallery on July 7, running until October 23.

John Kobal was the author of Marilyn Monroe: A Life on Film (1974), one of the first picture books on Marilyn, and another of my personal favourites (it was only the second book that I read about her, and the first illustrated!)

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John Kobal’s Marilyn: Made in Hollywood

Ernest Bachrach, 1952

This photograph, taken on the set of Clash by Night, is part of an exhibition at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, running until September 12.

‘Made in Hollywood’ showcases the collection of film archivist John Kobal, who published one of the first photo books on Marilyn Monroe in 1974. Used copies of Marilyn Monroe: A Life in Pictures are still widely available, and if the presentation is not as glossy as readers now expect, the content – and Kobal’s own commentary – is nonetheless superior to its most of its successors.

Other classic stars featured in this exhibition include Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Gloria Swanson, Clark Gable, and Humphrey Bogart.