Marilyn Monroe by Eve Arnold review – intimate, tender and witty photographs

In front of the camera Monroe was luminous, but in this reissued and sumptuous collection of pictures Arnold also captured the insecurity and pain

The story is told of Marilyn Monroe and a friend walking down Fifth Avenue one day in the 1950s discussing Marilyn Monroe. MM was wearing a headscarf and a plain, belted raincoat. The friend remarked on the great difference there was between the woman he knew and the star the world thought it knew. “You want me to be her?” Marilyn said. “Watch.” She whipped off the scarf, opened the raincoat, thrust out her chest and put on The Walk. Within seconds, she was surrounded by a gaggle of excited fans clamouring for her autograph.

Monroe was one of the 20th century’s great clowns, whose clowning was intended not to make us laugh – though she was wonderfully funny – but to lose ourselves in fantasies of longing and desire. Most movie stars act the part of themselves, more or less convincingly; Marilyn created a wholly other version of herself, meant not to convince but to seduce. She was both Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster, and it is our subliminal awareness of this duality that makes her such a fascinating and compelling creature, even still, more than 60 years after her death.

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