MARILYN'S FIRST "LIFE" MAGAZINE COVER

In April 1952 Life magazine featured a sexy Marilyn on its cover and billed her as “the talk of Hollywood.” If she wasn’t before, she surely was now...photographer Philippe Halsman later recalled that at this time “she was at the height of her sex appeal; and everything she did, every motion, was a mixture of conscious and unconscious appeal and challenge to the desire of men.... Though I have photographed hundreds of actresses, I have never seen one with a greater inferiority complex.... She always had the feeling that she was not good enough, that she was unworthy; even her sex appeal stemmed from this. When she faced a man she didn’t know, she felt safe and secure only when she knew the man desired her; so everything in her life was geared to provoke this feeling. Her talent in this respect was very great. I remember my experience in her tiny apartment with my assistant and the Life researcher. Each of us felt that if the other two would leave, something incredible would happen.... She would try to seduce the camera as if it were a human being.... She knew that the camera lens was not just a glass eye but a symbol for the eyes of millions of men; so the camera stimulated her strongly. Because she had a great talent for directing the entire impact of her personality at the lens she was a remarkably gifted and exciting model.”