What are the Xs on the photos of Marilyn Monroe in The Last Sitting?
From all accounts, those red Xs were made by Marilyn herself, and were published despite her reservations about those shots by the photographer, Bert Stern. She was 36, and the photos were taken at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. She also had just been fired from an unfinished George Cukor movie. Six weeks later she was dead of an apparent barbiturate overdose. Despite being famous and beautiful, as typical of many women Marilyn was insecure, I’m sure. Plus she drank and did drugs! What to others might seem a beautiful shot, to her might have been horrendous, and thus she used her red marker to X it out. To display her self-loathing and insecurity. Using a hairpin, she scratched up others. It was written: “The Monroe shots are what Stern will be remembered for, especially the ones Monroe mutilated with a hairpin. Just days before her death, Stern mailed color transparencies out to L.A. as a courtesy for Monroe. The woman went ahead and scratched up the ones she didn’t like. Or else X
