The Birth of Marilyn: The Lost Photographs of Norma Jean

Dust jacket notes: "Marilyn Monroe was born in 1946 at the age of nineteen. As Norma Jean Dougherty, she had come to Hollywood, ready to leave her name and husband behind her, dreaming of being a movie star. Early that year, practical steps were taken - her modelling agency asked a successful young photographer, Joseph Jasgur, to take some photographs that would impress the big casting directors. He fulfilled his assignment with distinction: Ben Lyon at Twentieth Century-Fox was impressed and arranged a screen a screen test. By autumn she had a film contract in her pocket and a new name, given to her by Lyon - Marilyn Monroe had said goodbye to Norma Jean and Jim Dougherty. Joseph Jasgur took his new model to the hills above Los Angeles, and to Zuma Beach in Malibu, where his lens focused on a woman who was relaxed, radiant ad at one with the camera. Jasgur took over 100 photographs, magically capturing the essence of Norma Jean as she evolved into Marilyn. For more than forty years, these treasured photographs were locked away by the photographer and remained, with rare exceptions, unpublished. The best of them are reproduced here in this first-ever collection....The Birth of Marilyn is a celebration, essential for every admirer seeking the essence of the phenomenon that is Marilyn Monroe."