Giant Marilyn Monroe Tribute

[22 views of this sculpture at this link]

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/photo-galleries/2011/07/19/marilyn-monroe-sculpture-inappropriate/



Massive Marilyn Monroe Sculpture To Tower Over Chicago's Michigan Ave

CHICAGO, IL – JULY 15: Newly-wed bride Magda Villasenor looks at “Forever Marilyn”, a sculpture by Seward Johnson, on July 15, 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. The stainless steel and aluminum sculpture, which stands 26 feet tall and weighs 34,000 pounds, will be on display in Chicago through the spring of 2012. The sculpture was inspired by Marilyn Monroe?s iconic scene in the 1955 movie “Seven Year Itch”. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Marilyn Monroe & Jane Russell 1953

Think of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes when Marilyn Monroe, definitely someone who could have gotten by on her good looks alone, danced and sang in her own particular way. She wasn't necessarily the best, but it fit her character.

More of Marilyn Monroe Truth

Sewn into her dress, Marilyn Monroe sings Happy Birthday to President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, New York City.

Screen legend: Marilyn Monroe's last ever photo shoot before her death is going up for auction, taken in 1962 by photographer Bert Stern

Marilyn Monroe As A Stocking, More

For the non-hardcore Marilyn Monroe fans, maybe you didn't know that the actress spent some time at NYC's Payne Whitney Hospital in 1961, just a year before her fatal overdose. That year her psychoanalyst, Marianne Kris, committed Monroe; "Knowing the star would never go to a psychiatric hospital on her own— Monroe was terrified of sanitariums because her mother lived in one for most of her life and her grandmother had died in one— Kris told her that she was going to a private hospital for some rest and relaxation." The ol' R&R bait and switch!

By February 5th, the starlet was in a padded room with barred windows; she told friends, "I'm locked up with these poor nutty people. I'm sure to end up a nut too if I stay in this nightmare. Please help me." One author has taken to task the retelling of this time in a new book called The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, even talking to a Payne Whitney intern "who visited Monroe after she tried to break down the bathroom door in her room." She told her: "You are a very, very sick girl. And you've been sick for a long time.” Indeed, Monroe's mother was a paranoid schizophrenic, and now there is "evidence that suggests that, beginning in her late teens, Monroe heard voices and believed she was being followed." Sigh. Here's some video, along with the photographs, of Monroe in New York City during happier times.

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Santa Baby...

Marilyn Monroe as the sexiest stocking stuffer ever, 1951.

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LIFE has a slew of Christmas photo galleries up right

now—Here's one of old school starlets getting dressed

up for Santa, including Marilyn Monroe (a few years

before she was committed in NYC) doing her best

impersonation of a stocking!

Ambassador Winthrop Aldrich, ex-envoy to Britain

chatting with Monroe as her husband, playwright

Arthur Miller looks on at April in Paris Ball. Circa 1957.

Monroe reaching for construction helmet while in the

Rockefeller Center "Sidewalk Superintendents Club"

during ceremony for soon to be built Time & Life

Building. Circa 1957.

Playwright Arthur Miller dancing with his wife Marilyn

Monroe, at the April in Paris Ball in the Waldorf

Astoria Hotel ballroom. Circa 1957.

Monroe in Manhattan in 1955

Monroe at the Oak Room

JFK and Marilyn Monroe

Courtesy Bonhams

PICTURE THIS: Marilyn Monroe was
rumored to have had affairs with both John
and Robert Kennedy. They're pictured here
in 1962, along with other iconic photos of
JFK and his family that were sold yesterday.