{"id":2436713,"date":"2026-05-29T10:08:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T10:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2436713"},"modified":"2026-05-29T10:08:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T10:08:00","slug":"marilyn-monroe-never-before-published-photos-are-up-for-auction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/marilyn-monroe-never-before-published-photos-are-up-for-auction\/","title":{"rendered":"Marilyn Monroe never-before-published photos are up for auction"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It was the summer of 1949 when a 22-year-old, newly hired Milwaukee photojournalist was assigned to take portraits of an unknown 23-year-old actor passing through town on a publicity tour. John Ahlhauser spent 30 minutes capturing seven photos of the up-and-coming starlet. One was published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Ahlhauser took the other six home.<\/p>\n

That unknown actor was Marilyn Monroe (although her legal name was still Norma Jeane Mortenson).<\/p>\n

To celebrate Monroe\u2019s 100th birthday<\/a> on June 1, five photos from the shoot are being auctioned off<\/a> through proxy bidding until Tuesday morning, when the live auction will occur. The photos were shot as part of a promotion for Monroe\u2019s brief role in the Marx brothers\u2019 final feature together, \u201cLove Happy.\u201d According to Ahlhauser\u2019s daughter, Mame O\u2019Meara, these pictures represent an unguarded and unedited version of the celebrity. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we took it to \u2018Antiques Roadshow\u2019 \u2014 which it did not get on at that moment \u2014 they said these are before she got her nose job, before she went platinum, and that she had developed a look in her eye in January of 1950 that really kept you out of her personal space,\u201d O\u2019Meara said. \u201cThey describe these seven little pictures as windows into her soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran one photo in 1949 and a second image was used in Gloria Steinem\u2019s 1988 book, \u201cMarilyn: Norma Jeane.\u201d In 2011, all of Ahlhauser\u2019s work was placed in a trust, including his photos of Monroe.<\/p>\n

Monroe\u2019s estate was controlled by Anna Strasberg<\/a>, the second wife of Monroe\u2019s acting coach and close friend, Lee Strasberg, since his death in 1982. O\u2019Meara explained that the family waited to release Ahlahauser\u2019s photos of Monroe because of the \u201ccontention\u201d over Anna Strasberg\u2019s ownership of Monroe\u2019s image. Strasberg died in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cStrasberg was fighting in court for all of the images of Marilyn, and we put these in a trust and actually worked to keep them quiet at that time,\u201d O\u2019Meara explained. <\/p>\n

When Ahlhauser died in March 2016<\/a>, O\u2019Meara and her five siblings inherited hundreds of their father\u2019s yellow Kodak photo boxes. Inside the boxes were his photos of Monroe, organized with the \u201csleeve dated and with the assignment on the outside.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to touch absolutely everything in the boxes,\u201d O\u2019Meara said. \u201c[My siblings] were both gracious, and none of them wanted to, and so I have had the privilege the last six years of going through every print he ever made, and I\u2019m just working on the negatives now.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, O\u2019Meara and her siblings aren\u2019t entirely ready to let go of Monroe yet. While they\u2019ll be auctioning off five of the photos, they\u2019re planning to keep two. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re selling these five, and people can take the copyright and put them on coffee mugs, or make an AI movie, or whatever they want to do with them,\u201d O\u2019Meara said, laughing. \u201cWe\u2019ll just keep the two really nice ones that he was so proud of. We\u2019ll keep those in his collection, and we can sell prints if we feel like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Ahlhauser\u2019s photo of Monroe may become his most iconic image, the session didn\u2019t feel like a particularly notable event in his career. It wasn\u2019t as impactful as when he photographed the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago or civil rights marches in 1960s Mississippi. But for O\u2019Meara, that\u2019s where the beauty of these photos lies. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey are both really nobodies; they\u2019re both people doing a job,\u201d O\u2019Meara said. \u201cAnd yet, when I look at those pictures, I think they both had to really allow themselves to let the camera find the vulnerability, and that to me is the art in it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was the summer of 1949 when a 22-year-old, newly hired Milwaukee photojournalist was assigned to take portraits of an unknown 23-year-old actor passing through town on a publicity tour. John Ahlhauser spent 30 minutes capturing seven photos of the up-and-coming starlet. One was published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Ahlhauser took the other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2436714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2436713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Marilyn-Monroe-never-before-published-photos-are-up-for-auction.com2F572F8c2Fcbefda9d45c499076b72371f.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2436713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2436715,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436713\/revisions\/2436715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2436714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2436713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2436713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2436713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}