We’ve shown you a couple of Technicolor lithographs with overlays. Before we get off the subject for a while we want to show you one more item. This lithograph featuring Marilyn Monroe isn’t technically an overlay because the nightgown is printed on the paper, but it’s a smiliar idea. The image is best known as the centerfold of the debut issue of Playboy from December 1953, but it originally hit the market as part of a 1952 calendar, which means it went on sale in late 1951.
The only text featured on those original calendars was the title “Golden Dreams,” but the above litho has both a title and Monroe’s name because it was a re-release designed to take advantage of her growing fame. That fame had waned since a favorably received role in 1948’s Ladies of the Chorus, but had been rekindled when she admitted to newspapers in early 1953 that she had posed nude.
The Playboy centerfold further turbocharged her ascent, and the famous velvet photo kept appearing over and over again, mainly as calendar shots in 1955, 1956, and 1958, and at least three times with different types of obscuring overlays. In all those images, as well as the one above, Monroe is facing the opposite direction from the photo that appeared in Playboy. However, the Playboy centerfold is reversed from the original calendar shot, so it was Hugh Hefner who flip-flopped her. But from whichever direction you look at her, and in whatever garb she appears, Monroe is still exquisitely Monroe.
