RED VELVET VARIATIONS

Monroe’s famous photo changes like a chameleon.

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.

Playboy, Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Hefner, Technicolor pin-up, nudity

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 11

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

February 10

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

February 9

1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame

Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains more than 2,800 stars.

February 9

1971—Paige Enters Baseball Hall of Fame

Satchel Paige becomes the first player from America’s Negro Baseball League to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Paige, who was a pitcher, played for numerous Negro League teams, had brief stints in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Major Leagues, before finally retiring in his mid-fifties.

February 8

1969—Allende Meteorite Falls in Mexico

The Allende Meteorite, the largest object of its type ever found, falls in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The original stone, traveling at more than ten miles per second and leaving a brilliant streak across the sky, is believed to have been approximately the size of an automobile. But by the time it hit the Earth it had broken into hundreds of fragments.