The story probably fueled ten million fantasies. Marilyn Monroe had stripped naked on the set of her last movie Something’s Got To Give. Monroe was eventually fired, the production was scrapped, and the footage was archived, but if it had been released, she would have been the first Hollywood actress to appear unclothed onscreen since the 1920s. It’s interesting, isn’t it, to reflect upon the effect a minority of prudes had on Hollywood? Because of them, Monroe’s unreleased scene, and Jayne Mansfield’s later nude scene in 1963’s Promises, Promises, merely brought American cinema back to where it had already been four decades earlier.

Hush-Hush was not the first magazine to break the story of Monroe’s peel down. Life had done that in June 1962, and included a couple of titillating photos. By the time Hush-Hush told the tale Monroe was two months dead. The blurb MM—Even In The Nude They Didn’t Want Her wasn’t strictly true. The production company Twentieth Century Fox most certainly did want her. A hospital stint prior to production had caused her to shed twenty-five pounds, bringing her to a weight she had never reached in her adult life, despite exercise and dieting. The newly svelte Monroe looked good and Fox was getting her cheap—$100,000.

This nice poster was made for the Yugoslavian release of Marilyn, a 1963 documentary about her life and death. When Monroe died during the filming of Something's Got To Give, this feature was hastily cobbled together and rushed into cinemas to fill the gap that had appeared in Twentieth Century Fox's release schedule. It was narrated by Rock Hudson, which is why he appears on the art, and featured Monore's most memorable screen moments, including her song and dance "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. These days, more is known about Monroe’s life than was the case in 1963, so those looking for tabloid style dish will be disappointed. This is a tribute intended to burnish her legend, rather than a real documentary designed dig into it. But it’s a good movie, not least because it gives a clear portrait of her unmatched stature as a celebrity at that time. Marilyn premiered in the U.S. today in 1963. As a bonus, below are some images of Monroe at her most alluring. 

On the Q.T. asks on this September 1963 cover whether Hollywood has gone strip crazy, and they have a bit of a point, for once. In the previous year, more or less, movies that featured stripping as a major plot device included Natalie Wood’s Gypsy Rose Lee biopic Gypsy, as well as A Cold Wind in August, Portrait of a Young Man, Girl in Trouble, Night of Evil, Satan in High Heels and The Stripper, with Joanne Woodward. There were possibly even more films, but you get the drift—Hollywood had indeed discovered strippers and had begun featuring them to titillating effect. But while some of the films were more serious and racy than others, none actually showed any naughty bits, despite the breathlessness of On the Q.T.’s reporting.

Other countries, notably France, had already unveiled the human form in cinema, but the first true nude scene in a mainstream American motion picture (excepting the pre-Code films of early Hollywood) came in Sidney Lumet’s 1964 drama The Pawnbroker when both Linda Geiser and African-American actress Thelma Oliver bared their torsos. Interestingly, the nudity barrier probably would have been breached in 1962 by Marilyn Monroe, who filmed a semi-nude pool frolick in Something’s Got To Give. But the production was scrapped, so we’ll never know whether the scenes would have been released as originally shot. Thus two obscure actresses take the prize, and from that point forward Hollywood’s floodgates were open.