The story as written by Hedda Hopper, movie columist, in 1953

I'll bet 10,000 stories have been written about that now famous calendar portrait of Marilyn Monroe in the nude...

" ...and while Marilyn looked helplessly he, too, kicked the tires and looked under the hood. It took only a minute to get to the gas tank. Then he broke the sad news,
"You're out of gas miss. We can call the Auto Club and they'll bring you some," he said. He knew right away from the expression on Marilyn's face that it wasn't that simple. "If you don't have any money in your purse, let me give you some - and my card. You can pay it back whenever you're near my studio.

It was several months before Marilyn found herself in a position to pay the $5 back. That is by no means an unusual situation in Hollywood. She drove out to Kelley's studio, knocked on the door, and when Tom opened it, Marilyn stood there holding out the money. All she said was:"Remember me?"

Well, you can fool a landlord, a casting director, a wolf and lots of other people in this town about your finances, but if you are a pretty girl you can't fool a photographer who works with models. Tom knew the fiver was Marilyn's last. He asked her to step inside. He asked her if had done any modeling. She said she'd done a little, Tom tried to think of something he could use her for right then, but nothing came to mind. So he lied. "Tell you what," he said. "A calendar company wants be to do some nudes. Are you interested?" Marilyn said she was. So Tom hustled her into his studio, set up the lights and camera - and Marilyn reclined on the red velvet drape, which Mrs. Kelley arranged and the most famous photo of our town was snapped. Tom told Marilyn to keep the five, made out a check for $45. To this day Marilyn doesn't know that Tom took the picture so he could pay her $50 - and had no assignment at all for calendars.

More than a year passed and Tom got a request from Western Lithograph for a nude. He dug Marilyn's prints out of e files and sent them downtown. The company bought two for $200 - a small fee for Kelley's work, but better than nothing. The calendars were printed and sold slowly. For almost two years they were shipped out with the other regulars and nobody thought much about it. Then one day an executive of the company came running into the office looking as though he was about to have a stroke. "I went to the movies last night," he stuttered, "and I think that blonde dame on one of our calendars is Marilyn Monroe."

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Pacific Licensing, licensed by Tom Kelley Studios, Inc., Los Angeles, is proud to introduce the only
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