A photojournalist who worked on the set of the 1962 movie Something’s Got To Give, which turned out to be the final film of the legendary star Marilyn Monroe, is speaking out this week to reveal that the actress had a very unique idea about how to make a splash in the movie.

Fox News reported that Monroe would have turned 94 on June 1, and to honor her birthday, photojournalist Lawrence Schiller has teamed up with New Orleans-based antique dealer M.S. Rau to release some limited-edition photos that he’d taken of her. Monroe tragically passed away in 1962 at the age of 36 from a barbiturate over overdose, but Schiller still remembers working with her well all these years later.

“I’m in her house — [she’d] just come back from Mexico,” he told Fox News. “She had all these floor tiles that she was going to redo in the kitchen and she was trying to pick out what color blue she liked. … She was asking for my opinion — not that my opinion meant anything to her. Maybe she was being polite or something.

“And she said, ‘Oh, you know about that scene in the movie where I’m supposed to be in a swimming pool and I have a bathing suit on, but it looks like I’m nude?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s going to really make some good pictures.’ She said, ‘Larry, what would happen if I jumped in the swimming pool with the bathing suit on, but I came [out] with nothing on?’” Schiller recalled.

“I said, ‘Well, Marilyn, the problem really is … you’re already famous,’” the photojournalist continued. “‘Now you’re going to make me famous.’ She looks at me and giggles and says, ‘Larry, I can fire you in two seconds.’ Of course, she didn’t fire me.”

At the time, Monroe’s biggest Hollywood rival was in Rome filming the epic Cleopatra, becoming the first actress to ever be paid one million dollars for a role. Monroe was only being paid $125,000 for her comedy, and Schiller can remember her talking to him about this.

“‘I should be getting that kind of money!’” Schiller remembered Monroe telling him of Taylor’s salary. “‘That’s why I want to come out of the swimming pool with no clothes on. Because the pictures will then be on the cover of all the magazines and they won’t have Liz Taylor to look at. If you shoot the pictures, I want to make sure that when you release them, everybody’s got to put me on the cover and Liz Taylor can’t be in the same issue of the magazine.’”

Since Monroe always portrayed herself as a “dumb blonde,” Schiller was surprised to see what a savvy businesswoman she actually was.

“Marilyn knew exactly what to do,” he said. “You didn’t have to tell her, ‘Pose this way or that way’ in between the takes. She knew exactly what to do when she was directing herself. I felt quite honestly that I was the technical guy who was like a sponge. I was capturing it and absorbing it. Preserving it. But Marilyn was directing.”

Though Monroe had high hopes for the project, her erratic behavior eventually led to the studio firing her from the movie. Schiller can still remember the last time he ever saw Monroe.

“I was going to Palm Springs with my first wife and daughter,” he said. “I went to her house because we were talking about doing the cover of Playboy magazine. She kind of liked the idea and [Hugh] Hefner had written a personal note. … The idea was a front cover and back cover. … Her press agent Pat Newcomb didn’t like the idea. You know, ‘You don’t have to go that far.’

“She already had Vogue magazine. … I went out to talk to her and see whether she really wanted to do it,” Schiller added. “By then she had been fired by the studio. … We had a conversation and then all of a sudden, she turned to me and said, ‘Oh, they’re just interested in my body — nothing else but my body!’ Something like that. … I just knew I had to get the hell out of there. I blew her a kiss and drove off. … The next morning I got a phone call. Marilyn was dead.”

When Schiller looks at the photos he took of Monroe, he wonders to this day what she could have achieved had she lived.

“[These photos are] a mirror to another era,” he said in reflection “It’s a window to what was and what no longer exists. And I don’t necessarily mean Marilyn as a person. … It’s a whole different ball game now. … [Back then, these stars], were there to entertain. And they made great films. Yes, we make fine films now. But when you start thinking about great films, you don’t think of anything made in the last five years, even though there have been some fine films made. I personally think it’s a window into a period of American history, world history, which we will never see again.”

This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.

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