Sexy Marilyn, the Nude Pin-up

In 1949 photographer Tom Kelley took some nude photos of a 22-year-old aspiring actress who would become Marilyn Monroe.

Here's the story in Marilyn's own words:

What had happened was I was behind in my rent at the Hollywood Studio Club, where girls stay who hope to crash the movies. You’re only supposed to get one week behind in your rent at the club, but they must have felt sorry for me because they’d given me three warnings. A lot of photographers had asked me to pose in the nude, but I’d always said, ‘No.’ I was getting five dollars an hour for plain modeling, but the price for nude modeling was fifty for an hour. So I called Tom Kelley, a photographer I knew, and said, ‘They’re kicking me out of here. How soon can we do it?’ He said, ‘We can do it tomorrow.’

The calendar was reprinted in 1954 and 1956 with lace overprint as the ‘Golden Dreams’ calendar and the session is now known as the legendary ‘red velvet’ session. Hugh Hefner used one of the images on the cover of his new magazine, Playboy. He paid a whopping $25,000 for the rights, which was a huge sum then, and allowed Marilyn to purchase a house with a pool in Hollywood. The images were a good investment for Hef, however, helping propel Playboy magazine to success.