.....Many famous people die thru the years but it is hard to think of anyone who's death caused more shock , confusion and stunned disbelief than Marilyn Monroe's. Surely James Dean's sudden and tragic death, at age twenty-four, was a real shocker. But we knew how he died. There were photographs of the twisted and torn metal of his brand new Silver Porche - a sudden death with adequate proof There was no mystery there to be solved. It was just a terrible tragedy.

.....Marilyn suffered severely from insomnia, and, at that time, I was convinced she died from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills with the added mix of alcohol. Not as dramatic, perhaps as other theories, but considering the real evidence, nonetheless, a viable one. Still, the conspiracy theories abound.

.....Marilyn was fired from her last film, "Something's Got To Give", Twentieth Century Fox claiming that she had been constantly late for work or had not shown up at all. Marilyn claimed that she was ill and unable to work. She was also drinking quite a bit and she was rumored to be mentally unstable. It was a desperately lonely time for her.

.....While her lawyers negotiated, Marilyn stayed at home, living in the house in Brentwood she had recently purchased and was in the process of finishing But whatever her worries, during the last two months of her life, she seemed to be determined to prove that she still had a life to live and to refute all the rumors, she made herself available to three major magazines - Vogue, Cosmopolitan and LIFE. LIFE was the last to approach her. She was happily looking forward to doing those articles.

.....The LIFE piece was not to be the usual Hollywood glamour assignment. I was told to forget Marilyn Monroe the movie star, Marilyn Monroe the sex goddess' "Just give us Marilyn without the Monroe attached." It was going to be a challenging assignment.

.....When I first got the assignment I was put on "standy-by" for what eventually turned out to be two weeks of waiting for Marilyn, to make herself available. Finally on July 6th I got a phone call promising that Marilyn would be available and ready on Saturday July 7th. at 2 pm LIFE had already set a closing date of August 3rd. for the story. The article entitled, "Marilyn Lets her hair down about being famous" was already written by LIFE writer Richard Merymen. They were waiting for my photographs.

.....On July 7th, 1962 1 had arrived at her Brentwood home for what turned out to be her very last photo session. It was a little over three weeks before she died

.....I arrived at 1:45 pm. Marilyn, I was told, was on the telephone and would be ready in a few minutes. Pat Newcomb, Marilyn's publicist and close friend, introduced me to Alan Snyder, Marilyn's make-up man and Eunice Murray, her live-in housekeeper and companion. Marilyn" s hairdresser was in another room doing her hair. I set up my lights and loaded my cameras and waited. Twenty minutes later she showed up, in a bathrobe and , not surprisingly, with glass of Champaign. (Most movie stars would have a drink or two before a LIFE cover shoot.) Marilyn was still far from ready and I had to get my film on an airplane in three hours. I was getting nervous

.....She offered me some champagne which I gladly accepted. It helped. She asked me what she should wear for the photographs. Told her to dress very casually. I told her what I had in mind and she should make her own choices as to what would make her comfortable. She left with her make-up man and hairdresser. About twenty-five minutes later she appeared in tight fitting capri pants and a dark v-neck sweater. There was nothing about her that reminded me of the lush, laughing, Marilyn Monroe of the big screen. To me she seemed somewhat thinner and much more fragile than I expected. and I detected a sadness about her. She had become the Marilyn they asked for.

.....I had spotted an interesting looking antique chair sitting in the comer of the dining room and moved it in front of a sunlit window to catch the light which would be coming from behind her. I sat her down and explained to her what we were trying to do was to illustrate the interview she had done two weeks before which she had approved and was scheduled to be published on August 3rd. LIFE also agreed to give her the right to disapprove of any of the photographs that I had shot.

.....I remembered some of the text in the article and asked her to talk about her childhood. As she talked one minute she was the pale schoolgirl, frightened and unsure; then she became cheerful, seductive and glamorous. "Tell me about fame," I asked. There was a vulnerability about her which was quite touching. But, somehow her sexuality always managed to cut through the haze of her personality.

.....We took a break to reload my cameras and relax. At that point she grabbed my hand and took me on a quick tour of her recently purchased house.

.....When she first saw the house in Brentwood, Marilyn liked it immediately. She liked the simplicity and the privacy of the property as well as the fact that it was not new but had been lived in by a family with small children. It was a small but charming Spanish style house that was built in the nineteen twenties. The family who lived there decided they needed a bigger home where their children could grow.

....."I didn't want a house in Beverly Hills, and I didn't want a 'Movie Stars Palace' she said, "I just wanted a small house for me and my friends."

.....Her privacy was very important to her so she had her neighbors carefully checked out - it was a dead end street with two other houses on the property. She discovered that one of the neighbors was a UCLA professor; she felt better about it.

.....When Marilyn signed the papers for the purchase of the house she was legally alone. Yet, for her, it was the beginning of a new dream. She wanted some changes made as soon as possible. New cabinets in the kitchen, new fixtures in the bathroom new paint on the walls and hand made furniture from Mexico.

.....Later on, since there would be people working on the house, she had replaced the her private unlisted phone number with a phone number from the West Los Angeles police department. She knew that the going rate for her private number was a substantial sum of
money. Any plumber or carpenter might see it and pass it on to someone. who would make an obscene phone call and find himself talking to a cop. The thought tickled her.

.....Although each room she showed me was devoid of furniture, she described each piece in detail as if it was already placed in the room. She told me of her interest in designing furniture and of her trips to Mexico where the ftu-niture was being made. It was three weeks before her tragic death, I'm sure suicide was the furthest thing from her mind.

.....Once again Marilyn sat on the antique chair in front of the sunlit window. She appeared to be more at ease, more peaceful. I adjusted my lights and resumed shooting.. In two hours my film was on an airplane heading for New York. A copy of the article - for her approval - was in her hands on July 14th and approved the next day. LIFE published the article in the August 3rd issue as planned.

.......................................................Marilyn died on August 5th, 1962

.....In the LIFE article, an outspoken and gutsy Marilyn talked angrily about the Major studios, stardom and fame. Fame, for all it had brought her was not the most important thing in her life, she concluded:

....."I now live in my work and in relationships with a few people I can count on ... Fame will go by and, so long I've had you, fame. If it goes by, I've always known it was fickle. So at least it is something I have experienced, but that's not where I live..."

.....Where she lived at that moment was in her new Brentwood home, and that house was happily absorbing much of her attention and providing much to look forward to...