Marilyn Monroe’s final professional photoshoot was taken by photographer George Barris between June and July 1962, primarily around Los Angeles, with the key beach sessions on Santa Monica Beach.
The work spanned roughly six weeks beginning around her birthday on June 1, 1962. It included indoor sessions (at a borrowed midcentury home in the Hollywood Hills/North Hollywood area owned by real-estate figure Tim Leimert, since her own Brentwood house was not yet fully furnished) and outdoor work. Trusted stylists such as hairdresser Agnes Flanagan and makeup artist Whitey Snyder were involved for some of the more formal shots.
The Santa Monica Beach sessions—often dated specifically to July 13, 1962, for the final day—are the best-known and produced the very last images. Monroe appears relaxed, playful, and largely unstyled: minimal or no makeup (freckles and a gallbladder-surgery scar from the previous year are visible in some frames), wind-tousled hair, and casual clothing. She wore a bikini, a bulky hand-knitted Cowichan-style cardigan from her own wardrobe, a green towel, and similar relaxed pieces. She ran and almost danced with the waves, posed in the sand and seaweed, sipped champagne, and showed a carefree, luminous energy that contrasts with the tragic circumstances that followed. Natural lighting and a candid, unguarded approach defined the look; Barris later recalled her saying of certain frames that they showed “the real me, freckles and all.”
As the afternoon light faded and it grew cold on the nearly deserted beach, she asked if they were finished. Barris had one frame of color film left and asked for a final shot. She leaned forward, clasped her hands, and blew a kiss toward the camera, saying words to the effect of “This is just for you, George” (or “for you and the rest of the world”).
That became the last photograph he ever took of her.
Cosmopolitan ultimately did not run the photos after her death. Some appeared relatively soon in the British press (including the Daily Mirror and the magazine Town). Barris, deeply affected, delayed broader publication for years and spent time living in Paris. The images later featured in books, including a 1986 collaboration with Gloria Steinem (Marilyn) and Barris’s own Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words (first published 1995), which pairs many of the photos (over 150 total from the sessions, black-and-white and color, some previously unpublished) with her interview material. Prints and related material have been auctioned (notably a 2017 Paddle8 sale) and exhibited; the National Portrait Gallery in London included several in its 2026 Marilyn Monroe centenary show.
These beach portraits stand out for their intimacy and vitality. Unlike more glamorous or highly produced sessions (including Bert Stern’s concurrent “Last Sitting” for Vogue at the Hotel Bel-Air in June 1962, a separate studio assignment), Barris’s work captures a playful, natural Marilyn at the ocean—settings that also echoed earlier moments in her life, from childhood photos with her mother to 1940s beach shoots.
Viewers often find them especially poignant precisely because they show her looking so alive so close to the end.
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
ellievsbear
gracieabrams
blakekathryn
gummygunk
2087
yousharknotpass
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
