Through The Backdoor

All About Eve (1950)

Greta Garbo in The Mysterious Lady (1928)

Ava Gardner as Kitty Collins in THE KILLERS (1946) dir. Robert Siodmak

BARBARA STANWYCK as PHYLLIS DIETRICHSON Double Indemnity — 1944, dir. Billy Wilder

FILMS in 2025: 78 | The Lady Eve (1941) — dir. Preston Sturges     

MARILYN MONROE & JANE RUSSELL as LORELEI LEE & DOROTHY SHAW GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1953)

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) dir. Victor Fleming

Anna May Wong in Daughter Of The Dragon (1931)

Mary Pickford in Friends (D.W. Griffith, 1912)

Barbara Stanwyck as Lily Powers Baby Face (1933), directed by Alfred E. Green

GENE TIERNEY as Ellen Harland in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN 1945 — dir. John M. Stahl

Costume design by Hubert de Givenchy

Monroe’s bookshelf was exceedingly impressive. At the time of her death, she owned more than 400 volumes, including several first editions. Of the thousands of photographs taken of her, she was especially fond of ones that showed her reading. When a director once found her reading R.M. Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, he asked her how she chose it. “[On] nights when I’ve got nothing else to do I go to the Pickwick bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard,” she told him. “And I just open books at random—or when I come to a page or a paragraph I like, I buy that book. So last night I bought this one. Is that wrong?”

—You know, I used to be afraid. I've died a thousand times, when death really comes, it will come as an old friend. Gently and quietly.

Ava Gardner in ONE TOUCH OF VENUS 1948 | William A. Seiter

The Apartment (1960) dir. Billy Wilder

Eleanor Parker in SCARAMOUCHE (1952)