Douglas Kirkland’s widow ‘wasn’t impressed’ by him photographing Marilyn Monroe

By Pierra Willix, Press Association Senior Entertainment Reporter

Douglas Kirkland’s widow, Francoise Kirkland, has admitted she “wasn’t impressed” finding out her husband once photographed Marilyn Monroe.

In 1961, a 27-year-old Kirkland photographed the Hollywood star when she was aged 35 and at the height of her fame. She also famously requested only three things for the shoot: champagne, Frank Sinatra records and silk sheets.

The images – shot for Look magazine – have since become some of the most notorious images of Monroe, who died nine months after they were taken at 36 years old.

A few years later, the Canadian photographer met his future wife, who expressed her disinterest in his session with one of the most famous women in the world.

“I had heard that he’d photographed Marilyn, because he came with that reputation, but I wasn’t that impressed,” she told Press Association.

“I mean I was a 22-year-old French intellectual girl, well, supposedly intellectual, and at that time, if he had told me he’d photographed Picasso, I would have thought, ‘oh, okay’, but Marilyn, I mean…we’re all a little bit of a snob at times.”

Despite her initial scepticism, Kirkland grew to appreciate the photos.

Years later, she has decided to turn them into her latest project – Douglas Kirkland: Marilyn. A Magical Dance, which has been published to mark what would have been Monroe’s 100th birthday.

Published by Damiani Books, it is a collector’s edition of the photos presented as a hardcover leporello, which features handwritten reflections from the late photographer, who died aged 88 in 2022.

His wife said: “I decided that maybe it would be like a fun thing to reinvent Douglas’ session with Marilyn, but in that form.

“I’m a little bit tired of big books and wanted something that was tactile and that people could also display and put on a shelf.”

She added that while the story of the famous photography session was “not new”, the book was a “different way of telling it”.

When Kirkland photographed Monroe, he was already an established celebrity photographer working for Look magazine, who was assigned to work with the actress for a piece the magazine was doing on its 25th anniversary, focused on six Hollywood stars.

Kirkland said that her husband told her that although Monroe was three hours late for the shoot, once she arrived, she didn’t waste any time securing the now-famous shots.

Kirkland also later recalled to his wife how Monroe told him about her “unhappy childhood” and the pair promised that they would meet up again to do another shoot, however she died the following year.

Reflecting on the impact of the photographs, Kirkland said they balanced Monroe’s “innocence and playfulness with sexiness”.

“There’s a kind of a romance about, and Douglas’s pictures make her, I think, probably more accessible, because there’s a feeling that there’s a vulnerability in them,” she said.

Throughout his career, Kirkland photographed other Hollywood stars including Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren.

However, while his wife said people might have assumed she might have felt threatened by the string of actresses he was working with, something else captured his attention more than anything else.

“I always said that the biggest rival in my marriage was not all the beautiful women, but it was a camera,” she said.

“It was his passion and he put his entire life and effort into it. The camera was really like a lover. He was photographing almost till he died, even when he was very weak,” she said.

“When he was younger, he would also sometimes get a new camera, and the camera would come to bed with us, because he was looking at the camera, or trying to photograph me … I’ve got some hilarious picture of him where he’s sitting up in bed, and he’s got a flashlight in his mouth, and he’s examining his camera.”

In the years since her husband’s death, Kirkland has worked on several projects and exhibitions highlighting his work.

She told PA: “It’s always said when someone you love who you’ve spent your life with dies.

“But my mission is about the same as it was when Douglas was alive, and I really do think that you as long as someone says your name, the last person that says it is when you die.

“So, my way of keeping Douglas alive, apart from personal feelings, is helping his work continue to be recognised.”