Hugh Hefner and Marilyn Monroe, those two icons of the sexual revolution, never met, but they were born in the same year and laid to rest in the same place, side by side. In 1992, Hefner bought the crypt next to Monroe’s in the Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles for $75000, telling the Los Angeles Times, ‘I’m a believer in things symbolic… [so] spending eternity next to Marilyn is too sweet to pass up.’
At the age of 91, Hefner got his wish. The long-dead Monroe had no say in the matter. But then she never had much say in what men did to her over the course of her short life.
Marilyn Monroe was both the first cover star and the first naked centre-fold in the first issue of Hefner’s Playboy magazine, published in December 1953. ‘Entertainment for MEN’ was the promise on the cover, and the magazine evidently delivered on that promise. It was a commercial success from its first issue.
Monroe’s naked photos were four years old by the time of their publication. In 1949, the 23-year-old Monroe was paid $50 for a 2-hour photoshoot with the pin-up photographer Tom Kelley, who promised he’d make her unrecognisable, and almost delivered. The woman curled up on a red velvet bedspread is not obviously Monroe: her hair was a little more brunette at the time, her pained face is half-hidden
