Miller on Monroe

“If there was a key to Marilyn’s despair, I did not possess it.” – Arthur Miller

This is one of the 70 photos mostly in black and white that record photographer Inge Morath’s 18-day road trip from New York City to Reno, where ‘The Misfits’ (1961) was filmed throughout the summer and fall of 1960. Morath was one of nine photographers assigned the job by Magnum Photos, the company hired to document the shoot.

Morath’s pictures of Marilyn Monroe “are particularly empathic and touching as she caught Marilyn’s anguish beneath her celebrity, the pain as well as her joy in life,” wrote Arthur Miller, the film’s screenwriter and Monroe’s husband at the time.

The Austrian-born Morath later married Miller, with whom she remained until her death at age 77 in 2002.