Never-before-seen photos of Marilyn Monroe, taken in 1950 by LIFE photographer Ed Clark in Los Angeles Griffith Park, were recently discovered during the magazine’s effort to digitized their immense photo archive.
Monroe, 24 at the time, had just begun her career playing the girlfriend of a crooked lawyer in “The Asphalt Jungle” three months before the photo shoot. Two months later she had a small roll in “All About Eve.”
Clark got a call from a friend at 20th Century Fox about a “hot tomato” the studio had just signed. “She was unknown then, so I was able to spend a lot of time shooting her,” the photographer recalled. He sent several rolls to LIFE in New York, but they wired back, “Who the hell is Marilyn Monroe?”
The photos were never published.
Less than two years later Marilyn was “the talk of Hollywood” and made the cover of LIFE magazine on April 7, 1952.
Monday would have marked Marilyn Monroe’s 83rd birthday.
View the never-before-seen photos of Marilyn Monroe
photo: Ed Clark/LIFE