BEHIND WHEN WE WERE BRILLIANT

Eve Arnold and Marilyn Monroe: A Brilliant Collaboration

What was it about Elton John’s “A Candle in the Wind” that made photojournalist Eve Arnold go public about her friendship with Marilyn Monroe? Only after hearing the song while driving through cornfields on her journey across America “to take its portrait,” did Eve Arnold decide—after 25 years of silence—to publish her photos of Marilyn that she’d kept secret since learning of Marilyn’s death. Why did Eve keep the photos hidden for so long? What words in the song spurred her to action?

Eve Arnold was slowly building a career built on her knack for capturing an unseen side of her subjects when Marilyn Monroe approached her at a party in 1952. Eve resisted her. She was already grappling with a problem that photographing Marilyn Monroe would only worsen. As successful as Eve was as a member of the vaunted Magnum Agency, along with Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philippe Halsman, and other giants in her field, she was expected to pursue subjects from a distinctly woman’s point of view. One of very few women photojournalists at the time, she was hired to cover the women in the news, usually movie stars or the wives of famous movers and shakers. Photographing starlet Marilyn Monroe would do little to further Eve’s reputation as a serious photographer.

But Eve relented. After a bumpy start, she and Marilyn Monroe would go on to form a once-in-a-lifetime bond.

From her extensive study of the lives of these two artists and the photos from their collaboration, Lynn Cullen wrote the novel When We Were Brilliant, a testimony of the power of friendship and of believing in oneself.