The Last Sitting: Marilyn Monroe’s Final Photo Session
In June 1962, just six weeks before her death, Marilyn Monroe checked into Suite 261 and Bungalow 96 at the Hotel Bel-Air for what would become one of the most hauntingly beautiful photo sessions in history.
The photographer was Bert Stern — Vogue’s chosen lensman — and the session would go down in legend simply as The Last Sitting. Stern’s contract with Vogue granted him the freedom to create an eight-page feature of his own choosing. His choice was Marilyn Monroe.
What unfolded over three days in Hotel Bel-Air became something intimate, tragic, and eternal. Six of these black-and-white frames were published in Vogue’s 1st September 1962 issue, forming part of the now-iconic eight-page spread published posthumously just weeks after Monroe’s death.
These images marked Marilyn Monroe’s first collaboration with Vogue. Over three days, she and photographer Bert Stern created two distinct series — one a classic high-fashion editorial, the other a daring sequence of nude portraits. Together, they became known as The Last Sitting, a title that would forever frame the final chapter of her luminous, turbulent life.
Monroe, draped in nothing but silk sheets and pearls — or nothing at all — moved through a haze of laughter, champagne, and late-night vulnerability. Stern shot over 2,500 images, mostly on 35mm film using his Nikon F with a 105mm lens.
A case of Château Lafite-Rothschild and bottles of 1953 Dom Pérignon were on hand — perhaps to loosen nerves, or perhaps to conjure the illusion of celebration.
It should be noted that the last professional photographs of Marilyn Monroe ever taken were by George Barris on Santa Monica Beach on 13th July 1962. Commissioned by Cosmopolitan magazine, the session captured Marilyn barefoot in the sand, radiant and carefree, just weeks before her death on August 5.
Although informal snapshots exist of Marilyn with Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford at the Cal-Neva Lodge during the weekend of July 28–29, 1962 — just days before her death — the session with George Barris is her final professional photoshoot.
The auction Marilyn Monroe: The Last Sitting Hollywood/Entertainment Signature® Auction is on 8 December 2025.
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Marilyn Monroe, Black Dior Dress, for Vogue, in “The Last Sitting,” Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles, June 1962
This roll of sixteen vintage original 2.25-inch negatives by Bert Stern captures Marilyn Monroe wearing a sleek black Dior dress during The Last Sitting at the Hotel Bel-Air in June 1962.
Stern used a Hasselblad film camera on Kodak safety film, the negatives are divided between two complete sequences — exposures 1501–1512 (twelve frames, sleeve 848-126) and 1533–1536 (four frames, sleeve 848-128, not shown here) — each hand-marked in India ink along the margins.
Among them, exposure 1503 (848-126, frame 10) became the defining image of the series — a striking double-page spread on pages 190–192 — later reproduced in Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting by Bert Stern, pages 154, 157, and 192.
This elegant sequence balances sophistication and sorrow, capturing Monroe’s final performance in high fashion before the lights dimmed for good.
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Marilyn Monroe, Nude in Fur Coat, for Vogue, in “The Last Sitting,” Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles, June 1962
This rare set of twelve vintage original 2.25-inch negatives by Bert Stern captures Marilyn Monroe in one of the most famous sequences from The Last Sitting — posing nude beneath a luxurious fur coat during her final photo session at the Hotel Bel-Air.
Bert Stern used a Hasselblad analog film camera in Suite 261 and Bungalow 96, the negatives are marked “349–360” in India ink and represent a complete roll of twelve frames taken in late June 1962 for Vogue magazine.
Exposure 353, frame eight, became one of the session’s most iconic images, reproduced full-page in the September 1, 1962 issue of Vogue, published just weeks after Monroe’s death. Six black-and-white negatives from this series appeared in the magazine’s eight-page spread, revealing Monroe’s blend of vulnerability and confidence in what would be her final portrait series.
These negatives were later featured in Bert Stern’s Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting (2000), pages 331–333 — a lasting testament to the intimate collaboration between Monroe and the photographer who captured her final days in the public eye.
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Marilyn Monroe, Standing Nude with Transparent Veil, for Vogue, in “The Last Sitting,” Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles, June 1962
This complete set of twenty-eight vintage original 35mm negatives by Bert Stern captures Marilyn Monroe standing nude, draped only in a sheer transparent veil, during The Last Sitting at the Hotel Bel-Air.
Stern used a Nikon F 35mm single-lens reflex camera fitted with a 105mm lens, the series was commissioned by Vogue magazine. Each frame — numbered 1 through 28 and housed in sleeve 848-41 — reveals the ethereal interplay of light, fabric, and skin that defined Stern’s final collaboration with Monroe.
In front of the camera, Marilyn Monroe possessed an extraordinary, chameleon-like gift — the power to become anyone the lens required. Across these frames she shifts effortlessly: goddess, siren, child, woman, femme fatale, and dream made flesh.
Yet beneath the shimmer of beauty lies something darker — a quiet desperation that seeps through the film like light through silk. The roll embodies the quiet sensuality and fleeting vulnerability of Monroe’s last photo session, transforming a veil of transparency into both costume and metaphor.
The auction Marilyn Monroe: The Last Sitting Hollywood/Entertainment Signature® Auction is on 8 December 2025.
In one sequence, the one now immortalized in this auction, Monroe reclines nude in bed. The negatives — thirty-five vintage originals from that session — capture her in moments of unguarded playfulness and melancholy reflection.
The three-day session yielded nearly 2,600 pictures—fashion, portrait, and nude studies—of indescribable sensual and human vibrancy, of which no more than 20 were published. And yet these few photographs ineradicably shaped our image of Marilyn Monroe.
Exposure numbers 2 through 37, all from a single roll, record the subtle dance between glamour and mortality. Frame 19, underexposed, almost disappears — like a premonition.
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Vogue Magazine, 1 September, 1962 Kecia Nyman by Art Kane
When Vogue published the images on September 1, 1962, Monroe was already gone. She had died less than six weeks earlier, on August 5. The magazine chose six black-and-white frames for an eight-page spread — clean, ethereal, heartbreakingly distant.
| The word of Marilyn Monroe’s death came just as this issue of Vogue went on the press. After the first shock of tragedy, we debated whether it was technically possible to remove the pages from the printing forms. And then while we waited for an answer from our printers, we decided to publish the photographs in any case. For these were perhaps the only pictures of a new Marilyn Monroe – a Marilyn who showed outwardly the elegance and taste which we learned that she had instinctively; an indication of her lovely maturity, an emerging from the hoyden’s shell into a profoundly beautiful, profoundly moving young woman. She has given a warm delight to millions of people, made them smile affectionately, laugh uproariously, love her to the point of caring deeply – often aggressively – about her personal unhappiness. That she withstood the incredible, unknowable pressures of her public legend as long as she did is evidence of the stamina of the human spirit. Too late one can only wish that somehow, somewhere that pressure might have been listed long enough to let her find the key to the self behind the public image. The waste seems almost unbearable if out of her death comes noting of insight into her special problems; no step towards a knowledge that might save, for the living, these beautiful and tormented. – VOGUE, September 1, 1962 |
Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting
Twenty years later, Bert Stern published Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting in 1982, admitting that the session was not just a professional encounter but a deeply personal exchange.
This book presents the complete set of 2,571 photos.
Monroe had flirted, teased, refused, and returned — even crossing out certain proofs she disliked with lipstick Xs.
“It was almost like she was editing her own immortality,” Stern recalled.
In his compelling foreword to The Last Sitting, Bert Stern reflects on that fateful session, revealing a woman stripped of illusion — vulnerable, uncertain, and adrift at the height of her fame.
He also captures the spirit of the early 1960s fashion world — a time of expanding boundaries and blurred lines between art, sex, and self-expression. From the elegant black-and-white images Vogue published as a somber tribute, to the unguarded color photographs drawn from hours of exhaustion and intimacy, this body of work spans the full spectrum of modern photography: portraiture, fashion, eroticism, and art.
Yet beyond all of that, Stern’s images stand as an ode to America’s first true goddess — a woman dreamed into existence by her audience, and forever just beyond its reach. What endures is the radiance of the woman who, in her final sitting, revealed everything and yet remained an enigma.
Today, the negatives themselves — these fragile strips of Kodak safety film — are all that remains of that night’s light. The prints, the films, the stories — they are relics.
Marilyn Monroe, Reclining in Bed, Nude, for Vogue in “The Last Sitting,” Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles, June 1962.
Marilyn Monroe, Reclining in Bed, Nude, for Vogue in “The Last Sitting,” Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles, June 1962. Vintage original 35mm camera negatives on Kodak safety film (35), shot on a Nikon F-body 35mm single-lens reflex camera with 105mm lens by Bert Stern. Suite No. 261 and Bungalow No. 96, late June 1962.
Exposure numbers 2–37 (complete roll of 36 frames; frame 19 underexposed). Reproduced in Vogue on September 1, 1962, as an eight-page spread, and later in Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting (2000), pages 396–403.
Each auction lot is sold as a collectible physical object only, without any copyrights or intellectual property rights, which remain with the artist or his estate. Comes with a Certificate of Authenticity (COA) from Heritage Auctions.
The Last Sitting recreated
Bert Stern revisited The Last Sitting with a modern twist — recreating his iconic Vogue images using actress Lindsay Lohan as the model.
The series appeared in the 25th February 2008 issue of New York magazine, echoing the poses and mood of Marilyn Monroe’s final session while reinterpreting its allure for a new generation.
Bert Stern: The Photographer
Bert Stern (1929–2013) was an American fashion and celebrity photographer whose crisp style defined the visual language of postwar glamour.
Starting as an art director for Look magazine, Stern found his true calling behind the lens.
His commercial work for Smirnoff Vodka made him a Madison Avenue legend, but it was his portraits — of Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, and Audrey Hepburn — that revealed his gift for intimacy.
Stern approached The Last Sitting not as an assignment but as a seduction of light and soul. His rapport with Monroe blurred the line between artist and subject, creating images that feel as tender as they are iconic.
Marilyn Monroe: The Muse
Born Norma Jeane Mortenson in 1926, Marilyn Monroe rose from a childhood in foster care to become the world’s most luminous film star. By 1962, she had conquered Hollywood yet struggled privately with loneliness and the pressures of fame.
Her roles in Some Like It Hot and The Misfits had proven her depth as an actress, but her public image — the laughing blonde — masked a profound vulnerability. During The Last Sitting, Monroe was both goddess and ghost, teasing the camera with the practiced charm of a star while revealing flickers of exhaustion and defiance.
When she died that August, at just 36, she left behind an image so potent that it continues to shimmer — forever caught between allure and absence.
The auction Marilyn Monroe: The Last Sitting Hollywood/Entertainment Signature® Auction is on 8 December 2025.
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