Marilyn Monroe’s last film appearance would have been the first time a major Hollywood movie star appeared in the nude, had the Something’s Got to Give been finished. Filming the infamous pool scene, Marilyn ditched the full body stocking prop and splashed around in a flesh-colored bikini bottom; then, laughing, she ditched that too, as to “push Liz Taylor off the magazine covers.” She was mesmerizing — “The sweet angel of sex,” Norman Mailer wrote, “and the sugar of sex came up from her like a resonance of sound in the clearest grain of a violin.”

Missing shooting days, battling bronchitis, skipping out (with Fox studios’ permission) to New York’s Madison Square Garden to sing “Happy Birthday” to JFK — Marilyn was fired from the set. She was re-hired after her co-star Dean Martin refused to work with any other actress, but she died tragically from an overdose of barbiturates before she could resume working on the film. During Marilyn’s tumultuous last days, she gave “fame is fickle”-themed tell-all interviews to major magazines and was followed by a photographer, whom she personally invited to the closed set of the pool scene. These rare and captivating “12 Photographs” — spotted at LA Weekly — are currently on view at the Duncan Miller Gallery in Los Angeles through November 26th but you can peak a bittersweet view right here.

Photo credit: Lawrence Schiller. Courtesy of the Duncan Miller Gallery

Photo credit: Lawrence Schiller. Courtesy of the Duncan Miller Gallery

Photo credit: Lawrence Schiller. Courtesy of the Duncan Miller Gallery

Photo credit: Lawrence Schiller. Courtesy of the Duncan Miller Gallery

Photo credit: Lawrence Schiller. Courtesy of the Duncan Miller Gallery

Photo credit: Lawrence Schiller. Courtesy of the Duncan Miller Gallery

Photo credit: Lawrence Schiller. Courtesy of the Duncan Miller Gallery