Julie Strain as Marilyn Monroe
One of the latest additions to my From My Collections (Cultural & Erotic) gallery is a pair of trading cards from the 1999 Julie Strain’s Marilyn 2000 series.
I picked them up a few months ago, but they found their way back to the front of my mind after all the Marilyn Monroe activity here in Palm Springs surrounding what would have been her 100th birthday.
Between the exhibits, celebrations, and the world-record gathering of people dressed as Marilyn that I photographed downtown, Marilyn seemed to be everywhere.
Produced by Comic Images in 1999, the series featured Julie Strain portraying Marilyn Monroe in photographs by Benjamin Hoffman.
If you were around glamour photography, magazines, or collectible cards during the 1990s, chances are you knew who Julie Strain was. A Penthouse Pet of the Year, actress, and model, she became one of the most recognizable glamour figures of the decade and appeared in everything from magazines and calendars to comic-book related projects and trading card sets like this one.
The card shown here is number 70 from the set.
The front contains a cropped version of the image along with the card number and caption. Turn it over and the entire photograph appears on the reverse along with the photographer credit, copyright information, and publisher details.
Trading cards are usually associated with sports, movies, television shows, or comic books. By the late 1990s, however, publishers were producing collectible card sets devoted to everything from fantasy art to glamour photography. Apparently someone decided Marilyn Monroe belonged in that world as well.
You’ll find both this card and card #20 from the Julie Strain’s Marilyn 2000 series, along with other photographs, slides, postcards, magazines, and collectible artifacts, here in From My Collections (Cultural & Erotic)
Palm Springs Becomes the Center of the Marilyn Monroe Universe
One question I’ve been getting a lot lately is whether I photographed the Marilyn Monroe Guinness World Record event in Palm Springs this last Saturday.
Yes, I did.
I was there photographing the event for syndication through ZUMA Press, expecting a large crowd, but once I arrived it was just amazing. From ground level it looked as if downtown Palm Springs had been completely overtaken by Marilyn Monroe. Everywhere you looked there were white wigs and white dresses stretching in every direction.
It has been reported that the final count was either 1,034 or 1,037 participants, depending on the source. Either way, it was enough to establish a new Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people dressed as Marilyn Monroe.
What immediately stood out was the sea of white wigs.
The wigs were part of the registration package given to participants, which explains the remarkable uniformity of the crowd. Everywhere you looked was the same iconic hairstyle repeated hundreds and hundreds of times. White dresses and white wigs stretched in every direction beneath Palm Springs’ famous 26-foot-tall Marilyn Monroe statue.
Another question I’ve also been asked repeatedly since Saturday is whether there were actually any women participating.
Yes.
While the crowd was overwhelmingly men, there were also women throughout the event, some of whom looked remarkably beautiful as their own version of Marilyn herself. The mix of participants only added to the unusual atmosphere.
Despite the Guinness record attempt, the event was more a celebration than a competition. Thousands of spectators joined more than a thousand participants to mark the 100th anniversary of Monroe’s birth. People traveled from around the country, posed for photographs, laughed with strangers, and became part of a unique piece of Palm Springs history.
For one afternoon, Palm Springs became the center of the Marilyn Monroe universe.
If you’re interested in photography ranging from events like this to aviation, food, Muscle Beach, Palm Springs, and some of my more unusual projects, you’ll find them on my website along with my blog and the first additions to my new Motion section at https://www.secondfocus.com
Starting At The Bottom With Marilyn Monroe…
I guess if you have to disassemble a 26 foot tall stainless steel and aluminum Marilyn Monroe, you best start at the bottom. The process began today after almost two years on display here in Palm Springs. A truly whimsical sculpture, it is one of the most famous images of Marilyn Monroe, from 1955 movie “The Seven Year Itch”. It will be on the way tomorrow to New Jersey for a showing of the works of the artist, Seward Johnson. Hopefully afterwards to return to Palm Springs as the permanent home of “Forever Marilyn”.
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