In the spring of 2025, my co-author, Mark A. Fortin, and I began work on The Marilyn Monroe Century, a book that would detail the friendship and collaboration between my German immigrant grandfather, Bruno Bernard, one of Hollywood’s premier golden age photographers, and the woman the world would come to know as Marilyn Monroe. Digging through Bruno’s archives, we found endless handwritten transcripts of my grandfather’s conversations with Monroe. What we learned was that the duo conspired, together, to create the bombshell image that would eventually secure her fame. At the start of his entries on Monroe in September 1945, the paint on his “Bernard of Hollywood” sign for his Sunset Boulevard photo studio was still fresh; his years trying to break into the industry as an actor or director had led to his becoming a photographer for the families of studio heads, then hopeful actors. He had only just opened his storefront when he first saw the woman who would capture his imagination before she captured ours. Toward the end of his life, in the 1980s, Bruno would draw from those diary entries to recollect the fateful encounter:
The Marilyn Monroe Century Book by Bruno Bernard
Bernard of Hollywood Foundation Archive
