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"I found Marilyn an extremely warm person with a strong desire to do good work and make a career for herself in the entertainment industry. I considered her a friend.”
- Tom Kelley
Tom Kelley was born December 12, 1914, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His interesting career spans more than four decades. He first started as an apprentice in a New York photo studio that catered to the city's elite, i.e. the Vanderbilts, Astors, Harrimans, Morgans, etc. The owner of the studio was also chief photography instructor at the prestigious New York School of Photography. Working under him for the next four years gave Kelley an excellent background for the art. His expertise in picture taking came to the attention of the New York bureau chief of Associated Press Wire Photos, who hired him to cover all aspects of news assignments. One of his biggest spot news assignments was covering the Lindbergh kidnapping case in Hopewell, New Jersey. Following two and a half years with the A.P., Kelley joined a society magazine, Town & Country, as a photographer traveling from coast to coast.
Coming to California in 1935, Kelley was retained to photograph the stars created by David 0. Selznick and Samuel Goldwyn. His very first assignment was an unknown who was not to remain so for long, Ingrid Bergman. Following a long and profitable career helping to publicize motion picture personalities, he drifted into the commercial advertising/photography field where he has remained as one of the leading exponents in the business.
Reflecting on the Marilyn Monroe nudes, Kelley remembers posing the out-of-work actress on a bright red velvet cloth. She was paid $50.00 for modeling, telling Kelley that she would use the money for her car repairs. Kelley is proud of the fact that no matter how one turned the photograph, its composition was impeccably symmetrical. The photograph turned calendar brought him $900.00 from a printer who sold it in mass for millions. This brought Kelley untold fame. Kelley’s nudes of Marilyn contributed as a catalyst in the sexual revolution that occurred five years after the photos were taken. Up until that time, the nude female form was limited to sleezy, if not outright hardcore pornography. However, Kelley and Marilyn made the naked body a beautiful thing to behold. No longer was a nude picture of a woman an object to be viewed from the back of a barn or within the confines of one's bedroom. Marilyn readily admitted that it was she who had posed for Kelley's camera when confronted by United Press Hollywood correspondent Aleene Mosby, and for years thereafter, she would autograph copies of the calendar for servicemen with consummate pride.
