Marilyn Monroe’s Screen Worn Skirt from Let’s Make Love

Seen in Let's Make Love, 1960

A vibrant orange wool wrap skirt worn by Marilyn Monroe in Let’s Make Love (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1960). Precisely tailored and fully lined in pink cotton, the skirt features fine hand-finished details and retains its original studio label inscribed “F-13 M. Monroe.”

The photographs below document the skirt on screen. In the first, Marilyn drapes the skirt over her left shoulder just prior to rehearsing “Specialization.” In the second, the garment appears hanging on the back wall of Amanda’s dressing room during a scene opposite Yves Montand, offering a rare glimpse of the costume within the film’s narrative setting.

The design is the work of acclaimed costume designer Dorothy Jeakins, who also created Marilyn’s costumes for Niagara.

Let’s Make Love

This Cinemascope musical comedy scripted by Norman Krasna as The Billionaire was brought to Marilyn by producer Jerry Wald as Fox stepped up the pressure for her to honor her studio commitments. In 1955 she had agreed to do four films for Fox, but before Let’s Make Love went into production she had only done Bus Stop (1956). Initially Billy wilder was a front runner for the director’s chair. Apparently he was willing to try again after the harrowing experience of working together on Some Like It Hot, but he already was contracted to do The Apartment. George Cukor was summoned as his replacement. He too had difficulties with Marilyn, and reputedly did a great deal of his communication through choreographer Jack Cole.

Marilyn’s reputation made it next to impossible to find a male lead for this movie, a character rumored to be closely modeled after Howard Hughes. Before Yves Montand was offered the role, it was turned down by a “who’s who” of Hollywood’s headliners: Yul Brenner, Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Charlton Heston, William Holden, Gregory Peck, and James Stewart. It was Marilyn who suggested Montand; the studio was not happy, but she insisted, and Marilyn got her man, in more ways than one. Their very public love affair spelled the beginning of the end of Marilyn’s marriage to Arthur Miller, and came close to unraveling Montand’s union with Simone Signoret.

There were script troubles too. Miller returned from Ireland, where he had been working with John Huston on the script for The Misfits, to do some emergency work on Let’s Make Love. “Before production, I did some rewriting of a couple of scenes. I tried to give some point between these two featureless figures. When they talked, there was no character, no motivation, and so I stepped in and did what I could for the script. But we were beating a dead horse.”

The biggest delays during filming were not due to Marilyn’s lateness or illness, they were because of a strike by actors to preserve residual payments. The Writers Guild came out in support too, though this was precisely at the time when Arthur was doing the rewrites.

Marilyn sang four songs for the film: My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Cole Porter, and Let’s Make Love, Incurably Romantic, and Specialization by Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen. Marilyn’s rendition of My Heart Belongs to Daddy is remarkable for the effortlessness of her performance, the result of at least two weeks of rehearsal.

The movie bombed. Critical write-ups were almost all scathing, and the public stayed away. Inside Hollywood, gossip circulated that Marilyn’s star was on the wane. Outside America, the film was renamed The Millionaire.