--- description: On the 50th anniversary of her death (at a far too-young 36), LIFE.com presents a series of warm, casually intimate photos of Marilyn Monroe by the great Alfred Eisenstaedt. title: Marilyn Monroe: Portraits of a Legend by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1953 image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt853a75679991d6d9/698847b635ba6f7e98c0c5c8/01_011810542.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [actresses](/tag/actresses/) ## actresses Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # LIFE at Home With Marilyn Monroe, 1953 by [Ben Cosgrove](/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jan 19, 2013 2:32 AM CUT  Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953. Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953.Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jan 19, 2013 2:32 AM CUT When Alfred Eisenstaedt photographed Marilyn Monroe at her Hollywood home in 1953, the 54-year-old LIFE staffer and the 26-year-old actress were—on the face of it, at least—an utterly improbable, mismatched pair. An artist and a master craftsman with the camera, the German-born Eisenstaedt had been a professional photographer for three decades (he would keep shooting into the 1990s) and by the early 1950s had made several of the 20th century’s most recognizable, iconic pictures. His “V-J Day in Times Square,” for example—a.k.a, “The Kiss”—is arguably the single most famous, reproduced and (lovingly) parodied photograph ever made. He had traveled everywhere and photographed most everyone, from Hitler and Hemingway to Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein. In photographic circles he was something of a legend, and over the next four decades would continue to create fond, inimitable pictures of the famous (Jackie Kennedy, Leonard Bernstein, Sophia Loren) and the unknown. His unforgettable shot of children reacting to a 1963 puppet show in Paris, for example, remains one of the single greatest portraits of raw, innocent wonder ever produced. Jacob Deschin, a long-time photography critic and “camera editor” at the New York _Times_, said of Eisenstaedt in 1954: “After 25 years of professionalism, he is still an amateur at heart, excited about his medium, full of delight in persons and things and as enthusiastic as a beginner.” For her part, by 1953 Marilyn Monroe was indisputably an actress on the rise—that year alone she would star in three memorable movies: _Niagara_, _How to Marry a Millionaire_ and _Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_—and there was little doubt that bigger things were on the horizon; but even her most ardent fans could hardly have imagined the utterly singular, enormous place in the pop culture pantheon that she would someday occupy. Her career-defining screen roles (_Bus Stop_, _The Misfits_, _The Seven Year Itch_ and, of course, _Some Like It Hot_) were still to come, but unmistakable glimmers of the Marilyn mystique—sex goddess, muse, troubled soul—were there for anyone with eyes to see. [\[Buy the LIFE book, _Remembering Marilyn_\]](http://subscription-assets.timeinc.com/prod/assets/themes/magazines/default/template-resources/html/THEOX/splits/li-marilyn.html "undefined") Happily, if _anyone_ had eyes to see, it was “Eisie.” The images that he captured on one afternoon in 1953 remain not only among the warmest, most casually intimate photos of Marilyn that anyone ever made: they also serve as a poignant record of a young woman on the very cusp of both genuine superstardom and years of gradually, ever-deepening misery. Defined less by her film work and more by her celebrity, her broken marriages (to baseball Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio and great American playwright, Arthur Miller), depression, drugs, affairs—most famously and devastatingly, of course, with JFK — Marilyn Monroe’s life in the decade between that 1953 photo session with Eisenstaedt and her death in August 1962 has been chronicled, dissected, analyzed and sifted so thoroughly that there’s little need to recount it here. Instead, LIFE.com offers this series of photos—most of which never ran in LIFE magazine—as both a tribute and a reminder: a tribute to the great, uniquely empathetic photographer who made them, and a reminder of the talented, beautiful, utterly alive young Marilyn who so bewitched the world, her whole life still ahead of her. _Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com_  Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953 Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt poses with Marilyn Monroe at her home in Hollywood, 1953. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3875608/life-at-home-with-marilyn-1953/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3875608/life-at-home-with-marilyn-1953/"},"headline":"LIFE at Home With Marilyn Monroe, 1953","datePublished":"2013-01-19T02:32:53.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:03:53.961Z","description":"On the 50th anniversary of her death (at a far too-young 36), LIFE.com presents a series of warm, casually intimate photos of Marilyn Monroe by the great Alfred Eisenstaedt.","url":"https://time.com/3875608/life-at-home-with-marilyn-1953/","keywords":["actresses","Hollywood","los angeles","marilyn monroe","alfred eisenstaedt","actress","1953"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt853a75679991d6d9/698847b635ba6f7e98c0c5c8/01_011810542.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ben Cosgrove","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt853a75679991d6d9/698847b635ba6f7e98c0c5c8/01_011810542.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953","caption":"Marilyn Monroe at home in Hollywood, 1953.","creditText":"Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/actresses/","name":"actresses"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3875608/life-at-home-with-marilyn-1953/","name":"LIFE at Home With Marilyn Monroe, 1953"}}]}] ```