Look Familiar?

The June issue of Vanity Fair contains what it asserts are lost Marilyn Monroe nudes, outtakes from her last on-set shoot, taken on May 23, 1962. But an astute scholar of Monroviana will take exception with this cover-story claim. None of these nude photos were lost—in fact, they are in the Playboy photo archives, or have been previously published in Playboy.

According to Vanity Fair’s website: “It was to be their last conversation: the very next morning, Marilyn was reported dead at 36. One of her final acts had been to return the nude photo to Schiller, which he found waiting for him at his house. She had written, 'Send this to Playboy, they might like it.'

And, indeed, we did like it. So much that we ran them 48 years ago, in our January 1964 issue, or again in January 2005. Sorry, Vanity Fair. Sometimes when something is too good to be true, it really is too good to be true. In the parlance of today: You got got.

To see more Marilyn from our January 1964 issue, go to iplayboy.com.