Marilyn Monroe's First Professional Photos Up for Auction

Photographs of a 19-year-old Norma Jeane, later known as Marilyn Monroe, taken by Joseph Jasgur, are now up for auction. The photos represent Marilyn's first professional photoshoot.

The pictures of the star, then called Norma Jeane, show the young hopeful in a side street, unrecognisable from the blonde bombshell she would become.

The photos, which are being sold with copyright and include many other snaps of the model, could fetch nearly a million dollars in the U.S. when they are sold.





Jasgur was commissioned in 1946 by the Blue Book agency to take pictures of various aspiring models, among them the brown-haired Norma Jeane Dougherty.

The pictures show her in a side street in West Hollywood behind Beverly Boulevard and she is wearing a jumper, black hat and is slightly plump in the face.

It was these snaps that Norma Jeane presented to Ben Lyon, the casting director at 20th Century Fox, who signed the wannabe and turned her into Marilyn Monroe.