Marilyn’s Potato Sack Dress

I never thought I’d go over a year between posts, but crippling depression and sudden life changes will do that to you! However, I’m back today and hope to be more active as we enter 2024.

To kick off my resurgence, I thought it was high time we looked at the Marilyn Monroe potato sack dress, primarily because I keep seeing this meme pop up:

I hate to burst the Marilyn bubble, but she wasn’t exactly known as a style icon in her early career. I’m not saying she dressed poorly. In fact, many of her clothing items would evolve into timeless essentials. However, for the conservative 1950s, many columnists judged her clothing as risqué, cheap or poorly made ensembles. I’ve never found a columnist say her clothing choices explained her beauty; it’s usually some variant of her clothing taking away from her appearance.

Regardless, I can’t claim to know everything ever written about La Monroe. However, the meme’s version of events is new, likely created by whomever made the junk history meme. The two commonly accepted narratives are:

• A columnist claimed Marilyn was soooo beautiful she’d make even a potato sack look good
• A columnist saw her at the Henrietta awards and said she would’ve looked better in a potato sack

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but columnists tended to make their money by acting like vipers. Very rarely will you hear someone was “so beautiful” unless it’s a puff piece by the studio. This isn’t to say a photo session might not get built around the idea of “X is so beautiful they’d look great in Y,” but columnists really weren’t that complimentary unless receiving an exclusive or friends with a celebrity.

I believed the second version for years. The Oleg Cassini-designed basket weave dress causes mixed reactions in the Marilyn community. Marilyn didn’t wear the gown as intended (a common theme) and it was arguably just a tad too tight due to Cassini originally designing it for then-wife Gene Tierney. Although I think she looks nice in the gown, I could see a zealous columnist making a fuss over it.

So, because we’re here, you know I’m not just going to tell you the second story is accurate. There was a columnist, but she didn’t say Marilyn would look better in a potato sack due to the red, basket-weave dress. In fact, the whole trouble started over this Dior I. Magnin creation (which I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of myself) that Marilyn wore to the 1952 Photoplay Awards on February 9, 1952:

So, Marilyn wears this dress, and it’s all sunshine and roses. She loves it, she’s confident in it and she’s ready to take on the world. Two columnists, however, did not hesitate in expressing their displeasure with the gown. The first was Sheilah Grahame, who questioned Marilyn’s ability to sit in the dress on February 13, 1952 in the Hollywood Citizen News:

The second was Edith Gwynn in the February 18, 1952 issue of the Los Angeles Mirror. Although Grahame restrained herself in her critique. Gwynn did not, saying:

Fox was quick to rebuttal the accusations thrown out by Gwynn, making William Travilla whip up a potato sack dress within a few days. With studio photographer Gene Kornman behind the lens, and not the often-cited Earl Thiesen (more on that in a minute), Fox sent the Mirror and Gwynn a reply via a potato-sack-wearing Monroe that ran on February 23rd:

If I had to guess, I would say the photos were likely taken on February 20th, but that’s neither here nor there.

Seeing the success of the Mirror stunt, Fox put a different photo from the session on the newswire, resulting in this image getting printed in hundreds of papers across the country:

Gwynn, however, got another quip in about a different dress with a potato sack in the April 3, 1952 issue of the Mirror:

Marilyn was quick to defend the gown just a few days later in Ailen Mosby’s April 10, 1952 column, falsely claiming the dress was a Dior creation:

In the July 1952 issue of Modern Screen, she fessed up to it actually being an I. Magnin dress, saying:

”It is a strapless red silk taffeta, snug from the bodice down to the hips, which is covered in black French lace. At I. Magnin’s, where I paid a still price for it, I was told that the dress was the only copy of an original purchased by a San Francisco social leader. I wonder if her dress has ever been criticized in her set the way mine was the night I wore it to one of the few formal Hollywood parties I have attended.”

On a quick side note before I sign off on this one, I know the potato sack dress photos commonly get credited to Earl Thiesen. Thiesen did, in fact, take photographs of Marilyn in a potato sack, but they were for Look Magazine in October 1951. This is a Thiesen photo:

Also, I highly recommend reading Tara’s article on the Marilyn Report about the potato sack dress here.

Happy New Year!