The Story Behind Marilyn Monroe’s Unbearably Poignant Final Portraits

June 21 1962. The Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles. 3am. Frank Sinatra is playing on the turntable, bottles of Champagne are opened and half drunk, trays of food litter the room. Bert Stern is taking for Vogue the last studio portraits of Marilyn Monroe. They did not know it, of course, but Stern and the magazine had finessed the scoop of the Hollywood century.