What Rave Might Say about Ana de Armas and Nudity in “Blonde”

Rave would have dutifully gathered and consumed every scrap of news about the movie “Blonde,” with Ana de Armas starring as her friend Marilyn Monroe. Rave liked Monroe quite a bit, always referring to her as Norma Jean. She did find her flighty and baffling at times, and she told some cute stories about her mother making sure Norma Jean ate properly and had something to wear in the years when they were all back-door neighbors in New York.

But I believe Rave also would have hooted with laughter at Ana de Armas claiming shock, shock! that nude images are circulating online from the new movie. https://bit.ly/Ana-de-Armas Rave assured me that since the earliest days of Hollywood, stars planned their own leaks of nude photos, and then cried crocodile tears to the press about it, feigning the purest innocence. She described young women and some men who wanted to be stars arranging to pose in the altogether, often by swimming pools. They’d tell the paparazzo where to position — behind the fence or even up in the trees — to get the best angles. “Top, bottom, cheesecake, full-frontal… those starlets planned it all!” She giggled this in a whisper, like we were sharing a delicious and little-known secret.

And of course there is no shortage of Marilyn Monroe nudes. She seemed quite comfortable disrobing, and even became the first cover girl for the nascent Playboy magazine. And Rave was friends with photographer Bert Stern, who took some of the most famous nude photos of Monroe (I think I remember her saying they were related somehow, by marriage? I’ll find it in later notes).