Sweetheart of the Month
Sweetheart of the Month
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Print Size & Custom Framing
Print Size & Custom Framing
Listed dimensions refer to the image size. Each print includes an additional border around the image for matting and framing.
Optional matte black hardwood framing is available at checkout. Each frame is hand-crafted with museum-grade white mat board, UV-protected acrylic, and hanging hardware, and ships fully assembled.
Authenticity & Provenance
Authenticity & Provenance
Every print ships with a Certificate of Authenticity.
Depending on the work, prints may also carry an embossed archive seal, edition numbering, estate signature, or additional provenance records, as stated on the product page.
Shipping & Returns
Shipping & Returns
Unframed works typically ship within 1–2 business days in archival-safe packaging. Framed works are hand-assembled to order and require up to two weeks before dispatch. Tracking is provided once the order has been released for shipment.
Returns and cancellations are accepted within 24 hours of purchase. If your work arrives damaged, contact us and we will repair, replace where possible, or resolve the issue at no cost.
Sweetheart of the Month
This is the image that launched Playboy. Photographed by pinup artist Tom Kelley in 1949 and published in the magazine's inaugural issue in December 1953, Sweetheart of the Month became Playboy's first centerfold, its most famous image, and the origin point of the archive.
In 1949, Monroe was still on the edge of fame. Then known as Norma Jeane, she posed nude on red velvet for a two-hour session and was paid fifty dollars. Four years later, Hugh Hefner purchased the rights from the Baumgarth Calendar Company for five hundred dollars and built the first issue of Playboy around her. The issue sold fifty thousand copies without advance publicity.
Hugh Hefner described her in a single phrase:
She is natural sex personified.
The remark is blunt, but the image explains why it endured. Monroe reclines across deep red velvet, one arm lifted over her head, her body lit warm against the saturated ground: glamour, innocence, desire, and American mythology gathered into a single frame.
Photographed by Kelley, modeled by Monroe, and preserved within the Playboy Legacy Collection, the work is part of the forty-eight-print archival edition released for Playboy's 50th anniversary.
Collection Note
The Playboy Legacy Collection was released in 2007 for the magazine's 50th anniversary as a forty-eight-print archival edition curated under the direction of Hugh Hefner. Each print is embossed with the archive seal bearing the Playboy Bunny mark and accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity.