Excerpts of Richard Avedon from American Masters film, Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light were provided courtesy of Thirteen/WNET New York.

Richard Avedon:

There was no such person as Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe was an invention of hers. A genius invention that she created, like an author creates a character. So when Marilyn Monroe put on a sequin dress and danced in the studio—I mean for hours she danced and sang and flirted, and did this thing. There is no describing what she did, she did Marilyn Monroe . . . And then there was the inevitable drop because she was someone who went very high up and very way down. And when night was over, she sat in the corner like a child with everything gone. But I wouldn't photograph her without her knowledge of it. And as I came with the camera, I saw that she was not saying no.

David Halberstam:

I think there is a great sadness to her. There was always this great contradiction between the sexual figure that men wanted her to be, and the poignancy of her own life—the sense of desperation, the sense of inadequacy.

It was the saddest of childhoods. A mother who was institutionalized. A father who was never there; did not exist. In and out of orphanages. There was to her it seems to me, always a search for father figures.

She was the woman that all men wanted to help catch as she was falling. And I think that was a key to her success. And you can see it in photos like this. The sadness, the erosion, the face that exists behind the glamour that's on the screen.