Marilyn Monroe's Real Best Friends: Animals

Marilyn Monroe enjoyed the company of many pets throughout her life. “I like animals,” she once said. “If you talk to a dog or a cat, it doesn’t tell you to shut up.” Here, she and a collie play nice on the set of the 1953 thriller Niagara.

Young starlet Monroe gets into the spirit of her 1952 screwball comedy Monkey Business and wraps her arms around the movie’s star chimpanzee.

Not only could Monroe stun all manner of men into silence, she worked her magic on dogs, too. While shooting a scene with an acting pup for 1962’s Something’s Got to Give, it wasn’t Monroe who flubbed her lines, but the dog. All he could do was stare.

Monroe and her third husband, playwright Arthur Miller, shared a basset hound named Hugo. During a bucolic moment at the couple’s home in Roxbury, Conn., in 1957, the actress lets down her hair and enjoys a laugh with the dog.

Two years prior to her death in 1962, a joyful Monroe relaxes with a furry friend.

Shortly before she fully transformed into Marilyn, the actress lounges on the sand with dog Ruffles in 1947.

“When she saw a camera, any camera, she lit up and was totally different,” photographer Laszlo Willinger said of Monroe. Even when attempting to walk her dog while skiing on sand, she could be extremely charismatic.

Monroe’s powers of seduction even worked on a toy tiger in this photo taken in 1957.

Walking a dog in wedges and a bikini – anything goes with Marilyn! She and a Chihuahua pose for the cameras at a Beverly Hills home in 1950.

Miller, Monroe and their basset hound hang out in the yard in Roxbury in 1956. The only thing missing is a pair of sunglasses for Hugo.

On the set of Monkey Business in 1952, chimpanzee Esther goes over some lines with her costar.