In February 1952, the actress attended the Henrietta Awards, awards organized by a group of journalists who had separated from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who had organized the Golden Globes since 1943. The Henrietta, named after the President of this new association, Henry Gris, were awarded for four years, from 1950 to 1954, when the two associations rejoined and continued with the Golden Globes as we now know them.

Marilyn Monroe attended the 1952 ceremony to collect the award for 'best young personality at the box office', accompanied by Charlie Chaplin Jr, the son of the famous comedian with whom he had a brief relationship and did so in a striking red velvet dress with a heart cleavage and siren cut. This outfit sparked criticism from several journalists, one of them considered that the dress was too clear-cut and tight, that the actress looked 'cheap and vulgar' and that she would have been better off with a sack of potatoes. It was then that the twentieth Century Fox advertisers, a studio Marilyn had a contract with, decided to take a photo shoot with the actress dressed in a sack of potatoes to show that she could even be spectacular. The photographs were disseminated through several American newspapers.

The portraits were made by renowned photographer Earl Theisen, who in his long professional career would photograph important personalities of the time such as Ernst Hemingway, Walt Disney, Orson Welles and Elizabeth Taylor. The result is one of the most unusual images of the actress and one of the most curious anecdotes of Hollywood's golden years.