Marilyn Monroe, Hitch and James Dean are in the building.

Surprise, a new photo exhibit at South Shore Arts spotlights screen icons' humanity over glam and gloss.

Monroe, cast as a fragile divorcée in "The Misfits" (1961), looks as lost as her character in a photo snapped on location in the Nevada desert. Life was imitating art. Her marriage to Arthur Miller crumbling, the troubled star numbed her pain with sleeping pills. She died of an apparent drug overdose in 1962.

In contrast, Alfred Hitchcock hams it up in a publicity still for "The Birds" (1963). The portly director is shown puffing a cigar, a scruffy bird perched on the stogie. The prop bird's wires -- visible in the photo -- were airbrushed from the final version.

Ultimate rebel Dean exudes loneliness.

Bowing Thursday, "Celebrity Revealed: Rare and Unpublished Images of Film Legends" is a cine-voyeur's dream, a collection of more than 100 photos of stars, directors and sets from the 1940s through the 1990s.

The large-format images, most black and white, feature rare candids, stills and outtakes culled from the archives of Magnum Photos. "Legends," based at the Center for Visual and Performing Arts, runs through Feb. 1.

John Cain predicts the show will be a blockbuster. Every culture has its obsessions, the executive director of South Shore Arts noted. We gravitate to show-biz folk, "because they're American royalty," he said.

"The Greeks and Romans had gods. In the Dark Ages, they had the popes. And we have celebrities. We have to have something (to discuss) beyond our everyday, boring lives."

Our celeb cravings keep growing, too. "That's why we have Perez Hilton and TMZ.com," gallery manger Mary McClelland said.

Unlike today's star-stalking paparazzi, Magnum photographers specialized in intimate moments, such as Eve Arnold's portrait of a young Paul Newman lost in his craft. The prints have "a charming authenticity you don't see all the time today," McClelland said.

Four war correspondents founded Magnum in 1947. Charter members Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David Seymour chose to chronicle stars, civilians and soldiers with the same respect. Their reputations flourished, and their work graced magazines like Life and Look. The co-op enjoyed exclusive access to the "Misfits" set, a historic coup when the film was the last completed by Monroe and Clark Gable.

All the Magnum founders are represented as are notables such as Philippe Halsman, known for his playful 1950s series of "jump" photos depicting celebs in mid-air leaps. "When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears," he once said.

VIP jumpers featured include a laughing Brigitte Bardot in a fetching white swimsuit (1955) and comic duo Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in a slapstick-y double leap (1955). The funnymen yukked it up for the shoot, but their relationship was strained in real life. The act broke up a year later. Such shots are intriguing to contemplate in hindsight, South Shore Marketing Director Tricia Hernandez said.

"We know a lot more about the celebrities now. It makes (the dynamics) that much more interesting," she said.

Equally fascinating are the long-term aftermaths. Some photos raise questions that linger to this day. For example, Austrian-born photographer Inge Morath, one of nine Magnum staffers to document the troubled "Misfits" shoot, often trained her lens on Monroe during the assignment.

Thirteen months after Miller and Monroe obtained a Mexican divorce, Morath and Miller tied the knot. The couple were married 40 years until her death in 2002.