This rare photo captures eight-year-old Marina Habe celebrating Christmas 1959 with Anjelica Huston, Tony Huston, and Joan Buck. Marina and Anjelica, both the same age, spent the holiday together in Ireland at St. Clerans, where the Habe and Huston families gathered for the festive occasion.

“A Few days later, Cherokee Hardt arrived. At one time a girlfriend of Dad’s, she had since married the novelist Hans Habe, from whom she was now separated. She brought her daughter, Marina, a beautiful eight-year-old green-eyed blond, who joined Joan and me, sleeping on a foldout cot in my bedroom at the Little House.”

A Story lately Told, 2013, Anjelica Huston

In her memoir, Anjelica Huston recalled that Marina brought along her Barbie doll collection and wore a red nightgown with a bib that read “Don’t Tease Me,” which inspired playful mischief. The adults stayed in the big house, while the children slept in the “little house.” Anjelica remembered that Marina cried for her mother on the first night.

The three girls—Marina, Anjelica, and Joan—performed a theatrical piece for the adults, choosing a scene from Macbeth. They dressed in costume, with Marina wearing a blue silk nightshirt that belonged to John Huston. Tony managed the lighting, flicking switches to simulate lightning. But the play fell apart when Anjelica became shy and ran off.

That Christmas, John Huston, the famed director and father of Anjelica and Tony, gave Marina a memorable gift: a tin box of oysters, each containing a pearl. “All the women were given saris, and Anjelica, Joan, and Marina were given tin boxes with oysters in them. Inside each oyster was a pearl.” (Lawrence Grobel, The Hustons, 2014)

“Girls,” said John, “Marina, Joan, come here,” and handed each of us a tin can with a picture of an oyster on its label. Ricki sent us to the kitchen, where the butler opened the tins and prized open the oysters over the sink; inside each one, lying in oyster mucus, was a real, slightly smelly pearl.

The Price of Illusion, 2017, Joan Buck

Marina had a particular fondness for Anjelica and Tony’s mother, Enrica “Ricki” Soma, who tragically died in a car accident just weeks after Marina Habe’s own murder in early 1969.

Anjelica wrote about working on the film Sinful Davey with Marina’s mother, Eloise Hardt. While her mother was away, Anjelica grew close to Eloise, and the two became best friends on set.

Years later, Anjelica reflected on Marina’s striking beauty as a teenager, writing: “I’d thought she was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. At seventeen she still had long blond hair and was sloe-eyed, with graceful, delicate features.”

Also pictured is Joan Buck, daughter of Jules Buck, a film producer who worked as a cameraman on John Huston’s World War II documentaries and later helped launch Peter O’Toole’s acting career. During World War II, Jules Buck served alongside John Huston in the Signal Corps.

Joan Juliet Buck, who was eleven when the photo was taken, is a writer, editor, and actress best known for serving as editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris from 1994 to 2001 — the only American to hold that position.

That Christmas was also the first time she met Anjelica Huston; the two have been friends ever since. Joan later reflected on her encounter with Marina Habe in her memoir, The Price of Illusion.

Surrounded by artists, filmmakers, and cultural icons, and with Marina pursuing her own artistic ambitions, one can only imagine the life she might have led had it not been so tragically cut short.