Andy Warhol's 1962 pop-art multiple images of Marilyn Monroe sold for $38.2 million on Thursday. The original silk screen grid, titled Four Marilyns, had been expected to fetch about $30 million. Reports said that it was purchased by Victoria Gelfand, a director at the Gagosian Gallery, at the Park Avenue salesroom of Phillips. Just one day earlier paintings by Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein and Jean-Michel Basquiat smashed all previous auction records at Christies. To put the sale in some perspective, Marilyn Monroe's 12 feature films averaged $7 million in total worldwide ticket sales.
Her biggest hit, 1959's Some Like It Hot, earned $25 million. Her next biggest, 1953's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, took in $12 million. The remaining films collected between $2.5 million and $8.4 million each. Even accounting for inflation, most of the Monroe films' earnings would not have matched the amount earned by the Warhol creation." Source: www.contactmusic.com
"Marilyn Monroe: My Little Secret" Ranked as one of the Top 20 Marilyn Books. 1 Year after its release, the controversial book Marilyn Monroe: My Little Secret by author Tony Jerris, has been ranked as one of the Top 20 Marilyn Monroe books on the market by Gutsy Books. The story began in 2001 when Jerris met Jane Lawrence, who knew Marilyn Monroe very well. They became close friends and she told him her story. At 12, she started Marilyn’s fan club at Fox. According to Jerris, “By the time Jane was 15, her relationship with Marilyn had become physically intimate. Marilyn referred to Jane as 'my little secret,' and I couldn’t have chosen a more fitting title.”
Marilyn Monroe: My Little Secret is a provocative, poignant, no-holds-barred account of the relationship between Jane and Marilyn, which Tony has written in Ms. Lawrence’s voice. It took Jerris over 10 years to reach and write the book, and was released 1 year ago on the 50th Anniversary of Marilyn’s death. It has been featured on a variety of media outlets such as ExtraTV and The Young Turks Show, and written up in numerous worldwide publications and online sites including The Globe, The Enquirer, The Daily Mirror, Radar Online, Perez Hilton & Hidden Hollywood News. It was also named one of 2012’s Top Scandals in The Globe, and continues to be written up in numerous magazines and websites. Source: www.pr.com
"Marilyn's eyes opened wide in surprise and she burst out laughing. She took a swig of Dom. "Now you're my agent?" Marilyn poured more champagne and winked at me. "Five hundred bucks a week. Not bad for a girl from Van Nuys, uh?" I sipped my Coke, satisfied that Marilyn was not being snookered. Grace McKee (Gladys's best friend and fellow film tech at Columbia Pictures, whom Norma Jeane would refer to as Aunt Grace) was one of the few who truly loved Norma Jeane. As Norma Jeane's legal guardian, Grace promised to take care of her until Gladys could recover and return to society. Grace was a huge fan of Jean Harlow, so Norma Jean also became a big fan." -"Marilyn Monroe: My Little Secret" (2012) by Tony Jerris
The giant Marilyn Monroe sculpture with the forever billowing skirt has stood at Palm Canyon Drive and Tahquitz Canyon Way in Palm Springs for a year, but it will be moving on in June. Before then, there's a film series and farewell party planned. So go, snap some pictures and see the movies that made her a film icon.
The deal: The Forever Marilyn Outdoor Movie Series on May 3 will screen the comedy "Monkey Business" (1952), in which Monroe stars with Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers, and the thriller "Niagara" with Joseph Cotten on May 17. There also are screenings of new short films from ShortFest on June 7. All events start at 8:30 p.m. Source: www.latimes.com
"Black Dahlia & White Rose" is one of the short stories from "L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories" (2011), a re-imagining of the last days of a tragic figure of Los Angeles lore, Elizabeth Short, who became immortalized posthumously as “The Black Dahlia”. Mixing fact with fiction and a bit of legend, the story tells of Elizabeth Short sharing an L.A. apartment with a young Marilyn Monroe in 1947.
For the old life was used-up & of no promise, in Medford, MA. And the golden California life beckoned—Los Angeles & Hollywood. It did not seem a far-fetched idea to Betty Short as to Cleo Short or anyone who knew them, that daughter Betty was pretty enough & “sexy” enough to be a movie star one day. That was a happy time, those months then. They did not last long but Norma Jeane said to me when we were new & shy to each other sharing a room in Mr. Hansen’s “mansion” on Buena Vista Avenue: Oh Betty you are so lucky! for Norma Jeane said she had not ever glimpsed her father even from a distance but now that she’d been on the covers of Swank & Stars & Stripes maybe he would see her & recognize her as his. Poor Norma Jeane had faith, if she worked hard & made the right connections among the Hollywood men, like all of us, she would become a star like Betty Grable, Lana Turner, & earlier Jean Harlow who was Norma Jeane’s model & idol. Norma Jeane said if she walked into some place eyes would flash on her and people would think—Ohh is that Jean Harlow?
Lots of guys would claim her—seeing she’d one day be “Marilyn Monroe”—but in 1945 at the Radioplane factory in Burbank, Norma Jeane was just a girl-worker in denim coveralls—eighteen—not even the prettiest girl at the factory but Norma had something—“photogenic”—nobody else had. I took her picture for Stars & Stripes—in those factory-girl coveralls seen from the front, the rear, the side—“to boost the morale of G.I.’s overseas. And the phone rang off the hook—Who’s the girl? She’s a humdinger.
Betty said: You can get money from men—if they’re the right men not these God-damn bloodsuckers. Betty seemed angry at most men. She’d been engaged to a major in the US Army Air Corps she had met at Camp Cooke—this was said of her by girls who’d known her longer than me—& her fiancé had died in a plane crash—
BETTY SHORT: "Dr. M. drove me back to the Buena Vista in the beautiful black Packard car & said very few words to me—asked where I lived & was I a “starlet” —& stared straight ahead through the windshield of the car— Where does it seem that I am from, then?—I asked him with a sidelong smile. He continued to drive the Packard slow along the street as other vehicles passed us & his forehead furrowed & he said finally—I could not guess. I would think that you are born of Hollywood—you have stepped out of a movie—or of the night. Out of the night—this struck me, it was a strange thing to say & flattering to me & so I thought He is attracted to me. He will fall in love with me—he will be in my power." -"Black Dahlia and White Rose: Stories" (2012) by Joyce Carol Oates's story
Scarlett Johansson posing as Anti-Marilyn Monroe for Vogue Paris magazine, 2009
DePalma turns the legend of The Black Dahlia into a portrait of the Hollywood institution as both nightmare and fantasia—not dishonest sociology, but a haunting realization of all that Hollywood represents. “Hollywood will fuck you when no one else will,” says a hard-boiled police captain. His cynicism is in response to Elizabeth Short’s murder, but he could also be describing the misfortunes of his two young detectives assigned to the case, Bucky (Josh Hartnett) and Lee (Aaron Eckhart). Commodified just like movie stars, their hot and cold temperaments reflect contrasting ways of dealing with social and inner pressure—the range of moral disgust. It’s DePalma’s vision of social chaos—citizens divided against themselves—that never ends. (Johansson is uncannily photographed like Tippi Hedren in The Birds.) Source: nypress.com
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