

Schagrin says he would occasionally visit Susan in the apartment. Marilyn got the pearls in Japan when she was on her honeymoon with Joe DiMaggio.”įor several years, the 60-year-old actress had been writing and teaching and living off and on in a borrowed apartment on Central Park South which belonged to her close friend the actress Tanya Lopert, who spent much of her time in Paris. The pearls were one of the greatest artifacts my partner and I had ever purchased we sold them to Mikimoto, who’d made them back in 1954. “I was delivering it to her that morning. “I’d just sold Susie’s most treasured possession-Marilyn Monroe’s necklace of vintage pearls-and I had the check for $100,000 in my pocket,” he recalls. appointment with Susan Strasberg, Lee’s daughter, who long ago had become the youngest star on Broadway when, at 17, she electrified audiences with her luminous performance as Anne Frank. Ten months before, Schagrin had had what he calls a “really weird experience.… I mean, I had never had somebody die in my arms before-right after I made one of the most important sales of my life!” On January 21, 1999, he had an 11 a.m. “Along with Elvis, Babe Ruth, and the Beatles, she is always a great investment for collectors. “Marilyn Monroe is one of a few international icons who will transcend time,” Schagrin says. The dress was purchased by Robert Schagrin, co-owner of the New York shop Gotta Have It!, which specializes in pop-culture memorabilia. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden went for $1.26 million. The moths had chewed it to bits.Īnna Strasberg was not present at the auction, so she didn’t hear the gasps and applause when the glittery, formfitting, flesh-colored gown Marilyn had worn when she sang a sultry “Happy Birthday, Mr. Everything had remained in pristine condition except for the sober little black dress Marilyn had worn when she announced her engagement to Arthur Miller. (Anna Strasberg declined to be interviewed for this story and said that questions submitted to her about its content contained information that was false.) Monroe’s will stipulated that Lee Strasberg “distribute these, in his sole discretion, among my friends, colleagues and those to whom I am devoted.” Until Anna Strasberg assumed responsibility for the estate, however, Monroe’s things had been in storage for years-“in white coffin-shaped boxes,” curator Meredith Etherington Smith wrote. The vivacious, auburn-haired former actress had never known Marilyn Monroe, and she has never explained why she decided to auction off all the star’s belongings. When Strasberg passed away in 1982, his third wife, Anna Mizrahi Strasberg, inherited everything. “It’s hard to figure out when everything I feel hurts!” Then there were the poems Marilyn scribbled to herself: “I’m lucky to be alive,” read one.
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“Vulnerability was part of Marilyn Monroe’s irresistible appeal.” Some of the relics had a haunting quality: an open compact half full of crumbling pink face powder, a strand of blond hair clinging to a hat. “All these things reflect Marilyn’s vulnerability,” Nancy Valentino said.


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The star’s temporary driver’s license went for $145,500 and an anonymous bidder paid $80,000 for the certificate Marilyn got when she converted to Judaism. There was a gold Magnavox television, a set of gilt lighters from Frank Sinatra’s Cal Neva lodge, and the platinum-and-diamond wedding ring Joe DiMaggio gave Marilyn. The approximately 1,000 items sold included 20 pairs of Ferragamo stilettos (slightly sweat-stained at the heels), rainbow-colored Pucci shifts, Maximilian furs, lace bustiers, baby-doll nighties, and furry mules. As it turned out, Marilyn’s stuff brought in $13.4 million. Valentino estimated that the take from the Monroe auction would fall somewhere between the $5.7 million raised by the 1997 sale of dresses worn by Princess Diana and the $34.5 million earned the year before from the auction of Jackie Onassis’s things. On October 27 and 28, 1999, Christie’s held a noisy, highly publicized auction of Marilyn Monroe’s personal belongings, “a veritable time capsule of a great Hollywood icon,” according to Nancy Valentino, a senior vice president at the auction house. Susan Strasberg, left unfinished at her death. From Confessions of a New Age Heretic, an unpublished memoir by That life is really stranger than fiction-that nothing is too
