One-day glimpse of trove of Marilyn Monroe's personal belongings offered in Beijing

Record ID: 85270

  • Title: One-day glimpse of trove of Marilyn Monroe's personal belongings offered in Beijing
  • Date: 27th September 2016
  • Summary: PHOTO OF MONROE IN GREEN COSTUME ON DISPLAY
  • Embargoed: 12th October 2016 12:16
  • Keywords: China Beijing Marilyn Monroe personal collection exhibition auction
  • Location: BEIJING, CHINA
  • City: BEIJING, CHINA
  • Country: China
  • Topics: Celebrities,Arts/Culture/Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA00251CBEX9
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: A U.S.-based auction house put a selection of items from the largest collection offered at auction of personal artefacts belonging to the film star Marilyn Monroe on display at a one-day exhibition in China on Tuesday (September 27).
    In addition to the glamourous career costumes and jewellery, the exhibition displayed a number of Monroe's hand-written letters, recipes, poems and notes from her acting mentor Lee Strasberg's estate.
    Monroe, one of the most iconic stars of Hollywood's Golden Age of cinema, left numerous personal items in her will to Strasberg.
    Strasberg's son, David Lee Strasberg - the creative director of the Lee Strasberg school - told Reuters that some of Monroe's personal items were only recently discovered at the back of a closet at his home.
    "This is really a chance to hold, to see part of her life," he said. "These were things that were part of her life - dresses that were part of her career, things that she wrote by hand, you know, things that expressed her, her thoughts, her feelings. I think it's the best way to get close to Marilyn is to experience things at this auction."
    China is one of the six stops included in the exhibition's worldwide tour, taking place ahead of over 800 items of the collection going up for auction in Los Angeles on November 17-19. On Tuesday, 54 of the items from the collection were brought to an art centre in Beijing's World Financial Centre.
    "China is a very important new market," said Executive Director at Julien's Auctions, Martin Nolan. "We're here to really firstly to educate the market of Chinese people that these items are available; they're great conversation pieces, they're iconic and they're potentially a good investment as well,"
    After Beijing, the exhibition will travel to South Korea's capital Seoul and Hong Kong.
    Julien's Auctions says their conservative estimation of the full collection's worth is at three to five million U.S. dollars. They offer a real-time online bidding, which enables potential buyers around the world to participate in the auction.
    "I think this will be the biggest auction we have ever done at Julien's," Nolan said, adding that the key item in the collection was the dress Monroe wore when she sang happy birthday to U.S. President John F. Kennedy, though that was not on display in Beijing.
    Monroe was considered to be one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and a major popular culture icon.
    She died of a drug overdose at the age 36 in 1962.
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