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‘Forever Marilyn’ Heads to Connecticut

‘Forever Marilyn’ assembled for a previous stay in Bendigo Park, Australia (2016)

Seward Johnson’s giant sculpture, Forever Marilyn, is coming to Latham Park in Stamford, Connecticut this summer, as part of an outdoor art exhibition, Seward Johnson: Timeless, as Annette Einhorn reports for Hamlet Hub. You can read more about the exhibit and other events (including a screening of The Seven Year Itch at the Avon Film Centre on June 7) here.

“The installation will begin on Monday, June 4 when a crane will lift the 26-foot, 30,000 pound Marilyn, in various parts, high into the air before she is assembled in place in Latham Park in Stamford Downtown. The opportunity to capture photos of the flying sculpture parts; legs, torso, skirt, will be from 10:30am to 2pm.

The monumental Forever Marilyn, sponsored by Avon Theatre Film Center, from the Icons Revisited Collection, is just one of 36 sculptures that will be on display in Stamford Downtown. 35 life-size, realistic sculptures from Seward Johnson’s Celebrating the Familiar series will also be on display as part of UC Funds presents Timeless – The Works of Seward Johnson for the Summer of 2018. Installation of the life-size works begins May 30.

The exhibition will kick off with an opening night celebration on Wednesday, June 6, hosted by Stamford Downtown. The event will be held at the Palace Theatre at 61 Atlantic Street from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. Trolley tours are set to run throughout the evening, offering guests a chance to view many of the sculptures.”

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‘The Marilyn’ Blocked From Two Bridges

Permission to open ‘The Marilyn’, a new speakeasy-style cocktail on Monroe Street, NYC, has been denied, Bowery Boogie reports. Monroe Street is in the Two Bridges district of Manhattan. While in theory it sounds like perfect branding, it seems the developers failed to address residents’ concerns.

Two Bridges is located near the footings of the Manhattan Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge, the subject of a touching 1955 poem by Marilyn…

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Margot Kidder 1948-2018

Margot Kidder as Cherie in HBO’s ‘Bus Stop’ (1982)

Yesterday brought the sad news that Canadian-born actress Margot Kidder has passed away aged 69. Many children of the 1970s (myself included) will remember her as Lois Lane in the Superman movies. But did you know she also played Cherie in a 1982 television remake of Bus Stop? Filmed for HBO at the Claremont Theatre in California, it was a more literal adaptation of William Inge’s play, featuring additional characters not seen in Marilyn’s 1956 movie. If you’re curious about Margot’s performance, watch this Youtube clip from 6:20 onwards – and a full copy can be purchased for $23 from DVD Cafe.

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Warhol Family to Sell ‘Double Marilyn’

Paul and Anne Warhola with Warhol’s ‘Double Marilyn’

Double Marilyn (or Two Marilyns), originally a gift from Andy Warhol to his late brother, is to be sold as part of the 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale this Thursday (May 17) at the Phillips auction house on Park Avenue, NYC, with an estimate of $3-4 million, as Marylynne Pitz reports for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“Seven of the artist’s nieces and nephews, who range in age from 58 to 75, will share the proceeds. They are the children of Paul Warhola, who died in 2014, and his wife, Anne, who died in 2016.

Until last fall, ‘Double Marilyn’ and 10 early Warhol artworks owned by the Warhola family hung at The Andy Warhol Museum on the North Side. James Warhola, who lives in Long Island City in the New York borough of Queens, took them back after he was unable to arrange a sale or trade with museum director Patrick Moore.

‘My dad was the oldest brother,’ said James Warhola, a 63-year-old artist. ‘He saved the early works when my uncle left for New York. They have been in the family ever since as well as the “Double Marilyn” silkscreen. That was part of our household for close to 60 years.’

He said The Andy Warhol Museum ‘would have loved for us to have donated the collection’ but that was not possible.

‘My uncle’s estate went to a foundation. We didn’t get anything from the foundation. We’re not the Rockefellers. It was my dad’s main asset,’ Mr. Warhola said.

Pre-sale estimates are not always indicators of a painting’s actual auction price. Warhol’s works often sell for more than the pre-sale estimate. A 1962 ‘White Marilyn’ silkscreen by Warhol was estimated to sell for $12 million to $18 million in 2014. It fetched slightly more than $41 million at a Christie’s auction on May 13, 2014.

In this case, Phillips auction house has a third-party guarantee on ‘Double Marilyn.’ This means that one bidder has guaranteed a price of $3 million for the painting if no one bids higher.”

UPDATE: ‘Double Marilyn’ has been sold at Phillips for $3.6 million, as reported in an editorial for the Post-Gazette.

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Marilyn’s Dress to Raise Funds for Lincoln Foundation

A dress owned by Marilyn will be auctioned at the annual Hollywood Legends sale hosted by Julien’s in Las Vegas on June 23 to save a valuable collection of items belonging to her idol, Abraham Lincoln, as Ray Long reports for the Chicago Tribune. The dress is authenticated as it was previously listed in the famous Christie’s auction of Marilyn’s estate back in 1999, where it was purchased as an addition to the Lincoln collection. (I think it may be Lot 215, shown between two other black dresses on P160 of The Personal Property of Marilyn Monroe.)

“Struggling to pay back a loan used to buy Abraham Lincoln artifacts, the foundation that supports the 16th president’s library in Springfield [Illinois, Lincoln’s birthplace] is selling a black wool dress once owned and worn by movie star Marilyn Monroe.

The three-quarter-length, long-sleeved dress with a scooped neck is the centerpiece of nine items the Lincoln foundation is putting on the block … The auctioneer estimates the dress is worth $40,000 to $60,000, but could sell for much more.

It’s a windfall the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation could use. The group acquired the Monroe dress as part of a private collection of more than 1,000 items from Louise Taper 11 years ago. The foundation financed the purchase with the help of a $23 million loan … The foundation raised private money and whittled the debt down to $9.7 million, but officials said they’ve run into trouble on the loan, which comes up for renewal in October 2019 …

Proceeds from the auction of the non-Lincoln items, including the Monroe dress, seven photographs of the 1950s bombshell shot by noted photographer Arnold Newman, and a bust of Chicago poet Carl Sandburg that she owned, could help make the loan payments.”

Marilyn with Lincoln’s biographer Carl Sandburg, 1962

 

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Sugar Heads Back to Broadway

A new Broadway musical based on Some Like It Hot is in the works, Playbill reports.

“A new musical adaptation of the film classic Some Like It Hot is in the works, with a Broadway premiere slated for 2020. The project hails from the Shubert Organization and Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the team behind NBC’s roster of live musicals.

The show will feature a score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, plus a book by playwright Matthew Lopez. Casey Nicholaw will direct and choreograph.

Shaiman and Wittman are no strangers to the Marilyn Monroe canon, having previously penned songs for Bombshell, the fictional Monroe bio-musical in the NBC series Smash. A real-life stage presentation of Bombshell, produced by Zadan and Meron, is long-gestating

The 1959 Billy Wilder comedy was previously adapted for the stage with Jule Styne, Bob Merrill, and Peter Stone’s Sugar, which opened on Broadway in 1972, going on to earn four Tony nominations and play over 500 performances.”

 

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British Press Goes Mad for Marilyn

British fans can expect lots of media coverage for Marilyn this month. In this week’s issue of free magazine Stylist, Rhiannon Lucy Coslett interviews gallery director Amy Thornett about Up Close With Marilyn, the exhibition of Milton Greene photos at London’s Proud Central  until June 24. You can read it here, or buy a copy (N415) for just £1 from Newsstand (shipping costs may vary outside the UK.)

And in the latest issue of The Lady (dated May 11), ‘Marilyn Monroe: An Unlikely Feminist’, a four-page article by Michelle Morgan, author of The Girl (just published in the US, and coming to our shores very soon), is accompanied by more Greene photos.

Finally, Alfred Eisenstadt’s 1953 portrait of Marilyn is featured in today’s Daily Mail, in a review of a new book by Ian Haydn Smith, The Short Story of Photography.

Thanks to Fraser, Valerie and Nicola at Marilyn Remembered

UPDATE: Here’s a few more…

From ‘Amateur Photographer’ magazine
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Why Marilyn Wasn’t ‘Always at the Carlyle’

Marilyn with Isadore Miller (1962)

Always At The Carlyle, a new documentary about one of New York City’s legendary hotels, puts paid to the enduring myth that Marilyn and John F. Kennedy enjoyed a romantic tryst in the Presidential Suite after the 1962 gala where she sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him.  ‘Much is made of a story about how John F. Kennedy smuggled Marilyn Monroe through a tunnel to the Carlyle,’ the Times reports, ‘but then the idea is pretty convincingly debunked.’ In fact, at the end of the evening Marilyn accompanied her elderly former father-in-law Isadore Miller – who was her escort at the gala and after-party – back to his hotel, before returning home alone. This was confirmed by superfan James Haspiel, who clocked Marilyn entering her apartment building in the small hours.