Jack Allen To Sell Marilyn’s ‘Down Boy’, and More

Marilyn By Moonlight author Jack Allen is selling off some items from his collection in the Essentially Marilyn auction on December 11 at Profiles In History – including photographs and the unreleased song, ‘Down Boy‘, as Mike Szymanski reports for The Art of Monteque. (The auction also features the spectacular collection of Maite Minguez Ricart – more details here.)

“When Jack Allen first fell in love with Marilyn Monroe, it was while watching her in the 1953 movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes where she plays an ambitious showgirl … ‘Here was a girl full of naïve innocence and you could really tell that she loved performing and that she really wanted to make it,’ says Jack. ‘In a lot of ways that is the story of Hollywood.’

Jack worked on some of the photo displays and books with [Andre] de Dienes’s widow after he died in 1985, and as a payment for his work, he received some of his original photos.

‘I was most fascinated with the “End of Everything” photo session that he took near Zuma Beach in Malibu,’ Allen recalls. ‘She was troubled at the time, and it has an almost religious feeling to them.’

What the auction house doesn’t explain in the description of the photographs is why they will have a faint scent of dirt or earthiness to them. After a terrible rainstorm in Los Angeles in the 1950s, a mudslide buried and destroyed many of the photographer’s collection in his house, and out of frustration he simply buried most of his collection in the backyard. A year later, LIFE magazine editors asked about some Monroe photos, and he literally dug them up from his backyard, and in the middle of the mess, salvaged a few of the gelatin silver prints.

Marilyn with boxer Max Baer

In another signed 8×10 photograph expected to fetch between $6,000 and $8,000, Marilyn signed it to former Heavyweight Champion of the World Max Baer, writing: ‘To Max, My body guard, Love Marilyn Monroe.’ Baer was a fighter-turned-actor and longtime admirer of the starlet, and visited her on the set of Some Like it Hot.

When studios made movies, they often pressed a record — and it was usually one-sided — of each of the songs used in the film, so when dubbing or playback was necessary while they were filming, they could use the record. So, these records actually played while the stars recreated the scenes, or filmed the dance numbers or lip synced the songs.

Jack found the heavy 78 acetate records on eBay as part of an estate of a 20th Century-Fox craft service worker who took the 12-inch records when they were abandoned by the studio after the filming of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Jack bid on the records in 2005, thinking they would be a fun piece of Hollywood history to have to one of his favorite films. The records were stained and scratched, but kept in their vintage sleeves from the studio … But, Jack noticed a recording ‘Down Boy‘ also penned by the legendary Hoagy Carmichael that featured only Marilyn and a soft piano accompaniment.

‘I realized that this was a song that was actually mentioned in the script, but it was never used in the movie,’ Jack recalls. ‘It was like finding a treasure. No one had ever heard this recording of Marilyn before.’

The song is upbeat and whimsical and planned for when a diamond dealer played by Charles Coburn is getting fresh with Marilyn’s character Lorelei. She sings to the men like they are a pack of hungry dogs, saying ‘Down Boy‘ to them. Marilyn sang the song with a swing temp in the key of A and B-flat.”

‘Down Boy!’ Rare Marilyn Song Resurfaces

Marilyn has been making news in the music world this week, with a story that ‘Down Boy’, an unreleased song cut from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, may be sampled on a new track by hip hop producer Timbaland (who is currently working on his fourth solo album, Opera Noir.) Here’s a report from ContactMusic:

“The 43-year-old record producer is sampling the late Gentlemen Prefer Blondes actress’ only unreleased track, a swing number titled ‘Down Boy’ 53 years after she died of an overdose.

Timbaland – who produced Michael Jackson’s second posthumous album Xscape in 2014 – is now working on a modern version of the track after meeting up with the owner to the rights, Hollywood resident Jack Allen.”

Jack Allen‘s name will be familiar to fans, as he authored the 2002 book, Marilyn by Moonlight: A Remembrance in Rare Photos. Long out of print, it is now highly collectable.

Fans may also remember a similar news story from Entertainment Weekly in 2006, when Allen tried to shop ‘Down Boy’ to various female pop stars. It was briefly rumoured that Britney Spears would sample the track, but nothing came of it – so I would advise readers to treat this latest update with caution.


This unreleased song came from an 20th Century Fox playback acetate record, made for the music numbers in the movie. An acetate is a transitional stage between the master tape and the finished vinyl record. It is a metal plate covered in a layer of acetone. Very few are made and they are distributed to people directly involved with the recording in order that they can approve the sound before the record is cut.

‘Down Boy’ was intended for a scene in which Lorelei (Marilyn) dances with elderly millionaire (Charles Coburn.) Some footage can be briefly glimpsed in the film, although plans to include ‘Down Boy’ were abandoned. You can listen to a snippet from the original recording here.

The song, penned by Hoagy Carmichael and Harold Adamson, was later performed by Betty Grable in a 1955 musical, Three for the Show. You can watch it here.