The Man Who Bought Marilyn’s Hair

Hair test for Something’s Got to Give (1962)

Following recent news that two locks of Marilyn’s hair have been sold by Julien’s Auctions, the man who paid $37,000 for one of them has been interviewed by CNBC.

“The locks from the estate of Monroe super-fan Frieda Hull, who had obtained the hair from the Tinseltown starlet’s hairdresser, sold for a whopping $70,000 combined. Julien’s originally expected the hair to sell for only a few thousand dollars.

One of the bidders on Monroe’s golden tresses was Remi Gangarossa, a 31-year-old Chicago financial professional. Despite his relatively young age, Gangarossa told CNBC he’d been ‘infatuated’ with Hollywood and one of its most tragic icons for most of his life.

Fate may have intervened to grant Gangarossa one of his biggest wishes. He explained that Julien’s was originally scheduled to auction a slate of Monroe’s former property in November, but decided to auction just a few of her items off in a separate event, which took place last weekend.

The Chicago resident said he had already received offers to buy the hair, but ‘I said absolutely not,’ Gangarossa told CNBC. ‘It’s an interesting thing to know my investment was worth it, but it’s not for sale.'”

Marilyn: Still Loved For Her Yellow Hair

Marilyn during filming of Some Like It Hot

‘Love me for my yellow hair alone’, Marilyn once wrote to her friend, Norman Rosten – it was an ironical misquote (perhaps intentionally so) of a line from W.B. Yeats’ poem ‘For Anne Gregory‘, which actually read  ‘Love me for myself alone/And not my yellow hair.’

This weekend, two locks of Marilyn’s hair – previously owned by Frieda Hull, a former member of the teenage group known as the Monroe Six, who befriended the star when she moved to New York – were sold by Julien’s Auctions for $70,000, as part of their latest Icons and Idols sale. Other items from the late Ms Hull’s collection, including many rare, candid photos, will be sold by in November’s Marilyn-only auction, also at Julien’s.

In a macabre footnote, the ashes of novelist Truman Capote – another friend of Marilyn’s – were also sold at Julien’s this weekend for $43, 750.  And in other hair-related news, a wig worn by Marilyn in The Misfits will be on sale at Heritage Auctions on November 12.

UPDATE: You can now read a CNBC interview with Remi Gangarossa, who placed the winning bid for a lock of Marilyn’s hair, over here.