Marilyn, Hefner and the Sex Tape That Never Was

Marilyn is the victim of yet another ‘fake news’ story today, as it’s been reported that Playboy founder Hugh Hefner dumped a sealed casket containing his vast collection of sex tapes into the sea before he died.  ‘Marilyn [Monroe] was definitely in them as well as many superstars who graced the pages of his magazine,’ an unnamed source told UK tabloid The Sun. While Hefner’s admiration for Marilyn is well-known, there’s a big hole in this story: by his own admission they never met.

Rumoured Kennedy Sex Tape For Sale

Over the years, many ‘sex tapes‘ have been touted as featuring Marilyn. None, however, have been authenticated – with some being proved as fraudulent, and others hastily withdrawn. The latest – and perhaps most implausible yet – is an alleged 8mm film of a supposed ‘oval office orgy’, featuring MM with President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, reports gossip blog Radar Online.

I find this hard to believe, not least because it was near-impossible to secretly film people using camera equipment available during the early 1960s. And why on earth would the president and his brother have consented to be filmed in such a compromising situation?

“The steamy, never-before-seen reel — said to have been shot on 8 mm film — will be auctioned by the Tulare County Sheriff in California which has seized the property as part of a lawsuit involving the man, William Castleberry.

Castleberry exclusively told RadarOnline.com: ‘It’s real. I had it for years and I never released it out of respect for Joe DiMaggio… I’m just sick about it and I’m desperately trying to raise money to get it back.’

Castleberry, a 56-year-old memorabilia collector, would not detail how he obtained the alleged recording or what it depicts.

He had been making payments to satisfy the debt, but according to Castleberry, lawyers demanded a balloon payment that he simply couldn’t afford to pay.

‘They demanded a $90,000 payment I couldn’t afford and that is when the sheriff came in and seized the sex tape and all of my other memorabilia I have been collecting my entire life,’ he said.

‘I was told several years ago that Mr. Castleberry had a sex tape of Marilyn Monroe, JFK & RFK,’ said attorney Ryan Sullivan, who is representing the plaintiffs in the case against Castleberry.

But, cautioned the lawyer: ‘I have no idea what is on the tape, it could be what Mr. Castleberry says, or it could be a Disney cartoon. The only way anyone will ever know is if they buy it and view it. The entire lot will go up for auction on Tuesday and the minimum bid will be $200,000.’

‘Mr. Castleberry has until Tuesday morning before the lot goes up for auction to get his stuff back,’ Sullivan said. ‘He would have to pay over $200,000 to satisfy the judgement. If he fails to do so, the auction will proceed.’

If he does secure the apparent prized possession, Castleberry said he plans on ‘releasing it all to the world.’

He told Radar, ‘I had hoped to give it all to a museum, or even open one myself. If I don’t get it back, well, okay. It’s just stuff and I can start over. My wife is extremely sick and when I go to heaven someday, I’m not taking a U-haul full of stuff with me.’”

UPDATE: The auction has been cancelled after Mr Castleberry settled his $200,000 debt, reports TMZ. Publicity stunt, anyone?

 

Fred Otash: The Marilyn Tapes

Yesterday’s Hollywood Reporter contained allegations – not new, but still sensational – regarding the notorious ‘private eye’ Fred Otash’s alleged tapes of Marilyn and John F. Kennedy.

“Now unveiled for the first time to The Hollywood Reporter by the detective’s daughter, Colleen, and her business partner Manfred Westphal (a veteran publicist with APA, whose parents were Otash’s neighbors), the records fill 11 overflowing boxes that for two decades have been hidden inside a storage unit in the San Fernando Valley.”

In his 1985 book, Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe, biographer Anthony Summers claimed that Otash began surveillance on her in 1961. And crime novelist James Ellroy is currently adapting his novella, Shakedown, for an HBO series about Otash’s exploits in 1950s Los Angeles.

Otash wrote a manuscript, Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys, before his death in 1992. It has never been published.

Stephen Galloway, author of the article, doesn’t mention whether he actually listened to the tapes, or read Otash’s notes on the case. Without confirmation that the recordings exist – and hard evidence that they are, indeed, of Marilyn – I remain unconvinced.

I also think that her personal life should remain private – but as we all know, sex sells.

Here is an excerpt from yesterday’s article:

“TAPING MARILYN MONROE

‘Marilyn wanted a mini-phone listening device,’ Otash claims in the notes, adding that he spied on her even while she was paying him to install recording equipment so that she could tape her own phone calls. ‘You could hide it in your bra. The microphone was a wristwatch. You could also put a suction cup on the phone. Later on, she wanted a sophisticated system put in her house. We wired up her phone because it started looking stupid with a suction cup.’

Otash listened in on Marilyn having sex with Kennedy when he was watching Lawford’s house in Malibu, allegedly while working for Howard Hughes, who was seeking general information with which to discredit the Democrats. ‘When the original Lawford house was wired, Monroe was not part of the plan,’ Otash says in the files. ‘It was to find out what the Democrats were up to on behalf of Howard Hughes and Nixon. Monroe became a by-product.’

The files include notes that he left for Colleen, in which he says he was conducting surveillance of Marilyn Monroe on the day she died.

‘I listened to Marilyn Monroe die,’ he claims in the notes, without elaborating, adding that he had taped an angry confrontation among Bobby Kennedy, Lawford and Monroe just hours before her death: ‘She said she was passed around like a piece of meat. It was a violent argument about their relationship and the commitment and promises he made to her. She was really screaming and they were trying to quiet her down. She’s in the bedroom and Bobby gets the pillow and he muffles her on the bed to keep the neighbors from hearing. She finally quieted down and then he was looking to get out of there.’

Otash only learned that Monroe had died when Lawford called him in the early hours of the following day and asked him to remove any incriminating evidence from her house. There is no record of what was removed, and the alleged tapes have since disappeared.

Shortly before Otash’s death in 1992 at the age of 70, he told Vanity Fair: ‘I would have kept it quiet all my life. But all of a sudden, I’m looking at FBI files and CIA files with quotes from my investigators telling them about the work they did on my behalf. It’s stupid to sit here and deny that these things are true…'”

Marilyn on ‘Stylist’ Cover

Eve Arnold’s 1955 photo of Marilyn reading Joyce’s Ulysses makes the cover of this week’s Stylist magazine, available for free around the UK. Please note, the picture complements an unrelated series on books and writing – however, there is a short article inside about the alleged sex tape which failed to sell at auction last weekend.

 

No Sale for Disputed MM ‘Sex Tape’

A 1940s porn film, said by current owner Mikel Barsa to feature an ‘underage’ Marilyn Monroe, failed to sell at auction in Buenos Aires yesterday, after MM’s estate denounced it as ‘fraudulent’.

‘Whoever the woman in the film may have been, even alleging that it shows Monroe violates her intellectual property rights and will cost Barsa dearly if he goes ahead with the sale,’ said Nancy Carlson, a spokeswoman for Authentic Brands Group (ABG.)

Collector Scott Fortner pointed out the many differences between the young Marilyn and the girl in the clip in a recent blog post. Michelle Morgan, author of Marilyn Monroe: Private and Undisclosed, told ABC News, ‘Marilyn at the time of this tape had a very slim figure, a widow’s peak and perfect teeth.’

To the San Jose Mercury, Morgan added, ‘Marilyn had no motivation at all to make a porn movie…Her friends all agree that she never, ever showed any signs of having earned money in any other way than modeling or working as a real actress.’

While conceding that Monroe ‘wasn’t a prude’, Dr Lois Banner (author of MM – Personal) advised, ‘There have been numerous tapes alleging to have caught Marilyn at a particular moment in a particular sexual indiscretion, but I would not accept any such tape without a documented provenance…No one would buy a Miro or a Picasso without such documentation, my understanding is that the person selling the tape has brought none of this forward.’

Mr Barsa – who was previously threatened with legal action when he first revealed his discovery in 1997 –  commented, ‘It always is the same story when it comes to Marilyn – to deny, deny, deny and to threaten.’

Alleged Blue Movie Resurfaces

Another alleged sex tape has resurfaced, to be auctioned by Spanish collector Mikel Barsa. This tape is nothing new – it was released as a DVD a few years ago, rather cheekily entitled The Bluest Marilyn Monroe.

Speaking to NPR, Los Angeles-based collector Scott Fortner confirmed what most informed fans believe – that the girl in the clip was not Marilyn:

“That’s not Marilyn. The chin is not the same, the lips are not the same, the teeth are not the same. Marilyn was a tiny little thing. And I know that for a fact. I own her clothing…In the Marilyn community, people have debated this for years and years and for the most part it’s widely believed that this is not her.”

However, Barsa insists that the woman is indeed the young, pre-stardom Monroe:

“People with romantic notions have denied that it’s Marilyn Monroe, and have invented stories…This film shows the real Marilyn Monroe — it was only later that the studios discovered her and transformed her.”

Barsa first made the film public in 1997, and at the time CMG – then MM’s licensing company – threatened to sue. While it is true that Marilyn’s appearance subtly changed over the years, in my opinion her jaw was never as square as that of the unidentified girl in the clip.

For comparison, here’s a photo by J.R. Eyerman of a noticeably slimmer Marilyn in one of her early movies, Love Happy (1949.)

Another stag film attributed to MM, The Apple-Knockers and the Coke, was correctly identified as starring Playboy model and MM lookalike Arline Hunter by collector (and friend of Marilyn) James Haspiel as long ago as the 1970s.

While Marilyn did pose topless or even nude on occasion, no sex film has ever been attributed to her. And yet rumours continue to circulate, and titillate a scandal-hungry public.

Mr Barsa plans to auction the film in Buenos Aires on August 7, days after the 49th anniversary of Marilyn’s. Coincidence, or marketing opportunity? You decide…

UPDATE: An excellent blog post from Scott Fortner points out the main differences between the girl in the film and the young Marilyn.

Marilyn Monroe Porno? The Widow’s Peak Speaks