Monroe picture sale proves gentlemen prefer blondes

Hundreds of photographs of blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe and other celebrities, including famous ones of Monroe in bed and as a ballerina, were sold for more than €588,000 at an auction in Poland.

Bidders and spectators packed the Desa Unicum house in Warsaw, where 238 pictures by the late American fashion and celebrity photographer Milton Greene were up for sale. Only one remained unsold, among about 500 bidders.

The auction house said the 2.4m zlotys obtained made it the nation’s biggest photo auction to date.

Most of the pictures of Monroe were taken from 1953 to 1957 when Greene was her adviser and business partner. He made many of the prints during Monroe’s lifetime and they are highly valued by collectors.

They include series of refined black-and-white studio photos and shots taken in natural surroundings, sometime in provocative poses, some in colour.

As the bidding began, a black-and-white photo of a reclining Monroe in black stockings sold for 50,000 zlotys (€12,500), and another of her in a ballerina’s dress sold for nearly €15,700. A picture of her in bed fetched €6,684.

The auction also offered Greene’s pictures of other stars, including Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, and Liza Minnelli.

A picture of Nelly Nyad in a white veil was among the bestsellers at €11,000, the auction house said.

Other greats in the vast collection, which had been estimated at €533,000, included Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, Alfred Hitchcock, and Marlon Brando.

The photos come from a collection of about 4,000 Greene pictures that Poland obtained from Chicago businessman Dino Matingas in the mid-1990s as the result of a complex communist-era embezzlement scandal linked to the buyout of Poland’s state debt. Proceeds from the auction will go to the Polish government.

Some of the images have never been published before, says Polish official Marta Maciazek.