Intl. Notebook | Sep 14 2021 |
No knock on Marilyn but even she's not worth this much to us.
In our continuing efforts to document all things Marilyn, we have today a unique piece of Monroe memorabilia, a life-sized cutout bearing her lovely form. This was made in 1953 as a promo for her drama Don't Bother To Knock, and it's fitting, because she was like cardboard in that flick. We already talked about it, and we think she was one of the greatest stars ever, and a brilliant actress too, but not in that particular psychological snakepit of a film. We're not being iconoclastic. We hate when people do that. We simply accept that every star has dim moments. Bogart made The Two Mrs. Carrolls. Michael Caine made The Hand. It happens.
But memorabilia often stands apart from performances. This cutout of Marilyn would have value no matter which film it was associated with—or even it were not associated with any film at all. You can buy it on Ebay but it'll cost you a small fortune—$1,750, plus shipping. For us, because of where we live, the latter would mean $520 additional mailing costs, plus $513 import fees, all to have the oceanfront humidity here wilt fragile Marilyn like she drank too many martinis. So as much as we'd love to have her, it's a hard no. Also, we never pay more for anything than it costs to fly to Thailand. You gotta have a code.