Where Is the Famous Dress From ‘The Seven Year Itch’? Plus: How Marilyn Became a Superstar Collectible
No matter how bright her Hollywood star, Marilyn Monroe was always Norma Jeane Mortenson under all that makeup. The most enduring icon of the 1950s, the blond bombshell of The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot was a normal gal who couldn’t get a break at love. Today, she is one of the most collectible stars, alongside Elvis, and a new auction has just been launched by Julien’s in honor of what would have been her 99th birthday on June 1. The auction is running online only from June 2 to 12, and includes Marilyn collectibles, such as dolls, stamps and rare photos — however, it’s not the first major auction to give the public a way to purchase Marilyn’s most personal memorabilia.
By the time she was in her mid-30s, Monroe’s star luster was beginning to fade. Divorced three times, an insomniac battling substance abuse, and psychologically fragile, Monroe was increasingly unable to work and struggled to keep up with her career. In mid-1962, she appeared in Life and Cosmopolitan, did a modeling shoot for Vogue, signed on to do a biopic of Jean Harlow, and sang “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy in Madison Square Garden for his 45th birthday party, wearing a glittery Bob Mackie sheath so skin-tight, she could wear nothing underneath.
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Not long after, on Aug. 5, 1964, Monroe was found in her bed, dead from an overdose of prescription medications. Some say it was suicide, others say it was an accidental overdose, still others say … something else.
When Monroe died, she had no heirs and had a net worth of about $800,000, of which probate took more than half. In her will, Monroe set up a trust to care for her mother until she died, left money to her half sister and made bequests to friends she trusted.
What happened to Marilyn Monroe’s estate after she died?
Monroe left the bulk of her estate to acting coach Lee Strasberg. He and his wife, Paula (also one of her acting coaches), were like surrogate parents to her. Paula died of cancer in 1966, and Lee married his third wife, Anna, in 1968. When Lee Strasberg died in 1982, Anna inherited the Monroe estate. She then hired CMG Worldwide, a company specializing in managing the name and image of dead celebrities, to license Monroe products. CMG wrote deals worth millions.
In 1999, Anna Strasberg commissioned Christie’s to auction off Monroe’s personal items; the catalog for the sale was 418 pages thick. In what was billed as “The Sale of the Century,” the auction brought in $13 million from the sale of 576 lots. Hundreds of glitzy possessions, from necklaces to cocktail dresses to cigarette lighters, were snatched up in a bidding frenzy.
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The blue jeans Monroe wore in River of No Return sold for $42,550 to designer Tommy Hilfiger; he also paid $85,000 for a pair of square-toed cowgirl boots Monroe wore in The Misfits. Massimo Ferragamo, the chairman of the Ferragamo shoe company, bought back a pair of red stiletto heels that the company made in the 1960s for $48,300. Monroe’s wedding ring from Joe DiMaggio, a platinum band with 34 diamonds, sold for $772,500, far more than Christie’s estimate of $30,000 to $50,000. Her white lacquered baby grand piano, which originally belonged to her mother, Gladys, went for $662,500 to singer Mariah Carey.
The prize of the auction was the flesh-colored Mackie sheath drawn for Jean Louis, hand-stitched and ornamented with thousands of crystals, worn by Monroe for then-President Kennedy’s 1962 birthday party in Madison Square Garden. After a raucous round of bidding, the dress sold for a cool $1.3 million to investor Martin Zweig.
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Several years later, Strasberg sold what remained of the Monroe estate to a new company, Authentic Brands Group, or ABG, for an estimated $20 to $30 million.
Ripley’s Entertainment in Florida subsequently bought the dress in 2016 for $4.8 million and put it on display in its Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum in Florida. It was Ripley’s who loaned the dress to Kim Kardashian to wear to the 2022 Met Gala opening. The dress was designed for a skin-tight fit — without undergarments — and Kardashian admitted to having to lose 16 pounds over three weeks to get into it for the Met Gala. Due to security concerns, she wore the original dress only for the red carpet, and then changed into a replica.
20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy: Everett Collection.
So what happened to the famous dress from Marilyn’s subway grate scene in The Seven Year Itch? Actress Debbie Reynolds maintained a sizable collection of Hollywood memorabilia before she died — a collection that contained Marilyn’s famous garment. For $200, she bought the white halter dress worn, which was designed by William Travilla for the subway grate scene in The Seven Year Itch. In a 2011 auction of some of her collection, that dress sold for $4.6 million to a private collector. Another dress worn by Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes sold for $1.2 million.
As Monroe has proved, some stars shine brighter after they’re gone. As it turns out, everyone prefers Marilyn.
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