Last May, Kim Kardashian took part in a red carpet turn requiring preparations and manoeuvres that would put most military operations to shame.
In order to wear the most expensive dress in the world, a garment that had sold for $4.8 million at auction in 2016, and was later acquired by Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum, Kardashian changed in a specially erected tent, paused for photographers, ascended the steps into the Met Ball, and then quickly changed back into a replica of the gown.
That outfit, embellished with more than 6,000 crystals, is valued for its historical worth rather than its sheer fabric and many gems.
It’s the dress that Marilyn Monroe wore to sing “Happy Birthday, Mr President” in front of John F Kennedy in 1962.
In the same month that Kardashian took that frock out for a rare airing, Warhol’s 1964 screen-print image of Monroe, became the most expensive piece of 20th-century art at auction, with a $195 million price tag.
Some 60 years after Marilyn Monroe’s death, the star of Some Like It Hot and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes remains something more than a movie icon. The subject of Blonde, the latest screen iteration of her short tragic life, is as voguish now as she was when cartoonist Don Wright depicted the Earth weeping following her death in August, 1962.
“There is something about her,” says Ana de Armas, who plays the title role in Blonde. “Because she had no boundaries, people feel close to her. It was so emotional for me. It took so much of myself to be that every day for nine weeks. My own feelings and exhaustion, and everything would kind of blend with exactly what the character was going through. I feel like all her emotions had to be just under the skin and very palpable. It was a lot but it was incredible to experience. The kind of opportunity that as an actor you don’t get. To put yourself there and just go with it and be fearless.”
“She has something you can’t name,” suggests Julianne Nicholson, who plays Monroe’s emotionally unbalanced mother, Gladys. “She still attracts fascination. I think it was her beauty. I think it was the people that she was connected to in her life. I think you couldn’t put her in one box. And then, of course, when someone dies at such a young age, they live in that beauty for all time. You don’t see them age and get wrinkles and have more failed marriages.”
I worked with Ana de Armas and I was completely blown away by her work and her interpretation of this character
In addition to the thousands of documentaries and biographies that have covered Monroe’s abusive childhood, three failed marriages, and a career beset with predators, she has been the inspiration for at least three operas, hundreds of songs, graphic novels, paintings, and around a dozen plays, including the semi-autobiographical After the Fall and Finishing the Picture, as written by Monroe’s former husband, Arthur Miller. She’s the inspiration for everything from Elton John’s song Candle in the Wind to Nicolas Roeg’s film Insignificance to Pauline Boty’s 1963 painting The Only Blonde in the World.
“I think at the crux of it, she was a struggling artist,” says Adrien Brody, who plays Arthur Miller in Blonde. “Anyone with any sensitivity can see that. Artists understand that struggle. All artists struggle. Look at Van Gogh. He’s probably the most pre-eminent artist of his time but didn’t sell one work during his life. And his brother was an art dealer.
“He didn’t experience the glory and in a way Marilyn Monroe didn’t either because she was lost in mental and emotional suffering. Anyone who’s genuinely in the business for the right reasons — a compulsion to create and make work in whatever capacity — understands her yearning and her plight. And you know, in spite of all of that, she’s created this vast…
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