Shown here is a free-style watercolour self-portrait, titled Myself Exercising and signed at the base “Marilyn Monroe Miller 56”.
It was created by Monroe for a charity auction intended to benefit what was then called the Actors’ Orphanage Fund, but it is now known as The Actor’s Children’s Trust. Laurence Oliver, then the charity’s president, was the auctioneer.
The sale was held at a time when the actress was filming The Prince and the Showgirl and it was purchased by Sir Terence Rattigan, who had adapted the screenplay for that film from his own play, The Sleeping Prince. In this recent Heritage auction in Dallas, the watercolour sold for $100,000 (£72,465).
Monroe’s extensively annotated shooting script for the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch took $65,000 (£47,100).
That film included what an exuberant cataloguer dubbed the single most famous scene in motion picture history: a 35-second sequence that took five hours to film and at which some 1500 people gathered on a sweltering New York street to watch it being shot.
In that famous scene, Monroe, wearing a white halter dress, stands on a subway grating, enjoying the breeze that fans the dress up around her waist. She speaks just three lines – most of which are about the weather.
The sale took place on July 16-18.
