It was so tight that she must have worn it close to her skin. It was also sewn at the last minute before entering Madison Square Garden in New York, in 1962, and it went down in history. The amount exceeded all expected
The luminous, fitted dress that Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang happy birthday to President John F. Kennedy on his 45th birthday went up for $4.8 million on Thursday, exceeding all expectations. colored and embellished with 2,500 hand-encrusted crystals, the gown was expected to fetch between $2 million and $3 million, Julien's Auctions in Los Angeles said.
The dress ended up at Ripley's Believe It or Not (Ripley, even if you don't believe it!), an American media empire specializing in the quirky and outlandish, which owns a chain of museums, including one in Hollywood.
The dress was so tight to Marilyn's body that she was wearing no underwear and had to be sewn at the last minute before she entered the stage at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1962 to sing happy birthday to JFK with her sensual voice.
First auctioned by Christie's in 1999, the Jean Louis dress was bought by magnate Martin Zweig for $1.3 million.
"Marilyn Monroe singing 'Happy Birthday Mr. President' is surely one of the most famous impromptu performances in American history," said Darren Julien, president of Julien's Auctions. "Tonight was one of the most important moments in our history as a company. We were incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to present this dress to the most legendary screen star of all time," he added.
Monroe died of an overdose less than three months after that Madison Square Garden performance, while Kennedy was assassinated a year later.
Other notable sales from the first of the three-day auction of Monroe's personal effects include the cocktail dress she wore in the film Some Like it Hot (1959), which sold for $450,000, and a costume from the film Rose Tattoo (1955), which was auctioned for $125,000. A pair of her Ferragamo shoes sold for $34,000, while the negligee she wore to Niagara (1953) fetched $59,000.
The singer-actress, one of the highest-grossing stars before her death on August 5, 1962, at age 36, in Los Angeles, tops the list of celebrity memorabilia collectors. Five years ago, the dress portrayed in the famous scene in the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch, in which her skirt flies over the subway vent, sold for $5.5 million. Dollars.
