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Marilyn Monroe JFK Birthday Performance Photos

Currency:USD Category:Memorabilia Start Price:17,000.00 USD Estimated At:68,000.00 - 102,000.00 USD
Marilyn Monroe JFK Birthday Performance Photos
<B>Happy Birthday, Mr. President!" Spectacular Never-Before-Available Pictures with Copyrights of Marilyn Monroe at JFK's 45th Birthday Party May 19, 1962.</B></I> The site is Madison Square Garden, and 15,000 people have gathered for a show celebrating the 45th birthday of President John F. Kennedy.<BR><BR> The show, a live telecast, boasted such stars as Jack Benny, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Jimmy Durante, and Maria Callas. Host Peter Lawford gallantly tried to introduce Marilyn Monroe -- who at first failed to come on stage. As Lawford kept ad-libbing, Marilyn finally made her spectacular entrance in a Jean Louis-designed flesh-colored dress decorated with 2,500 rhinestones. Adlai Stevenson described the dress (fated to sell at a 1999 auction for $1.26 million) as "skin and beads," and it was so sensually tight that Marilyn had been literally sewn into it. "The <I>late</B></I> Marilyn Monroe," joked Lawford in his introduction, and the actress -- terrified, vulnerable, and iconically sexy -- sang in her purring, almost breathless voice: <I>Happy Birthday, Mr. President</B></I><BR><BR>Marilyn Monroe, then waging a last-stand battle with drug abuse and her own demons, would be dead (a suicide?) 78 days later. A year-and-a-half later, JFK was assassinated. Yet the Happy Birthday episode has won its own strange immortality, parodied by everybody from Madonna on <I>Saturday Night Live</B></I> to <I>The Sopranos</B></I> to <I>Wayne's World</B></I> and <I>The Simpsons.</B></I> Despite its basic innocence, the awesomely seductive way Marilyn delivered the song, and the persistent rumors about the mysteries of the private relationship of Monroe and Kennedy made this possibly the most openly racy and sensational confluence of sex and U.S. Politics.<BR><BR>Featured are ten newly-discovered bombshell photos and their negatives, along with the copyrights. Nine photos are from the original negatives, and an additional close-up print was cropped from the photo of Marilyn with two unidentified members of her entourage. The pictures come from New York photographer Irv Steinberg (see bio), who arrived late to the event and caught Marilyn on film backstage, at that point wearing a white mink stole and flushed with excitement after her show-stopping appearance. Seven shots show her surrounded by celebrities and friends, including Arthur Miller's father (then Marilyn's father-in-law), and Jack Benny. Two additional shots show Marilyn in her limousine, and finally, a stunning close-up of her.<BR><BR>Gorgeous candid pictures of Marilyn with connections to two of the 20th century's most glamorous figures and hints of the possibly dark mysteries of "Camelot," as well as original artifacts from one of pop culture's most recognizable and unforgettable moment, these photos capture a memorable night when Hollywood flirted with Washington D.C. as the world watched.