REMINDED OF MARILYN

GOLDEN LADS AND GIRLS...

          Digging recently through the accumulated detritus of a life spent in service to the printed word, I came across a forgotten oddity; a box produced by German company Taschen commemorating photos taken in Marilyn Monroe’s early career by Andre de Dienes. It includes a book containing the images, and a facsimile of his hand-written diary of the experience.

         Not worth a great deal (and hell to shelve), it isn’t something I treasure, but it did remind me that a recent sale of Monroe memorabilia at Christies in New York grossed more than $13 million. In particular, I was struck by the $129,000 paid for a worn, creased invitation to the 1962 Madison Square Garden event at which the following took place.

         Marilyn did not always inspire such acclaim. At one time, Madame Tussaud’s, the London museum of wax effigies, removed hers from the pantheon and even – the ultimate indignity – melted it down, along with other celebrities who’d exceeded their shelf life. For the magazine Punch, Caryl Brahms wrote the following poem. (I’ve footnoted some of the once-famous names she drops.)

On the Melting of the figures of Vivien Leigh and Marilyn Monroe at Madame Tussaud's.

Flames whisper now their threnody

O’er Voroshilov * and Vivien Leigh*.

Flames disrespectful, not for quelling

Melt Lord Kilmuir* and Colonel  Llewellyn*,

And the consuming flame now shrinks

The waxwork form of Terry Spinks*.

Flames are the cradle, flames the lace

That frame sweet Marilyn’s radiant face.

Furnace man, as you stir the pot,

Ponder a moment on this lot.

Brave travelers on fame’s golden tracks

Reduced now to amorphous wax.

Beauty, brains, brawn and personal symmetry

Boiled in your cauldron to anonymity,

The cheaper to achieve the morrow’s

Attraction in the Chamber of Horrors.

Spare, friend, a sigh for Vivien there.

And for sweet Marilyn a prayer.

D. Kliment Voroshilov, Marshal of the Soviet Union.

Vivien Leigh. Actress – Scarlett in Gone With the Wind.

David Patrick Maxwell Fyfe, 1st Earl of Kilmuir - Lord Chancellor and judge at the Nuremberg war crime trials. 

Sir Harry Morton Llewellyn,- British equestrian champion.

Terence "Terry" George Spinks - flyweight boxer and Olympic Gold Medal Winner.  On the