Some Like Marilyn Exhibit Not

Marilyn Monroe



If Marilyn Monroe were still alive, she'd be celebrating her 80th birthday on Thursday.
Unfortunately, the Hollywood legend died of a drug overdose in 1962, meaning that she missed out on innumerable technological advances, including liposuction, cell phones, iPods and, according to a new lawsuit, certain models of Clairol hair rollers and Samsonite suitcases.


The latter two advances are at the center of a lawsuit filed against the organizers of an exhibit of purported Monroe memorabilia on behalf of two Marilyn-o-philes: Ernest Cunningham, the author of The Ultimate Marilyn and Emily Sadjady, a Los Angeles-based Monroe collector, who claim they were conned by the exhibit.

Cunningham and Sadjady are among the thousands of visitors who have shelled out $22.95 to board the Queen Mary and take in Marilyn: The Exhibit since it opened in Long Beach, California last November.

The exhibit claims to display a slew of the Some Like it Hot star's personal possessions, including the previously mentioned hair rollers and suitcases, clothing, items from her marriage to Joe DiMaggio, cosmetics and jewelry.

However, according to Cunningham and Sadjady, who hope to turn their filing into a class-action suit against the organizers of the exhibit, Monroe never came into contact with many of the items displayed, including the hair rollers and suitcases, which they allege were not even manufactured until well after her death.

In their suit, excerpted in the Long Beach Press Telegram, they claim that the exhibit's curator, Robert Otto "knew when he purchased the items he displayed in the Exhibit, that the items were fake and did not personally belong to Marilyn Monroe" and he acquired a number of the items from "questionable dealers, known to deal in fake memorabilia, without any proof of authenticity."

Besides Otto, the RMS Foundation Inc, which operates the Queen Mary, and Mark A. Roesler, CEO of CMG Worldwide, which manages the estate of Marilyn Monroe, are named as defendants in the suit, which was filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Other allegedly inauthentic items include a typewriter (Monroe, Cunningham and Sadjady claim, could not type), a tennis racket (Monroe was no athlete, per the suit) and a "shiny red dress" supposedly worn by the star (too new, and no pictures of Monroe wearing it exist, per the suit).
The suit seeks to force the Queen Mary and exhibit organizers to refund attendees' admission fees, and asks for unspecified punitive damages.


Otto has claimed in the past that the items in the exhibit are the real deal.

However, the exhibit only opened on the Queen Mary after the Hollywood Museum canceled the show scheduled there due to questions over authenticity of some of the items.

According to the Press Telegram, some of the items questioned by experts, including the Clairol hair rollers, have since been removed from the exhibit, though organizers claimed the action was taken to "refresh the exhibit."

But George Braunstein, an attorney for the plaintiffs, isn't buying it.

"The public was duped," he told the Press Telegram. "This is a lawsuit to give the public back their money."

The exhibit of items, whether owned by Monroe or not, runs through June 15.

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