Save the Marilyn Monroe Dress Campaign Heats Up
Who would have thought that a simple white dress could cause such a ruckus.
But if that dress was worn by Marilyn Monroe and became part of a famous picture promoting the film "The Seven Year Itch," then you have an icon. The brouhaha is because the dress soon will be auctioned off June 18 in Beverly Hills by its owner, actress Debbie Reynolds, and a lot of dress fans aren't too happy. They would like to see the halter dress, designed by William Travilla, in a museum.
A New York entertainment tech company called inQuicity launched a campagin recently called Save-The-Dress to raise money to purchase the garment. Tomorrow, June 1, they are having a press conference in New York on Lexington Avenue, site of the photograph, to bring together some of the campaign's supporters, such as actress Liza St. John, who has portrayed Monroe on the stage and in film, Alyse Swick, a TV host and former Miss New York, and Andrew Hansford, curator of the Travilla estate. They would like to put the dress on permanent display in New York.
Reynolds has owned the dress since 1999 when she paid $1.1 million for the frock to add to her extensive collection of film costumes she had planned to place in a Hollywood costume museum at the Hollywood Highland shopping center 10 years ago. I spent a lot of time writing about that project and made numerous phone calls to Reynolds' son, Todd, who was helping her with the project, and to Reynolds herself. But the fashion museum never materialized and the dress is being auctioned off by Profiles in History at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills, along with 700 other Reynolds-owned costumes. The collection has 3,500 costumes worn by actors such as Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Gene Kelly, Greta Garbo and Judy Garland.
The pieces to be auctioned are on view at the Paley Center from June 4 to June 18.
