Fan Fare
Entertainment behind the scenes
Eternity with Marilyn Monroe goes back on auction block
If you didn’t succeed the first time in your bid to spend eternity in a crypt above Marilyn Monroe, try again.
That’s what the auction team handling the sale of the crypt is saying, after a previous eBay sale for $4.6 million fell through in August.
Eric Gazin, president of AuctionCause.com, told Reuters he believes there may have been some qualified bidders in the first eBay auction, but that there was no system in place to determine who really had the cash for the crypt, which is located at Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles.
This time around, the sale will also be on eBay, but bidders will have to be ready to make a deposit of 1 to 5 percent of the cost of the crypt, and they will have to prove that they have sufficient funds to buy it.
The crypt is expected to sell for millions of dollars.
And the auctioneer has more details on Richard Poncher, the man who bought the space above Marilyn Monroe’s crypt from Monroe’s ex-husband Joe DiMaggio, after meeting the baseball slugger at a Beverly Hills restaurant. Poncher had a yearning for the crypt because he wanted to have in death what he never had in life, the chance to be face down on top of Marilyn Monroe, which is how his family placed him when he died in 1986.
It turns out buying the crypt was not the only bright idea that Poncher had in a long life as an entrepreneur. Gazin said that in the 1920s, Poncher was living in Chicago and learned that an armored car company was going out of business. Sensing an opportunity, he approached Al Capone and obtained a loan from the gangster to build armored cars for him.
Paris Hilton – the new Marilyn Monroe?
Celebrity heiress and businesswoman Paris Hilton is back in Cannes to drum up some interest in the documentary “Paris, Not France”, which follows her as she goes about her daily life being rich and famous.
The 28-year-old tried to prevent the film, directed by Tom Petty’s daughter Adria, from reaching the big screen, but now sees it as a kind of set-the-record-straight exercise for someone whose portrayal in the media is not always flattering.
“I was a little scared,” Hilton told reporters at the Cannes film festival, where she said she was partying hard. “I filmed it over three years ago so it was a different period of my life.”
“It also shows how it is living in this life and how much pressure there is. It definitely shows a different side than the media portrays me as.”
You can read about the documentary here, from a story we did when it screened back at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2008.
Asked why she thrust herself into the limelight as much as she did, Hilton replied: “I have a brand, I have a business … I always have something to promote. I love doing it, it’s fun. I always loved Marilyn Monroe and she loved the camera and the camera loved her and I just think of her as one of my idols.”
She also been seeing the older (Actor) Neil Fifer… but quietly.
Marilyn Monroe wins new praise — for selling fishing tackle
Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe has been praised for many things over the years but here’s a first — the impact she had on the fishing tackle industry. Finland’s Rapala Group, which makes and sells fishing tackle, has inducted Monroe into its hall of fame as one of the influential people who assisted the company in its business.
The connection? The August 1962 issue of Life magazine bore a picture of the actress on its cover and carried a history of her life — with the same magazine carrying an article titled “A Lure Fish Can’t Pass Up” showcasing Lauri Rapala’s original floating fishing lure. This edition broke all circulation records.
“The article about Rapala lures in the 1962 issue of Life magazine created an unforeseeable chain of events for our company,” said Tom Mackin, president of Rapala USA, in a statement. “Marilyn Monroe’s presence in that issue should definitely be credited for dramatically launching the Rapala brand.”
He said the small, two-person U.S. company felt the impact of the article immediately and in no time had orders for three million lures. The thanks may be a bit late coming but add it to Monroes list of achievements.
I wonder whether you should be slightly less flippant about this. The idea that dead people wanted to both live as long as they lived and then die when they died seems somewhat improbable. An element of tragedy suggests itself.