Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Marilyn Monroe Still Makes The Headlines


A 15-minute film of Marilyn Monroe engaging in oral sex with an unidentified man will be kept from public view by a New York businessman who has bought it for $1.5 million.

Memorabilia collector Keya Morgan said he recently arranged the sale of the silent, black-and-white film from the son of a dead FBI informant who possessed it to a wealthy businessman who wants to protect Monroe's privacy.

Monroe is clothed and the man's head remains out of the frame for the entire 15 minutes of the film, said Morgan, who has watched it several times.

Monroe was rumored to have had an affair with U.S. President John F. Kennedy, and Morgan said then FBI Director and cross-dresser J. Edgar Hoover, a Kennedy rival, went to great lengths to try to prove it was Kennedy in the film but how could you keep a giant head like his out of the frame?

One of Monroe's ex-husbands, the late baseball great Joe DiMaggio, once tried to buy it from the collector for $25,000 but "he would not part with it."

Morgan is a well-known collector who owns memorabilia from the estates of Monroe and DiMaggio and said he was friends with Monroe's other two husbands, Jim Dougherty and Arthur Miller.

He said he learned of the existence of the film while working on a documentary about Monroe, who died in August 1962 at age 36. A former FBI agent told him about it, and Morgan said he confirmed it by tracking down the son of the FBI informant, who had provided a copy to the FBI.

The late informant's son had the original while the copy remains classified in the FBI files, said Morgan.

"The FBI agent that I interviewed said J. Edgar Hoover was completely obsessed. A team of nine individuals were analyzing the tape inside a lab. J. Edgar Hoover brought in a few dozen prostitutes who allegedly had been with President Kennedy and they tried to ... see if that was really President Kennedy."

An FBI spokesmen declined to comment because he was only 26 years-old and had never heard of any of the people mentioned.

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