Marilyn Monroe's Plastic Surgery Records Sold at Auction

by Joan Kron

Grant Cornett
Grant Cornett

If you were a Marilyn Monroe fan with money to burn, would you want to own the rare X-rays of her skull and notes from the plastic surgeon who treated her in 1962, three months before her death? Or would you prefer the star's award from Redbook magazine? Or perhaps rare photos of her in Korea instead?

There was great anticipation when Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Norman Leaf put the Hollywood icon's medical file, which he inherited from his late partner Michael Gurdin, up for sale at Julien's Auctions in Los Angeles. Monroe had come to see Gurdin because she was afraid she had broken her nose. She claimed she'd tripped and fallen, but rumors circulated that she'd been struck by her psychiatrist.

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Judging from the press frenzy, many people thought the lot might surpass Julien's top estimate of $30,000, but Monroe's fans spoke with their wallets yesterday when the medical file fetched only $26,500. In contrast, the Korean photos of the star sold for $50,000, and her Redbook award brought a whopping $62,500. The difference in values came as no surprise to Virginia Postrel, author of the new book The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion (Simon & Schuster). "There are few things less glamorous than medical records," said Postrel. "They destroy the magic that leads Marilyn fans to pay a lot for memorabilia. People want mystery, not history. Medical records are of primary interest to scholars and journalists. The Korean photos, by contrast, offer the newness of being unpublished but still preserve the glamour. And the award allows you to touch something Marilyn touched and even project yourself into what it might be like to receive it."

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The buyer of Monroe's medical file is anonymous, but the money raised is going to a charity called Rebuilding America's Troops (RAW), a nonprofit devoted to providing reconstructive and essential cosmetic surgery to wounded vets from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Leaf, a cofounder of RAW, admits he was originally "ambivalent about the moral, ethical, and taste issues involved in letting [Monroe's medical files] go to auction. But I became convinced it was the right thing to do when I saw a documentary showing Marilyn entertaining the troops in Korea. That made me think it was an apt and somewhat poetic reason for proceeding."

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