Claire Milner was asked to describe the motivation behind the picture:

“I tried to show the glitter of the public life and then the sadness in Marilyn’s eyes. Because of who Rihanna is, everything had to be done through her interior decorators. But they told me afterwards that she loved it. A 100 per cent Swarovski crystal portrait is very luxurious — people stand and stare because it constantly changes colour, sending rainbows round the room.”

This year, in August, will be the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death, at the age of 36. Marilyn Monroe struggled with the pressures of fame and it is said that Rihanna identifies with her. Rihanna is also currently looking to produce and star in her own fashion show. According to MiD DAY, Rihanna is very excited about this project, saying:

“I have been very fortunate to work with some truly amazing designers and stylists throughout my career, and they have been instrumental in making sure my creative vision reaches the stage,” explained the star. I am excited to follow the journey of our aspiring contestants and see how their individuality influences their efforts during the course of the show.”

Source: The Sun

Rihanna Splashes A Hundred Grand On Marilyn Monroe Crystal Portrait is a post from: The Inquisitr

Super producer Harvey Weinstein has revealed that his first choice for the leading role of Norma Jean in the upcoming stage version My Week With Marilyn is none other than pop superstar Katy Perry.

The silver screen version of the biopic stars Michelle Williams as Monroe and tells the story of Colin Clark, an assistant to Laurence Olivier who spent a week frolicking around the UK with Monroe as she filmed The Prince And The Show Girl in 1957. The book talks about their partying and sexual conquests over that one week period.

Weinstein isn’t just throwing out the singer’s name either, they actually met in 2010 when Weinsteing brought his daughter to New York City for the Jingle Ball concert at Madison Square Garden where Katy Perry was the star performer. A remix to Perry’s song The One That Got Away is even featured in a trailer for My Week With Marilyn.

Speaking to E! Harvey Weinstein says of Perry:

“If the movie works, I would try to make it a musical and I would go to Katy [Perry] first. I mean Michelle could do it. Michelle is so good she could do it live, if she ever wanted to do it. I don’t know if she would ever want to revisit it, but Katy would blow it out of the universe, and that’s the kind of Broadway show I’d like to make.”

Do you think Katy Perry would do a good job of portraying Marilyn Monroe on the musical stage?

[Image via Debby Wong / Shutterstock.com]

Harvey Weinstein Says Katy Perry Would Be Perfect For Marilyn Monroe Role is a post from: The Inquisitr

Michelle Williams is the latest actress to take on the daunting task of playing Marilyn Monroe,and most critics agree that her performance as the Hollywood icon in “My Week with Marilyn”  is spot on.

Mark Jenkins at the Washington Post writes:

“Williams’s Monroe is more vital than anything else. The actress captures Monroe’s range of emotions and personae, her shifts from vulnerability to brashness.”

Roger Ebert writes:

“What matters is the performance by Michelle Williams. She evokes so many Marilyns, public and private, real and make-believe. We didn’t know Monroe, but we believe she must have been something like this.”

Tom Horgen says that Michelle Williams “disappears so effortlessly” into Marilyn Monroe. Betsy Sharkey writes “Williams is Monroe.”

The movie, which opened the day before Thanksgiving, currently has an 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Some critics weren’t a fan of the movie but almost all of them agreed that Michelle Williams performance is award worthy.

Here’s a trailer for “My Week With Marilyn.

Have you seen “My Week With Marilyn?” Were you impressed with Williams’ performance?

“My Week With Marilyn” is based on the book written by Colin Clark, an employee of Sir Laurence Olivier. The book focuses on Clark’s relationship with Marilyn during the production of “The Prince and the Showgirl.”

Michelle Williams will be taking on another famous role in her next film. Williams will play Glinda the good witch in Sam Raimi’s “Oz: The Great and Powerful.”

Do you think Williams, who has already been nominated for two Oscars, will see a statue come her way for her role as Marilyn Monroe?

Michelle Williams Is Marilyn Monroe: Critics Impressed With ‘My Week With Marilyn’ [Video] is a post from: The Inquisitr

Michelle Williams isn’t the first actress to dress up like Marilyn Monroe, and she won’t be the last, but she is one of the few to channel the sex symbol on the silver screen. Williams just finished up filming My Week With Marilyn, but before she took off the guise of Marilyn Monroe she posed for a few sexy photos in Vogue.

Williams said that she couldn’t quite get Monroe’s look down by herself for the movie. She tried to gain weight to imitate Monroe’s curvy body, but William’s said that all the weight went straight to her face.

Williams told Vogue:

“Unfortunately, it went right to my face. So at some point it became a question of, ‘Do I want my face to look like Marilyn Monroe’s or my hips?’”

So the 30-year-old Oscar nominated actress decided to use padding to push out her hips, but that doesn’t mean that Williams didn’t work hard to achieve Marilyn’s look.

Williams said:

“It felt like being reborn. It felt like breaking my body and remaking it in her image, learning how she walked and talked and held her head. None of that existed in my physical memory, and I knew I needed as much time as possible to make it part of me.”

What do you think about Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe? Do you think she can she pull off playing the famous sex symbol?

My Week With Marilyn will hit theaters this November. Will you be in the theaters to watch the latest re-invention of Marilyn?

Michelle Williams Poses As Marilyn Monroe is a post from: The Inquisitr

Sunday is a big day for Marilyn Monroe memorabilia collectors as a purported sex tape from the actress’ younger days is reportedly going to auction.

Some experts believe the female in the film is a Norma Jean lookalike but that hasn’t stopped collector Mikel Barsa from placing the film on the auction block for a hefty price tag of $500,000.

According to Barsa the six-minute black-and-white film shows the actress before her Hollywood breakout and was shot in either 1946 or 1947.

Nancy Carlson, a spokeswoman for the brand development and licensing company Authentic Brands Group spoke with ABCNews.com about the tape and the legal ramifications that could potentially come with it, she notes:

“The seller would bear the responsibility of proving that it is Marilyn Monroe and if he cannot do that, he runs the risk of facing claims for perpetrating a fraud on the public.”

If the film is not proven to be legitimate it could also lead to legal action by the Monroe Estate which owns all rights to the actresses name, likeness, image and other personal items.

Barsa said regardless of legal action threats he will still sell the tape, explaining that he is not the owner of the film and is simply collecting a 10% royalty for helping sell the item. At this time Barsa is refusing to reveal the real owner of the alleged Marilyn Monroe sex tape, although if legal action is taken we should soon find out who has been holding onto the movie for all of these years.

Rumored Marilyn Monroe Sex Tape Going Up For Auction is a post from: The Inquisitr

My Week with Marilyn

Directed by Simon Curtis, the highly anticipated film is based on a week that writer Colin Clark – played by Eddie Redmayne – worked as an assistant with Monroe during her filming of The Prince and the Showgirl in the United Kingdom in the early summer of 1956.

“After seeing Marilyn Monroe so often portrayed in films as a caricature, it is a pleasure to see this complex personality and unique on-screen presence portrayed so well by such a talented actress as Michelle Williams,” says NYFF selection committee chief Richard Peña.

Dougray Scott also stars in the film as Monroe’s husband, playwright Arthur Miller, while Dame Judi Dench, Emma Watson and Dominic Cooper round out the movie’s cast.

Following its 2011 NY Film Festival premiere, My Week with Marilyn will be released in theaters on November 4th.

The festival, which begins on September 30th and goes through October 16th, will also feature a special screening of the digitally-restored version of William Wyler’s 1959 epic Ben-Hur.

In addition to the two aforementioned movies, the NY Film Festival will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Japan’s Nikkatsu Films with screenings of 36 of the legendary studio’s films, two of which include Kon Ickhkawaa’s “The Burmese Harp” and Masahiro Makinoa’s “Singing Love Birds.”

Via Reuters

Marilyn Monroe Film, ‘My Week with Marilyn’ To Debut at NY Film Festival is a post from: The Inquisitr

Actress Debbie Reynolds held an auction for the nearly 3,500 movie costumes she collected over the years and one of the first dresses which was worn by Marilyn Monroe in the movie Seven Year Itch has fetched a record $5.6 million.

The white “subway” dress caused Reynolds to break out in tears when it brought her $4.6 million with a separate $1 million payment going to the auction house. The dress was only expected to bring in $2 million after a previous Monroe dress fetched $1.26 million and that dressed was worn during the actresses famous “Happy Birthday” song to JFK.

Later in the auction three more Monroe dressed fetched $2.7 million and Judy Garland’s blue cotton dress ruby slippers earned $1.75 million while a bowler worn by Charlie Chaplin brought in a respectable $135,300.

Reynolds will host several more auctions to sell off her clothing collection which she had planned to put in a museum before their care became too expensive.

Marilyn Monroe Dress Sells For $5.6 Million is a post from: The Inquisitr

Wayne, New Jersey adult-entertainment photographer Anton Fury managed to pick up something pretty special at a yard sale back in the 1980s: negatives of pictures showing singer and actress Marilyn Monroe along side of Jayne Mansfield (another blonde sex symbol from the 50′s) before the pair became famous. Fury recalled:

“I found an envelope of negatives, didn’t know what they were, but I realized they were old. I took it home, put them on the lightboard with a loupe and…. I was like, oh my God,” he said. “I thought, ‘It’s Marilyn,’ and then I saw the other pictures were Jayne Mansfield. That was probably my greatest garage sale discovery ever.”

Not knowing what to do with them or what they were worth, Fury stored them away for three decades. The kicker is that Fury paid a whopping two dollars for the entire set of shots which included 33 Monroe photos and 71 pictures of Mansfield.

It was only until about two months ago when watching an episode of Pawn Stars that Fury felt compelled to find out just where the pictures came from and, of course, how much they’re worth. The photographer contacted an auction house in California but was unable to get in contact with anyone about the photos.

He decided to contact one of the appraisers he had seen on Pawn Stars, and the appraiser pointed him to the direction of David W. Streets, a Beverly Hills art dealer and an expert in all things Hollywood. The photos are said to depict Monroe as a 24-year-old girl “just having fun.”

Streets told Fury that he believed the pictures were taken near the Hollywood Hills sometime around the 1950s, just before her rise to fame. Streets suggested that Fury contact a CNN reporter to bring the story out into the public in hopes of finding out more and, while his phone has been “ringing off the hook”, the origin of the photos remain a mystery.

There is one piece of information however that could yield some insight to the whole ordeal. The same unknown man is seen in both Monroe’s and Mansfield’s photos which leads some to believe that he could be their photographer.

“We know that Monroe and Mansfield were here working at the same time, were contemporaries and friends,” Streets said. “So, there’s an intertanglement there that we’re going to unravel and see where the mystery leads.”

With the amount of buzz these photos are creating on the net right now, it wont be long before someone chimes in and sheds some light on the matter. Regardless of when or even if that happens, one thing is certain: Fury is going to turn a serious profit on his bargain bin score.

Via North Jersey

[Image]

Pre-Fame Marilyn Monroe Picture’s Origin Unknown is a post from: The Inquisitr

Elsie Poncher must be thanking her lucky stars that there are people out there with more money than brains.

Her husband, Richard Poncher, has been buried in the in a crypt at Pierce Bros. Westwood Village Memorial Park for the last 23 years and while that may not seem all that earth shattering the fact that the crypt below him houses the crypt of Marilyn Monroe definitely makes it interesting. Elsie Poncher said that when her husband was dying he made her promise to put him in the crypt upside down or else he would haunt her for the rest of her life.

But everyone it seems these days is falling on hard times and it is no different with Elsie who decided that to be able to pay off the mortgage on her Beverly Hills home she would move her husband’s remains to the adjacent crypt that he had also paid for and auction off the one he had been in – the one over top of Marilyn Monroe.

Like everything else it seems these days the crypt went up on eBay for auction on August 14th where the bidding started at $500,000 and quickly grew to $1 million in two days. The auction closed out today with Elsie pocketing a cool $4,602,100 million.

Damn.

image courtesy of LA Times

Would you spend over $4M to lie on top of Marilyn Monroe? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Meanest widow ever, Elsie Poncher, is moving her late husband’s remains and peddling his final resting place, located directly above Marilyn Monroe’s, to the highest bidder.

Elsie, who is in her 70s, was widowed 23 years ago. She hopes that the sale of the crypt will help pay off her $1.6m mortgage so she can give the house to her kids “free and clear.” She plans to start the bidding at a cool $500K on eBay.

Mrs. Poncher tells the LA Times that when her husband purchased the plot from Joe DiMaggio during his divorce from Monroe in 1954, Marilyn was alive and kicking. (The actress died in 1962.) Elsie says he had no idea how much of a cultural icon Monroe would become. Of her husband, Elsie described him and their lifestyle as outrageous, and said he “knew all the gangsters.”

For her part, Elsie did accomodate his final wishes when he was interred. Of his burial, she says:

When he was dying, Elsie said, her husband approached her with a request. “He said, ‘If I croak, if you don’t put me upside down over Marilyn, I’ll haunt you the rest of my life.’ ”

Right after the funeral, Elsie said, she told the funeral director of her husband’s wish. “I was standing right there, and he turned him over,” she said.

Wanna spend your afterlife on top of Marilyn Monroe? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Behold: Lindsay Lohan’s new collection, which includes these snazzy Ankle Gloves! 50% leggings, 50% socks. . . 100% ugly. The good news is that Intuition has an exclusive deal with Lindsay, which means that this type of gross stuff is somewhat confined to certain parts of the internet. You’ll have a better idea of how great that is after you witness the pair with kneepads, called Mr. President, no less.

What hurts me most of all is the fact that Lindsay’s collection was inspired by Marilyn Monroe. Ouch.

Lindsay Lohan’s Exclusive Collection: Just As Yucky As I Thought is a post from: The Inquisitr