Marilyn Monroe’s Golden Globe Award Sells For Record-Breaking $250K
One Marilyn Monroe fan now has an important piece of the actress’s history, and paid a record-setting amount to get it.
This week, the Golden Globe that the actress won in 1961 was sold at a Beverly Hills auction for $250,000, setting the record for sales of Golden Globe awards. As Reuters reported, the award for World Film Favorite Female was awarded to Monroe by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association one year before her death.
The Golden Globe award was one of a number of items owned by the late actress and Playboy model that sold at a two-day auction this weekend. Others included her iconic 1956 Ford Thunderbird, which went for $490,000 in its first auction. The car itself is a piece of history, captured in an iconic photograph after Marilyn’s 1956 wedding to playwright Arthur Miller. She drove the car for six years before giving it to the son of her acting coach in 1962. She would die late that year.
Though the actress has been gone for more than five decades, her legacy has lived on in part thanks to auctions of her personal items and professional accolades. Last month, her personal book of Jewish prayers also went on sale, highlighting a little-known and seldom discussed part of her life — her conversion to Judaism when she married Arthur Miller.
As the the New York Times reported, Marilyn had no strong religious affiliation before marrying Miller, and the conversion to Judaism stuck even after the couple’s marriage ended.
“After her marriage to Miller ended in 1961, Monroe is believed to have maintained her Jewish identity,” the report noted. “She kept in her possession the prayer book and a menorah, which played the Israeli national anthem, until she died a year later.”
Marilyn Monroe's 1961 Golden Globe Award sells for a world record $250K https://t.co/FatgFt60Xy pic.twitter.com/lMWp7LjrB4
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) November 18, 2018
Other auctions of Marilyn Monroe’s personal items have gotten worldwide attention. In 2016, a slate of very personal items including private letters and her lipstick went on tour around the world before being put up for auction. As the New York Times noted, many of the items had never been seen by the public until the auction.
“The amazing thing about these items is they’ve never been seen before in public since Marilyn passed in 1962,” said Martin Nolan, the executive director of Julien’s Auctions in Los Angeles, told the newspaper.
This weekend’s auction also included Marilyn Monroe’s personal copy of her Playboy cover, which was signed by publisher and magazine founder Hugh Hefner. The magazine fetched $32,000.
