BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - The protectors of Marilyn Monroe's image say a collector who wants $500,000 for a short 1940s stag film is committing fraud and violating the actress's intellectual property rights by claiming it shows her having sex when she was underage.
Mikel Barsa, a Spanish events promoter, insists that the scratchy, black-and-white six-minute film shows the young actress, known then as Norma Jeane Baker, around 1946 or 1947 when she was poor and desperate to break into show business.
Experts on Monroe's life, however, say it's highly unlikely that the smiling young blonde in the film is her. Comparing the film with claims the 8 mm strip of celluloid was made simultaneously with a 16 mm version, which he claims he sold for $1.2 million in 1997. He refuses to identify any of the sellers or buyers of the films, but said a European magazine also bought rights to make copies and later sold 600,000 videotapes promoted as documenting Monroe's secret sex life. Copies of the tape can still be found online.
Barsa offers a 1996 letter from Alan Brown of the nonprofit American Film Institute that he say confirms the woman is Monroe. But the letter says only that "it's not clear whether the woman in the film is Marilyn Monroe _ if not, she's the woman in the film, from her teeth to her chin to her ears. Some show that while Monroe had a prominent widow's peak, the hairline of the woman in the sex tape seems straight.
Monroe underwent plastic surgery in 1950 to change her nose and chin, but her widow's peak never changed, Fortner said.
"To me personally, it doesn't even resemble her," Carlson said.
(Source:China Daily)
