Marilyn is frequently depicted on murals in her hometown of Los Angeles. The sad fate of one of the city’s most famous public artworks at Hudson Avenue on Hollywood Boulevard – in which she was memorably depicted in her ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ gown from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes alongside Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, James Dean, Bette Davis and Clark Gable – is revealed by Chris Nichols in LA Magazine.
“Q: What happened to the huge movie-star mural that was near the Hustler store in Hollywood?
A: Like nearby freeway overpasses and apartment buildings, Eloy Torrez’s mural Legends of Hollywood came crashing down the morning of January 17, 1994, during the Northridge earthquake. The Hollywood Arts Council hired conservators to move the pieces to the artist’s Echo Park home with the intention of selling shards of Marilyn Monroe and Fred Astaire to pay for a new mural. But Torrez says he ‘dropped the ball’ after a few years and hired a team of, um, curators from outside the Home Depot to haul the five-foot-tall stacks to the dump. A decade later, though, he went on to paint a very similar mural that now adorns the auditorium at Hollywood High.”
The Marilyn Report 