Authentic Brands Group (ABG) – the licensing company that owns Marilyn’s estate – has partnered with a French champagne house for a new publicity campaign.
Although Dom Perignon 1953 was her favourite vintage, Marilyn also enjoyed Piper-Heidsieck, as Scott Fortner can confirm with two receipts from his Marilyn Monroe Collection.
These bills from Jurgensen’s Market in Los Angeles date back to January and February of 1960, when Marilyn was staying in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel as production began on her musical comedy, Let’s Make Love.
Piper-Heidsieck has posted three reels featuring Monroe to Instagram. “Marilyn was a pioneer among women in film production,” they claim – but while she did co-produce one film, The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), many other women preceded her in Hollywood history (see here.)
Framing Marilyn’s sole production credit as the mark of a trailblazer may be a stretch, but there is another, more credible link to Piper-Heidsieck via one of her most popular films, released during her year-long strike against the studio system.
In an amusing scene from The Seven Year Itch (1955), Marilyn brings champagne to a party with neighbour Tom Ewell; and after they finally crack the bottle open, she dips potato chips into her glass.
With product placement still in its infancy, advertising is nonetheless one of the movie’s central themes – and the label on Marilyn’s bottle does resemble Piper-Heidsieck’s.
Filmed seventy years ago in September 1954, the movie’s iconic ‘subway grate scene’ is referenced in ‘Twist the Script,’ a new series of print and billboard ads for Piper-Heidsieck, as AdAge reports.
“Honours for outstanding art direction of the day go to Piper-Heidsieck, which unveiled a campaign from DDB Paris called ‘Twist the Script,’ featuring four images—with artwork by Miles Aldridge—referencing key moments in the champagne brand’s past.
The highly stylised images span from Prohibition-era restrictions to the brand’s connection with cinema icon Marilyn Monroe. Aldridge, the acclaimed British artist and photographer, brings his cinematic style to the tableaux.
The print work is also brought to life as a mural at Wythe Avenue and North 10th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, through Oct. 4. The brand worked with Colossal Media on the OOH.”
In Aldridge’s ‘Twist No. 4 – Break Out of the Role’, a lookalike blonde sits in a director’s chair on a subway platform. Behind her is a billboard showing herself in Travilla’s famous gold lamé dress, holding a glass of champagne as if making a toast.
Meanwhile the ‘real’ MM – dressed in a black sweater and capri pants, similar to the casual chic Marilyn donned for LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1953 – tosses pin-up shots of herself over the red-carpeted grate; and the images float in the evening air, just like her billowing skirt in The Seven Year Itch.
The text reads as follows: “A little-known production company founder & Piper-Heidsieck lover called Marilyn Monroe. After following Hollywood’s scripts, she decided to write her own.”
The Marilyn Report 
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