This classic image of Marilyn in a Christian Dior dress sold for $47,500 this week, among thousands of negatives shot by photographer Bert Stern in 1962, and sold for the first time (without copyright) at Heritage Auctions.
However, the sale was almost halted after a bizarre (and unsuccessful) legal bid by the photographer’s widow, as Justin Rohrlich reports for The Independent.
“Shannah Laumeister Stern, who in 2009 secretly married Bert Stern, a leading fashion photographer of the 1950s and 1960s, says the roughly 2,500 negatives long ago went missing ‘in the middle of the night’ from Stern’s apartment … In 2018, an unrelated dispute found that the copyright to the iconic images belonged to Laumeister Stern, but the physical ownership of the negatives has never been tested.
Stern, who died in 2013, always ‘suspected that the Mafia was behind the theft of the photo negatives, and that they also bore responsibility for Marilyn Monroe’s untimely death,’ according to a complaint Laumeister Stern filed Tuesday in New York County Supreme Court.
The whereabouts of the negatives were unknown until 2023, when Laumeister Stern was contacted by an attorney representing a woman identified only as ‘Jane Doe.’ Doe said Stern had given the negatives to her late husband as collateral for a loan that was never repaid, the complaint goes on.
‘Bert Stern’s fear and suspicion seemed to be confirmed as he periodically received anonymous messages from an individual in Las Vegas taunting him over the ‘missing’ photo negatives,’ the complaint states. ‘As such, Bert Stern was legitimately scared and intimidated by the circumstances surrounding the theft of the photo negatives.’
However, it contends that the purported loan never existed, and that Laumeister Stern cut off contact with Doe’s lawyer following his offer to return the negatives in exchange for a $3m payment — a proposal the complaint describes as ‘a shake down [sic] as well as possibly related to the taunting messages Bert Stern had received.’
Doe subsequently consigned the negatives to Dallas-based Heritage Auctions … Attorney Richard Aulisi, a retired New York State Supreme Court judge who is representing Doe, said on Wednesday that the allegations in Laumeister Stern’s complaint may sound tantalising but are not at all accurate. ‘My client intends to fight this,’ Aulisi told The Independent. ‘There is no legal or factual basis for this action.’
In an email, a spokesperson for Heritage Auctions said, ‘The consigner warranted good title in these items and we have no reason to believe otherwise.’ Although Heritage declined to answer any follow-up questions, a source with knowledge of the situation told The Independent that Stern gave the negatives to Doe’s deceased husband in the late 1970s or early 1980s.”
A printed catalogue for Marilyn Monroe: The Last Sitting is available from Heritage Auctions at a reduced price of $25 plus shipping. You can also view it here.
In other news, a hardback book accompanying Bert Stern: Original Madman, the current exhibition at Pasci Contemporary Gallery in Milan, is now available for purchase here. Over 88 pages, the book focuses mainly on the ‘Last Sitting’ but also features some of Stern’s other celebrity subjects.
And finally, the artist Natalie Krick – whose series of giant vinyl banners reimagining Stern’s photography via cut-up contact sheets went on display in Seattle this year – has created a limited edition book, like a vampire with a rose in my teeth, with a title lifted from Bert’s infamous essay accompanying The Last Sitting.
The Marilyn Report 