Daily Express

GOODBYE NORMA JEANE’S HOME?

The modest LA hacienda where Marilyn Monroe was found dead may be facing the bulldozers after its new owners went to court to tear it down, in the latest twist of an increasing­ly bitter battle over a slice of Hollywood heritage...

SIX decades after her tragic death at the age of 36, legendary screen siren Marilyn Monroe still fascinates and captivates. Her pillowy red lips, pert nose and signature beauty spot on her left cheek, framed by a lustrous crown of honeyed blonde curls, peer from billboards, commercial­s and a seemingly endless supply of biographie­s, television dramas and movies.

Fans and tour buses make daily pilgrimage­s to the hacienda-style home in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood where she died of a drug overdose in August, 1962.

The star of Some Like It Hot, The Seven Year Itch and How To Marry A Millionair­e is as much a part of the fabric of Tinseltown as the Hollywood sign and the HollywoodW­alk of Fame, where her hand-prints and footprints – surprising­ly small – still attract thousands of tourists each day.

Yet the home where Monroe died is now at the centre of a toxic feud over its proposed demolition, raising difficult questions over the actress’s cultural significan­ce, the importance of Hollywood history and whether a celebrity’s past should affect a home’s future.

“It is the only place in the world that grounds Marilyn’s myth into history, and the US and world’s history,” says art historian Jacques Le Roux, echoing words by legions of Monroe’s fans, while making his plea for preserving the home to the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission.

“It is the only physical reminder that remains of the life and death of an extraordin­ary human being. Marilyn has become part of our – the US and the world’s – collective unconsciou­s. Destroying the only place she owned while alive, and where her transition into a sacred figure started, would be a shame and irreparabl­e error, an ignorant act against culture and history.”

Los Angeles councilwom­an Traci Park, spearheadi­ng the move to save Monroe’s villa, says: “This home is more than just a brick and mortar building. It is a symbol of her journey, and our identity as Angelenos. This home must be preserved as a crucial piece of Hollywood’s and the city of Los Angeles’ history, culture and legacy.”

Yet it is ironic that those who wish to preserve the home have most likely never seen it except in archival photograph­s.

TOURISTS who roll up to the gate cannot see the villa’s white walls and red-tiled roof, hidden behind high garden walls.They cannot wonder at the ornate tile positioned on the front porch that ominously reads “Cursum Perficio” – which is Latin for: “The journey ends here.”

They cannot wander the home, or stand in the bedroom where she took her final breath and ponder the controvers­y that still surrounds her demise.

Monroe’s friends, historians and conspiracy theorists have for six decades debated how the troubled actress met her end, depressed by her advancing age and her third broken marriage, tormented by insecuriti­es born from abandonmen­t by her father, and from her years with foster parents and in an orphanage after her mentally ill mother

was institutio­nalised. The actress, born Norma Jeane Mortenson, bought the house at the end of a cul-de-sac on Fifth Helena Drive for $75,000 only six months before her death: the first home she had ever owned and the setting for some of her most private personal dramas.

Monroe was still reeling from being given the cold shoulder by two secret lovers: President John F Kennedy and his brother, US Attorney General Robert F Kennedy.

The villa where she died held all her secrets. If its walls could talk, the home would be getting a movie and book deal rather than facing demolition.

Her death was ruled a “probable suicide”, but questions endure about how Monroe’s boudoir secrets could have been exploited by the Mafia, the FBI and even the Soviet Union.

George Cukor, who had directed two of her movies, said Monroe’s death was “a nasty business. Her worst rejection. Power and money. In the end she was too innocent”. Historians have suggested that the Kennedys, or their henchmen, deliberate­ly murdered Monroe to prevent her spilling their embarrassi­ng secrets. Hollywood’s most infamous private detective, Fred Otash, claimed that he had recordings of the president making love with Monroe and secretly taped an angry confrontat­ion between Robert Kennedy, the president’s brother-inlaw actor Peter Lawford, and Monroe, just hours before she died.

Otash also claimed that within minutes of her death being discovered, he was ordered by Lawford to “do anything to remove anything incriminat­ing” about either of the Kennedy brothers from her home.

JFK was also having an illicit affair with Judith Exner, who happened to be the mistress of Chicago Mafia don Sam Giancana – an ally of crooked Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa, both scheming to entrap the Kennedys. Historians have pondered whether they played a role in Monroe’s death, in the hope it would embarrass the president. Others are convinced that she was killed by the CIA, because she was about to go public with what she knew about CIA-led attempts to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. But if Monroe’s last home holds any secrets, they mean little to its current owners: billionair­e heiress Brinah Milstein and her husband, reality television producer Roy Bank.

They have lived next door for the past eight years and last summer bought Monroe’s home for £6.7million, planning to raze it and expand their existing home across the two properties.

The City of Los Angeles granted the couple a demolition permit last September, sparking an immediate outcry from Monroe fans, history lovers and conservati­onists who complained that the actress’s home is an important piece of Hollywood history.

COUNCILWOM­AN Park pushed for the house to be granted status as a historic monument. The city’s Cultural Heritage Commission endorsed the designatio­n in January, meaning it will go to a full vote of the Los Angeles council this summer, temporaril­y halting the demolition.

The battle over Monroe’s villa raises the debate over homes being given historic status because of their past inhabitant­s.

The birthplace of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson’s family home are museums in the US, while tourists in Britain can visit the homes of the Brontë sisters or poet John

Keats, as well as the childhood residences of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

But should their famous former residents automatica­lly make their homes culturally significan­t?

On Monday, Milstein and Bank sued the city of Los Angeles, demanding the right to demolish Monroe’s former home, claiming it is far from historic or culturally significan­t.

The four-bedroom 2,900-sq-ft house, built in 1929, has had 14 owners since Monroe’s death, and has been substantia­lly remodelled over the past 61 years, they argue.

It had only two bedrooms when the screen legend was resident. Monroe only lived there for six months before her death and has left no visible mark on the home.

“There is not a single piece of the house that includes any physical evidence that Ms Monroe ever spent a day at the house, not a piece of furniture – not a paint chip, not a carpet, nothing,” states the lawsuit.

In recent years, Monroe’s home has been empty and bare. “We have watched it go unmaintain­ed and unkept,” says Milstein. “It is not a historic cultural monument.”

Yet Monroe’s adoring fans might disagree, continuing to flock to the quiet, leafy street, seeking answers to the mystery surroundin­g her death. Whether the house ultimately survives or is demolished, those secrets will remain buried with Marilyn Monroe.

‘Not a single piece of the house includes any physical evidence Ms Monroe ever spent a day there’