Putting a price on iconic moments that defined true stars

If you genuinely have never seen Billy Wilder’s sparky 1955 flick, you’ll doubtless have seen the iconic image of iconic star Marilyn Monroe in the iconic sequence in which she stands over a subway grate on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan and giggles as a passing train blasts up her dress.

And you’ll have heard that Monroe’s iconic ivory dress has just sold for a jaw-dropping $4.6m to a mystery buyer. Okay, that’s enough of the iconic.

My point is that some stars just never die – even when they’re dead. Some personalities burn themselves into the retina, such is their brightness. Marilyn Monroe was one. Humphrey Bogart was another. Then there’s Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s lead-footed, heavy-lidded monster. And Charlie Chaplin as the bowler-hatted, cane-twirling little tramp.

It’s changing now, but when I was a kid I knew who all these people were despite having never seen one of their films. We all knew Karloff was Frankenstein. Bogie, in his trenchcoat in the rain, was the epitome of detached cool. Monroe was the sexualised innocent. Chaplin’s mischievous vagrant reached out to the child in all of us.

It was as much to do with the photography as it was the star. Geniuses like Karsh, or Cecil Beaton, knew how to light personalities like Bogart, Spencer Tracy, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Errol Flynn. Later it all became a bit perfunctory.

But I’m getting off the point. Marilyn Monroe has endured as an icon because of expertly choreographed moments like the subway scene in The Seven Year Itch. It is a perfectly preserved instant in time – a brilliant piece of cinematic art by one of the key practitioners of the age. Everything is in sync. “Isn’t it delicious?” she says. Yes, it is. It was and it remains so.

So who has got the best part of five million bucks to spend on a 56-year-old frock?

Well, we may never know. But there are enough big spenders out there; others spent $3.7m on Audrey Hepburn’s Ascot dress from My Fair Lady, $1.2m on Monroe’s red sequinned number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and $910,000 on Judy Garland’s test outfit from The Wizard of Oz.

This is the stuff of legend. Film buffs are everywhere, but most content themselves with posters and pictures, an autograph or two or a snatched moment to press the flesh of their heroes and heroines.

Others, clearly, go much, much further. Owning something that once belonged to, or defined, a mythic movie or music goddess is akin to preserving their allure in aspic.

It could be Ursula Andress’s white bikini from Dr No, or Kylie Minogue’s gold hot pants if your memory doesn’t stretch back as far as the statuesque Ms Andress.

Marilyn Monroe is long gone. She came to a sad end. So did Judy Garland. Beautiful Audrey Hepburn retired from movies and faded away. It was the movies’ loss.

Yet if you have enough money you can buy a degree of closeness to them. What are you buying? Instant nostalgia. Iconography comes at a price. But I reckon it’s probably worth it.