Marilyn Monroe Red Sequin Dress (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)

Two little girls from Little Rock

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a 1953 musical comedy directed by Howard Hawks and written by Charles Lederer, adapted from the 1949 Broadway musical, which was in turn based on Anita Loos's 1925 novel. Fox paid $250,000 for the film rights while the stage show, starring Carol Channing, was in its second year on Broadway. The studio first imagined it as a vehicle for Betty Grable and Ginger Rogers, but after Monroe's success in Niagara earlier in 1953 it decided it had a more potent, and cheaper, star.

The film opens before its title sequence: showgirls Lorelei Lee (Monroe) and Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell) burst through a curtain in identical red gowns to sing "Two Little Girls from Little Rock." Hawks is credited as sole director, but Russell and assistant choreographer Gwen Verdon said the musical numbers were staged by choreographer Jack Cole, and Hawks later agreed that he did not direct the production numbers.

The pay gap behind those matching dresses was enormous. Monroe was on her usual contract salary of $500 a week, about $18,000 for the picture, while Russell, then the bigger name, earned $200,000.

The film opened on July 1, 1953, in Atlantic City and on July 15 in New York (one chronology gives July 18 as the release date). It earned $5.3 million worldwide and was the seventh-highest-grossing film of the year.

Travilla, the man who dressed Marilyn

William Travilla was born in Los Angeles on March 22, 1920. As a teenager he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute and sold costume sketches to burlesque dancers; after being classified 4F for flat feet, he studied fashion design at Woodbury University and graduated in 1941.

He began as a ghost sketcher at Western Costume, then designed at Jack's of Hollywood before moving into studio work. He won an Academy Award in 1949 for Adventures of Don Juan and later worked mainly at Twentieth Century-Fox. By 1952 he was dressing Monroe, starting with Don't Bother to Knock and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and he went on to design costumes for her in eight films.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes gave Travilla more than one famous dress. Its gold lame "sunburst" gown, barely seen in the finished film, caused a sensation when Monroe wore it to the Photoplay Awards in January 1953. Two years later he designed the pleated ivory halter dress from The Seven Year Itch, the subway-grate dress that also passed through Debbie Reynolds's collection.

Travilla was nominated again for How to Marry a Millionaire, There's No Business Like Show Business and The Stripper. He died of lung cancer in Los Angeles on November 2, 1990.

Monroe's breakout year

Monroe starred in three films released in 1953, and together they made her a major sex symbol and one of Hollywood's most bankable performers. Niagara, released in January, set her look. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes fixed her screen persona as the "dumb blonde," though she had the line "I can be smart when it's important, but most men don't like it" added for her character.

To promote the film, Monroe and Russell pressed their handprints and footprints into wet cement outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in June 1953. In November came How to Marry a Millionaire, the second film released in CinemaScope and her biggest box-office success to that point. In December, Hugh Hefner put her on the cover and centerfold of the first issue of Playboy, which she did not consent to.

Outside the studio, 1953 was the year Dwight D. Eisenhower took office, the Korean War armistice was signed, and the first Chevrolet Corvette was assembled in Flint, Michigan.

From a studio sale to a record

Debbie Reynolds began collecting film costumes and props at the landmark 1970 MGM auction. A year later, according to the 2011 sale description, she bought the Monroe wardrobe directly from Twentieth Century-Fox in a pre-sale held before the studio's own 1971 auction. This gown came to her that way.

Reynolds hoped to put the collection in a museum, first at her Las Vegas hotel and later near the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. A planned move to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, collapsed when the developer went bankrupt, and the museum filed for Chapter 11 in June 2009. The collection, more than 3,500 costumes plus photographs, posters and props, was sold in a series of auctions starting in June 2011.

On June 18, 2011, at a 12-hour sale of nearly 600 lots in Beverly Hills, the red gown and its feathered headdress sold far above their $200,000 to $300,000 estimate. Reports of the price differ: one put the hammer price at $1.2 million, contemporary reports gave $1.47 million, and a later tally of the most expensive film costumes lists $1.44 million including commission. The same evening, the Seven Year Itch dress brought $4.6 million.

The gown returned to auction in Beverly Hills on November 1, 2019, after a month on view in London. The specialist handling the sale said only one other person had owned it since Reynolds. With the headdress it sold for $250,000, well above its $60,000 to $80,000 estimate but far below the 2011 figure. Russell's matching gown and headdress, offered in the same sale, brought $43,750.

The trick in the sequins

The gown is heavy silk crepe covered in thousands of hand-sewn sequins that spiral in every direction, starting small at the top and finishing in large single sequins around the hem so they catch the light from every angle. The matching headdress is the same red silk with sequins and red and white feathers.

Look closely and some sequins are not red at all but a light beige or putty color. The specialist who sold it in 2019 explained that onscreen those pale sequins pick up the light differently and give the dress a shimmering, "super sparkle" effect, a trick meant for a costume that would only be seen on film.

Monroe's and Russell's gowns were made to match, so provenance matters. Monroe's is the Lorelei Lee gown from the Reynolds collection and was offered with its headdress. In 2019 the two gowns appeared in the same sale, which the specialist called likely the first time they had been together since filming. In 2019 the dress and headdress were described as in good condition but showing their age, with a few feathers missing from the headdress since Monroe wore it.

Timeline

1. Mar 22, 1920

   William Travilla is born in Los Angeles.

2. 1949

   Travilla wins an Academy Award for Adventures of Don Juan.

3. Jan 1953

   Niagara is released, and Monroe wears Travilla's gold lame Gentlemen Prefer Blondes gown to the Photoplay Awards.

4. Jun 1953

   Monroe and Jane Russell leave their handprints and footprints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre to promote the film.

5. Jul 1, 1953

   Gentlemen Prefer Blondes opens in Atlantic City, with the red gowns in its opening number.

6. Jul 15, 1953

   The film opens in New York.

7. 1970

   Debbie Reynolds begins collecting at the MGM auction.

8. 1971

   Reynolds buys Fox's Monroe wardrobe, including this gown, in a pre-sale before the studio's auction.

9. Nov 2, 1990

   Travilla dies in Los Angeles.

10. Jun 2009

    Reynolds's museum files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

11. Jun 18, 2011

    The gown and headdress sell at auction in Beverly Hills, reported at $1.47 million.

12. Dec 28, 2016

    Debbie Reynolds dies.

13. Sep 18, 2019

    The gown goes on view in London for about a month before its next sale.

14. Nov 1, 2019

    The gown and headdress sell at auction in Beverly Hills for $250,000; Russell's matching gown brings $43,750.

The world in 1953

• Jan 19, 1953

  About 68% of U.S. television sets are tuned to I Love Lucy as Lucy gives birth.

• Jan 20, 1953

  Dwight D. Eisenhower is sworn in as president.

• Jun 30, 1953

  The first Chevrolet Corvette is assembled in Flint, Michigan.

• Jul 27, 1953

  The Korean War armistice is signed.

• Aug 18, 1953

  The second Kinsey Report, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, is issued.

• Sep 12, 1953

  Senator John F. Kennedy marries Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island.

• Oct 19, 1953

  Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is published.

• Dec 1953

  The first issue of Playboy appears, with Monroe on the cover.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Marilyn Monroe Red Sequin Dress (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) is number 56 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (55 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Some of the gown's sequins are beige, not red, so they catch the light differently onscreen and make the dress shimmer.
• Monroe earned about $18,000 for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; her co-star Jane Russell earned $200,000.
• The role of Lorelei Lee was first meant for Betty Grable, Fox's top blonde star of the 1940s.
• Jane Russell's identical red gown sold for $43,750 in 2019, in the same sale where Monroe's brought $250,000.
• Director Howard Hawks admitted he did not stage the film's musical numbers; choreographer Jack Cole did.
• Debbie Reynolds bought Fox's Monroe wardrobe before the studio's 1971 auction, saving costumes the studio was about to sell off.