Warhol's 'Marilyn, 1967' - uploaded to Flickr by 'oddsock'

’15 Minutes Eternal’, an exhibition devoted to the work of Andy Warhol – including a 1967 screenprint of Marilyn – will tour Asia over the next 27 months, reports Art Daily. Opening in Singapore, the retrospective will also visit Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo.

Aspen, Colorado – most famous as a luxury ski resort – is also home to a fan-made Marilyn shrine, reports the Snowmass Sun:

 ”The Marilyn Monroe Shrine on Aspen Mountain was the first — and for a long time the only — shrine dedicated to a woman. Up until around March 2008 it had been somewhat neglected. There was only one photo of her there, and the shrine was in danger of disappearing. However, around that time, Curtis Broek, of Urbandale, Iowa, took it upon himself to resurrect and restore the shrine.

He enlisted some of his friends to help him update the shrine, and now it has many famous photos of Monroe, including ones from Playboy magazine and a couple of Andy Warhols, and it also includes a large clock with an image of Monroe on its face, a Monroe thermometer, two poems she wrote, a Monroe quote dealing with face-lifts, some Monroe banners and a bouquet of red and white roses with pearls.

One of the laminated photos there shows Monroe playing golf. One of the first items put up in the shrine was a large bra. That bra is long gone, but since then, others have been put up, and recently a lacy red bra was attached to a tree. The shrine was updated again around February 2010.”

US teen drama Gossip Girl  featured in its recent 100th episode a dream sequence in which Serena (Blake Lively) imagines herself as Marilyn, singing ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’.

Megan Hilty, star of Smash, spoke to the New York Observer about the challenge of playing a wannabe Monroe:

‘We asked, in the season that has seen Michelle Williams get nominated for an Oscar for playing Marilyn then trotting that character out on magazine covers, if it was possible to distinguish oneself playing Monroe. “Well, she is certainly having a moment!,” said Ms. Hilty. “My whole career so far is taking things other people have established and trying to make them my own!” (Ms. Hilty took over a lead role in Wicked and played the Dolly Parton role in the musical adaptation of 9 to 5.) “I can always hide behind Ivy Lynn. I’m playing a character who’s playing Marilyn Monroe. That makes it a little less daunting. But I’m constantly doing research and—all of her biographies are wildly different and all cover different parts of her life. No one biography has her whole story! There’s always something else to learn and infuse into the character.”’

And according to Broadway.com, Hilty will take on another MM-inspired role when she plays Lorelei Lee in a new stage production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, due to open in new York this spring.

Smash, NBC’s new series about the staging a Broadway musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe, will premiere on NBC on Monday, February 6 (to follow later in the UK’s subscription-only satellite channel, Sky Atlantic.)

A pilot episode is now freely available on iTunes:

“A loving paean to Broadway, and to the enduring legacy of Monroe.” – Daily Beast

“If Smash wanted to be loved more than admired, it’d be an instant camp classic. Alas, it will probably just be a hit instead.” – New York Observer

‘“Without a Marilyn we’re nothing!” a songwriter exclaims in the middle of the talent search.

Sorry, guys, but even with two Marilyns, you’re still nothing…Both women are generic belters, with none of the certain something that made Marilyn so memorable.’ – San Antonio Current

My Week With Marilyn was screened at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre, followed by a Q & A with stars Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh. Full report by ‘misskelleen’ at LiveJournal’s 1962  fan forum.

In his 1995 book, The Prince, the Showgirl and Me, the late Colin Clark claimed that Mr Zec was a total stranger who had just jumped out of the bushes when this picture was taken.

Of course, this was untrue and Mr Zec took legal action, ensuring that all future editions of the book should be amended. However, last week, a further apology was posted on the Harper Collins website after they omitted to correct the recent reissue.

Journalist Hugh Muir noted the blunder in yesterday’s Guardian. In his book, Clark referred to Zec as a ‘creep’, and supposedly wrote in his diary, ‘D. Zec was telling everyone who would listen that MM was a personal friend of his.’

Considering that many Monroe fans now believe that Clark’s own account of their ‘relationship’ is wildly exaggerated, it’s somewhat ironic that he saw fit to question someone else’s claim to have known her.

An attack of the green-eyed monster, perhaps?

We’re now giving away five copies of Dressing Marilyn: How a Hollywood Icon Was Styled by William Travilla. Simply follow us @queensofvintage and @carltonbookspr on Twitter and tweet us your favourite Monroe film using #dressingmm as a hashtag. The fiver winners will be picked at random at midday on Thursday, 2 February 2012. There is no cash alternative. Good luck!

Over at Bad Reputation, a light-hearted look at women, glasses and the movies of MM:

“In The Seven Year Itch, the protagonist imagines his secretary throwing off her (tailored) jacket, throwing out her hair and losing the glasses, to reveal ‘I’m a woman! I’m flesh and blood!’

The weakness myopia is seen to connote in men is generally considered more attractive than the dowdiness it suggests in women – ‘You don’t think they make me look like an old maid?’ worries Marilyn-Pola, through her Dame Ednas, in How to Marry a Millionaire - and millionaire-seeking once again in Some Like It Hot, Marilyn hopes ‘her’ man will have glasses. ‘Men who wear glasses are so much more gentle, sweet and helpless’, she says. Indeed, there’s even a sense here that a man with glasses becomes less frightening or powerful, less brashly ‘male’. The only disadvantage for Marilyn is that when she kisses the one she finds, his glasses steam up.

But perhaps she has something when, in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes she asserts to her (bespectacled) groom’s disapproving father – who sees right through her gold-digging tricks – ‘Don’t you know that a man being rich is like a woman being pretty? You wouldn’t marry a woman just because she’s pretty but, my goodness, doesn’t it help?!’.  If a woman’s face is her fortune, best not to cover it with glasses, eh?

But actually, I think the time has come to take that as exactly the nonsense it is. Seeing is sexy. Wear your glasses with pride.”