Marilyn Monroe's Jewellery: What She Owned, What She Borrowed, and What Came Up at Auction

In October 1999, Christie's New York held a two-day sale called The Personal Property of Marilyn Monroe. It included her cars, her furniture, her cookbooks, a notebook of phone numbers, the white dress from The Seven Year Itch, and one hundred and forty-two lots of jewellery. The sale's pre-auction estimate ran to roughly $3 million. The actual total ran to $13.4 million. A single strand of cultured pearls, bought from Mikimoto in Tokyo by Joe DiMaggio in 1954 for the equivalent of about $700, sold to a Japanese buyer for $211,500.

What was unusual about the auction wasn't that Marilyn Monroe's possessions went for many multiples of their estimates. That was expected. What was unusual was what the sale actually revealed, lot by lot, about what Marilyn Monroe had owned. And it was less than people thought.

For nearly forty years after her death in 1962, the public image of Marilyn Monroe's jewellery had been built on photographs from films, premieres, and publicity shoots in which she was wearing pieces she didn't own. The 24-carat fancy yellow Moon of Baroda diamond she wore for the press tour of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was loaned by a Detroit jeweller. The diamonds she sang to in "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" were studio property. Most of the spectacular cocktail jewellery she was photographed wearing on red carpets came from Cartier or Harry Winston or Bonwit Teller, on loan for the evening, returned the next morning. Marilyn Monroe wore extraordinary jewellery. Marilyn Monroe, for the most part, owned modest jewellery.

What I find interesting about this, and what I think the Marilyn Monroe jewellery story actually turns on, is that the small handful of pieces she did own were the ones that mattered. They were chosen for her by men who loved her, kept by her through three marriages, and present in the apartment on Fifth Helena Drive on the night she died. The Christie's catalogue from 1999 reads, in places, less like an auction inventory and more like the contents of a life.

These are the pieces.

The Mikimoto pearls

In February 1954, two weeks after marrying Joe DiMaggio at San Francisco City Hall, Marilyn flew to Japan with him for what was meant to be a honeymoon. It became a working trip almost immediately. DiMaggio had been invited to give baseball clinics in Tokyo, and Marilyn, then twenty-seven and at the apex of her fame, was asked to detour to Korea to entertain American troops. She agreed. She would later describe the trip as the first time she'd understood the scale of her own celebrity.

At some point during the Tokyo stay, DiMaggio walked into the Mikimoto store on Ginza, then as now the most famous pearl retailer in the world, and bought a strand of forty-four cultured Akoya pearls. The strand was modest by Mikimoto standards (the pearls were 5.5 to 7.5 millimetres, the clasp was 14-carat white gold with a small diamond) and cost roughly $700. By Mikimoto's records, it was a standard piece, not a particular commission.

She wore it for the rest of her life. There are photographs of her wearing the strand on the flight back from Japan, at a party at Frank Sinatra's house in 1958, at an awards lunch in 1960. The pearls appear in informal snapshots from the house on Fifth Helena Drive in the last months. When the strand came up at Christie's in 1999, the catalogue identified it as Lot 56. The estimate was $7,000 to $9,000. The hammer price, plus buyer's premium, was $211,500. It was bought by Tomonori Kobayashi, the then-CEO of Mikimoto, and is now displayed in the company's flagship store in Ginza, in the same room where DiMaggio bought it.

I think this lot tells you most of what you need to know about the auction. The pearls were modest, the marriage was disastrous (it lasted nine months), and the strand survived everything that came afterwards because she wore it constantly. It was not, by any measure, an important piece of jewellery. It was the most important piece of jewellery she owned.

The eternity band

When Marilyn married DiMaggio at San Francisco City Hall on 14 January 1954, the ring he placed on her finger was a platinum eternity band set with baguette-cut diamonds running its full circumference. The ring had been made in New York. DiMaggio had chosen it himself.

The marriage ended that October. By most accounts, Marilyn returned the eternity band to DiMaggio at the divorce. By some accounts, she kept it and lost it in a hotel room some years later. The truth is probably the former, because the ring did not appear at the 1999 Christie's sale, and the auction was substantially exhaustive. Almost everything she owned at the moment of her death was in the catalogue.

DiMaggio continued to send roses to her grave for twenty years after she died. He never remarried. He never spoke publicly about her in interviews. When asked, in his eighties, whether he had any of her things, he is reported to have said only that he had a few photographs. Whether the eternity band was among the few remaining objects is not, as far as I can find, recorded. It would not have looked, in any case, like a particularly important ring. It would have looked like a normal platinum eternity band, slightly worn. That was, more or less, the point.

The Moon of Baroda

The most famous piece of jewellery Marilyn Monroe is associated with, the 24.04-carat fancy yellow Moon of Baroda diamond, was never hers. She wore it once, in 1953, on a single afternoon, for promotional photographs and the press premiere of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The piece was loaned by Meyer Rosenbaum, a Detroit jeweller who had acquired the stone from the dispersal of a European collection in the late 1940s.

The stone has its own substantial history, most of which is European rather than American. Pear-shaped, mounted on a silk cord, it was reportedly mined in the Golconda fields of India in the sixteenth century, presented as a diplomatic gift by the Gaekwad of Baroda to the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa of Austria in the 1700s, returned to India in the nineteenth century, then sold to a European trader in the 1920s. By the time it reached Rosenbaum in Detroit, it had been worn by an empress and at least two maharanis, and it was about to be worn by Marilyn Monroe.

The press photographs from the 1953 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes tour are the reason most people associate Marilyn with the stone. The visual logic is so persuasive (the diamond on her hand, her hand on a glass of champagne, the cinematic blonde and the cinematic stone) that the piece has been described as hers in countless places where careful research wasn't done. It wasn't hers. Rosenbaum got it back the next day.

The Moon of Baroda has changed hands twice since. It was sold at auction in 1990 for $297,000, and again at Christie's Hong Kong in November 2018 for HK$10.5 million (around $1.3 million). The 2018 lot description carried, prominently, the line Famously worn by Marilyn Monroe. The estimate had been $500,000 to $750,000.

What I find compelling about the Moon of Baroda story is the asymmetry it reveals. A jeweller in Detroit, looking to publicise a stone he'd acquired cheaply at a postwar European auction, loaned it for an afternoon to a starlet who happened to be promoting a film with a memorable song about diamonds. Seventy-five years later, the afternoon is worth a million dollars to the stone every time it changes hands. The stone has been to two empresses, several maharanis, and a Hong Kong auction room. The afternoon with Marilyn is what's left when the rest is forgotten.

The studio jewellery

Most of the rest of the jewellery that Marilyn Monroe is photographed wearing in her professional life came from Twentieth Century-Fox's wardrobe department, from Cartier on West 57th Street, or from Harry Winston, whose New York flagship was running a borrowed-for-the-night programme by the mid-1950s that became the template for almost every Oscar-night jewellery loan since.

The diamonds in the "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" number were paste. The ruby and diamond brooch in the publicity shots for How to Marry a Millionaire was studio property. The platinum cuff she wore to the 1956 Photoplay Awards was on loan from Cartier and returned that night. The chandelier earrings in the famous "white dress" shot from The Seven Year Itch were studio property. By the time of Some Like It Hot in 1959, Marilyn had developed a working relationship with Harry Winston's New York office: she would borrow specific pieces for premieres, return them, occasionally request the same piece back for a later event. None of these pieces have ever been hers.

This is more or less standard for the high era of Hollywood. The studios and the jewellers had a transactional relationship that suited everyone (the star looked spectacular, the studio paid no insurance, the jeweller got photographed in Photoplay) and it has continued, in modified form, into the present awards-night economy. The difference with Marilyn was the sheer number of these images that have survived, the cultural prominence of the photographs, and the resulting impression, which lasted nearly forty years, that she owned much of what she wore.

She didn't.

What she actually owned

The 1999 Christie's catalogue lists, with photographs and descriptions, every piece of jewellery in her estate at the time of her death. The list is short. A handful of cocktail rings (most semi-precious, one with a small diamond cluster). The Mikimoto strand. A set of pearl drop earrings (also Mikimoto, also from the 1954 Japan trip). A gold cigarette case engraved with her initials. Several pairs of costume earrings worn at home. A medal-style pendant given to her by Lee Strasberg of the Actors Studio. A gold heart-shaped locket containing a photograph of her mother, Gladys.

The most expensive jewellery lot in the 1999 sale, after the Mikimoto strand, was a set of diamond earrings she had bought for herself in 1958, from a jeweller in Beverly Hills, for around $1,500. They sold at Christie's for $90,500. The most poignant lot, in my reading, was the heart-shaped locket with the photograph of Gladys, who had been institutionalised most of Marilyn's life and outlived her by twenty-two years. The locket sold for $11,500 to an anonymous buyer. The photograph of Gladys was, at the time of sale, still inside it.

Reading the Christie's catalogue in 1999, the cultural commentary at the time tended to focus on the disparity between the jewellery she owned and the jewellery the public remembered her wearing. I think it was the wrong story. The right story was that she had kept these pieces, the Mikimoto strand and the locket and the modest cocktail rings, through the apartments and the marriages and the divorces and the films and the breakdowns and the comebacks. The pieces had been with her constantly. They were not important pieces of jewellery. They were pieces that were important to her.

The afterlife

After the 1999 sale, the bulk of the major lots were bought by a single collector. Anna Strasberg, the widow of Lee Strasberg, had inherited Marilyn's personal effects in 1962 and had kept them privately for thirty-seven years before consigning them to Christie's. The 1999 buyer was David Gainsborough Roberts, a British property developer and Monroe collector. The pearls went to Mikimoto. The locket went to an anonymous bidder. Most of the rest went into Roberts's collection.

Roberts displayed the items for several years in his Jersey home, then in a 2007 touring exhibition that visited the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and other venues. He died in 2019. His Monroe collection was dispersed in subsequent sales. The Mikimoto strand remains at the Mikimoto store in Ginza, in the room where it was bought. The Moon of Baroda is in private hands in Hong Kong. Most of the other pieces are uncertain to trace.

What survives, in the end, is the Christie's catalogue itself. It is a complete inventory, with photographs, of what Marilyn Monroe had owned at the moment of her death. Anyone curious about what she actually wore, as opposed to what she was famously photographed in, can read it. It is a small book. The jewellery section is fewer than thirty pages. Most of the lots are modest. None of them is the Moon of Baroda.

Frequently asked questions

How much did Marilyn Monroe's jewellery sell for at auction?

The total Christie's 1999 sale (which included furniture, clothing, books, and other personal property as well as jewellery) totalled $13.4 million against a pre-sale estimate of around $3 million. The jewellery lots alone totalled approximately $1.2 million, with the Mikimoto pearl strand achieving $211,500 as the single highest jewellery lot.

Did Marilyn Monroe own the Moon of Baroda diamond?

No. The 24.04-carat fancy yellow Moon of Baroda diamond was loaned to her for a single afternoon in 1953 by Meyer Rosenbaum, a Detroit jeweller, for promotional photographs and the premiere of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Marilyn returned it the following day. The stone has been sold at auction twice since, most recently at Christie's Hong Kong in 2018 for approximately $1.3 million.

What was Marilyn Monroe's most famous piece of jewellery?

The pieces most photographed with her, including the Moon of Baroda diamond and the diamonds from the "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" number, were not hers. Of the pieces she actually owned, the Mikimoto pearl strand bought by Joe DiMaggio during their 1954 honeymoon in Japan is the most famous. She wore it constantly from 1954 until her death in 1962.

Who inherited Marilyn Monroe's jewellery?

Marilyn Monroe's personal effects, including her jewellery, were left to her acting teacher Lee Strasberg and his wife Anna Strasberg. Anna Strasberg kept the collection privately for thirty-seven years before consigning the major items to Christie's New York in October 1999. Most of the 1999 jewellery lots were purchased by David Gainsborough Roberts, a British collector, who displayed the items publicly and later dispersed them.

Where is the Mikimoto pearl necklace now?

The strand is held by Mikimoto and is displayed at the company's flagship store on Ginza in Tokyo, in the same room where Joe DiMaggio purchased it in February 1954. It has been displayed there since 2000.

Did Marilyn Monroe own any real diamonds?

Yes, but modestly. Her personal collection included several pairs of small diamond earrings, one with a stone of approximately one carat, and a handful of diamond-and-semi-precious cocktail rings. None of her personal diamonds were of investment quality. The diamonds she is most associated with through film and publicity work were either studio property or jeweller loans.

Why did most of the jewellery she wore in films belong to the studios?

In the studio era of Hollywood (roughly 1930 to 1960), wardrobe jewellery was generally either paste or borrowed from contemporary jewellers in exchange for credit. The studios maintained large in-house wardrobe collections, and additional fine pieces were loaned by retailers like Cartier and Harry Winston in exchange for publicity. The practice continues in modified form today, particularly at major awards ceremonies.