Tag: Marilyn Merlot

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The Great Quake of ’08!

Yesterday morning at around 11:42am a fairly large earthquake hit the LA area. I received a text message from a friend, who forgot that I am currently on vacation in Hawaii, asking if I felt the quake. My first thought was ” OMG! My Marilyn Merlot bottle!” LOL The bottle of Marilyn wine that my dad gave me a few weeks back is on display on the top shelf of the baker’s rack in my kitchen (not a smart place to put it being that I live in California!) and I was super worried that the bottle did not survive the big quake. 🙁 One of our good friends rushed right over to our place to check on Marilyn and I am happy to report that she remained intact during the earthquake!!! Our friend said she was literally teetering on the shelf in my kitchen and one more aftershock would have done her in, so thank goodness she was rescued in time. 🙂 That Marilyn – she takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’!

In other Marilyn news, while walking around Downtown Kona the other morning, we stumbled upon Hula Bean Coffee Shop. I was immediately drawn to the place – not only because I am addicted to coffee, but because the logo on the sign out front was somewhat familiar. At first I couldn’t place the image, but then I realized, the logo is almost exactly like one of the famous nude photographs of Marilyn that were taken by photographer Tom Kelley in 1949.

I, of course, had to go inside to sample some of the Hula Bean Coffee and to ask the owner about their logo. He said the logo was actually based on the pin-up girls from the World War II era. To me, though, it looks like an exact replication of Marilyn’s pose. There are many conflicting stories of how the Marilyn Monroe nude photographs came to be, but what I was able to discern from the various different accounts is that in 1949 Marilyn was down and out on her luck and her money. An already established model with the Blue Book Modeling Agency, Marilyn was scheduled to pose for some calendar photographs with photographer Tom Kelley. He offered her $50 to pose nude during the session, and the broke starlet, whose car had actually just been impounded, agreed. The pictures sat in a drawer for a few years until they were released in 1952, causing quite a scandal as by that time Marilyn was a bonafide moviestar. Marilyn, who always loved any sort of media attention, immediately fessed up to posing for the photographs and when a reporter asked if she had anything on during the shoot, she replied “The radio, of course.” 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: Hula Bean Coffee is located at 75-5719 Alii Drive in Kona, Hawaii. I highly recommend stalking it as it serves up some great coffee. I am a Starbucks girl myself and can rarely find a coffee house that compares, but Hula Bean was really good!

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Marilyn Merlot

I am still very much in the throws of my Marilyn Monroe obsession, and it is definitely true what they say – the more you think about something, the more you attract that thing to you. My father happened to be going through his wine collection last week and discovered a bottle of “Marilyn Merlot” wine that he had purchased almost a decade ago. No one in my family has ever been a big Marilyn fan, so it was a fairly random purchase. My dad says he came across the wine one day many years ago in a grocery store and he grabbed it thinking it might one day be a collector’s item. Due to my recent obsession, he of course gave the bottle to me and I quickly put it on display in my kitchen. Flash forward to this past weekend, when my parents were vacationing in Monterey, California. They made a visit to their favorite wine shop there, Terranova Fine Wines, and lo and behold, sitting on a shelf in the store was a vast collection of the Marilyn Wines, including the one my father had just given me. It’s present day worth? $225!! Guess he was right about it one day being a collector’s item. 🙂

Bob, the owner of Terranova, filled my dad in on the history of the Marilyn Wines. Apparently, in 1985 two Napa area brothers gained exclusive rights to Marilyn’s name and certain images of the starlet and decided to use them on bottles of wine. Beginning in ’85, the brothers released a new vintage of Marilyn Merlot each year on her birthday – June 1 – each with a different photograph of the screen legend. The wine was not extremely popular until its fourth vintage when it caught the attention of a Japanese businessman who formed a partnership with the brothers. They agreed that 60 percent of each year’s vintage would be sold exclusively in Japan, as Marilyn is still a huge icon there. They also agreed to only release a limited quantity of each year’s wine, so as to prevent overflooding of the market. Today the wines are hugely successful, with some vintages costing upwards of thousands of dollars. The brothers have branched out and now also produce Marilyn Cabernet, Norma Jeane Wines, the Velvet Collection, and Blonde de Noirs, their latest creation of sparkling wines. All royalties from the sales of the wines go to Anna Strasberg, the wife of Marilyn’s beloved acting coach, Lee Strasberg, to whom Marilyn left everything in her will. Anna allocates the money to the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and the Anna Freud Fondation in London.

That same day that my parents learned the history of the Marilyn Wines, my boyfriend and I were actually stalking the Beverly Hills home Marilyn shared for a few short months with husband Joe DiMaggio. Monroe and DiMaggio rented the house in April of 1954 while Marilyn was in town filming There’s No Business Like Show Business. The home, which is most often referred to as Joe and Marilyn’s honeymoon home, is a very cute, but nondescript Elizabethan style house. It is amazing to me to that she lived in such a normal home at the height of her career.

On October 6, 1954 a distraught Marilyn held a press conference on the front lawn of this home announcing her divorce from Joe DiMaggio. The press were out in force that day, camped out in Marilyn’s front yard, to document the event. Marilyn vacated the home shortly thereafter. You can see a slide-show of the press conference that took place that day here. Although it is a very long slide-show, there are quite a few photographs where you can see the home in the background.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Marilyn and Joe’s honeymoon home is located at 508 North Palm Drive in Beverly Hills, just off Santa Monica Boulevard. Terranova Fine Wines is located at 315 Calle Principal in Monterey, California. If you visit the store, be sure to ask for Bob, who has a vast knowledge of Marilyn Monroe and the Marilyn Wines. You can also visit the Terranova website here.