Who Shot Marilyn? : A Book of Movie-Star Pics Has Photographers Fighting Over Who Took Which Image

Two books, one published, the other poised, are stirring old adulations and fresh contention around Marilyn Monroe.

Hollywood’s photographic elders accuse the first of pirating several dozen of their pictures. And a Monroe estate official says an inscription and her signature in the book appear forged.

The second is a prodigal boxed volume that may never reach publication. Planning has slowed amid lawsuits alleging breached and conflicting contracts, a widow wronged, canceled checks--and more forgeries.

“Bernard of Hollywood’s Marilyn” was published last month as a 122-page elegy to her moment, an album of nine dozen photographs credited to the late Bruno Bernard.

But several Hollywood portraitists--including those who photographed, even aided the evolution of Norma Jeane Dougherty to Marilyn Monroe--say many images in the book are theirs, published without permission, fee or credit.

“Between 50% and 60% of the pictures in the book are not Bruno Bernard’s,” says Sid Avery, 74, photo-biographer of Bogart, Dean, Gable and founder of the Motion Picture and Television Photo Archive in West Los Angeles.

He blames Susan Bernard of Hancock Park, Bernard’s daughter and a former soap actress who compiled the $29.95 book published by St. Martin’s Press: “Obviously she didn’t have enough of her father’s images, so she borrowed from 10 or 15 other photographers to flesh it out.”

Last month, New York photographer Sam Shaw, 81, filed a $4-million suit against Bernard and St. Martin’s.

Shaw alleges the book credits nine of his photographs to Bernard, including a signal image: Marilyn Monroe, skirt blown high by subway breezes, taken during filming of “The Seven Year Itch.”

Susan Bernard denies it all: “Basically, this book is a tribute to my dad and his integrity, his artistry and his legendary work. I stand behind my father’s work. I stand behind my book.”

Says a spokesperson for St. Martin’s: “We stand behind Susan Bernard.”

And Lincoln Mint, a small group of Century City entrepreneurs, says it is standing behind “Monroe by Norma Jeane,” its planned prayer to the deity.

Its book is a contrived collectible, a rich, hard-cover collection of 118 pictures taken by celebrated Hollywood form photographer Andre de Dienes, who died in 1985. Sample albums are leather covered, with vellum separation pages and silk end sheets. They will be sold in burl wood boxes with a gold-plated title plaque and hinges. Cost: $600.

And well worth it, says Sean O’Keefe, Lincoln Mint president. He believes the elegance of De Dienes’ photographs and the immortal Monroe mystique--plus the extravagance of the album--will surely create “something quite unique that can’t be replicated.”

O’Keefe, 25, claims exclusive rights to the De Dienes’ pictures. He says most have never been seen because they spent 20 years buried in the photographer’s Sunset Boulevard back yard. A few images, he says, have received only “limited exposure in exhibitions.”

Not really, says Shirley de Dienes, who married De Dienes on his deathbed.

She knows from her earlier business dealings that most pictures planned for the book are available as loosely limited editions through Edward Weston Galleries, an auction and retail outlet in Northridge for affordable art.

De Dienes says the supposedly rare photographs also were exhibited last year in Las Vegas and sold by the dozens at a 1992 London auction. Some were published in 1986 in her late husband’s book, “Marilyn, Mon Amour,” and three years later appeared in a book published in Germany.

And the widow, now living in Palmdale, says the contract that helped transfer control of her husband’s photographs to Lincoln Mint was prepared by former business associates who forged her signature.

O’Keefe says, “This kind of crap” is “just coming to light” and he wants to “wait and see” before commenting on the validity of the signature.

He says he has “just been apprised” of the broad exposure given the images. But he doesn’t think it will affect production because “they (exhibitions and auctions) haven’t been the whole collection of Andre de Dienes.”

Lincoln Mint, according to O’Keefe, has spent $1 million--including an initial $750,000 payment on a $3-million contract for rights to De Dienes’ prints--on developing the book.

*

Richard Miller, 81 and retired to Malibu, Joe Jasgur, 74, of Palms, and other Monroe photographers claim Susan Bernard obtained their work for her book by covert borrowing from collectors, galleries and stock houses.

Bernard approached the John Kobal Collection in New York a year ago. Also Globe Photos of Los Angeles and New York, Avery’s Motion Picture and Television Photo Archive and others.

Some were pitched by telephone, others by letter from Suzanne Sommer Productions, claiming to be “in the process of producing a documentary and a pictorial book on the life of Norma Jeane-Marilyn.”

Bernard acknowledges sending the letters and says Sommer is her family name from a father born Bruno Bernard Sommer. Yet it’s also close to a more famous name, one quite familiar to agencies.

“I thought it (the telephone request) was from Suzanne Somers the actress,” remembers Bob Cozenga of the Kobal Collection. “In fact, the woman on the phone said it was the actress.”

Cozenga sent “a couple hundred” Monroe pictures to Suzanne Sommer. Avery shipped five dozen. Globe added its selection.

It took a year and threats of legal action before the pictures were returned to Globe, Kobal and Avery.

By this time, “Bernard of Hollywood’s Marilyn” was ready for sale in Europe and a St. Martin’s Press publicity drive was stirring flattering stories in Mirabella, Newsweek and Los Angeles magazine.

*

Sam Shaw wasn’t flattered.

In 1953, 20th Century Fox hired Shaw to direct photo publicity for “The Seven Year Itch.” One sequence was a photo opportunist’s dream: Monroe, standing over a subway grating, skirt billowing in the subterranean breeze.

The scene was shot more than three dozen times, on location in New York and again in Los Angeles at the 20th Century lot. Shaw says he knew Bernard well, did not see him at either session, and the photographer certainly was not among studio and news cameramen invited by Shaw to the shoots.

But Susan Bernard’s book carries 28 photographs taken during filming of “The Seven Year Itch”--16 of the skirt sequence.

Shaw says nine skirt photos are his. One became a poster for the movie and has appeared in five Monroe books. That photo credit has always been: Sam Shaw.

Two others are vivid in Shaw’s mind because they show frontal underpants with the skirt above Monroe’s waist. He says he rejected both photos as “too vulgar” for studio publicity purposes.

Shaw has no idea how Susan Bernard obtained the unretouched culls. Nor does he recall Bruno Bernard claiming these particular pictures. So he is suing the daughter and her publisher in U.S. District Court, New York, for copyright infringement and unfair competition. Or as Shaw says: “For using my pictures with a different (photographer’s) name and making money on it.”

Bernard, however, says that her father had indeed claimed the skirt shots, and that the panty picture was included in a 1984 exhibition of his work at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

That exhibition has been broken up. But a spokeswoman said Academy files on the movie contain an 8-by-10 print of the skirt shot in question. Stamped on the back: Bernard of Hollywood.

There appears to be less confusion surrounding other pictures in the Bernard book. In interviews with the Times, photographers and archivists question the origins of at least 79 of its more than 130 Monroe pictures.

* One photo in the book is a montage showing model Norma Jeane Dougherty on the covers of Salute, Parade, Laff, Family Circle, Personal Romances, Pageant and other magazines. Jasgur recalls making the photograph in 1946 at the Hollywood offices of Blue Book Models.

* Another photo shows Monroe dressed in an Idaho potato sack. It previously was published in “Marilyn Monroe and the Camera,” “Marilyn, a Hollywood Life” and other volumes with credit to the late Earl Theisen.

* Monroe in a lace negligee. Taken on the set of “Clash By Night,” it previously appeared in “Film Star Portraits of the Fifties” and four other Monroe books. Credit: Ernest Bachrach, a 25-year photographer for RKO Radio Pictures.

* Monroe in a more modest skirt-blowing pose. Since 1954, this photo has appeared in seven books, all crediting Sam Shaw.

* Monroe in most of her movies, from “Niagara” to “The Misfits.” They are movie stills identified by prior publication as the work of Frank Powolny, John Florea, Jimmy Mitchell, Bert Reisfeld and other studio photographers.

* And, Monroe posing in 1954 alongside Bruno Bernard. The inscription reads: “Remember Bernie, everything started with you . . . Marilyn Monroe.”

The writing and signature don’t appear to match the hand of Marilyn Monroe as it appears on several samples examined by the Times--her correspondence, checks, personal diary, autographed photographs, model releases, even divorce papers. And Roger Richman, a Beverly Hills licensing agent with the Monroe estate, says it appears the writing and signature “is not that of Marilyn Monroe.”

Susan Bernard avoids comment on the signature beyond saying: “I can show you what my father wrote (in his journal about) the photograph and all that. But I’m getting into all these things that I shouldn’t get into. That is . . . getting into the whole situation of the (Sam Shaw) case and I’m not sure I should be talking about this in this kind of an interview.”

She vehemently denies pirating photographs, and claims she contacted stock houses because she believed they were selling her father’s images without credit or payment. And, she adds, she recognized some of her father’s photos among those received from agencies.

Why didn’t she approach the stock houses as Susan Bernard? “Because . . . they will lie to me and say they don’t have my father’s photographs. . . . And then I see them marketing it after. But not in my father’s name.”

So she believes other photographers have been selling her father’s work as their own?

“Yes. My dad would go crazy about that,” she says. “He would say: ‘My God, that’s mine.’ And one of his last statements were to me: ‘Please get these negatives from these agencies and please recoup them for me.’ ”

*

Monroe has rested since 1962 in a marble mausoleum at Westwood Memorial Cemetery. The remains of Andre de Dienes are nearby.

“In his niche, close to hers, I placed a rose for him, a rose for her, and one for me and his two rings,” says widow Shirley de Dienes, 52. “He loved her from the day he met her in 1945 until the day he died.”

That was in April, 1985, four weeks after De Dienes, 70 and suffering terminal cancer, married Shirley, a final friend of three months.

Shirley de Dienes inherited a home on Sunset Plaza Drive, several thousand photographs of Monroe, a mandate to protect her husband’s legacy--but no instructions how to market his candid portraits, unique, mystical superimpositions and multiple images.

In 1991, she met art dealer Weston, no relation to the famed photographer. She signed what she says was “an idiotic, one-sided contract” authorizing Weston to produce limited editions of 399 photographs of Monroe by De Dienes, stage exhibitions and “secure any licensing and usage agreements.”

Profits, she says, would be split 50-50.

Despite a year of warehouse sales, auctions and exhibitions in the United States and Europe, De Dienes says her take was a little more than $3,400. Weston, she adds, wrote additional checks totaling $3,001 but stopped payment after a disagreement with her.

(Weston did not return telephone messages seeking a response to De Dienes’ claims.)

De Dienes says the canceled checks breached her contract with Weston, but she took no legal action to dissolve the agreement. In April, 1992, she signed L. A. licensing agent Robert Michaelson as her adviser.

He soon introduced De Dienes to Ed Litwak, a friend and fellow licensing agent.

De Dienes eventually gave Litwak and Michaelson 176 Monroe images--and a fascinating tale. The photographs were from negatives her husband--in anger and depression over Monroe’s death--had buried in his back yard. He exhumed them in 1980 and spent the final years of his life crafting them into an assembly of ethereal, multiple images.

Hence: The Lost Collection.

Statements divide from this point. Michaelson and Litwak say they formed the Norma Jeane & Marilyn Collection Inc. to better market the collection. A new contract was drawn up, they claim, and De Dienes signed on May 26, 1992.

This contract started the commemorative book rolling with Lincoln Mint in January, wire service reports of the $600 photo album and claims of $3 million paid for rights to the pictures.

“But the signature on that contract is not mine,” De Dienes says. “It is a forgery.”

*

She has a sworn statement from a handwriting expert that the signature “was written in the hand of another.”

Litwak and Michaelson, however, have their own expert saying her signature is genuine. Their claim appears in a suit they have filed against De Dienes.

At Lincoln Mint--no relation to Franklin or Jefferson mints--expressions are bemused with President O’Keefe indicating his company has become an innocent victim of contract difficulties among others. He acknowledges meeting with De Dienes, subsequently dealing with Litwak and Michaelson, and researching the chain of title to the photographs with “no idea there was any problem.”

O’Keefe suspects De Dienes is the root of the problem: “As soon as some press comes out that there’s a bunch of money on the table, then here comes Shirley crying wolf.”

Meanwhile, he says, Lincoln Mint is going ahead with plans to sell distribution rights to the book. He predicts world sales of 100,000 copies--to be followed by a line of Norma Jeane cosmetics and clothing.

Attorney Tim Gorry, representing Michaelson and Litwak but working from the offices of Lincoln Mint, says his clients’ position is that they have a “valid agreement with Mrs. De Dienes.”

As proof, Gorry showed a Xerox copy of an April 27, 1993, check for $10,000. It was signed by Litwak for, and written to “Ms. Shirley de Dienes . . . Re Payment For Contract In Place on Marilyn Monroe Photos Taken by Andre de Dienes.”

Gorry later acknowledged the check had not been cashed, and Litwak couldn’t find the original.

De Dienes says she never got it.

Meanwhile, attorney Martin Bressler, now representing Shirley de Dienes, in addition to photographer Shaw, has reached an agreement with dealer Weston. De Dienes has been released from contractual obligations to Weston, who keeps photographic rights to certain Monroe images for five years.

And the Norma Jeane & Marilyn Collection has sought an injunction against De Dienes, alleging 10 counts of breach of contract, fraud and interference. In addition, the suit seeks to prevent De Dienes from “entering into any agreement, assignment, license or other type of conveyance of rights regarding the photos taken by Andre de Dienes” or concealing or destroying other photographs in her possession.

A preliminary hearing has been set for Monday.

De Dienes says she is angry at her own naivete, but is much wiser from her misfortunes: “I’ve tried hard to keep his collection together. But I’ve failed. I let it get out of my hands. Oh, God.”

Then she apologized for her tears.

Rand Brenner, a former marketing specialist with Warner Bros. and now a licensing agent working with De Dienes, believes Lincoln Mint is overestimating the market for a $600 picture book.

“There’s a lot of Marilyn Monroe books out there,” Brenner says. “The bottom line: Publishing doesn’t generate millions of dollars.

“But a good, $9.95 T-shirt will do a half million units through K mart, Target and Walgreen.”