5 Early Marilyn Monroe Photos Fail to Sell at Auction

World famous photographs of Marilyn Monroe went on the auction block in Hollywood on Thursday but failed to attract the minimum bid.

The early nudes will remain in the hands of Ventura photographer Tom Kelley, whose father shot them in 1949 and helped rocket Monroe to stardom.

Five bidders offered to pay a total of $840,000 for the five images, but that did not meet an undisclosed minimum price set for the photos, said Gary Saal, Kelley’s Northern California agent.

The bidding was held simultaneously at an auction organized by Butterfields in Hollywood and online by its parent company, EBay.

Saal said that he will discuss options with his client and that the photographs might be offered at auction again soon.

“Tom is obviously disappointed that they didn’t sell at what we thought was a right price, but on the other hand they are still his,” Saal said. “We’re going to have to reevaluate, because we still have some of the most famous photographs of Marilyn Monroe ever taken.”

The auction did not feature the most celebrated image to come out of the session, a glamour shot of the starlet lounging against a blood-red curtain and used as the centerfold in Playboy’s inaugural issue.

However, Kelley did put on the block the five other famous photos from the session, as well as all copyrights, trademarks and Monroe’s signed release to the pictures.

Kelley said before the auction that he expected the final sale price to exceed $1 million, because those so-called intellectual property rights would have allowed the buyer to use Monroe’s name and likeness for trade and advertising purposes.

Saal and Butterfields’ spokeswoman Catherine Williamson said it’s possible that potential buyers didn’t fully understand just what they would be getting by purchasing all rights to the photos.

“Obviously, we wish these would have sold, but this is an area that is new and different for us,” Williamson said. “We knew it was risky, but we decided to do it anyway.”