Marilyn Monroe’s final photos are at the center of a legal battle after a well-known auction house posted them on the internet — while making nearly $1 million off the allegedly stolen negatives.
Bert Stern’s famous three-day photo session with Monroe — done six weeks before she was found dead on Aug. 4, 1962 — became known as “The Last Sitting” and included sultry images of the star lounging on a bed with nothing but a white sheet and a glass of wine.
Officially licensed prints from the shoot are still worth thousands of dollars to the survivors of Stern, who died in June 2013 at age 83.
But the family business was allegedly wrecked by Heritage Auctions last year, when it blasted hundreds of photos onto the internet while promoting an auction of the negatives from the photo shoot.
Widow Shannah Stern has accused the Dallas-based auctioneer of using its 274-page catalog for the sale, which included 1,363 of the 2,571 copyrighted photos, to practically recreate the photo session.
Heritage’s “purpose was to supplant the original works in their entirety, including by selling and distributing the Infringing catalog to over 2,000 Heritage clients and making high resolution images of the photographs available on the Heritage website,” Stern said in a Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit.
Heritage sold off the negatives on Dec. 8 to an undisclosed buyer for more than $900,000, despite Shannah Stern’s caution that the company did not have the estate’s authorization, she alleged in her copyright infringement case.
Stern also sued Heritage in December in Manhattan Supreme Court over the sale of the negatives. The case is ongoing.
More than 1,000 people bid on the negatives, some of which are now being peddled on eBay, the widow claimed in her recent court papers.
Bert Stern turned his photos of the 36-year-old Hollywood legend into two books, 1982’s “The Last Sitting,” and “The Complete Last Sitting,” published in January 2000.
His widow wants $150,000 in damages for “at least” 1,527 images, and a court order forcing Heritage to reveal the buyers and profits from selling its catalog.
The auction house denied wrongdoing.
“We respect the copyright interests of artists and did so in this case,” the company said in a statement.
“Film negatives, similarly to prints created from those negatives and other artworks, are commonly bought and sold without transferring the original creator’s copyrights in the works. Such resale does not constitute copyright infringement nor does the necessary description, advertisement and display of such works when offering them for sale.”
Read the full article here
