Physicians notes indicating that Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe underwent plastic surgery, as well as a set of her X-rays, plan to rake in between $15,000 and $30,000 at a Beverly Hills, Calif. auction on Thursday, Reuters reports.
"Nobody really thought about Marilyn Monroe having plastic surgery. It was always speculation - did she or didn't she?" Martin Nolan, executive director of Julien's Auctions where the items will be sold, told Reuters. "They thought she was such a natural beauty, they didn't want to believe."
Plastic surgeon Michael Gurdin wrote the notes on Monroe's cosmetic procedures, which reference a cartilage implant on her chin in 1950 that he noted had begun to dissolve. Gurdin gave the gifts, which include six X-rays from June 7, 1962, to the unnamed seller.
Monroe's most successful films included the 1959 comedy "Some Like It Hot," 1953's "How to Marry a Millionaire" and 1955's "The Seven Year Itch," all of which were created after she underwent plastic surgery.
"Also at that time, going back to the 1950s, people didn't go for plastic surgery procedures," Nolan said. "This is very, very new."
The 1962 X-rays were taken by Gurdin after Monroe fell late one night, depicting her "frontal facial bones, a composite right and left X-ray of the sides of her nasal bones and dental X-rays of the roof of her mouth."
The day after the X-rays were taken, Monroe was fired by studio 20th Century Fox from the unfinished film "Something's Got to Give" for her many absences. The radiologist indicated on the X-rays that no damage was to be found from the fall, though more a recent analysis has identified a minute fracture on her nose.
To protect her identity, doctors used Monroe's alias "Joan Newman", her height listed as 5 feet, 6 inches and her weight as 115 lb.
The physicians notes match up with claims made in a self-published memoir by Norman Leaf, Gurdin's medical partner, who in 2010, wrote that Monroe underwent cosmetic surgery on her chin in 1950 and a slight rhinoplasty on the tip of her nose.
Two months after the X-rays were taken, Monroe died at the age of 36 from an overdose on barbituates that was ruled as a probable suicide.
Credit: Reuters/Julien's Auctions/Handout via Reuters
