Forced to preserve a monument': how the fate of Marilyn Monroe's LA home became a legal saga

"Marilyn Monroe is said to have had more than 50 addresses in her lifetime, but only once, in the final months before she died from a drug overdose at the age of 36, did she have a house she could call fully her own. The Hollywood star, burned out by the failure of her marriage to the playwright Arthur Miller and by health problems that prompted a year-long hiatus from acting, bought herself a quintessential hacienda-style Spanish bungalow with a pool at the foot of the Santa Monica mountains in February 1962."

"At the time, it was almost unheard of for a single woman to own property. For that reason, cultural historians and preservationists associate the house with the same trail-blazing spirit that spurred Monroe to help break the studio system and establish her independence from the movie industry and from the men who used and abused her on her way up. She did not spend long at the house, in the affluent Brentwood neighborhood in west Los Angeles."

"But, the preservationists say, that does not diminish its symbolic importance or its central place in the many conspiracy theories about her death there in August 1962. She talked about this house and was photographed in this house. It was where she was embarking on a new chapter of her independence, and it tells an important, poignant story about her, says Adrian Scott Fine, the president and chief executive of the nonprofit LA Conservancy."

"The current owners of the property beg to differ, however. Brinah Milstein, a real estate heiress, and Roy Bank, her reality TV producer husband, paid $8.35m for it in 2023 with the intent of demolishing the original house and incorporating the land into the adjoining half-acre estate where they've lived for a decade."

Marilyn Monroe had more than 50 addresses but owned a fully her own house only once, in the final months before her death at age 36. In February 1962 she bought a Spanish bungalow with a pool at the foot of the Santa Monica mountains in Brentwood, west Los Angeles. At the time, single women owning property was uncommon, so historians and preservationists link the home to her independence from the studio system and from abusive men in the industry. She spent little time there and decorated it minimally with items bought on trips to Mexico. The house became central to conspiracy theories about her death in August 1962. Current owners bought the property in 2023 and planned to demolish the original house to expand their estate.

Read at www.theguardian.com