Lewd Marilyn Monroe short film to be auctioned off

(AFP)

A pornographic short film of Marilyn Monroe will be auctioned off in August at an international film collectors' convention for a starting price of $500,000 (350,000 Euros), event promoter Mikel Barsa said Wednesday.

The six minute black and white film, which dates from 1946, shows the American actress, then known as Norma Jean Baker, and an unknown male.

Barsa said the film will go on the auction block on August 7 at 7:00 pm (2200 GMT) at the Borges Cultural Center in Buenos Aires.

"Knowing how many Marilyn fanatics are out there, the film could easily sell for a million dollars," he told a news conference.

The film had been in the possession of a Spanish film collector, but after his death his family decided to let Barsa sell the print.

Barsa sold the only other known copy of the film to a private collector a few years earlier, adding that he already had offers for this copy from Norway and Japan.

The short film first became known to the public in 1997, prompting a debate about the identity of the woman. Eventually, the American Film Institute certified that if it was not Marilyn Monroe, it was "her twin sister."

Another 16 millimeter film, this one in black and white but with no sound and lasting 15 minutes, shows Monroe practicing fellatio on an unidentified man. It sold to a private collector in 2008 for $1.5 million (1.1 million Euros).

The mythic white dress worn by Monroe in the 1955 film, "The Seven Year Itch," which floats upward after catching a burst of air from a passing train, sold for $4.6 million (3.2 million Euros) in June in Beverly Hills, shattering earlier estimates.