Marilyn Monroe’s Mortician Auctioned Off Her Hair and Breast Enhancers for $50K, Shared Inappropriate Details About Preparing Her Body
Marilyn Monroe is one of the great casualties of Hollywood. A larger-than-life personality and true celebrity, getting there was a rough road for the star. Used and abused by numerous people throughout her tragically short life, many saw her more as an object to boost their own profile than as a person.
Worst of all, this attitude persisted even after her death, with the people responsible for laying her to rest making sure to objectify her one last time.
Monroe’s body was handled by famous Hollywood morticians
It was barely an open secret that Monroe struggled with mental health problems and addiction throughout her life. On August 5, 1962, these problems came to a head as those close to the actor discovered her dead in her home from a drug overdose.
After she was found in her bed, her body was handed over to the people at Abbott & Hast Mortuary. The company came to be the funeral home for the stars throughout the middle of the 20th century, transporting numerous big names and handling their funerals. Monroe was no exception.
The people who handled her funeral revealed disturbing details about her body and auctioned off parts of it
Monroe’s funeral was held at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, attended by a select group of those closest to her. It was a sad day for all of them, as well as her fans around the world. For opportunists, though, it was quite the ghoulish opportunity.
These opportunists included both Allan Abbott and Ron Hast themselves, who made the most out of their brief time with the star’s corpse. After retiring, Abbott decided to write a book about his experiences as a mortician in Hollywood, publishing Pardon My Hearse in 2015.
As recapped in a Daily Mail article, he had a lot to say about Monroe. According to him, her face was covered in purple blotches, and her legs weren’t shaved, which made her look “like a very average, aging woman who had not been taking very good care of herself.”
The cherry on top came not long after the publication, though. As Artnet reported at the time, Abbott revealed he had something of Monroe’s to auction off. People selling the star’s possessions was nothing new, with many hefty sales for things ranging from photos to pianos, not to mention the disaster that was Kim Kardashian’s time in one of her famous dresses.
This, however, was different, as the auction in question was for pieces of Monroe’s hair and breast enhancers. Abbott himself volunteered the information that he’d stolen them out of the trash when everyone else left the room, saving them all this time until he could put them up for sale for $50,000.
The morticians worked with many other stars over the years
As stated before, Abbott & Hast worked with a ton of stars throughout the years, though Monroe is seemingly the only one they saw fit to sell pieces of. Abbott told of many of the people who had used his services in his book. Clark Gable, Ernie Kovacs, and Natalie Wood are all some of the big names whose funerals were arranged by the team.
In addition to the funeral services, Abbott & Hast also rented out their limos for various occasions, including to movie sets. Most notably, President John F. Kennedy used the fleet while in LA for the Democratic Convention and allegedly almost got stiffed by the end.
