The iconic white �subway dress� seen billowing under Marilyn Monroe as she stood on a subway vent in the 1955 movie �The Seven Year Itch� �has sold at a Profiles in History auction in Los Angeles last Saturday for $4.6 million (or $5,520,000, with added fees) shattering pre-auction estimates of between one and two million dollars.

Signed by the American designer William Travilla, the pleated ivory dress was part of Marilyn Monroe’s most breathtaking movie moment, solidifying Monroe’s enduring image as one of the most celebrated 20th Century sex symbol. The sexy white halterneck outfit has been voted the most iconic movie dress of all time. The image of Monroe in the white dress standing above a subway grating blowing her skirt has been described as one of the iconic images of the entire 20th century.

The entire auction, part of a collection of Hollywood memorabilia held by actress Debbie Reynolds, was valued at $22.8 million with some 700 pieces going under the hammer, according to Nancy Seltzer, a spokeswoman for auction house Profiles in History.

The breezy white halter �subway�dress was the highest value feature of the auction and the star of Reynolds� collection. Some of the other pieces are just as famously known, including Judy Garland’s costume from The Wizard of Oz, the dresses Monroe wore in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and �The River of No Return�, Audrey Hepburn’s Ascot dress from My Fair Lady, costumes from classic Hollywood staples “Gone With the Wind,” “The Sound of Music,” “Cleopatra,” and “Ben-Hur,” and Barbara Streisand’s gold sleeveless gown from Hello, Dolly � which is thought to be the most expensive dress ever made for a film.

79-year-old Reynolds, a singer, dancer and actress whose greatest role came in “Singin’ in the Rain,” began collecting Hollywood memorabilia in the 1970s when MGM Studios liquidated its assets. Her immense collection includes over 3,500 costumes, 20,000 photographs and hundreds of props and other film artifacts.

Reynolds has expressed her sadness over the need to break up her collection, as multiple attempts to showcase it in its entirety have fallen through.

“To keep them stored another 50 years didn’t make sense,” Reynolds told Reuters. “I hope in the end they all find happy homes, that they will be shown, and that they might even land in museums.”

After the death of Marilyn Monroe in 1962, Travilla kept the dress locked up with many of the costumes he had made over the years for the actress to the point that for years there was talk of a “Lost Collection”.

Only after his own death in 1990, were the clothes put on display by Bill Sarris, a colleague of Travilla. It joined the private collection of Hollywood memorabilia owned by Debbie Reynolds at the Hollywood Motion Picture Museum.

Who do you reckon will make it to the top 50 women on the Web? In this age of Google, the more you are searched, the higher you get on the list.

Lady Gaga (real name: Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) thus reigns supreme as the most popular woman on the web according to COED magazine.

This list has been compiled taking data and statistics from Google search-engine results, and COED Magazine has ranked them thanks to this data and statiustics.

At number two is Ke$ha (real name: Kesha Rose Sebert). The iconic Madonna (birth name: Louise Veronica Ciccone), age 52, remains a powerhouse in current pop culture at number three.

Every girl�s-crush Justin Bieber is placed at number seven on the list though he is not a woman. I guess his inclusion is part of COED�s sense of humor.

The COED Top 50 list of Most Popular Women on the Web:

1 Lady Gaga

2 Ke$ha

3 Madonna

4 Beyonce

5 Rihanna

6 Britney Spears

7 Justin Bieber

8 Miley Cyrus

9 Paris Hilton

10 Avril Lavigne

11 Shakira

12 Taylor Swift

13 Angelina Jolie

14 Oprah Winfrey

15 Megan Cox

16 Jennifer Lopez

17 Mariah Carey

18 Sarah Palin

19 Jessica Simpson

20 Lindsay Lohan

21 Michelle Obama

22 Katy Perry

23 Kim Kardashian

24 Sandra Bullock

25 Christina Aguilera

26 Jessica Alba

27 Fergie

28 Pamela Anderson

29 Betty White

30 Kristen Stewart

31 Ciara

32 Hillary Clinton

33 Jennifer Aniston

34 Demi Moore

35 Heidi Montag

36 Marilyn Monroe

37 Hilary Duff

38 Ashley Tisdale

39 Katy Price

40 Vanessa Hudgens

41 Amy Winehouse

42 Carrie Underwood

43 Kelly Clarkson

44 Sarah Jessica Parker

45 Lily Allen

46: Adriana Lima

47: Tina Fey

48 Carmen Electra

49: Scarlett Johansson

50: Eva Longoria

Hugh Hefner, the twice-divorced founder of pioneering men�s mag Playboy, is taking the marriage plunge once again.

He announced his engagement to Playboy Playmate December 2009 Crystal Harris in a Christmas Day posting on Twitter.

Don�t accuse Hefner of marrying somebody half his age. He is not. He is actually marrying someone young enough to be his great-granddaughter. Hef is 84. Harris is 24. Oh boy! This is really a case of a super-old cow eating super tender grass.

Read the rest of this entry…

A Salvador Dali watercolor, titled Playmate after Rokeby Venus, of a nude woman reclining against rose-colored cloth was among 125 artworks Playboy magazine offered at Christie’s auction � dubbed The Year of the Rabbit: The Playboy Collection � in New York on Wednesday.

The work was also commissioned and created in 1966. For decades, the artwork hung in Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s bedroom.

It was one of 11 works chosen for “The Playmate as Fine Art” pictorial for the magazine’s January 1967 Playmate review issue that asked artists to create Playmate-inspired art.

The nude sold for US$266,500, above its pre-sale estimate of US$100,000 to US$150,000, to an anonymous buyer.

Another top draw was an iconic, sexually charged oil of a scarlet-lipstick mouth entitled �Mouth No. 8� by pop artist Tom Wesselmann. The 1966 work had been estimated to bring $2 million to $3 million but was sold to an anonymous buyer for $1,874,500, just shy of the low end of its pre-sale estimate.

“I chose to do a huge cutout mouth in order to isolate and make more intense the one body part that has a high degree of both sexual and expressive connotations � but then painted a mouth with low degrees of each quality, to keep it, like the [Playboy] Playmate, somewhat glossy yet inviting,” the artist told the magazine in 1967.

Aaron Baker, curator of the Playboy Art Collection, called it a great example of Wesselmann’s work “from his best period.”

The sale included 80 photographs, more than a dozen contemporary works and 24 cartoons. Nearly all the items in the sale have appeared in the Playboy publication, a cultural icon that helped liberate American sexual mores.

In an interview last month from his Los Angeles mansion, founder and editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner said the magazine that has entertained, titillated and informed with its commissioned art has blurred the lines between fine and popular art.

“Playboy helped to change the very direction of commercial art – breaking down the wall between fine art and commercial art,” the 84-year-old Hefner said.

“Before Playboy and a few other places, commercial art was essentially Norman Rockwell, very realistic.And we introduced into commercial illustration the whole notion of everything from abstract to semiabstract to stuff that you found on a gallery wall.”

The sale represented only a fraction of Playboy’s historic art.

Baker said the Chicago-based Playboy houses an archive of 5,000 contemporary artworks and more than 20 million photographs in a storage building in the city.

Wednesday’s sale marked the second time Christie’s has sold items from Playboy. On its 50th anniversary in 2003, Christie’s offered memorabilia and ephemera from Playboy’s collection.

Not all the material focused on the erogenous.

A white plaster cast by George Segal of a pregnant woman seated in a folding chair that was part of the “Playmate of Fine Art” pictorial sold for $170,500.

Other lots included dozens of cartoons, contemporary works and approximately 80 photographs depicting stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Bo Derek, Elle MacPherson, Brigitte Bardot, Stephanie Seymour and Cindy Crawford. Almost all the lots have appeared in Playboy over the years.

Overall, the sale took in about $2.9 million. Prices included the buyers premium.

I came across this news on Reuters yesterday. It is another proof that you can sell almost anything on Ebay.

An American widow sold her husband’s burial crypt directly on top of film legend Marilyn Monroe’s final resting place for $4.6 Million dollars.

Elsie Poncher sold the crypt in Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery in Los Angeles to pay off the $1.6 million mortgage on her Beverley Hills home.� The cemetery is home to legends such as Dean Martin, James Coburn, Ray Orbison, Truman Capote and the recent arrival Farrah Fawcett. Elsie’s husband Richard Poncher bought the crypt from baseball star Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn’s ex-husband, as the famous couple was divorcing in 1954.

Monroe died at age 36 in 1962 and Richard Poncher died in 1986 at the age of 81. Richard’s body was positioned to allow him to look “face down” on Monroe. Elsie plans to move her husband’s remains over one spot to a crypt that had been intended as her own final resting place as she wants to be cremated when she dies.

Elsie listed the crypt on eBay at a starting bid of $500,000 and the listing description stated ” Here is a once in a lifetime and into eternity opportunity to spend your eternal days directly above Marilyn Monroe”.� It attracted 21 bids when it closed on 24th August 2009 with a winning bid of $4.6 million.�� The winning bid came from an unidentified person from Japan but this person pulled out of the deal. Elsie’s attorney, David Camel, is currently going through the bids to find a qualified buyer.

Isn’t that incredible?