The Story of Marilyn Monroe's White Piano

In addition to her bombshell beauty and her acting prowess, Marilyn Monroe was renowned for her unique, breathy singing voice that can be heard in a total of ten musical films. Undoubtedly, Diamond's Are a Girl's Best Friend from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and I Wanna Be Loved by You from Some Like It Hot (1959) are her best-known numbers.

Marilyn Monroe had a naturally good singing voice, but this was only realised later in life. She spent her childhood mainly with foster families, and Marilyn, or Norma Jeane as she was then called, developed a tendency to stutter. Acting and singing lessons later helped her overcome her shyness. However, Monroe never could completely shake off her fear of falling back into stuttering, which was one reason for her constant nervousness during filming, which accompanied her until her early death.

See also: Marilyn Monroe and the Camera: A Love Story

"Her voice was so soft and soothing that grown men fainted at the sound of it," Monroe's third husband, writer Arthur Miller, once confessed. Yet at the beginning of Monroe's career, there were critics who didn't want to believe that she actually had such a good voice. In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, it was even assumed that Monroe only moved her lips while a professional singer sang the songs.

Marilyn Monroe was born as Norma Jeane Baker in 1926 to Gladys Pearl Baker, who worked as a film editor in Hollywood, and an unidentified father. Since Baker didn't have time to take care of her child, she gave Norma Jeane to a foster family. In the fall of 1933, she took the then seven-year-old girl back to live with her. They lived together in one room in a house that Baker had bought furnished and mostly rented out. 

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The special highlight of the house was a white baby grand piano. Baker paid for her daughter's piano lessons, but the mother-daughter idyll soon came to an end when Baker was taken to a clinic in February 1934 due to psychological problems. Norma Jeane first lived in an orphanage and then with other foster families until she was married to the neighbours' son at the age of just sixteen.

In 1946, at the age of twenty, she changed her name of Marilyn Monroe when she signed a contract with 20th Century Fox. However, she would never forget the brief time she shared with her mother, and the white grand piano held special meaning for her. After Baker was institutionalised, the piano had been sold. However, Marilyn tracked it down in 1951 and bought it back with her modest, yet steady salary. From then on, it accompanied her every time she moved, including to New York, and it was displayed in every home she lived in.

However, Marilyn was never very good at playing the piano. Yet, she showcased her humble skills with the duet Chopsticks, which she performed with co-star Tom Ewell in The Seven Year Itch (1955). 

See also: Worth Millions: Behind the Appeal of Celebrity Memorabilia

Although it's not entirely clear whether Monroe had the white grand piano with her at her last home in Los Angeles, it must have been part of her estate after her death in August 1962. She left everything to her mentor, Lee Strasberg of the famous Actors Studio in New York, where Monroe, like many of her famous colleagues, including Marlon Brando and James Dean, had taken acting classes in the mid-1950s. After Lee Strasberg's death in 1982, the estate passed into the possession of his second wife, Anna Strasberg, who had this unique treasure auctioned off at Christie's in New York in October 1999.

The white baby grand piano was part of the more than 500 lots on offer with memorabilia and many personal items from Marilyn Monroe. Christie's estimated the piano to be worth $10,000-15,000. However, it eventually changed hands for a whopping $662,500, the second-highest price for an item at the auction (first place went to an eternity ring put on Marilyn's finger by second husband Joe DiMaggio in 1954).

See also: The 6 Most Expensive Film Costumes Sold At Auction

But who paid this high sum for Marilyn's piano? It was none other than singer Mariah Carey, whose singing talent no one could ever question (her vocal range crosses five octaves, and she has the ability to sing in the whistle register!).

Mariah Carey never made her admiration for Monroe a secret. She often copied her look and even gave her daughter, who was born in 2011, the first name Monroe. 

Like Marilyn Monroe, Mariah Carey received piano lessons as a child and is able to play some tunes. She once described Monroe's baby grand piano as her "most prized possession" in an interview for Vogue, and it occupies a prominent place in her New York apartment.

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