Elsie Poncher, whose husband Richard Poncher, is entombed above Marilyn at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park in L.A., put her husband's plot of up for sale on eBay. According to the L.A. Times a Japanese bidder pledged $4,602,100, but went back on his offer shortly after he won the auction yesterday. The next highest bid was only $100 less than the winning offer. Poncher is giving the 11 other top bidders 24 hours to make her an offer for the coveted spot. She plans on using the money to pay off the mortgage on her $1 million home in Beverly Hills. At least she's not trying to blame "the economy."

Richard Poncher bought his final resting spot and the one next to it from Marilyn's ex, Joe DiMaggio, in the '50s, while the pair were divorcing. Elsie was going to have the spot next to her husband, but now she plans on selling one tomb and moving her husband's into the one next door. She plans on being cremated.

And for all of us who think we're clever for coming up with the "on top of Marilyn" joke, Poncher, who died in 1986, thought of it first and better.

[Elsie] said that when her husband was dying, he made a request. "He said, 'If I croak, if you don't put me upside down over Marilyn, I'll haunt you the rest of my life.' "

After the funeral, Poncher said, she conveyed her husband's wish to the funeral director. "I was standing right there, and he turned him over," she said. I guess she's no longer afraid of ghosts.

1.) "God, Guns, Guts, and American Pickup Trucks"
That's this guy's motto for his truck dealership in rural Missouri. He gives away a free AK-47 with each vehicle purchased. While being interviewed on CNN's American Morning, he made some compelling arguments for his business model:

"The only 911 call I need is chambering a round."
"There is a tremendous crime problem with people doing meth and these people – they've lost their souls."
"You don't have a problem with God, do you? I'm just curious…"
"We're a Christian nation."
"You don't think God wants us to defend ourselves? I'm confused."

2.) Paris Hilton: "I'm Not Retarded"

3.) Me: "Yes You Are"

4.) Barbara Walters' Speech Impediment
I've finally cracked the code to the cause of Barbara Walters' "accent." She says her R's backwards, so they come out as "raw" instead of "arh."

5.) Big Brother

I'm so obsessed with these turds. This sums up how I'm feeling right now:

6.) Gay Penguin Dramz
After a six-year relationship, Harry and Pepper, two gay male penguins living in a zoo in San Francisco, are no longer an item. Harry left Pepper for a woman. (A penguin one, not a human one.)

7.) And This

8.) Things Are Different in Canada

9.) Who Does Jon Gosselin Think He Is?
Remember when the father of eight said that he was sick of doing the show and sick of paparazzi? He's so sick of the celebrity life, that he just needed to get away from it—by sipping champagne on a private yacht floating in the French Riviera.

10.) Wrap It Up, Linda

Life has put eighteen of the shots on their website, part of an ongoing effort to digitize their entire photo archive. Clark is quoted in one of the captions as saying because she was an unknown at the time, he got to spend a lot of time shooting her in the park, a shoot in which she read poetry during her breaks. The only clue to why the photos were never published comes via an editor's note found with the negatives in the archives that read, "this take was over-developed and poorly printed."

Marilyn: Never-Published Photos [Life]
via David Carr's Twitter

This weekend was a cold one here in the Midwest so instead of going out and braving the weather we decided to hibernate instead, but not before heading out to our local cult video store and grabbing a couple of our all-time favorite classic movies. We got a couple of goodies including: Le Mans, The Great Escape and couple of our significant other's favorite Agatha Christie mystery TV episodes featuring the quirky detective, Hercule Poirot.

After watching a couple of these films we got to thinking about what some of these famous actors would be like if they were celebrities in today's day and age. We contemplated this for a while (mostly while suffering through Agatha Christie's, The Mysterious Affair at Styles) and got to thinking about what some of these celebrities would drive. So, thanks in part to both our boredom and ADHD, we've come up with the list below featuring some of our favorite classic celebrities and what we think they would drive if they were alive today.

Bettie Page	James Dean	Bob Ross
Louis Armstrong	Steve McQueen	Tiny Tim
Lucille Ball	Frank Sinatra	Elvis Presley
Audrey Hepburn	Charlie Chaplin	Marlon Brando
Marilyn Monroe	John Wayne	Bruce Lee
George Burns	Harry Houdini	Vincent Price
Cesar Romero	Agatha Christie	Ray Charles

[inspired by our ADHD and famousdeaddb, clips via YouTube]

The starry-eyed Kitson wannabe Intuition, who assures online shoppers they cater "to celebrities and Hollywood wives" in case you were worried, has an exclusive first look at Lindsay's highly anticipated leggings line, and the rumored public blow job volunteer has delivered a mini-preview that does not disappoint. In another apparent homage to her (yes, we get it already) icon Marilyn Monroe, the entire collection is called "6126," Monroe's birthday, and one standout pair is named the "Mr. President Leggings," an eyesore that comes with built-in knee pads. Get it?! Like, when you're doing a striptease and croaking out "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to your nearly unconscious beau of the moment, a mere $132 will ensure a blurry morning after without any pesky knee scrapes for once!

[Photo credits: Shop Intuition]

• ROD TOWNSEND [Rod Townsend]

It makes all the sense in the world. Really! Just ask him.

"It's a lingering sensation," Korine told Defamer in a recent interview. "I just started thinking of images like nuns riding bicycles out of airplanes — doing tricks in the clouds and stuff. I couldn't figure out where that was coming from. So if I was going to tell a story with nuns jumping out of airplanes, what could it mean? And I thought, 'What if they had no parachutes? What if they just believed enough that they would survive?' It's the same way the impersonators willed themselves to be those people. Maybe both stories speak to the idea of faith and a kind of strange magic in things — wanting to be something other than who you are."

Opening today in New York and May 9 in Los Angeles, Mister Lonely is in part Korine's way of both rationalizing and perpetuating that magic. More immediately, it's the meandering tale of a Michael Jackson impersonator in Paris (Diego Luna) who steals away to a colony of other impersonators sequestered in a Scottish castle. Led by Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton) and her misanthropic husband Charlie Chaplin, the remaining characters evoke Korine's '90s antagonisms Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy without leaning on their bleak dispossession.

"They had to be people who, in real life, I've liked and admired," he said, referring to an ensemble including Abraham Lincoln, the Three Stooges, Madonna, Queen Elizabeth II and Sammy Davis Jr. "Someone whose mythology I could bleed into the narrative of the movie. Or I could take Marilyn's depression or Sammy's sadism or Michael and his ethereal, bizarre nature and incorporate that into the storyline."

But their celebrity was essential, Korine added, hinting at a sort of accidental accessibility he hadn't achieved since scripting Kids in 1995. Most important was his conception of — or even his sympathy for — Michael Jackson himself. "Michael was symbolic of the world's greatest eccentric," he said. "Maybe somewhere in his story is the Greatest American Story Ever Told. It would take someone much smarter than me to tell that story or decipher it. But what I liked about him was what he stood for. He wasn't a man; he wasn't a boy. He wasn't black; he wasn't white. He just existed like a ghost to me. He was all of those things and none of them. I liked that idea."

Then there were the nuns, plummeting in prayer with powder-blue habits billowing behind them. Korine's friend and Julien Donkey-Boy cast alumnus Werner Herzog plays the wasted priest channeling God, urging them toward the miracle of survival. Korine hinted at the connections between narratives, but acknowledged only the sense in senselessness.

"There's not really a point to it," he said. "There hasn't really been to anything I've done. They're more just ideas. If I could express it in words, I don't think I'd film it. I'm trying to figure it out myself." Iron Man, eat your heart out.

From: "Bryant, Matthew" [REDACTED] Date: April 17, 2008 12:50:32 AM EDT To: legal@gawker.com Subject: http://defamer.com/380219/exclusive-debunking-the-marilyn-monroe-sex-tape-hoax

April 16, 2008

By Email
Gawker Media, Legal Department
76 Crosby Street
New York, NY 10012
legal@gawker.com

Re: http://defamer.com/380219/exclusive-debunking-the-marilyn-monroe-sex-tape-hoax

Dear Sir or Madam:

I write on behalf of Keya Morgan in reference to the above-referenced post on www.Defamer.com authored, apparently, in part by Mr. Mark Bellinghaus and the website itself. Please be advised that Mr. Morgan has filed a report today with Precinct 20 of the New York City Police Department in regard to recent threats Mr. Bellinghaus' made on Keya Morgan's life in the wake of Mr. Morgan's recent successful $1.5 million brokerage-sale of a Marilyn Monroe film as reported by Reuters, The New York Post and CBS, NBC and Fox. Mr. Morgan naturally will protect himself and his business to the full extent of the law.

Further, Mr. Bellinghaus' recent publication of the above-referenced defamatory post on www.defamer.com constitutes defamation per se and subject its authors and related internet content providers, such as www.defamer.com and Gawker Media, to civil liability under New York and federal law. Mr. Morgan is a distinguished internationally-recognized manuscript and artifact expert. He has built an impeccable reputation over a decade. Mr. Bellinghaus' challenges to the film's authenticity are based on false information, self-serving analysis and speculation. Neither he nor any of his colleagues interviewed Mr. Morgan. Mr. Morgan authenticated the film based on his interviews with the owner, the son of an FBI informant, the FBI analyst who worked on the film, and his personal review of declassified documents and the film itself. Mr. Morgan's reputation and expertise speaks for itself. Mr. Bellinghaus' allegations that Mr. Morgan is engaging in a fantasy PR campaign are absurd and, most importantly, by his own admission backed up by no evidence whatsoever.

As stated, Mr. Morgan will protect his reputation and business to the full extent of the law. Please find a copy of our cease and desist letter to Mr. Bellinghaus of even date. Please retract and cease any publication of defamatory matter from Mr. Bellinghaus.

Very truly yours,

Matt Bryant
Ohrenstein & Brown
[REDACTED]
Garden City, New York 11530

From: Gaby Darbyshire
To: "Bryant, Matthew"
Date: Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 10:44 AM
Subject: Re: http://defamer.com/380219/exclusive-debunking-the-marilyn-monroe-sex-tape-hoax

Mr Bryant,

I simply do not accept that anything written in this piece is libellous. Our source is willing to state under oath that they spoke with Mr Morgan last year and that he told them the things stated as coming from him in the article. This piece is simply a detailed analysis of the claims made by your client regarding this tape, and the writers' view of whether those claims are supported by the evidence. That's called reporting. Your client may not like the conclusions drawn, but this country believes in free speech, last I checked. The material is a matter of opinion, strongly held for sure, but not a matter of libel.

If you can point me to any facts stated that are provable incontrovertibly as facts and not mere opinion, then - as I have said - we are willing to print a statement from your client to clarify his position on those specific points. I've already offered to do that over the age of your client (provable fact, but not libellous) and his denial of making any dating claims (not provable, and not libellous either, but if your client cares about this, I'm happy to do it).

Beyond such minor clarifications, either we accept that people of strong conviction and passion for a subject can vehemently disagree about events and their interpretation of events, let them as grown-ups debate their side of the argument in a public forum as experts in their domain, and let the public decide which version they choose to believe - or we can take this matter to the courts and hash through it all there.

I'm happy to do either. Mr Morgan must decide how he wants to proceed.

Regards,

******************************************
Gaby Darbyshire
VP, Finance & Legal, Gawker Media

******************************************

From: "Bryant, Matthew"
Date: April 17, 2008 5:05:39 PM EDT
To: "Gaby Darbyshire"
Subject: RE: http://defamer.com/380219/exclusive-debunking-the-marilyn-monroe-sex-tape-hoax

Dear Ms. Darbyshire:

Thank you for your response to my letter sent yesterday on behalf of Keya Morgan. At this juncture, I advise you to seek counsel from Gawker Media's in-house attorney or, in if no such person exists, seek outside counsel.

From the outset, Defamer.com, Mark Bellinghaus and Gawker Media are accusing my client of fraud. Your headline boasts, as fact, that the film is a "hoax." The apparent editor asserts, as fact, that it was "fabricated." My client is a business man and well respected manuscript and artifact expert. Your website has not only impugned my client's honesty, integrity and profession, but has accused him of committing fraud. This is defamation, not reporting.

It should be noted that while Mr. Morgan embraces the "market place" of ideas, the freedom of the press has always ended at the expense of a third-party's rights. There is little room for an organization doing business as "defamer.com" to hide behind the legitimate press' cloak of freedom. Your self-described "Marilyn Monroe Expert" (Mark Bellinghaus) has well-documented history. Most recently, he threatened to blow up my client's home and stab him. [ED. NOTE - As of April 23, 2008, this case has been closed.] I have personally spoken to Detective Banville of the NYPD's 1st Precinct; Mr. Morgan's policy report number is 2008-001-02543. If Mr. Bellinghaus is found in NYC, he will likely be arrested. His rantings can be viewed by any reporter wishing to verify him as a source at www.marilynmonroeforall.com as a "cyber-harasser" and self-proclaimed Monroe expert. Your website relies on this man as an expert and touts, as fact, his warped conclusions founded in delusion and animosity. We believe goes well beyond mere defamation and constitutes harassment or criminal menacing. For the record, your claim that this is legitimate reporting rings false — Mr. Morgan adamantly denies ever granting an interview to any such self-proclaimed experts. Further, your reporters cannot even ascertain Mr. Morgan's correct age and the allegations regarding his romantic goings-on are simply false and inserted to further harass and injury my client's business and personal reputation.

Unlike other recent on-line defamation cases where anonymous users post on third-party interactive web-sites, defamer.com controls its own web-site and contributed to this content by identifying these alleged expert sources citing their conclusions as fact. We again invite you to seek legal counsel and protect your own business' interests by distancing yourself from Mr. Bellinghaus and his cohorts. Feel free to post this letter as Mr. Morgan's reply to your invitation below.

Very truly yours,

Matt Bryant
Ohrenstein & Brown
[REDACTED]
Garden City, New York 11530

UPDATE (April 18, 2:36pm):: Here is a link to a statement Mark Bellinghaus made on his blog in regards to Mr. Bryant's letters to us.

UPDATE (April 23, 4:21pm): We just received word that the NYPD has closed this case.

To that end, Defamer worked with a trio of Marilyn Monroe experts in an effort to get to the bottom of Keya Morgan's outrageous claims. The team of Mark Bellinghaus (one of the foremost Marilyn Monroe experts/collectors in the world), Ernest W. Cunningham (author of The Ultimate Marilyn) and freelance journalist Jennifer J. Dickinson to put together the following piece. It's one of the longer pieces that we have ever published at Defamer, but we think that it's well worth your time. And with that, please enjoy. — MDG

DEBUNKING THE MARILYN MONROE "SEX TAPE" HOAX
By Mark Bellinghaus, Ernest W. Cunningham and Jennifer J. Dickinson

On June 26, 1952, Marilyn Monroe testified in court (as pictured) to protect her own reputation from accusations that a mail order pornography ring was selling pictures of her and that she was a participant in this process through solicitation of sales by letter writing. Along with her attorney, she debunked these claims and the pictures themselves, and the two men who created this scam were found guilty of misdemeanor charges, and Marilyn Monroe's name and reputation were cleared.

Nearly 56 years following her own victorious court appearance, Monroe's name is once again being affiliated with a fabricated pornographic claim. Now it is time to have the name Marilyn Monroe cleared once again of false allegations.

Keya Morgan, 38, New York City based memorabilia collector, has spawned a rumor of 16 mm film footage said to be Marilyn Monroe engaging in oral sex with an unknown male participant in the early 1950's when she was just a starlet. Morgan claims that this is an illicit copy of an FBI classified film of which a copy was made before the original was confiscated by the Feds. According to Mr. Morgan, he brokered the sale of this claimed 15 minute lasting reel to a wealthy New York Businessman for $1.5 million.

"You can see instantly that it's Marilyn Monroe," said Morgan—"she has the famous mole. She's smiling, she's very charming, she's very radiant, but she's known for being radiant."

The happy buyer of this supposed film chooses to remain anonymous but says he has no plans to market the tape. Morgan states: "He's just going to lock it up."

This tale of the sex tape follows on the heels of last month's Marilyn scandal, in which a fellow in Las Vegas called a news conference to display an unknown photo of nude Marilyn, but it turned out to be just nude Madonna. Please click here and here to read our reports on this story.

The real "Marilyn Monroe Nude" pictures are well-documented. She posed nude on red velvet for photographer Tom Kelley on May 27, 1949—photos that showed up for years on calendars and in lawsuits. Lawsuits for obscenity usually turned out to be the Kelley nudes, and were dismissed.

About this same time a short nudie film called The Apple, Knockers, and the Coke Bottle, began making the rounds. It's composed of grainy footage of a bare-chested young woman amusing herself -she's Arline Hunter, a Marilyn lookalike but clearly not Marilyn.

When a journalist or a tabloid show stumbles over a nude photo or nude film footage, the immediate response is usually Marilyn! Or Unseen Marilyn! Or Nude Marilyn!

But if it's not a Tom Kelley red velvet photo or Marilyn in the "Something's Got to Give" nude swim, then it's Arline Hunter and her apple.

If it's none of those, then it's pornography, and it's not Marilyn. She didn't go there.

There are too many holes in the Keya Morgan story. Having talked with Mr. Morgan in our own interview over the phone in the summer of 2007, he spoke quickly and non-stop of his planned television documentary, of conspiracy theories into Monroe's death, and about his alleged friendships with all three Monroe husbands. He claims he was one of the last people to speak to James Dougherty and gave the similar scenario about Dougherty's final words as has been rumored about Joe DiMaggio - that both former spouses on their deathbed spoke about seeing Marilyn on the other side.

In general Mr. Morgan was a name dropper, especially when it came to those notorious for supporting the conspiracy theories involved with the story of Marilyn Monroe. However, he wove into our conversation his claim that he dated Mariah Carey and Renée Zellweger.

The most recent sensationalism of this supposedly existing film footage generated by Mr. Morgan, ties in with the usual opportunistic conspiracy theories that are out there. What Keya Morgan is promoting equates to questionable stories generated simply to sell another book or push another cheesy documentary. Just looking at Mr. Morgan's cast list is enough to know that this is more of the same conspiracy rehash. There's John Miner, Jack Clemmons and Thomas Noguchi, who have changed their stories over the years and cashed in on the various Marilyn Monroe murder theories by being featured in books, articles and television specials.

Keya Morgan went on and on when we were on the phone, speaking of this usual cast of characters. At the time of our conversation with him, we immediately discerned that he was one of them only out to exploit Marilyn Monroe and to come up with something new to fuel the rumor mill of her life.

Yet Keya Morgan claims he would not have gotten his name involved in this latest story, if there was harm to Marilyn Monroe. But he is already too late - Keya Morgan himself is causing harm to the legacy of Marilyn Monroe by creating this outrageous and absurd fantasy (he did not participate in it—he created it!).

There are a few questions that one must immediately ask, the litmus test that proves Mr. Morgan's story about the supposed sex tape to be as bogus as the one caused by the perpetrators against Marilyn Monroe in 1952.

· The film was supposedly made of Marilyn Monroe as a starlet. If filmed in this time period of Monroe's life, why would the feds have cared about the activities of a young starlet, considering that Marilyn Monroe had not reached the heights of fame at the time this footage was claimed to have been filmed?

· "You see instantly that it's Marilyn Monroe - she has the famous mole." This is a quote by Keya Morgan, which is one of the flimsiest pieces of evidence ever presented. Just because this alleged film has a person with a mole, it's instantly Marilyn Monroe?

· Essentially Morgan is claiming that this is a bootleg copy of a classified FBI film. So if an original is classified, why would the FBI allow this public brouhaha in the press and not stop this sale from taking place? Why would this film copy not be destroyed?

Keya Morgan claims to respect Joe DiMaggio (it is alleged that DiMaggio tried to pay the informant $25,000 for the film and the offer was refused), and Marilyn Monroe even greater. Then why would Mr. Morgan allow this sale considering his "respect" of DiMaggio and Monroe? If he was such a collector looking to protect Marilyn Monroe especially, why would he not keep this supposed film safely in his own collection?

Stay tuned, but you're sure to learn nothing new from the Keya Morgan upcoming documentary, except the usual repetitive death theories (namely, that she was murdered). And Keya Morgan's time in the spotlight for this recent spin is nothing more than an opportunity for him to do just that - soak up some extra time in the limelight with his invented story about a fake flick, at the expense of the legacy of Marilyn Monroe.

Mark Bellinghaus is the leading Marilyn Monroe expert and official expert witness in the Queen Mary/Marilyn Monroe fraud Class Action Lawsuit; Ernest W. Cunningham is the author of 'The Ultimate Marilyn' and plaintiff in the Queen Mary/Marilyn Monroe Fraud Class Action Lawsuit; Jennifer J. Dickinson is a journalist based in New Jersey and a mother of two.

[Photo: Marilyn Monroe, pictured with her attorney on June 26, 1952 testifying in her own defense in Los Angeles Court, when there were accusations that pictures of her were being sold in a pornography ring. It turned out that the accusations were bogus, as were the pictures, and two men who created this scandal were found guilty.

Credit: The Mark Bellinghaus Marilyn Monroe Collection]

The 15-minute, 16mm film, dated around the early '50s, apparently stars a "smiling" Monroe servicing an anonymous subject; New York memorabilia collector Keya Morgan, who recently sold the movie for $1.5 million, is said to have tracked it down through some investigative work that went all the way through the FBI:

The feds eventually confiscated the original footage - but not before [an] informant made a copy of it, which is what was just sold by his son, Morgan said.

There are heavily redacted, declassified FBI documents talking about a "French-type" film. They state the informant "exhibited [to agents] a motion picture which depicted deceased actress Marilyn Monroe committing a perverted act upon a unknown male," Morgan said. ...

According to the documents, "Former baseball star Joseph DiMaggio in the past had offered [the informant] $25,000 for this film, it being the only one in existence, but he refused the offer.

"Source advised that [redacted name of the mole] informed them that he had obtained this film prior to the time Marilyn Monroe had achieved stardom."

Which is where we're kind of lost. As noted this morning by Jeffrey Wells, Monroe already had a career going by 1950; the Post story cites other documents stressing that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sought "in the mid-'60s" to prove the unidentified man was John F. Kennedy or Robert Kennedy, placing its provenance even later. That sprawling timeline, along with the fact that publicity-loving Morgan and his alleged buyer — identified only as a "wealthy New York businessman" — are the only ones who've seen the film, leave us a little skeptical. No one in this day and age would would think to perpetrate a sex-tape hoax, would they?

• HARDCORE MARILYN [NYP]