The upside of idolising dead people is that you can go through their things. It’s not creepy – you’re an amateur historian, reconstructing the material culture of a lost age. With some luck, the whole pursuit will gain the cachet of a primordial religious ritual. Virtually every major star from Hollywood’s Golden Age is gone, and many of them have since been transmuted into transcendent icons. The things they touch and the places they visit become sacred by proximity. This doesn’t get any clearer than at “Marilyn: The Exhibition”, a rare showing of 250 of the actress’s most intimate possessions at an incongruous venue near London Bridge Station.
There has never been anything like this before in Britain; it provides the kind of thrill that international fans can’t get from reading online auction listings or taking Hollywood pilgrimages on Google Street View. Face creams and eye pencils are displayed like the relics of medieval saints. One sign even announces that bleached hairs were found on some of the objects in storage.
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