Celebrity items pieces of history

The cool thing about looking at auction items is when you can relate. On Monday, I was looking at the black wool jacket and pants Elvis wore in "Viva Las Vegas" when I realized the sizes -- 42-inch chest, 32-inch waist -- are exactly my sizes. I could wear that outfit! I am Elvis Presley!

Then there was a pair of Marilyn Monroe shoes. I swear I have no shoe fetish, but to me, Marilyn is the hottest celebrity of all time, so merely looking at old Creazioni Dal Co. heels of hers is hypnotizing. Yes, I touched them. Yes, that's weird.

These remembrances are free to see this week at the new Symbolic Gallery, 4631 Dean Martin Drive. Starting at 10 a.m. Saturday, Julien's Auctions bids out these and many other items at Planet Hollywood. On Sunday, animation pieces get offered. Look at this madness at JuliensAuctions.com:

* An impressive painting of a dog done as oil and canvas by Frank Sinatra. He gave it to his lady Ava Gardner.

* Pam Anderson's bustier from her February 1990 Playboy spread.

* And a disco ball from "Saturday Night Fever."

That stuff is interesting. But the big "get" is two film canisters containing behind-the-scenes footage from John Huston's 1961 "The Misfits," starring Monroe, Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift and Thelma Ritter. Estimated value is set at $10,000 to $20,000, but the canisters could fetch many, many times that.

The off-screen footage was shot by an extra on the film, Stanley Floyd Kilarr. He was a radio DJ in Oregon, but sometimes worked as a dealer in Reno, where he probably answered a call for extras.

He died in the 1990s and left behind a record collection of more than 1 million pieces of vinyl, plus the films. His family sold the records for a scant $35,000 to a dealer in Los Angeles. His nephew, Frank Hasy, wanted to find out what the films looked like but died a few years ago.

Now Kilarr's daughter, Cathy McCormick, and her husband, Rod, retired in Reno, are selling it. What do you see in 47 minutes and 45 seconds of film?

"John Huston," Rod McCormick says, "actually gets on the back of a camel, and he races it down main street" in downtown Virginia City. "It's pretty wild."

Huston is shirtless. Monroe is not.

"It would be worth more probably" if she had been, he says.

You see Monroe, in character, cover her mouth and run toward the men her character loves.

"That's take one. Then you see her do the whole thing again," McCormick says.

"Uncle Sax" Kilarr also sits down with Monroe and Gable to chat, but whoever buys the film would have to hire a lip reader to find out what they're saying.

"I tried to get the local media involved in this thing four years ago," McCormick says, but they weren't interested, especially one who "shrugged and dropped me like a hot potato. He thought I was nuts, I guess."

Not nuts. Richer, soon.

More items at auction: A rare "Godfather" auction item, a scene clapper board; a Marlon Brando-signed script; and the blue-and-white checkered dress Margaret O'Brien wore in 1944's "Meet Me in St. Louis."

O'Brien is showing up for Saturday's auction. She says she's surprised the outfit, a pinafore over another dress, looks as good as it does because she wore it at age 6 while playing jacks and jump-rope with Judy Garland on the set.

"I think she (Judy) was better at jacks, and I was better at jumping rope," O'Brien says.

"She was not always a sad person. She was basically a happy person from the lady I knew," O'Brien says. "Liza (Minnelli) remembers that she was really a fun mom."

This is funny: O'Brien first came to Vegas when she was younger than 10 for the opening of the Flamingo to see Rose Marie and Jimmy Durante, and she played slots.

"They allowed children where they gambled, at the time," she says. "I liked it so much, my mom bought me a slot machine."

While in Vegas all week, will she be playing slots? Nope.

"I gave that up when I was 9," she says.

IN VEGASLAND

Check out my blog and our Vegas Voice blog today to see video of our critics chatting about upcoming events this week. That's at LVRJ.com.

Doug Elfman's column appears on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Call 702-383-0391 or email delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.