By Derryn Hinch
Nude photos everywhere, but not a footballer or hotel room in sight.
Nude photos of famous people are somewhat in the news, giving me a lurid flashback. A couple of weeks ago, I was in a room filled with pictures of celebrities with no clothes on. Elle Macpherson, Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Ursula Andress and Bo Derek.
Prints of Elle's 1994 Playboy shoot sold for less than expected.
There wasn't a St Kilda footballer or a hotel room in sight. All these photos were snapped with the subjects' permission, but they had no say in what was happening to their images decades later.
They were up for sale in a room in the Rockefeller Centre in the heart of New York - the auction room for Christie's.
The 1953 Playboy that featured the famous Red Velvet photos of Marilyn.
It was the sell-off of some of Hugh Hefner's memorabilia from the start of Playboy magazine in the late 1950s. Christie's called it: ''The Year of the Rabbit. The Playboy Collection.''
I knew it wasn't going to be cheap when I asked for a catalogue to see what was up for auction and what the likely reserve prices would be.
''That'll be $35, sir.''
''I just want to see what's for sale.''
''That will still be $35, sir.''
The second clue came early in the auction, when a three-dimensional painting of gleaming teeth and a pair of lips went on the block. Called Mouth #8 and painted for Playboy by Tom Wesselman in 1966, it was sort of Andy Warhol meets a Rolling Stones album cover. And it was a little tatty and tacky. In a couple of minutes of quiet bidding, it sold . . . for $1.6 million.
Actually, it was all very quiet and civilised. There were only about a dozen people dotted about a high-ceilinged room with about 100 seats. At judicial-looking desks down either side, Christie's staff manned a bank of phones for interstate and international bidders. Down the back another batch of auction staff had laptops for internet bidders. Most of the bidding came from elsewhere.
The female auctioneer was very calm. Whether the item was selling for $5000 or $50,000, she never raised her voice. And after repeating ''All clear? All done?'' several times, she didn't slam down a gavel, merely tapped the wooden podium with a small stone.
So how did Elle fare? Not as well as Christie's expected. Seven gelatin silver prints from a 1994 shoot, when The Body was featured in the May edition of Playboy, were expected to fetch between $12,000 and $18,000. They sold for $9500. A second series of Elle, topless and in sheer tights, reached $9000. A series shot in January 1994, showing a very skinny Elle, sold for $8000.
Sex kitten Brigitte Bardot was described as ''a perennial Playboy favourite''. She appeared on the cover of the March '58 edition. That shot was expected to bring between $4000 and $6000 but sold for $19,000. Two better shots of a naked Bardot lying on a bed fetched only $2000.
(Confession time: I have had a thing about Bardot for most of my life. I snuck in under-age to see And God Created Woman and visited her home in St Tropez trying to get an interview about 30 years ago. In my novel about the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, Death in Paradise, I based the heroine, Monique Monet, on Bardot and her anti-nuclear and animal welfare campaigns.)
Back in the art world, a grotesque (to me) plaster statue of a pregnant woman in a canvas chair sold for $40,000 and a Salvador Dali original in the ''Playmate as fine art'' series sold for $220,000.
The most attention centred on the famous Marilyn Monroe series called ''Marilyn Monroe on Red Velvet''. The nude shots of the unknown Norma Jean were shot in 1949 by Tom Kelley and used in the first edition of Playboy. And used again and again. They sold for only $11,000. But it made sense when you read the fine print: ''six chromogenic digital prints, printed later'' - they weren't even a limited edition.
There was some interesting proof of Hefner's attention to detail in some of the final items up for sale. They were the original centrefold shots of the monthly Playboy playmate. One shot shows a naked playmate draped over a polar bear skin in front of a fire. Hefner has scribbled on the artwork ''Need whiter polar bear. Too green.''
And a second confession. Couldn't help myself. The Bardot photos ended up under my Christmas tree. Better than a shot of Nick Riewoldt.
Derryn Hinch is a broadcaster with Fairfax radio 3AW.
Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU