This black doctor’s bag was used by Elvis Presley’s personal physician, George C. Nichopoulos — better known as “Dr. Nick” — for making house calls to Graceland. It will be accompanied by a photo of Dr. Nick about to board Elvis’s plane, with Lisa Marie holding the bag, at the auction of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe personal items being held in Las Vegas later this month.
By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 9:51 a.m. ET, Thurs., June 4, 2009
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/31100610/?GT1=43001A white fox stole may not be politically correct these days. But the one that appeared on the TODAY show Thursday belonged to Marilyn Monroe, and that makes it a piece of pop history — not to mention a potentially potent investment in these troubled economic times.
“This is something very personal to Marilyn Monroe,” Martin Nolan of Julien’s Auctions told Meredith Vieira, inviting her to try it on.
Items of icons
Among the hundreds of items are prescription pill bottles that once held the many medications Presley was taking at the time of his death at the age of 42 on Aug. 16, 1977.
In a similarly macabre vein, one of the Monroe items is the bathrobe that is said to be the last article of clothing she wore on Aug. 5, 1962, the day she died in her Brentwood, Calif., home of an overdose of barbiturates.
The auction event will take place on June 26 and 27 at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.
The measure of the enduring popularity of both Monroe and Presley is the $800-$1,200 that each of 12 ordinary pill containers is expected to bring. One of the bottles bears a label showing it was prescribed the day before Presley died. Another item is a curious bit of glass tubing called a nasal douche that Presley used to irrigate his sinuses with saline solution before a concert performance.