With news that a memorabilia collector has purchased a Marilyn Monroe “sex tape”, we now see the old starlet meets new starlet trend coming full circle. As if Lindsay Lohan’s aping Marilyn in her recent New York spread and Mamie Van Doren’s recent nipslip weren’t enough to show us both that today’s darlings are nothing compared to yesterday’s and that the media’s crucifixion of Lohan, Britney, Paris and the rest ignores the fact that actresses have been comfortably wild since before most paparazzi photogs were born, now we have an historical artifact that seems to validate Paris Hilton’s breakthrough via her sex tape “1 Night in Paris.”

Unfortunately for Paris, in her being validated, we also learn that in the 1940s, fellatio was perhaps a surer step to real movie stardom than it is in the 21st century. Of course, I also think that if Marilyn were alive and just starting out today, she would have enough talent to circumvent the “casting couch” and still become a bigger star than Paris. In the context of today, though, she probably wouldn’t become nearly as iconic nor would she have appropriated the same dumb blonde image. So, it’s difficult to tell where she’d fit in.