The story of the night Marilyn Monroe’s white halter-top dress blew up was well known among Jules Schulback’s children, and even among his grandchildren. His granddaughter Bonnie Siegler said he bragged from time to time about his personal film shoot with Marilyn.

“He was a real raconteur,” said Ms. Siegler, a graphic designer who runs her own company, Eight and a Half. “I didn’t know if the story was real.” But even though she had never seen it, she often told people that her grandfather had footage of Marilyn Monroe on the subway grate.

Ms. Siegler’s older sister, Rayna Dineen, said her grandfather, whom they called Opi (a German term of endearment), was rarely without his camera. “He would be filming everywhere, all the time.” There were reels of vacations, family picnics, birthday parties and bar mitzvahs. He had even filmed a 12-minute day in the life of his daughters, depicting them waking up, brushing their teeth and going to school.

“But the Marilyn story was one of his favorite stories to tell,” Ms. Dineen said.

It was just one of dozens of amazing tales. Mr. Schulback had a long, technicolorful life, one so filled with drama that his Monroe story sometimes seemed like a footnote.

In 1938, Mr. Schulback had argued with his family in Germany that Adolf Hitler was much more dangerous than anyone thought. According to Ms. Siegler, his family believed that Hitler’s hate speech was simply rhetoric, and that he wouldn’t act on anything he was saying. Mr. Schulback, 25 at the time, urged them to pack their bags and leave Berlin with him. But they resisted, opting to wait and see how things developed, never imagining the horror that awaited them and millions of other European Jews.