For years, advertisements declared that “every woman alive wants Chanel No. 5.” Now a star dead since 1962 returns to assert that even those women no longer breathing want it too.

An extravagant, elaborate and expensive television commercial that begins Monday uses the computer generated special effects technique called morphing to revive Marilyn Monroe as a celebrity endorser for Chanel No. 5. During the spot, the model Carole Bouquet, a mainstay in the fragrance’s campaigns since 1987, “morphs,” or changes, into Miss Monroe and back into herself as Miss Monroe sings “I Want to Be Loved by You.”

The 30-second commercial, pan of a ran multimillion-dollar campaign on national networks and local stations, is the most recent example of marketers using dead celebrities whose mystiques and recognition factors far outshine those of today’s stars– but whose estates charge far less to use their images than the agents of today’s stars do.

The spot combines black-and-white newsreel images of Miss Monroe with new footage of Miss Bouquet, then colors Miss Monroe and dresses her in Chanel-style garb to match the model’s. It was created by Jean-Paul Goude, the French director who produced two other spectacular spots for Chanel fragrances, and Peter Arnell, chairman and executive creative director at the Arnell Group in New York. The spot, set in a movie theater, offers a delightful blend of whimsy, fantasy and humor. Yet it is essentially a sales pitch that works hard to link a Hollywood icon and a venerable fragrance brand.

“To get the consumer’s attention, particularly with the tremendous competition in the fragrance category, is getting tougher and tougher,” said Arie L. Kopelman, president and chief operating officer at Chanel Inc. in New York, the United States unit of the French couture house Chanel. “This is Chanel No. 5 in a very memorable way.”

Among the fragrances that Chanel No. 5 competes against are those marketed by Unilever under the names Calvin Klein and a still-living contemporary of Miss Monroe’s, Elizabeth Taylor. The commercial is the most recent in a skein that use morphing, so named because one image metamorphoses into another. The process is tricky: old and new footage must be matched precisely in lighting and camera angles. It required a search through 900 hours of Monroe newsreels, Mr. Arnell said, for the appropriate seconds’ worth of footage.

Indeed, that all proved so complicated that Chanel Inc. postponed introducing the commercial for three months for “additional lab work,” Mr. Kopelman said, to “get it 101 percent perfect.” He wouldn’t discuss the commercial’s cost except to say it was in seven figures.

The spot is emblematic of the popularity of dead celebrities among marketers like Coca-Cola, Gap Inc. Hershey Foods and Levi Strauss which pay royalties to heirs and estates to to use likenesses or recreations of the stars. Perhaps the best-known example is a 1991-92 campaign for Diet Coke by Lintas New York that featured Louis Armstrong, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Cary Grant and Groucho Marx.

“It worked as an interruptor to grab people’s attention,” Bob Bertini, a spokesman for the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, said of the Diet Coke commercials. “The celebrities added an unexpected flair.”

Chanel Inc though, is perhaps more entitled to use Miss Monroe than, say, the Gap is to remind consumers that “James Dean wore khakis.” The No. 5 commercial is more a homage to a heritage than a plundering of the past.

A photograph circa 1955 shows Miss Monroe splashing on the fragrance from its distinctive battle. And of course, when she was once asked what she wore to bed, she replied, “Chanel No. 5.”

Mr. Arnell said, “It’s Marilyn holding the bottle–again.” An undisclosed fee, he added, was paid to the Roger Richman Agency, the Beverly Hills, Calif., company that represents the Monroe estate.

Chanel also invoked the dead in a 1992 spot for its Coco fragrance by Mr. Goude in which an actress portrayed its founder, Coca Chanel. As Mr. Kopelman put it, alluding to 73 years of Chanel’s selling No. 5 “Looking back makes you appreciate the future more.”

The commercial opens in black and white as Miss Bouquet, eating popcorn, watches Miss Monroe singing in a film. Suddenly, through the morphing technique, her blouse pops open, her hairline changes and her face is trans-formed into Miss Monroe’s. The spot turns to color and the popcorn box becomes an over-sized bottle of Chanel No. 5.

A actress’s voice that sounds like Miss Monroe’s says “No. 5,” which is echoed by the theater audience. As Miss Monroe morphs back into Miss Bouquet, she keeps the perfume bottle, hugging it as she resumes watching the film. 

The commercial will run nationally through Dec. 23 during programs like “Chicago Hope,” “Good Morning America” and “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” “It will run worldwide starting next year,” Mr. Kopelman said.