London - She stole the hearts of millions and starred in some of the most famous romantic films of her generation.
Now Marilyn Monroe’s own dramatic love life is in the limelight in an auction of items that include unseen love letters.
The collection, Marilyn Monroe’s Lost Archives, reveals the deepest affections and insecurities of the actress, who married three times.
Letters from her second husband, the infamously stoic and private baseball player Joe DiMaggio, show his heartbreak at the end of their marriage – which he only discovered when she tearfully announced on television that she was leaving him.
“I love you and want to be with you,” he wrote after she announced she was filing for divorce after a matter of months in 1954.
In the letter, addressed to ‘Mrs Joe DiMaggio’ and mailed via special delivery, he added: “There is nothing I would like better than to restore your confidence in me. My heart split even wider seeing you cry in front of all these people.”
Love letters from Monroe’s third and final husband, playwright Arthur Miller are also in the collection.
In one, ecstatic, letter to his wife, Miller asks her: “Do you realise that when you are here my agony will be over, and yours? … As I come awake in the mornings I will feel you sleep beside me, the way you lie there, a little child in my arms for whom I would fight to the death.”
At the bottom of another typewritten letter he scribbled a postscript that said: “Please, if I’ve ever made you cry or made you even more sadder, ever for a second, please forgive me, my perfect girl. I love you.”
In a handwritten letter to Miller, Monroe – one of Hollywood’s most attractive women – muses about her many insecurities and responds to being called “noble” at the handling of her difficult childhood. “There was no choice to make, the same road was always before me. So for you to speak of my nobility, it really wasn’t so noble”, she said.
“It’s doubly difficult to understand that you, the most different, most beautiful human being, chose me to love.”
The collection also includes letters from Clark Gable, Cary Grant and fellow Hollywood sex symbol Jane Russell – who implores Monroe over the course of ten handwritten pages to give her marriage to DiMaggio another chance.
Other items in the collection, which features paintings, photographs and clothes, include a 19-minute reel of a movie made for Monroe after the filming of her final picture, 1961’s The Misfits, which shows her frolicking on a beach with Gable and other co-stars.
There is also a framed letter she kept on her coffee table from costume designer Cecil Beaton, which reassured Monroe of her acting ability.
The actress was just 36 when she died of a drug overdose in 1962. She left her letters to her mentor, the acting coach Lee Strasberg, who passed them on to an anonymous friend.
Auctioneer Darren Julien estimates that the pieces could fetch more than $1-million).
“We anticipate a lot of fans will be here. They’ll fly in from all over the world,” he said.
The collection will be on display to the public at his Beverly Hills gallery before they are auctioned on December 5.
Auction curator Martin Nolan, who spent nine months organising the collection, said: “It’s fantastic to see how loved she was and it really gives you the chills when you read some of the stuff and see the intimacy and the personal nature of it.” - Daily Mail