The love between Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe is quite well-known.

sponsored links

The baseball legend cried at her funeral and placed flowers at her crypt several times a week for 20 years.

The public displays were also very surprising for the famously aloof and private DiMaggio.

However, after the auction of Monroe’s lost archives, his heartbreak over their marriage breakup received a rare public airing.

divorcio_marilyn

The 300 items also featured love letters from her third and last husband playwright Arthur Miller.

And a handwritten letter from Monroe to Miller where arguably the Hollywood’s greatest sex symbol muses about her several insecurities.

Other letters in the assemblage come from friends like Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Jane Russell, the latter urging Monroe in almost 10 handwritten pages to give Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe marriage a second chance.

cartas_marilyn2

Martin Nolan, the auction curator who spent nearly nine months organizing and cataloging the compilation said that it gives chills when you read some of the letters and seeing the intimacy and personal nature of it.

According to the auction owner Darren Julien, the auction fetched nearly $1 million.

Previously, Monroe painted a watercolor and planned to give to President John Kennedy sold for $80,000 at a real estate auction some years ago.

marilyn_kennedy

In recent years, Monroe’s “collectability” escalated thanks to the rich Asian and European collectors with a penchant for American pop-culture artifacts, Julien said.

The fact is the focal point of that auction was not just celebrity heirlooms, but greatly personal relics also fueled the interest of the public.

Julien also mentioned that collectors fled from all over the world to see the items which was on display to the public at his Beverly Hills gallery.

julien_subasta

Monroe died of a drug overdose at the age of 36 in 1962 and willed “The Lost Archives” to her fabled acting coach mentor Lee Strasberg. He gave it to a friend whom he trusted would take proper care of it.

That friend’s family, which according to Julien, wants to remain anonymous, indeed net Strasberg’s expectations. Most of the letters still look as pristine as the day their authors wrote them.

Subscribe
sponsored links
← Marilyn Monroe Books Home The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe →