Some like it hot: Marilyn Monroe’s lost love letters to be auctioned

It’s no secret Joe DiMaggio loved Marilyn Monroe. The baseball great cried at her funeral and for 20 years had flowers placed at her crypt several times a week. Now, his heartbreak over the breakup of their marriage will get a rare public airing when “Marilyn Monroe’s Lost Archives” goes up for bid at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills next month. The 300 items include love letters from Monroe’s third and final husband, playwright Arthur Miller. There’s also a handwritten letter from Monroe to Miller in which the woman who was arguably Hollywood’s greatest sex symbol muses about her many insecurities.

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.

Arthur Miller’s letter to Monroe

Other letters in the collection come from celebrity friends such as Clark Gable, Cary Grant and Jane Russell, with Russell imploring Monroe in 10 neatly handwritten pages to give her marriage to DiMaggio another chance. Auction owner Darren Julien estimates the pieces could fetch $1 million or more, noting a watercolour Monroe painted and planned to give to President John F. Kennedy went for $80,000 at an estate auction nine years ago. Monroe’s “collectability” has skyrocketed in recent years, driven in part by deep-pocketed Asian and European collectors with a fondness for American pop culture artifacts, he said.

It really gives you the chills when you read some of the stuff and see the intimacy and the personal nature of it.

Auction curator Martin Nolan, who spent nine months organizing and cataloging the collection.

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