She would have turned 100 years old on June 1. And to mark the occasion, Heritage Auctions put a remarkable collection of Marilyn Monroe’s personal belongings up for sale, pieces that take you right back to the woman behind the legend.
The centerpiece may well have been her Christian Dior skirt suit. Monroe wore the two-piece on January 29, 1954, when she and Joe DiMaggio left San Francisco for Japan on their honeymoon. It came from her personal wardrobe. The bidding started at $20,000, and it sold the very day it went up.
Also in the auction is a small hairpin from Monroe’s estate. It traces back to a 1999 sale of her personal clothing and accessories. As of the listing, bidding on the pin sat at $1,050.
Then there are the letters. One in particular is hard to forget. Arthur Miller wrote it on May 9, 1956, just over a month before the two of them married. In it, he pours out everything he feels for her.
“Pish, I love you. I think I have loved you all my life. Please don’t marry Henry or George Sanders or George Washington. What have they got, money? Marry me and I will write you poems and kiss you every few minutes, and love your every footstep. How you gladden my heart! Oh, it was good to have been born.”
Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson and died in 1962 at the age of 36. She had struggled with endometriosis, addiction, and mental health. Her death was ruled a suicide from a barbiturate overdose.
The auction stirred strong feelings online. When Vanity Fair reported on it, some followers were thrilled to see the pieces surface. Others were more troubled.
“Really the most tragic is that even in death Marilyn is not only exploited but owned by a conglomerate capitalizing off her hard work and every ounce of who she was,” one commenter wrote. Another simply said she “is still being exploited in her death.”
Whatever you make of the auction itself, it is hard not to feel something looking at these pieces. A skirt from a honeymoon morning in 1954. A love letter written by a man who could not wait to call her his wife. They remind us that behind the fame, there was a real person and she was loved.
