A very private and rather sad letter that Marilyn wrote to Lee Strasberg is to be auctioned by Profiles in History on May 30th. It will also be included in a preview exhibition at the Douglas Elliman Gallery on Madison Avenue, New York, from April 8th-16th, reports Yahoo.

Personally, I find it distasteful that such an item has been put on the open market – especially since many news sites have sensationally  described it as ‘suicidal’.

All of Marilyn’s letters have historic value, of course, and should be preserved – but in a university, library, or museum. Her emotional pain should not be exploited for profit.

It was written on Hotel Bel Air paper, and so may date from the filming of Some Like it Hot, a notoriously stressful shoot.

Her handwriting is quite difficult to read, but members of the Everlasting Star forum have been working on a transcript:

“Hotel Bel Air
701 Stone Canyon Road Los Angeles

Dear Lee,

I’m embarrassed to start this but thank you for understanding and having changed my life – even though you changed it I still am lost. I mean I can’t get myself together – I think it’s because everything is pulling against my concentration, everything one does or lives is impossible almost. You once said, the first time I heard you talk at the Actors’ Studio that ‘there is only concentration between the actor and suicide.’ As soon as I walk into a scene I lose my mental relaxation for some reason, which is my concentration. My will is weak but I can’t stand anything. I sound crazy, but I think I’m going crazy.

Thanks for letting Paula help me on the picture. She is the only thoroughly warm woman I’ve known. It’s just that I get before the camera and my concentration and everything I’m trying to learn leaves me. Then I feel like I’m not existing in the human race at all.

Love
Marilyn”

Marilyn with Jean Pierre Piquet, manager of the Hilton Continental, during her trip to Mexico in 1962

Writing for the Associated Press, Anthony McCartney reports that previously redacted FBI files relating to Marilyn have been released in full by the FBI after a request was made under the Freedom of Information Act.

The new information refers mostly to the FBI’s monitoring of Marilyn’s allegedly left-wing colleagues in her production company, her Jewish wedding to Arthur Miller, and her friendship with Fred Vanderbilt Field, the expatriate communist whom she met on a trip to Mexico.

“For all the focus on Monroe’s closeness to suspected communists, the bureau never found any proof she was a member of the party.

‘Subject’s views are very positively and concisely leftist; however, if she is being actively used by the Communist Party, it is not general knowledge among those working with the movement in Los Angeles,’ a July 1962 entry in Monroe’s file states.”

With Norman Rosten, 1955

A letter written by Marilyn to her poet friend, Norman Rosten, while living at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel circa 1955, is on display until December 9 at the Douglas Elliman Gallery on Madison Avenue, alongside notes penned by Joe DiMaggio, Emily Dickinson and others, reports DNAInfo. It will be auctioned by California’s Profiles in History on December 18.

A full transcript is available at Booktryst:

“Dear Norman, 

It feels a little funny to be writing the name Norman since my own name is Norma and it feels like I’m writing my own name almost, However— 

First, thanks for letting Sam [photographer and MM confidant Sam Shaw] and me visit you and Hedda last Saturday. It was nice. I enjoyed meeting your wife – she seemed so warm to me. Thanks the most for your book of poetry—with which I spent all Sunday morning in bed with. It touched me – I use to think if I had ever had a child I would have wanted only a son, but after reading -Songs for Patricia [Simon and Schuster, 1951] – I know I would have loved a little girl just as much but maybe the former feeling was only Freudian for something…anyway Frued [sic]

I use to write poetry sometimes but usually I was very depressed at those times and the few (about two) people said that it depressed them, in fact one cried but it was an old friend I’d known for years. So anyway thanks. And my best to Hedda & Patricia and you— 

Marilyn M.”

Marilyn’s personal script for her last, unfinished movie, Something’s Got to Give - is currently on auction at Paul Fraser Collectibles, reports The Independent. (A signed note from Marilyn, penned during filming of The Prince and the Showgirl, is also for sale.)

Biographer and researcher Michelle Morgan shares her latest findings on Marilyn’s early years on her blog today.

“Norma Jeane was living at the time with Doc and Grace Goddard, and a lodger…As stated in the census, Margaret Kanouse was living with the family in 1940, but I have discovered that sadly she died the next year on 7 March 1941. This is quite intriguing because if she continued living with the family, she would have actually died while Norma Jeane was still living there.

I have been unable to find a confirmed photo of Margaret Kanouse, but I think that the old lady in the photo above (far right) could very well be her.”

Marilyn with poet Norman Rosten and his wife, Hedda, in 1955

NPR takes a look at Marilyn’s will. Made in 1961, it remains controversial, and it’s rumoured that she had wanted to change it in the weeks before her death.

“Monroe grew up in an orphanage and foster homes. She had no relationship with her father, and her mother spent most of her adult life in mental institutions. In her will, the actress set up a trust to care for her mother until she died; left money to her half-sister, who Monroe didn’t even know existed until she was 12; and made bequests to a poet friend and his wife (she loved poetry, and even wrote some herself) and to others she trusted.

According to Anthony Summers, who wrote a best-selling Monroe biography, the people named in her will got to know her as a real person who loved children, animals and cooking.

‘They took Marilyn under their wings,’ he says. ‘They gave her uncomplicated privacy and companionship.’

Monroe also left a bequest to her psychoanalyst, Marianne Kris.

‘She felt that [Kris] was very helpful and sympathetic,’ says Sarah Churchwell, author of The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe. ‘She found that [Kris] was starting to help her understand what it was that she was going through.’

After Kris died, her portion of the estate was transferred to the Anna Freud Centre in London, which is dedicated to working with children with mental health problems. Churchwell says Monroe would have approved.

‘That would have made her really happy,’ Churchwell says. ‘She did want to do good, and she wanted to feel as if she had accomplished something.’

But Monroe left the bulk of her estate to her acting coach, Lee Strasberg. He and his wife, Paula, also one of her acting coaches, were like surrogate parents to Monroe. When Strasberg died in 1982, his second wife, Anna, inherited the Monroe estate and eventually hired CMG Worldwide, a company that specializes in managing the estates of dead celebrities, to license Monroe products. That’s when the actress started making big money.

Several years and a variety of lawsuits later, Strasberg sold what remained of the Monroe estate to a new company, Authentic Brands Group, or ABG, for an estimated $20 to $30 million. Strasberg remains a minority partner in the deal.”

The Associated Press has been investigating missing FBI files on Marilyn, as reported in the Washington Post.

“Like many of the stars of her era, Marilyn Monroe’s movements, relationships and comments weren’t just devoured by fans — they were followed closely by the FBI.

Records kept on Monroe, many of which were filed under “Foreign Counterintelligence,” have intrigued many who have sought to learn more about the film star, including those who investigated her death.

In connection with the 50th anniversary of Monroe’s death on Aug. 5, The Associated Press has attempted under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the most complete record of the bureau’s monitoring of Monroe.

Nearly nine months later — after several requests and an appeal — obtaining a more complete record of how the FBI investigated Monroe in the months before she died have been stymied by an effort to simply find the files.

The FBI says it no longer has the files it compiled on Monroe; the National Archives — the usual destination for such material — says it doesn’t have them either.

Finding out precisely when the records were moved — as the FBI says has happened — required the filing of yet another, still-pending Freedom of Information Act request.

The most recent version of the files, all heavily redacted, is publicly available on the bureau’s website, The Vault, which periodically posts FBI records on celebrities, government officials, spies and criminals.”

Last week, the Huffington Post reported a forensic psychologist’s comment on Marilyn’s last signed cheque, for a chest of drawers, dated August 4th. (The cheque is due to be sold by Heritage Auctions on July 24th.)

“‘People about to kill themselves frequently engage in self-soothing behaviors,’ Dr. S. David Bernstein told The Huffington Post. Shopping sprees are definitely one of those behaviors, he said. ‘Spending — and giving things away — make us feel good,’ he said.

But this was a single purchase, Bernstein said. ‘A single item — especially something practical like a chest of drawers and of a low value like this — suggests a frame of mind of “I’m going to be here for awhile,”‘  he said. ‘If I were doing a psychological autopsy, this would be intriguing. This would be more consistent with someone who is not suicidal.’

Bernstein says buying a chest of drawers that you are going to fill up with things is an action taken by someone who ‘plans to be around awhile,’ not about to end their life. ‘It’s an inconsistent behavior’ for someone planning suicide, he said.”

The check was signed by Marilyn, but written by someone else – possibly her housekeeper, Eunice Murray. Personally, I don’t think this item tells us anything significant about Marilyn’s state of mind on that day. She had been purchasing furniture regularly since moving into a new house several months before.

Veteran columnist Liz Smith considers the story in her latest Chicago Tribune column.

“Last week, a check Monroe wrote out a day before she died was put up for auction. It was also ‘analyzed.’ The purchase was for a chest of drawers for her new home in Brentwood. A forensic psychologist chimed in and insisted this was proof positive Monroe was not ‘planning to commit suicide.’ Well, gee. Nobody ever said she was planning it. If that had been the case she certainly would have had a touch up to her roots, not to mention a manicure and pedicure. (These things were noted by the police who first saw her body.) Suicide often just ‘happens’ to people who struggle with depression, and who also have an inordinate amount of medication handy, as the chronically sleepless Marilyn did. But the ‘she was murdered’ posse are pleased with one more notch on their side.”

A photograph signed by Marilyn to avoid a speeding ticket will be auctioned at a starting price of $4,000, Metro reports. Los Angeles traffic cop Roy Garrett (now deceased) made a habit of acquiring autographs from movie stars with bad driving skills.  Marilyn inscribed the photo, ‘To Roy, love and kisses. Thanks for keeping me out of the clink.’

Other stars in Mr Garrett’s ‘rogue’s gallery’ are Errol Flynn, Jimmy Stewart, Greta Garbo, Ginger Rogers and Dean Martin. ‘The Marilyn Monroe one is a real gem,’ says Margaret Barrett of Heritage Auctions. ‘She only signed photos for people she knew and not random strangers.’

The Entertainment and Music Memorabilia Sale, organised by Heritage Auctions, will be held in Beverly Hills on July 24. Other Monroe-related items include a pink Pucci blouse, a note from playwright William Inge, and rare photos from Korea and the East of Eden premiere.

According to PR Newswire, files from Emmeline Sniveley’s Blue Book Agency – where the young Marilyn worked as a model – have been recovered, in the Hague, Netherlands.

“Miss Emmeline Snively, founder of the agency in 1939, discovered Marilyn Monroe (then Norma Jean Dougherty) in 1945 as a model. The files go all the way back from 1945 until 1969, the year that, as Miss Snively mentioned in a interview, she ‘put it away forever.’

The contents are many photographs, negatives, letters, telegrams, personal notes, autographs and even a script… Most of this material has never been published.

Miss Snively introduced Marilyn to the movie world and always followed her career. From all the available information it appears that Miss Snively tried for years after Marilyn’s death to sell this box with the files to writers, editors and film producers like Darryl F. Zanuck from 20th Century Fox, without any luck. Who could have known at that time that Marilyn would still be such a legend even 50 years after her death? These files will be a unique start to make a great movie, book or documentary.”

 Lee Strasberg’s widow, Anna, has donated his personal papers – including correspondence, rehearsal notes and photos – to the US Library of Congress, reports the Los Angeles Times. (It will be interesting to see if any new Marilyn-related material is made public…)

Today’s Letters of Note blog features a famous note that Marilyn wrote to Dr Marcus Rabwin, while awaiting surgery Cedars of Lebanon hospital, back in 1952. She was extremely overworked and in poor health at the time, and her bosses at Twentieth Century-Fox had refused to let her undergo a much-needed appendectomy until she finished work on her current film, Monkey Business. Marilyn’s great anxiety about having children is painfully clear from the letter, and would prove to be well-founded: she suffered from endometriosis throughout her adult life, and would never carry a pregnancy to term.

Following the success of Fragments, Marilyn’s estate have approved two new books to be published later this year, reports Canoe.ca:

“The first book Girl Waiting, to be published in May, brings together drawings of Marilyn Monroe, unreleased, and a series of photographs where the blonde icon appears in front of paintings by great masters. These photos were taken by Joshua Logan shortly after the filming of Bus Stop.

The other book, edited by Bernard Comment, features the entire personal archive of Marilyn Monroe kept partly in New York and partly in Los Angeles. Some 500 documents were selected from the archives, to a large volume to be published in November 2012.”

If you’re already wavering on your New Year’s resolutions, take inspiration from Marilyn: a list of her goals (among her personal writings collected in Fragments) is posted, with full transcript, at Lists of Note.

Secrets of the FBI is a new book by the conservative author Ronald Kessler, and it includes material on Marilyn’s alleged meetings with Robert F. Kennedy.

I’m not clear whether this is based on known or unseen files, but FBI material on MM tends to be highly speculative.

Here’s an extract from an article by Kessler, writing for The Daily Beast:

“Many of the confidential files were destroyed after Hoover’s death. One such item that never came out previously was a teletype sent to headquarters from William Simon, who headed the Los Angeles field office, just after the August 5, 1962, death of Marilyn Monroe at her Brentwood, California home. According to Cartha ‘Deke’  DeLoach, who saw the teletype, it said that then Attorney General Robert Kennedy had borrowed Simon’s personal car to see Monroe just before her death.

Confirming this, Simon’s son Greg says, “My father said Robert Kennedy would borrow his white Lincoln convertible. That’s why we didn’t have it on many weekends.” Simon’s daughter Stephanie Branon also confirmed that her father lent his car to Kennedy and remembered that the attorney general once left his Ray-Ban sunglasses in the glove compartment.

As attorney general, Kennedy was entitled to be driven by an FBI security detail. The fact that he chose to use Simon’s personal car is consistent with William Simon’s report to headquarters that he lent his car to Kennedy for the purpose of clandestine meetings with Monroe. Whether his last meeting with her, possibly to break up with her, may have contributed to her suicide is legitimate speculation.”