BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) – 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.
The public displays were unusual for the famously stoic and private DiMaggio. 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.
“I love you and want to be with you,” DiMaggio said in one pained letter to Monroe from the collection, written when she announced she was filing for divorce after a matter of months in 1954. “There is nothing I would like better than to restore your confidence in me.”
The 300 items also 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.
DiMaggio wrote in his letter that he learned Monroe was leaving him when he saw her make the announcement on television.